Research Catalog

Title

Moving pictures : a new theory of film genres, feelings, and cognition / Torben Grodal.

Author

Grodal, Torben Kragh.

Publication

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

ix, 306 pages; 25 cm

Summary

• Moving Pictures is a bold new theoretical account of the role of emotions and cognition in producing the aesthetics effects of film and television genres. It argues that film genres are mental structures which integrate sensations, emotions, and actions, activating the viewer's body and mind.
• Using recent developments in neuroscience and cognitive science in combination with narrative theory and film theory the book provides an alternative account to that offered by psychoanalysis explaining identification and the correlation of viewer reaction with specific film genres.
• Concluding, with an analysis of the emotional structures of comic fiction, metafiction, crime fiction, horror, and melodrama the book is unique in describing a wide range of problems and issues within film studies, from a cognitive, neurophysiological, and ecological points of view. Highly original, the work will interest scholars in a wide range of fields, from aesthetics to psychology in addition to researchers in the areas of film and television theory.

Subject

• Motion pictures > Psychological aspects
• Film genres > Psychological aspects
• Fiction genres > Psychological aspects
• Cognition and culture

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-296) and index.

Contents

1. Fiction, Symbolic Simulation, and Reality -- 2. Cognition, Emotion, Brain-Processes, and Narration -- 3. Associative Networks, Focus of Attention, and Analogue Communication -- 4. Cognitive Identification and Empathy -- 5. Intentions, Will, Goal, Consciousness, and Humanness -- 6. Subjectivity, Causality, and Time -- 7. A Typology of Genres of Fiction -- 8. Comic Fictions -- 9. Metaframes as Emotion-Filters and Brackets -- 10. Crime and Horror Fiction -- 11. Melodrama, Lyrics, and Autonomic Response.

ISBN

• 0198159412
• 0198159838

LCCN

gb 97029768

OCLC

ocm36796915

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries