3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic well researched book on film theory, philosophy and psychology, February 2, 2011
This review is from: Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator's Experience (Paperback)
I am currently teaching a philosophy class on film and emotions class at a liberal arts college and we are using this book. My class has found it accessible and stimulating. It is a book that will be of great interest to anyone interested in the topic of film and the emotions, and the author's views are informed by the latest work in psychology and philosophy of the emotions. Psychoanalytic accounts of film have tended to be quite reductionistic, explaining our interest in classic, narrative Hollywood cinema in terms of the catch all concept "visual pleasure." Plantinga argues that this approach misses the great variety of emotional responses that these films engender--including fear, suspense, sympathy, and empathy, to name just a few. He proposes to open up how film theorists have looked at the viewer's emotional response to film, by looking at the wide range of emotional responses that classic narrative films prompt, and just how they do this.
In addition, this work is informed by the latest work by philosophers and psychologists on the emotions. Philosophers have tended to see emotions as a bodily reaction (Williams James view) OR they have overemphasized the extent to which conscious, deliberate judgments and beliefs are necessary for an emotion. Plantinga argues that cognition is a component of emotion, but that the relevant cognition is a "felt evaluation" of the situation that prompts an emotion, and that the cognition or evaluation can take place below the conscious level. This account of emotions are felt evaluations is at the center of Plantinga's analysis. Film narratives and characters prompt felt evaluations that are grounded in the concerns and values of the viewers. As such our emotional response to films need not be irrational but can be a proper expression of what is important to the film viewer. We can learn about what we value and take to be important by studying our reactions to films and understanding how films prompt character engagement.
Although I am a philosopher, my colleague in Cinema and Media Studies assigned this book as one possible book that her students could write a review of in her film theory class. She told me that the response to the book by the students was very positive. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but in my view this book IS very rigorous and also clearly written and engaging. It also has a respectful and constructive engagement with psychoanalytic approaches. Plantinga's argument is that the key notions that film theory has employed for the last twenty plus years has been tethered to a psychoanalytic account that is not be true to how actual viewers respond to film. The argument Plantinga makes is a groundbreaking step in opening up a new paradigm for thinking about film and emotion, and in my opinion, it should be welcomed as such. Read it for yourself and see what you think!
Note: there are many detailed discussions of films and a number of good examples to illustrate Plantinga's arguments. His discussion of the appeal of the film _Titanic_ and how the interest in the film is paradoxical--how can viewers take pleasure in the tragic events the film depicts--is illuminating and draws on philosophy and detailed discussion of the film techniques that convert our pain at the Titanic's sinking into pleasure at Jack's heroism near the end of the film. The book should interest anyone who wants to learn more about our emotional engagement with film.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A useful inquiry into the mechanisms whereby mainstream American movies deliver an emotional experience, November 26, 2011
This review is from: Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator's Experience (Paperback)
Film criticism often focuses on interpretation and theory at the expense of attending to the actual experience of film, which is always (or usually) an emotional experience. Yet it is the promise of a certain kind of emotional experience that tends to draw us to film in the first place, and it is our emotional involvement that tends to give weight to the messages we draw from film. In
Moving Viewers, Carl Plantinga considers the ways in which mainstream Hollywood movies tell stories in such a way as to deliver an emotional experience. While Plantinga is generally cautious in his approach to the philosophical issues he raises, he does show, in the end, how a cognitive-analytic approach to film theory and criticism can link up with the ideological and political concerns that tended to dominate the film theory of the preceding generation.
Emotions generated by watching movies are, for Plantinga, analogous to perceptions. They are a way of making sense of what we observe in light of the interests and allegiances we bring with us and are encouraged to form by the movie maker's narration and techniques. Perhaps understandably for a discussion that is not focused directly on the nature of emotions but on the nature of the emotional experience generated by film, the book doesn't do much in the way of attempting to address long-standing philosophical disputes regarding the relationship between the mental component (what he calls "concern-based construals") and the physical state (the bodily feeling that accompanies the emotion) except to recognize that both seem to be essential components of that emotional experience. His approach (what he calls a "cognitive perceptual" approach) recognizes the centrality of the cognitive elements of emotion -- where "concern-based construals" amount to a kind of pre-reflective judgment or interpretation of a situation in light of certain interests and expectations -- while acknowledging that there are other non-cognitive influences that play a role in emotional life.
Plantinga notes, importantly, that emotions are not static events but unfold temporally. There is a narrative dimension to emotional states - something happens that is relevant to ongoing concerns and creates a situation that solicits engagement. Mainstream narrative films draw upon the "paradigm scenarios" of concern that enable a shared vocabulary for emotional life, and it is largely their success in eliciting and sustaining emotional states that has helped structure the conventions of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. An important question for Plantinga, as for other theorists who've worked on related topics, is the extent to which the emotional experience of watching movies depends on viewer "identification" with a main character. He argues that while the experience of moviegoers is often aligned with or in sympathy with the goals of a main character, it is never strictly identified with that main character, and our emotions are not usually the same as those the main character is depicted as experiencing. Still, he wants to argue, while we may experience direct emotions (like becoming afraid while watching a horror film, or standing in awe of a beautiful image), the central emotional experience is one in which we are cued by filmmaker's techniques to construe the narrative in light of interests we have come to develop as a result of watching the film.
The most interesting, and most novel, chapter in the book is one in which he addresses the paradoxical appeal of negative emotions in film, such as sorrow or horror. He rejects solutions to the paradox of negative emotions that simply deny that the experience of these emotions is not pleasurable, or that stipulate on theoretical grounds that audiences are subconsciously masochistic. His intriguing solution to what has been called the "paradox of tragedy" and the "paradox of horror" (and what he identifies, more broadly, as the "paradox of melodrama"), draws elements from both Aristotle and Hume. He argues (focusing on the weepy appeal of the climactic scene in
Titanic) that, first, successful sympathetic narratives manage to mitigate the painfulness of negative emotions by combining them with positive emotions, and then, manage to channel the negative feelings into positive ones by connecting the painful situation to a fantasy (or myth) that overcomes it, such as the fantasy of "timeless romantic love" or the fantasy of "assurance and control". It is here that Plantinga -- uncharacteristically for most work in cognitive film theory which aims for a political neutrality that would distinguish it from the psychoanalytic and semiotic theory that it was formed against -- begins to address questions of ideology. He recognizes, rightly, that the emotional power of movies gives film the power to influence beliefs and to shape worldviews, and that this should raise ethical and political questions. While he only begins to touch upon such questions, his willingness to address them does open up an important space whereby a cognitive and naturalistic approach to film theory can be linked with or come into dialogue with film theoretical approaches that address directly its role in shaping culture and belief.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Folk Psychology approach to film theory, January 8, 2011
This review is from: Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator's Experience (Paperback)
I read this book toward the end of a self-directed independent study of film theory, following the likes of Mary Ann Doane, Vivian Sobchack, Gaylyn Studlar, Linda Williams, and Laura Marks. Because I read it in line with these theoretical, intellectually rigorous accounts, Plantinga's folk psychology approach felt wishy-washy. I would not suggest reading it if you are attempting a psychoanalytic or phenomenological approach along the lines of the authors mentioned above.
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