Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film

ISBN-13: 9780195371314 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 336 str.

Torben Kragh Grodal

Opis

Embodied Visions presents a groundbreaking analysis of film through the lens of bioculturalism, revealing how human biology as well as human culture determine how films are made and experienced. Throughout his study, Torben Grodal uses the breakthroughs of modern brain science to explain central features of film aesthetics and to construct a general model of aesthetic experience-what he terms the PECMA flow model-that demonstrates the movement of information and emotions in the brain when viewing film. Examining a wide array of genres-animation, romance, pornography, fantasy, horror-from evolutionary and psychological perspectives, Grodal also reflects on social issues at the intersection of film theory and neuropsychology. These include moral problems in film viewing, how we experience realism and character identification, and the value of the subjective forms that cinema uniquely elaborates.

Recenzje

Grodal has thrown down the gauntlet to film studies, giving us the first really detailed model of an evolutionary theory of film. This work will become a major reference point for scholars working on similar terrain, and indeed for any serious theorist of film.

O autorze

Torben Grodal is Professor of Film and Media at the University of Copenhagen. He is author of Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition, and he has published books and articles on cultural history, film theory and film analysis, aesthetic theory, and video games combining humanistic methods with brain science.