Moving pictures
Subtitle: a new theory of film genres, feelings, and cognition
By: Torben Grodal.
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 306
ISBN-13: 9780198159834
Subjects: Motion pictures -- Psychological aspects; Film genres
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-296) and index.
Table of contents: title: pt. 1. Visual fiction as embodied mental flow. Chpt. 1. Fiction, symbolic simulation, and reality; title: chpt. 2. Cognition, emotion, brain-processes, and narration; title: chpt. 3. Associative networks, focus of attention, and analogue communication; title: pt. 2. Narratives as basic mental models. chpt. 4. Cognitive identification and empathy; title: chpt. 5. Intentions, will, goal, consciousness, and humanness; title: chpt. 6. Subjectivity, causality, and time; title: pt. 3. A typology of genres and emotions. chpt. 7. A typology of genres of fiction; title: pt. 4. Laughter, distance, horror, and tears. chpt. 8. Comic fictions; title: chpt. 9. Metaframes as emotion-filters and brackets; title: chpt. 10. Crime and horror fiction; title: chpt. 11. Melodrama, lyrics, and autonomic response.