1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910788998403321

Autore

Plantinga Carl R

Titolo

Moving viewers [[electronic resource] ] : American film and the spectator's experience / / Carl Plantinga

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2009

ISBN

1-282-77262-7

9786612772627

0-520-94391-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (295 p.)

Disciplina

302.23/43

Soggetti

Motion picture audiences - Psychology

Motion pictures - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-267) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Affect and the Movies -- 1. Pleasures, Desires, Fantasies -- 2. Movies and Emotions -- 3. Stories and Sympathies -- 4. The Sensual Medium -- 5. Affective Trajectories and Synesthesia -- 6. Negative Emotions and Sympathetic Narratives -- 7. The Rhetoric of Emotion -- Conclusion: Moving Viewers -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Everyone knows the thrill of being transported by a film, but what is it that makes movie watching such a compelling emotional experience? In Moving Viewers, Carl Plantinga explores this question and the implications of its answer for aesthetics, the psychology of spectatorship, and the place of movies in culture. Through an in-depth discussion of mainstream Hollywood films, Plantinga investigates what he terms "the paradox of negative emotion" and the function of mainstream narratives as ritualistic fantasies. He describes the sensual nature of the movies and shows how film emotions are often elicited for rhetorical purposes. He uses cognitive science and philosophical aesthetics to demonstrate why cinema may deliver a similar emotional charge for diverse audiences.