Torben Grodal

Embodied Visions

Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. März 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 155mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 567g
• ISBN-13: 9780195371314
• ISBN-10: 0195371313
• Artikelnr.: 26366180

Autorenporträt

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.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface and Acknowledgments
1: Introduction: Evolution, Biology, Culture and Film
Part One: Film, Culture, and Evolution
1: Universalism, Cultural Variation, and Children's Film
2: Love and Desire in the Cinema
3: Screaming Lambs and Lusty Wolves: Moral and Evolution
4: Undead Ghosts and Living Prey: Fantasy and Horror
5: Sadness, Melodrama and Rituals of Loss and Death
Part Two: Narrative, Visual Aesthetics, Brain, and the PECMA flow
Introduction to Part Two: the PECMA flow
6: Stories for Eyes, Ears, and Muscles - Story as Embodied Simulation
7: Character Simulation and Emotion
8: Art Film, the Transient Body and the Permanent Soul
9: Subjective Aesthetics in Film
10: Realism and Reality
11: Conclusion
Appendix: Frozen PECMA Flows in Trier's Oeuvre
References
Index