Feeling Cinema: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies

Description

There is an upsurge of interest in contemporary film theory towards cinematic emotions. Tarja Laine's innovative study proposes a methodology for interpreting affective encounters with films, not as objectively readable texts, but as emotionally salient events. Laine argues convincingly that film is not an immutable system of representation that is meant for (one-way) communication, but an active, dynamic participant in the becoming of the cinematic experience. Through a range of chapters that include Horror, Hope, Shame and Love - and through close readings of films such as The Shining, American Beauty and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Laine demonstrates that cinematic emotions are more than mere indicators of the properties of their objects. They are processes that are intentional in a phenomenological sense, supporting the continuous, shifting, and reciprocal exchange between the film's world and the spectator's world. Grounded in continental philosophy, this provocative book explores the affective dynamics of cinema as an interchange between the film and the spectator in a manner that transcends traditional generic patterns.

Tarja Laine is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She is the author of Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema (2007).

Laine's book remains strong and contains many valuable additions to the growing body of scholarly work on cinema and emotions. The book serves both as a good introduction to the debates regarding emotions and affects in cinema, while also pushing the field further, particularly in its synthesis of two often competing traditions. -- Steen Christiansen, Aalborg University, Denmark * Medie Kultur * Tarja Laine's Feeling Cinema is a remarkably eloquent and accomplished contribution to the growing wave of theoretical work on our affective and emotional engagement with film. Not only does Laine develop excellent analyses of the copious theoretical literature on cinematic emotion, she offers a powerful and persuasive way of conceptualising our aesthetic experience of film as an 'emotional event'. Her perspicuous theoretical discussions of key emotions are elaborated via nuanced critical reflections on the 'emotional core' of selected films spanning horror, thriller, art house, and romance genres. Feeling Cinema is thus enlightening and engaging reading for anyone-student, theorist, or cinephile-wanting to understand the emotional power of movies. --Robert Sinnerbrink, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney