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Cognitive/Affective Theory THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK This study is based on the notion of interaction between the viewer's cognitive and affective faculties while engaging with screen fiction. Where psychoanalytical methodologies conceptualize humanity as 'torn [...] between principles of pleasure and principles of reality', with principles of reality and 'reason' considered as 'secondary processes', Torben Grodal attributes greater importance to ecological/evolutionary theories according to which humans have developed cognitive skills, not 'in opposition to their emotions and their bodies' but 'to carry out the preferences of the body-mind totality' (Grodal, 1997: 5). In other words, it is easier to obtain sustenance, preserve one's safety, and thereby experience pleasurable emotions if we are aware of the nature of worldly phenomena. In the context of the reception of film, Grodal's starting point is that 'visual fiction is viewed in a conscious state and it is mostly about human beings perceiving, acting and feeling [...] in relation to a visible and audible world' (Grodal, 1997: 6). In his view, individuals evaluate and process human behaviour 'by making mental models of act-schemata and motive schemata (Grodal 1997: 8) in other words, by using acquired experience to deduce the reasons behind a person's conduct or a given event and then to formulate hypotheses about the person's future actions or about possible developments in the light of an event that has occurred. There are similarities between this process and that of the progression of 'a classical and a canonical narrative", given that both occur in a 'coherent and consistent time and space"; Grodal therefore identifies the potential for visual fiction to be formally analysed (for example in ideological or stylistic terms) and related to 'fundamental formulas of consciousness' because it is motivated by 'fundamental aspects of the mental architecture of humans' (Grodal, 1997: 8). 28
In discussing different narrative theories, Grodal asserts that all aspects of the viewing experience, such as the perceptual, the cognitive, the emotional, the temporal and the spatial, are equally important; therefore he rejects the notion of 'hierarchies of mental functions', since they interact with one another. For example, an individual's perception of real-life or screen events provides information that is 'analyzed cognitively and evaluated emotionally', and therefore a film's narrative structure is conceptualized as the 'framework within which [the functions] interact' (Grodal, 1997: 9-10). hi this context, Grodal indicates the key function of cognitive evaluations of the 'reality status' of a given narrative event, and because the process involves emotions, he stresses the importance of analysing the reality status 'cued by a given sequence', as its cinematic manipulation 'can be used for evoking emotions and feelings'(Grodal, 1997: 28). On the basis of an individual's holistic experience of reality, which is composed of many visual and aural components, Grodal provides the example of how the removal of sound from a dramatic scene 'is often done to produce an 'unreal' and 'subjective effect' (Grodal, 1997: 29). This aesthetic device - as Grodal terms it - is a feature of Jean-Luc Godard's mode of film-making, for example. Grodal discusses the findings of scientific research into the ways in which higher animals and humans react to their surroundings, and to 'purposive', 'goal-oriented' acts within them, the critic referencing experiments on monkeys who were monitored as they observed a person moving around a room; increased neuronal activity was detected in the primates 'when the person moved toward a door leading out of the laboratory" (Grodal, 1997: 86). Grodal argues that such cognitive processes are 'based on innate circuits and is not a result of a cultural process', and on a comprehension of an individual's movements and objectives, and he suggests that 'when people are "fascinated" by films, this may be an effect of the number of movements and purposive acts represented in them' (Grodal, 1997: 87). Hence, he posits that in cinematic contexts a viewer participates in constructed fiction by 29
- Page 1 and 2: Emotion and Cognition in the Films
- Page 3 and 4: Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstrac
- Page 5 and 6: Acknowledgements I am very grateful
- Page 7 and 8: INTRODUCTION Over the past five dec
- Page 9 and 10: moods punctuated by emotional pheno
- Page 11 and 12: comprehensible why a nation that de
- Page 13 and 14: foreground a reception process in w
- Page 15 and 16: LITERATURE REVIEW While this study
- Page 17 and 18: film for 'jealous cinephiles or, mo
- Page 19 and 20: together' (Ungari, 1982: 51). This
- Page 21 and 22: Canby implicitly agrees with Cineas
- Page 23 and 24: it is Last Tango in Paris, and in t
- Page 25 and 26: e attributed to Paul's abolition of
- Page 27 and 28: Petri, who - in 1972 - talking abou
- Page 29 and 30: twofold aim of offering viewers sop
- Page 31: Maraini, D. (1973) 'Who were you?',
- Page 35 and 36: outcomes. The viewer and character
- Page 37 and 38: information to which the character
- Page 39 and 40: emotional state that the individual
- Page 41 and 42: opera houses in Before the Revoluti
- Page 43 and 44: manipulation, Bordwell analyses the
- Page 45 and 46: narrative schema clarifies how we o
- Page 47 and 48: to the point of drawing the spectat
- Page 49 and 50: for granted, in a 'slightly hazardo
- Page 51 and 52: passive emotionalism' (Sterritt, 19
- Page 53 and 54: Godard's approach from Bertolucci's
- Page 55 and 56: characters being stimulated into ta
- Page 57 and 58: apolitical art' in La Chinoise (p.
- Page 59 and 60: SECTION 1; Pessimism and Melancholi
- Page 61 and 62: La commare secca/The Grim Reaper: A
- Page 63 and 64: the film. Several of the suspects a
- Page 65 and 66: to reduce realism in favour of an a
- Page 67 and 68: giant publicity poster for the aper
- Page 69 and 70: mark out the sequence as significan
- Page 71 and 72: emphasizes his youth and simple nat
- Page 73 and 74: The camera movement and the frame c
- Page 75 and 76: Smith, G. M. (1999) 'Local Emotions
- Page 77 and 78: of respectability. Inspired by Cesa
- Page 79 and 80: film is/was viewed, the goal orient
- Page 81 and 82: viewers identify complicated intert
Cognitive/Affective Theory<br />
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK<br />
This study is based on the notion <strong>of</strong> interaction between the viewer's cognitive and affective<br />
faculties while engaging with screen fiction. Where psychoanalytical methodologies<br />
conceptualize humanity as 'torn [...] between principles <strong>of</strong> pleasure and principles <strong>of</strong> reality',<br />
with principles <strong>of</strong> reality and 'reason' considered as 'secondary processes', Torben Grodal<br />
attributes greater importance to ecological/evolutionary theories according to which humans<br />
have developed cognitive skills, not 'in opposition to their emotions and their bodies' but 'to<br />
carry out the preferences <strong>of</strong> the body-mind totality' (Grodal, 1997: 5). In other words, it is<br />
easier to obtain sustenance, preserve one's safety, and thereby experience pleasurable<br />
emotions if we are aware <strong>of</strong> the nature <strong>of</strong> worldly phenomena. In the context <strong>of</strong> the reception<br />
<strong>of</strong> film, Grodal's starting point is that 'visual fiction is viewed in a conscious state and it is<br />
mostly about human beings perceiving, acting and feeling [...] in relation to a visible and<br />
audible world' (Grodal, 1997: 6). In his view, individuals evaluate and process human<br />
behaviour 'by making mental models <strong>of</strong> act-schemata and motive schemata (Grodal 1997: 8)<br />
in other words, by using acquired experience to deduce the reasons behind a person's conduct<br />
or a given event and then to formulate hypotheses about the person's future actions or about<br />
possible developments in the light <strong>of</strong> an event that has occurred. There are similarities<br />
between this process and that <strong>of</strong> the progression <strong>of</strong> 'a classical and a canonical narrative",<br />
given that both occur in a 'coherent and consistent time and space"; Grodal therefore<br />
identifies the potential for visual fiction to be formally analysed (for example in ideological<br />
or stylistic terms) and related to 'fundamental formulas <strong>of</strong> consciousness' because it is<br />
motivated by 'fundamental aspects <strong>of</strong> the mental architecture <strong>of</strong> humans' (Grodal, 1997: 8).<br />
28
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