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eception, by creating an awareness of the reception situation' (Grodal, 1997: 178). Viewers,
in effect, engage with the screen action, while being simultaneously aware of an implied role
that the film intends them to play while viewing; contextual frames can, for example, take the
form of conspicuous, characteristic elements of film genre, as a dark, rainy urban street
illuminated by neon signs might signpost noir and put the viewer into the role of a knowing
cinephile. A spectator, for example, might identify himself 'with a viewer of art film or a
scientifically detached observer of the sordidness of human nature" (Grodal, 1997: 178). The
viewer's shifts of attention from the diegetic action to a film's 'special frames' will create the
effect of 'an emotional buffer or filter' distancing the viewer from the screen action (Grodal,
1997:178). Consequently, the viewer's affective and physiological reactions to such films
may be conditioned by the viewer's awareness of the implied role that s/he is occupying
(Grodal, 1997: 180).
The second theoretical cornerstone of this study is constituted by Murray Smith's
writings on the viewer's imaginative engagement with fictional narratives; Smith also
envisages an interaction between the cognitive and the affective, and divides the notion of the
viewer's engagement with screen characters into three concepts, or phases: recognition,
alignment, and allegiance, which constitute a 'structure of sympathy" involving 'empathic
phenomena' that are exemplified by viewers sharing and simulating the emotions of
characters at given moments in films (Smith, 1995: 73). He asserts that the film narration, 'as
the ultimate "organizer" of the text', is the force which generates the processes of
recognition, alignment and allegiance (Smith, 1995: 75). More in detail, recognition is the
process by which viewers recognize and construct the screen character's traits according to
analogical characteristics found in real human behaviour. Alignment is the process by which
viewers are placed in relation to characters, through 'two interlocking functions: spatio-
temporal attachment and subjective access'; viewers effectively share the visual and aural
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