2019/1 – #Emotions

Now showing 1 - 20 of 23

Editorial NECSUS
NECSUS Editorial Board (2019) , S. 1-3
The affective niches of media
Hven, Steffen (2019) , S. 105-123
This article explores the potential value of affective niche theory for understanding how media-induced emotions, especially those related to the cinema, extend beyond the body of the human organism and are thus to varying degrees scaffolded by environmental factors. A central thesis is that cinema creates ‘affective niches’ based on ‘sensory isolates’ that enable the experience of, for example, horror or extreme violence without having to actually fear for our lives. This article explores ways in which affective niche theory allows for the theorising of mediated affectivity as situated in the intermediary space between organism and environment.
Books of faces: Cultural techniques of basic emotions
Bollmer, Grant (2019) , S. 125-150
This article examines books of faces – serial images of faces performing a multitude of expressions – as a cultural technique employed in empirical, experimental psychological research on facial emotion. It focuses on the generally forgotten work of Robert S. Woodworth, Harold Schlosberg, Theodor Piderit, and Jean Frois-Wittmann, arguing that the media employed in their research provide the operative foundations for discrete ‘affect programs’ of ‘basic emotions’. The article opens and concludes with discussions of digital emotion recognition technologies, suggesting that the category system of emotion represented by the work of these psychologists is, perhaps, coming to an end.
The film is the museum: Ken Jacobs, Gus Van Sant, Mark Lewis, and Pierre Perrault
Le Maître, Barbara (2019) , S. 15-30
In the last twenty years, the question of the relationship between cinema and the museum has been raised in multiple theoretical and practical contexts. The purpose of this text is in a sense to reverse the way in which the question has been posed by shifting the conversation from the film as object for the museum to that of the film as museum. Taking as a starting point the diversity inherent in institutional museums as well as the constant redefinition of the project which those institutions nonetheless have in common, this essay develops the hypothesis of a delocalisation (accompanied by a reinvention) of most of the functions traditionally associated with the museum. Those functions can now happen elsewhere, as for instance in (and via) a film which can be transformed into an exhibition site or an act of restauration. Ultimately, that which is referred to as ‘curatorial gesture’ encompasses the entirety or part of a necessarily polymorphous curatorial project which is essentially redefined through film.
Brecht, emotion, and the reflective spectator: The case of BLACKKKLANSMAN
Plantinga, Carl (2019) , S. 151-169
This article argues that ‘late Brechtian’ theory about the relationship between the play/film design and the spectator’s experience, especially in regard to emotion, has much to teach about reflective spectatorship. A film that mixes characteristics of counter cinema and mainstream cinema may be the most effective in generating reflective, critical spectatorship. The article presents an analysis of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman to show how this might work. It argues that late Brechtian screen stories such as BlacKkKlansman should not be seen as solely alienating or estranging, but may also powerfully engage spectators through emotion and empathy.
Strategic pleasure: Gendered anger as collective emotion in WANTED
Pribram, E. Deidre (2019) , S. 171-189
‘Strategic Pleasure’ considers how collective emotions are generated for physically dispersed audiences of television and film narratives. How might viewers who are not co-present come to constitute communities through felt commonality? To answer this question, the essay turns to work on imagined communities and introduces the concept of socioemotionality to describe public emotional experiences encompassing social relations. In particular, the paper looks at the collective emotion of gendered anger in connection with the Australian television serial Wanted. Its deployment of gendered anger enables non-Australian audiences to locate themselves in an otherwise national series.
The emotional politics of limerence in romantic comedy films
Moss-Wellington, Wyatt (2019) , S. 191-209
‘Limerence’ describes the intensity of emotions often felt during the pair-forming stage of a romantic relationship, a period that is also the primary focus of many romantic comedy films. This article asks how filmmakers have used depictions of limerence to highlight spaces in which its potential for both disruption and loving care could be brought to political spheres. I look at a series of millennial romantic comedies that express emotional upheaval, vulnerability, and openness to change as qualities of relevance to both a romantic and political selfhood. These ‘political romcoms’ reveal a range of dynamic relations between notions of character competence, moral fibre, personality and deservedness, and invite investigation of complex emotions that modify a more generalised positive affect associated with romantic comedy cinema: humiliation as a comic device and the existential fear of rejection.
Episodes of depression: Existential feelings and embodiment in SHARP OBJECTS
Richard, David Evan (2019) , S. 211-229
This article argues that the HBO recent limited series Sharp Objects (cr. Marti Noxon, 2018) invites spectators to share in the ‘existential feeling’ of depression. I draw on philosophers Matthew Ratcliffe and Thomas Fuchs who identify core embodied experiences of depression: corporealisation, detunement, and desynchronisation. Following accounts of screen mood and ‘existential feelings’, I analyse how the form of Sharp Objects – cinematography, textural sound, and arrhythmic editing – expresses the embodied experience of depression. This paper therefore further demonstrates how screen media can evoke ‘existential feelings’ in its audience to promote an embodied understanding of depression.
Dreading the future: Narrative dread in BETTER CALL SAUL and contemporary television
Brown, David W R (2019) , S. 231-248
This article defines and conceptualises the emotion ‘narrative dread’. Most discussions of what we might call narrative emotions – such as suspense, curiosity, and surprise – have focused on film. By contrast, comparatively little has been said about the particularities of narrative and emotion in relation to long-form television series. The article proposes that narrative dread differs from other similar responses through its distinct temporality and level of knowledge. Through a discussion of the series BETTER CALL SAUL, the article argues that narrative dread is particularly effectively elicited by the long-form narration that is typical of contemporary dramatic television series.
Digging deeper: On horizontal and vertical landscapes
Mavrokordopoulou, Kyveli (2019) , S. 249-258
Nothing to Write Home About
Soni, Roma Madan (2019) , S. 259-271
Historiographies of women in early cinema
Ozgen-Tuncer, Asli (2019) , S. 273-281
European heritage and television
Valente, Donatella (2019) , S. 283-291
New ways of seeing (and hearing): The audiovisual essay and television
Grant, Catherine; Kooijman, Jaap (2019) , S. 293-297
How Black Lives Matter in THE WIRE: A video essay
Mittel, Jason (2019) , S. 299-300
Bodies at the border: Transnational co-produced TV drama and its gender politics in the pilots of BRON/BROEN and adaptions, THE BRIDGE and THE TUNNEL
McCabe, Janet (2019) , S. 301-308
The Female Narcotrafficker‘s Tongue | La Lengua de la Narcotraficante
Llamas-Rodriguez, Juan (2019) , S. 309-311
Haunting surveillance: Foregrounding the spectre of the medium in CCTV and military drones
Albuquerque, Paula (2019) , S. 31-50
Even in the age of fake news, alternative facts and deep fakes, digital surveillance media are valued for their documentary stance. CCTV and military drone footage are relied on for evidence of potential deviances. While exposing these media shortcomings in producing reliable evidence, I map video surveillance’s medium-specific instances of production of otherworldly visual phenomena with apparently no referent in material reality. This article consists of an exposition of my artistic research approach to modes of image production, which compare ghost sightings captured by spirit photography to those recorded/produced by contemporary surveillance media, to unveil the social and political impact of non-transparent image-producing mediators.
BREAKING BAD and surrealism
Restivo, Angelo (2019) , S. 313-316
A conversation with Pierre Sorlin about film studies, film and history, and European cinema
Pitassio, Francesco (2019) , S. 5-14
A discussion with Pierre Sorlin focusing on his career and approach. It first tackles his method, moving from history to the role audiovisual representation plays as a historical agent and source, and the merging of different disciplines in coining said approach, including social history, semiology, sociology of culture, and production studies. The conversation then moves to considering the role of national and supranational audiovisual production, notably European and Italian. Finally, it deals with the role film and media studies played in European humanities in previous decades, and considers their prospective function.

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