Author: Smith, Murray

Source: Projections, Volume 2, Number 1, Summer 2008 , pp. 60-77(18)

Abstract:

Skepticism, even hostility, about the relevance of the natural sciences to the humanities has been the orthodoxy for several decades—a position finding support from otherwise disparate traditions and philosophies, including that of the late Wittgenstein, and post-structuralism. What, then, of the ambitions of those counter-movements within the humanities, like cognitive film theory, which have actively turned to scientific knowledge as a resource in exploring certain aspects of the arts and culture? This article examines emotional expression and experience in relation to film, testing the hypothesis that different theories of emotion, and in particular scientifically grounded theories of emotion, will yield different implications about both emotional expression in film, and our emotional response to films. To concretize the argument, this article offers an analysis of a sequence from Heimat 3, contextualized by a consideration of various factors that make the series as a whole a particularly illuminating case study.

Keywords: BIOCULTURAL; CULTURE; DARWIN; EKMAN; EMOTION; HEIMAT; NATURAL SCIENCE; NATURALIZED AESTHETICS; TWO CULTURES

DOI: 10.3167/proj.2008.020105

User name

 

Password

 

 

Remember me

 

 

 

• forgotten your password?
• Sign in via Athens