The Cine-Fist

Eisenstein’s Attractions, Mirror Neurons, and Contemporary Action Cinema

in Projections
Author:
Maria Belodubrovskaya University of Wisconsin—Madison mbelodubrovs@wisc.edu

Search for other papers by Maria Belodubrovskaya in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Restricted access

Abstract

This article investigates the concept of cinematic attractions through an analysis of current research on mirror neurons. It suggests that when developing his conception of attractions, Sergei Eisenstein isolated the effect of visceral spectatorship, which today’s science associates with mirror neurons. The involuntary nature of some of Eisenstein’s attractions helps to dissociate them from Tom Gunning’s later conception of the cinema of attractions. Whereas Gunning’s attractions targeted viewers’ conscious engagement, Eisenstein’s attractions tapped into preconscious and automatic responses. Moreover, while Gunning contrasted the cinema of attractions with the cinema of narrative integration, Eisenstein’s attractions were compatible with narrative. Eisenstein’s attractions were a closer precursor to the contemporary impact aesthetic than Gunning’s cinema of spectacle and display, and the concept of attractions, returned to its original sense and paired with the literature on mirroring, may better explain the functions and effects of contemporary action cinema.

Contributor Notes

Maria Belodubrovskaya is Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has published articles on Russian cinema and special effects in Cinema Journal, Film History, Slavic Review, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, and KinoKultura, and is the author of Not According to Plan: Filmmaking under Stalin (Cornell University Press, 2017). E-mail: mbelodubrovs@wisc.edu

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Projections

The Journal for Movies and Mind

  • Aumont, Jacques. 1987. Montage Eisenstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  • Baird, Amee D., Ingrid E. Scheffer, and Sarah J. Wilson. 2011. “Mirror Neuron System Involvement in Empathy: A Critical Look at the Evidence.” Social Neuroscience 6 (4): 327335.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bordwell, David. 1993. The Cinema of Eisenstein. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  • Bordwell, David. 2006. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Bordwell, David. 2007. “This Is Your Brain on Movies, Maybe.” David Bordwell’s Website on Cinema, 7 March. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/03/07/this-is-your-brain-on-movies-maybe.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Brewster, Ben. 2004. “Periodization of Early Cinema.” In American Cinema’s Transitional Era, ed. Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp, 6675. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Brewster, Ben. 2012. “Narrative Structure of the One-Reel Film.” October 11. Lecture. University of Wisconsin–Madison.

  • Buckland, Warren. 2006. “A Rational Reconstruction of ‘The Cinema of Attractions.’” In Strauven 2006: 4155.

  • Calvo-Merino, B., D. E. Glaser, J. Grèzes, R. E. Passingham, and P. Haggard. 2005. “Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers.” Cerebral Cortex 15 (8): 12431249.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Carroll, Noël. 1999. “Film, Emotion, and Genre.” In Passionate Views: Film Cognition and Emotion, ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, 2147. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Curtis, Robin. 2007. “Expanded Empathy: Movement, Mirror Neurons, and Einfühlung.” In Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images, ed. Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara Fisher Anderson, 4961. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Decety, Jean. 2010. “To What Extent Is the Experience of Empathy Mediated by Shared Neural Circuits?Emotion Review 2 (3): 204207.

  • Eisenstein, Sergei. 1949. “Achievement.” In Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda, 179194. New York: Harcourt.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Eisenstein, Sergei. 1998a. “The Montage of Attractions.” In Taylor 1998: 2934.

  • Eisenstein, Sergei. 1998b. “The Montage of Film Attractions.” In Taylor 1998: 3552.

  • Eisenstein, Sergei. 1998c. “The Problem of the Materialist Approach to Form.” In Taylor 1998: 5359.

  • Eisenstein, Sergei, and Sergei Tretyakov. 1996. “Expressive Movement.” In Meyerhold, Eisenstein and Biomechanics: Actor Training in Revolutionary Russia, ed. Alma H. Law and Mel Gordon, 184191. London: McFarland.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Eizenshtein, Sergei. 1933. “Vylazka klassovykh druzei.” Kino, 22 June, 3.

  • Eizenshtein, Sergei. 1964. Izbrannye proizvedeniia v shesti tomakh. Vol. 2. Moscow: Iskusstvo.

  • Eizenshtein, Sergei. 2002. Metod. Vol. 1. Moscow: Muzei kino.

  • Gallese, Vittorio, and Alvin Goldman. 1998. “Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory of Mind-reading.” Trends in Cognitive Science 2 (12): 493501.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gallese, Vittorio, and Michele Guerra. 2012. “Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film Studies.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 3: 183210.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gallese, Vittorio, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 1996. “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex.” Brain 119: 593609.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Grodal, Torben. 2009. Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Gunning, Tom. 1986. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, its Spectators, and the Avant-Garde.” Wide Angle 8 (3–4): 6370.

  • Gunning, Tom. 1995. “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator.” In Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams, 114133. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hari Riitta, Nina Forss, Sari Avikainen, Erika Kirveskari, Stephan Salenius, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 1998. “Activation of Human Primary Motor Cortex during Action Observation: A Neuromagnetic Study.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 95: 1506115065.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Heimann, Katrin, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, Michele Guerra, and Vittorio Gallese. 2014. “Moving Mirrors: A High-Density EEG Study Investigating the Effect of Camera Movements on Motor Cortex Activation during Action Observation.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 26 (9): 20872101.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hickok, Gregory. 2014. The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition. New York: W. W. Norton.

  • Higgins, Scott. 2007. Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  • Iacoboni, Marco. 2008. Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • Jacobs, Lea. 1993. “Belasco, DeMille and the Development of Lasky Lighting.” Film History 5 (4): 405418.

  • Keil, Charlie. 2006. “Integrated Attractions: Style and Spectatorship in Transitional Cinema.” In Strauven 2006: 193203.

  • King, Geoff. 2008. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris.

  • Mason, David. 2014. “Video Games, Theater, and the Paradox of Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture 47 (6): 11091121.

  • Mukamel, Roy, Arne D. Ekstrom, Jonas Kaplan, Marco Iacoboni, and Itzhak Fried. 2010. “Single-neuron Responses in Humans during Execution and Observation of Actions.” Current Biology 20 (8): 750756.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Musser, Charles. 1994. “Rethinking Early Cinema: Cinema of Attractions and Narrativity.” Yale Journal of Film Criticism 7 (2): 203232.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Olenina, Ana. 2011. “Partitury dvizhenia: kak ni stranno, o psikhologii naturshchika u Kuleshova.” Kinovedcheskie zapiski 97: 2050.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Olenina, Ana. 2015. “Knowledge through Co-movement: Eisenstein’s Theory of Kinaesthesia, Emotion, and Embodied Spectatorship.” Paper presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) annual conference, Philadelphia, 21 November.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Pineda, Jaime A., ed. 2009. Mirror Neuron Systems: The Role of Mirroring Processes in Social Cognition. New York: Humana.

  • Plantinga, Carl. 2009. Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Plantinga, Carl. 2013. “The Affective Power of Movies.” In Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, ed. Arthur P. Shimamura, 94111. New York: Oxford University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Raz, Gal, and Talma Hendler. 2014. “Forking Cinematic Paths to the Self: Neurocinematically Informed Model of Empathy in Motion Pictures.” Projections 8 (2): 89114.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Rimberg, John. 1973. The Motion Picture in the Soviet Union, 1918–1952: A Sociological Analysis. New York: Arno Press.

  • Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Corrado Sinigaglia. 2008. Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions. Trans. Frances Anderson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Rutherford, Anne. 2011. What Makes a Film Tick? Cinematic Affect, Materiality and Mimetic Innervation. Bern: Peter Lang.

  • Shaw, Dan. 2016. “Mirror Neurons and Simulation Theory: A Neurophysiological Foundation for Cinematic Empathy.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, ed. Katherine Thomson-Jones, 148162. New York: Routledge.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Smith, Murray. 2014. “‘The Pit of Naturalism’: Neuroscience and the Naturalized Aesthetics of Film.” In Cognitive Media Theory, ed. Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, 2745. New York: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Spadoni, Robert. 2010. “The Old Dark House and the Space of Attraction.” CiNéMAS 20 (2–3): 6596.

  • Spring, Katherine. 2013. Saying It with Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Strauven, Wanda, ed. 2006. The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

  • Taylor, Richard, ed. 1998. The Eisenstein Reader. London: BFI.

  • Tikka, Pia. 2008. Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense. Helsinki: University of Art and Design.

  • Tikka, Pia, and Mauri Kaipainen. 2015. “Embodied Protonarratives Embedded in Systems of Contexts: A Neurocinematic Approach.” In Neuroscience and Media: New Understandings and Representations, ed. Michael Grabowski, 7688. New York: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Wondra, Joshua, and Phoebe Ellsworth. 2015. “An Appraisal Theory of Empathy and Other Vicarious Emotional Experiences.” Psychological Review 122 (3): 411428.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Wyatt, Justin. 1994. High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  • Zacks, Jeffrey M. 2015. Flicker: Your Brain on Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Zholkovsky, Alexander. 1996. “Eisenstein’s Poetics: Dialogical or Totalitarian?” In Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich, 245256. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 4586 2676 862
Full Text Views 190 40 1
PDF Downloads 257 58 3