Much of aesthetics is based in psychological responses. Yet seldom have such responses—couched in empirically based psychological terms—played a central role in the discussion of movie aesthetics. Happily, Todd Berliner's Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema does just that. This commentary discusses some history and some twists and turns behind Berliner's analysis.
James E. Cutting is Susan Linn Sage Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. His newest book is Movies and Mind (in press, Oxford). He has also published over 150 scholarly articles on perception, motion, space, and related topics. His interest in the relationships among visual perception, culture, and the popular arts led him to the study of movies. Email: james.cutting@cornell.edu