This article focuses on film noir as a place of visual representation of character embodiment, including most prominently sweat, but also pain, exertion, and addiction. This embodiment provides a way in for the viewer, a connection based upon a shared felt affect that situates emotional engagement and understanding at a more basic level. Noir films use indicators of character embodiment as a communicative resource for viewers to understand character experience and narrative situations, especially those that are unfamiliar and thematically prominent in the canon, such as paranoia, fear, anxiety.
Mattie Jacobs is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He works within the intersecting fields of cognitive studies, rhetorical narrative theory, and film. His current project focuses on conversation depiction and how viewers develop a theory of mind for characters in movies. Previous projects looked at probability signaling and techniques of viewer cognitive priming and how excess is used as a narrative resource to focus attention. mcjacobs4@wisc.edu