illustrates the proposed brand of naturalized aesthetics in a series of case studies that focus on the role of emotions. With these investigations, he continues a trend within film studies that he has himself helped to develop ( Smith 1995 ) and that
Introduction
Concepts of Emotions in Indian Languages
Margrit Pernau
Everyone can lay claim to inside knowledge in the field of emotions: everyone has emotions and has lived with emotions for many years, handling, controlling, and evoking them not only in him- or herself, but also recognizing and managing the
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 24–37
Rethinking Adaptation
Emotions, Evolution, and Climate Change
Debra J. Davidson
following exploration into emotions makes clear. I fully agree with Paul McLaughlin (2012: 248) , who argues “for both theoretical and substantive reasons, the question of adaptation and how to integrate the environment into social theory has become, as it
Anne Bartsch
This article outlines a conceptual framework for analyzing meta-emotions in audiovisual media. Meta-emotions are evaluative thoughts and feelings about emotions that are represented and/or elicited in the viewer. Based on a conceptual analysis of meta-emotion in terms of current emotion theory the essay concludes that meta-emotions are communicated on different levels of cognitive complexity. Cues to meta-emotion can be present in (1) the aesthetic representation of emotions; (2) the narrative context of emotions; and (3) symbolic elements that refer to cultural norms and values concerning emotions. The essay exemplifies this three-level framework using a film scene and a music video. Specifically, the essay analyzes the communication of meta-emotions about anger in Fight Club, and meta-emotions about sadness in Frozen.
From Morality to Psychology
Emotion Concepts in Urdu, 1870—1920
Margrit Pernau
If we look at photos of the protagonists of Urdu debates in the last decades of the nineteenth century, we mostly see stern-looking figures who look at us without any trace of emotion, much less a smile, their bodily posture as rigid as their facial
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 38–57
Torben Grodal
The narrative flow in mainstream films is driven by emotional engagement. The neurologist Jaak Panksepp (1998 ; Pankseep and Biven 2012 ) has described how human emotions are controlled by seven basic emotional systems (that he writes in capital
Ritual and Emotions
Moving Relations, Patterned Effusions
François Berthomé and Michael Houseman
This article reconsiders the connection between 'ritual' and 'emotion' from a pragmatic, relational perspective in which rituals are seen as dynamic interactive contexts and emotions as fairly short-lived emergent properties and integral components of these interactions. It emphasizes ritual's capacity to reallocate social positions by instantiating characteristic patterns of relationship, and the way particular emotions crystallize and express these patterns. In short, ritual emotions are treated as the sensate qualities of ritual relationships. From this standpoint, emotions feature in ceremonial settings not as striking experiences grafted onto practices and representations, but as constitutive aspects of ritual interactions themselves, whose properties of bodily salience and relational reflexivity both reflect and inflect the latter's course in a variety of sensory, expressive, moral, and strategic ways. Four issues relating to ritual and emotion are discussed within the framework of particular ceremonial practices that have been the object of much recent research: (1) the ritual expression of emotions in funerary laments, (2) the waning of cathartic models in the interpretation of rites of affliction, (3) the intense emotional arousal characteristic of initiatory ordeals, and (4) the self-constructive, affective dimensions of contemporary devotional practices.
Rikke Schubart
Looking at television series True Blood (2008-), The Vampire Diaries (2009-), and The Walking Dead (2010-), this article analyzes positive emotions in horror: the sexual emotions, trust, and hope. The article starts by substituting the positive-negative dichotomy of emotions with seeing emotions as coming in a “package“ (Solomon) and having a “story“ (Frijda), thus working together and not in opposition. It goes on to discuss the interaction of predation and sex in True Blood, torture and trust in The Vampire Diaries, and disgust, despair, and hope in The Walking Dead. The article then considers horror emotions, positive and negative, from a functional and evolutionary perspective. Comparing horror to play fighting and fiction to the pretend of play, the article suggests four reasons why horror is attractive: we learn to feel emotions (sensation), to react to emotions (evaluation), control our emotions (action tendency in the here-and-now), and to experiment (action tendency and planning for what comes next).
“Give Me Back My Son!”
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emotion Talk, and the Gendering of Political Rhetoric
Linda E. Mitchell
, but that few discuss in detail: Eleanor’s rhetorical use of emotion in her letters, specifically those presumably written to Pope Celestine III during her son Richard I’s captivity in Germany in 1192–1194. The provenance and purpose of the letters has
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–20
Charlotte Sun Jensen
This article investigates the film trailer in a cognitive film analytic perspective. More specifically, the focus is on how it circumvents its ontological tension between both giving and holding back its product—the film—at the same time. The hypothesis is that trailers that follow a classic genre convention seek to sell their products by condensing a range of genre traits, which arouses a specific, intense emotional experience. Most particularly, the trailer chooses to activate the main genre of the film and the corresponding range of emotions by reducing and reordering its often complex narrative. On this basis, compared to the film, the trailer may be viewed as an alternative narrative.