Embodied Visions Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film [Paperback]

Embodied Visionspresents a groundbreaking analysis of film through the lens of bioculturalism, revealing how human biology as well as human culture determine how films are made and experienced. Throughout his study, Torben Grodal uses the breakthroughs of modern brain science to explain central features of film aesthetics and to construct a general model of aesthetic experience-what he terms the PECMA flow model-that demonstrates the movement of information and emotions in the brain when viewing film. Examining a wide array of genres-animation, romance, pornography, fantasy, horror-from evolutionary and psychological perspectives, Grodal also reflects on social issues at the intersection of film theory and neuropsychology. These include moral problems in film viewing, how we experience realism and character identification, and the value of the subjective forms that cinema uniquely elaborates.

Preface and Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Evolution, Biology, Culture and Film
Part One: Film, Culture, and Evolution
2. Universalism, Cultural Variation, and Children's Film
3. Love and Desire in the Cinema
4. Screaming Lambs and Lusty Wolves: Moral and Evolution
5. Undead Ghosts and Living Prey: Fantasy and Horror
6. Sadness, Melodrama and Rituals of Loss and Death
Part Two: Narrative, Visual Aesthetics, Brain, and the PECMA flow
Introduction to Part Two: the PECMA flow
7. Stories for Eyes, Ears, and Muscles--Story as Embodied Simulation
8. Character Simulation and Emotion
9. Art Film, the Transient Body and the Permanent Soul
10. Subjective Aesthetics in Film
11. Realism and Reality
12. Conclusion
Appendix: Frozen PECMA Flows in Trier's Oeuvre
References
Index

We have long needed a theory of film which was naturalistic-which shows what cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and brain science can tell us about movies. Torben Grodal has lƒ9