Projections

This article argues that cognitive film theory has largely overlooked the phenomenon of disgust insofar as it can be racialized, but could be developed to account for it. Critical race theory, especially in its analytic mode, has similarly failed to offer an account of racialized disgust, although some thinkers in the phenomenological tradition have analyzed related phenomena. The article proposes to reconcile these three research areas by drawing on recent work concerning disgust and arguing for its relevance to viewers’ reactions to depictions of race in film, thereby developing an improved set of diagnostic tools for the analysis of cinematic spectatorship. The method used is analytic philosophy of film. The analysis reveals that many viewers embody their sense of race through disgust reactions and that these reactions constitute crucial components regarding how they perceive and understand narrative characters in film.

This article examines the stylistic mechanics behind the notion of gradation of emphasis in the CinemaScope westerns directed by Anthony Mann. It confronts the general assumptions with regard to CinemaScope with fresh empirical data. Building on Barry Salt’s quantitative methods, it studies the cutting rates and shot scale in Mann’s 1950s films and situates these within the broader context of film style in CinemaScope. This article furthermore analyzes the particular stylistic strategies Mann employed in order to create gradation of emphasis in his westerns, examining if the CinemaScope frame was particularly suitable for them, while also exploring the general relevance of the notion.

The heroes we encounter in narrative film speak to us as we go about making sense of our world. However, any evening spent browsing Netflix will demonstrate that protagonists have become so flawed that, “Even the anti-hero has degraded to the point that we cannot easily tell them apart from the antagonist” (Duffy 2008: 208). These are transgressive protagonist-heroes who take on quests of self-importance, shy away from any real moral transformation, and return from their heroic journey to serve us a spoiled elixir. Must viewers disengage their moral filters to identify with these characters and enjoy this kind of fare? Using sense-making methodology, fresh qualitative data was collected that provide thick descriptions revealing how actual viewers respond to transgressive protagonist-heroes.

This article shows in what ways Matthew Ratcliffe’s phenomenological theory of existential feelings is relevant to film and media studies. Existential feelings are “feelings in the body, which are experienced as one‘s relationship with the world as a whole.” They are related to other concepts in film theory; however, their relation to films has never been systematically examined. The article discusses how audiovisual media are able to represent, express, and evoke existential feelings, and even work as “qualia machines” in making viewers partially share feelings of characters. Focusing on the paradigmatic case of depression and on exemplary films like Dominik Graf’s Deine besten Jahre, the article identifies different aesthetic strategies to express existential feelings. Building on that, the article argues that the power of films to evoke related feelings in the viewers is a crucial factor in spreading ideas about how others feel and conveying collective structures of feeling.

Norwegian filmmaker Knut Erik Jensen claims to be an ecological filmmaker. This article explores what this means. Selected examples of filmmakers’ unsound attitudes toward nature are discussed to provide a context for the proposed definition of ecological filmmaking. The latter, it is claimed, goes beyond green filmmaking, by both exemplifying and cueing pro-environmental attitudes. The proposal is to understand ecological filmmaking in terms of a cluster of intentions targeting appropriate attitudes toward the natural environment; the intention, for example, to appreciate nature on its own terms. Intentions alone, however, do not suffice, as the filmmaker’s ecologically appropriate goals must be realized in practice. A consideration of recurring features of Jensen’s cinematic style offers examples of how ecological intentions may be expressed in audiovisual works. It further raises questions about the extent to which a distinct ecological style would be the likely outcome of filmmakers’ widely acting on ecological intentions.

Few empirical studies have examined the oft-mentioned psychological construct known as suspension of disbelief. This article examines suspension of disbelief as a function of perceived realism during the viewing of a genre that often blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction: documentary-style films. To do so, an initial model of the relationships between suspension of disbelief, perceptions of realism, narrative involvement, and enjoyment was proposed and tested. Participants (n = 205) viewed one of two full-length documentary-style movies. Differences were observed in the way that both suspension of disbelief and perceptions of realism predicted emotional and cognitive aspects of involvement, with subsequent impact on enjoyment. An explanation for these differences is offered.