Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film

Film As An Emotion Machine

Ed S. Tan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136694967
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

Introduced one hundred years ago, film has since become part of our lives. For the past century, however, the experience offered by fiction films has remained a mystery. Questions such as why adult viewers cry and shiver, and why they care at all about fictional characters -- while aware that they contemplate an entirely staged scene -- are still unresolved. In addition, it is unknown why spectators find some film experiences entertaining that have a clearly aversive nature outside the cinema. These and other questions make the psychological status of emotions allegedly induced by the fiction film highly problematic.

Earlier attempts to answer these questions have been limited to a few genre studies. In recent years, film criticism and the theory of film structure have made use of psychoanalytic concepts which have proven insufficient in accounting for the diversity of film induced affect. In contrast, academic psychology -- during the century of its existence -- has made extensive study of emotional responses provoked by viewing fiction film, but has taken the role of film as a natural stimulus completely for granted. The present volume bridges the gap between critical theories of film on the one hand, and recent psychological theory and research of human emotion on the other, in an attempt to explain the emotions provoked by fiction film.

This book integrates insights on the narrative structure of fiction film including its themes, plot structure, and characters with recent knowledge on the cognitive processing of natural events, and narrative and person information. It develops a theoretical framework for systematically describing emotion in the film viewer. The question whether or not film produces genuine emotion is answered by comparing affect in the viewer with emotion in the real world experienced by persons witnessing events that have personal significance to them. Current understanding of the psychology of emotions provides the basis for identifying critical features of the fiction film that trigger the general emotion system. Individual emotions are classified according to their position in the affect structure of a film -- a larger system of emotions produced by one particular film as a whole. Along the way, a series of problematic issues is dealt with, notably the reality of the emotional stimulus in film, the identification of the viewer with protagonists on screen, and the necessity of the viewer's cooperation in arriving at a genuine emotion. Finally, it is argued that film-produced emotions are genuine emotions in response to an artificial stimulus. Film can be regarded as a fine-tuned machine for a continuous stream of emotions that are entertaining after all.

The work paves the way for understanding and, in principle, predicting emotions in the film viewer using existing psychological instruments of investigation. Dealing with the problems of film-induced affect and rendering them accessible to formal modeling and experimental method serves a wider interest of understanding aesthetic emotion -- the feelings that man-made products, and especially works of art, can evoke in the beholder.

1	Introduction

DOES WATCHING A FILM PRODUCE EMOTION?

The story goes that during the showing of L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat in 1895, people were so terrified at the sight of the oncoming locomotive that they tried to hide under their seats. Today’s filmgoers are undoubtedly a good deal more hardened, but the cinema has itself evolved considerably since the days of the Lumière brothers. Thus even today any cinema visitors who are in a position to observe their fellow film spectators will see reactions that are not too different from those of the primal filmgoers. People cover their faces, shrink back against their seats, and scream “Oh, no! Not that!” The irrationality of such reactions is striking. It is, after all, only a film. All the usual clichés present themselves: the plastic shark, the tomato ketchup blood, the starstruck lovers played by two people who cannot abide each another. Film is make-believe, and we know it.

If we fail to be intrigued by the apparent irrationality of these emotional reactions, then we will at any rate be struck by their intensity. In Portrait de Lillian Gish (1986), the aged actress recalls a showing of Birth of a Nation (1915), and the violent emotions that seized the old men who had fought in the Civil War: “Their sobs shook the seats.” Today’s cinema audiences, too, are often surprised at the force of the emotion that grips them. Their surprise is triggered by the fact that they know full well that what they are seeing is a series of images projected onto a screen: in other words, an illusion.

There is another interesting side to the emotions evoked by a film, and that is the sheer diversity of those feelings. A cinema audience can be brought to such a fever pitch of excitement that the people squirm in their seats, or even call out, as did happen in the well-known film scene in Saboteur (1942). Or they may respond in exactly the opposite way, by following breathlessly, in total silence, the events taking place on the screen. This is nicely illustrated by a scene in 84 Charing Cross Road (1986) where Helen Hanff is sitting alone, smoking a cigarette and watching Brief Encounter. Or film viewers may feel a pang of guilt when they realize that they have wrongly suspected one of the characters of treachery or betrayal. Or again, they may be grateful to an actor or actress for a fine performance or jealous of the fortune amassed by the villain of the piece. Cinema audiences smile condescendingly, titter nervously, or burst out laughing. One and the same film can produce tears of joy or tears of frustration. And then there is that subtle emotion that is a combination of contradictory feelings, like hope and fear, embarrassment and mirth, or pity and gloating. But regardless of which particular registers of emotion are played upon, no one can deny the universal popularity of films. Apparently every conceivable human emotion, whether shunned or sought after in everyday life, is capable of providing entertainment when experienced in the cinema. And again we are struck by the suspicion that what filmgoers experience is a very special kind of reality. In any case, the fact that not only pleasant sensations but also such normally unpleasant feelings as terror, helplessness, and disgust are in a certain sense experienced as pleasurable leads us to wonder what all the different feelings evoked by films have in common.

Obviously, filmgoers themselves are not likely to rack their brains over such questions nor are they expected to do so. However, if a psychologist managed to step out of his or her role of film spectator and revert to that of skeptical scientist, two fundamental questions would immediately spring to mind. First, while viewers may themselves be convinced that what they feel is true emotion, that feeling is not necessarily consistent with an objective definition of the term. There is reason to question the authenticity of cinematic emotion, because viewers know full well that what they are seeing is a fictional world created by means of an artefact. According to some emotion theorists, notably Sartre (1940), the feeling evoked by an artefact—he was referring here to the image—can never give rise to a genuine emotion.¹ Is it possible to be afraid of a film shark or terrified by Jack Nicholson? Sartre’s view on this point is not without its complications. First, we must ask ourselves to what extent the reality, which is the source of any emotion, is itself subjective and dependent on the good will of the viewer.² Thus we may choose to surrender to the film, accepting the idea that the shark is “real.” A much simpler criterion for assessing the authenticity of the feeling evoked by films is the degree to which it resembles that experienced by the subject in the real world outside the cinema. What relationship is there between my fear of the shark and the fear I would feel if I actually found myself face to face with a shark? What is the relationship between the specific feeling experienced by the film viewer and “emotion” in the most general sense of the word? Is the sensation experienced by the viewer an emotion? If so, to what extent is it a particular kind of emotion? And in what respect does this emotion differ from that which we experience in the reality of everyday life?

Second, the psychologist has to explain the systematics behind the feelings that filmgoers experience. What mechanism produces the relatively orderly response to most feature films? On the basis of empirical observation, it is safe to say that the response to films is fairly unanimous within a given body of viewers. When the film is a comedy, most people laugh, although some may do so more exuberantly than others. There is also something systematic about the timing of the response. A comedy, for example, produces waves of laughter: most people laugh at roughly the same time, perhaps one just before the others, another slightly longer. The same is true of the other responses that we are inclined to see as emotional: apprehension, excitement, relief, and so on. There seems to be a plan governing the course of our feeling, and we know from sources other than the film itself that this is indeed so. Films are designed to produce a particular effect and, as artefacts, they display both a functional design and a certain consistency. That orderly structure and consistency are reflected in the systematics of the affective reactions of the viewers, reactions that they themselves are not aware of. The second goal of this study is to describe the essence of such reactions and their antecedents and, in so doing, to take the initial steps toward explaining the experience of the film viewer.

BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND FILM THEORY

The problem addressed by this study is important for both film theory and psychology. To begin with the former, much of the material published in this field focuses on qualities that are considered characteristic of this or that film genre. Such research tends to localize the singularity of a particular genre in the emotional effect that such films evoke in the viewer. The classic genre descriptions, in literature and drama as well as in film, have traditionally been rooted in the sort and the intensity of the emotion engendered. One need only think of the dictionary definition of words like tragedy and comedy; in fact, we all know the meaning of terms like thriller and tear-jerker without even reaching for a dictionary. Indeed, the only publications focusing on the subject of the emotional reactions of viewers may well be found exclusively among such genre studies.³ Unlike these and similar studies, the aim of this work is to contribute to a general description of the emotional potential of films and the structural characteristics involved. In this way, it may contribute to what, in the view of Bordwell (1989a), is seen by many as the crucial problem in cognitive film theory, namely, establishing a relationship between the cognition of film and its emotional effect.

As a psychological study, this book aims to extend our insights into the manner in which a film interacts with the human emotional system. If it can be shown that films do indeed generate genuine emotions, then we may have identified one of the major manifestations of human emotion. It may be that the emotions evoked by films are related to those that accompany fantasies, daydreams, and certain forms of play. It may also prove possible to shed some light on the question of aesthetic emotion in a wider sense of the word.

It is the intention of this study to integrate film theory and psychology. If we are to make any claims at all about what a viewer experiences, let alone about the systematics governing that experience, we must first examine what is already known about the structure of the stimulus, the film itself. This idea is an elaboration of a number of more general views on the best way of gaining information about complex information processing. On the basis of research directed toward a description of expertise in specific areas—chess, for instance, or solving physics problems—we know that a knowledge of the structure of the surroundings in which psychological tasks are carried out is often of crucial importance in understanding complex psychological processes (Frijda, 1981; Simon, 1970). Gibson went a step further when he formulated the principles of an ecological psychology that bridges the gap between stimulus and psychological process by viewing the two as a single system (Gibson, 1979). The integration that will be developed in the course of this study is characterized by the same general orientation. The rationale is that the film, to the extent that it is seen as a narrative, systematically manipulates fictional situations and aspects of those situations in such a way that they fulfill the requirements for the creation, maintenance, and modulation of emotions. In short, to narrate is to produce emotion. The more the description of the process of narration and the description of the emotion felt by the viewer intertwine, the more narration and emotion become a single system.

The notion that film narration and viewer emotion are actually two sides of the same coin provides us with a hypothetical answer to both parts of our central question. First, it assumes that films do evoke emotions, and second, it presupposes that film narration is responsible for a characteristic systematics in the emotion felt by the viewer. In the course of the book, this working hypothesis will be elaborated and provided with a theoretical basis.

The Theory of Film Narration

Like any theory, film theory must be based on usable observations. In his book Making Meaning (1989b), Bordwell argued that although considerable material has been collected on films, this material consists of a hodgepodge of observations that are of doubtful utility if what one is interested in is a theory dealing with a particular aspect of the film. Reviews, essays, polemic pieces, analytical applications of fragments of theory, and assorted other contributions to the publicistic enterprise that has formed around the film are all useless as observations precisely because they fail to describe the most directly observable manifestations. A perusal of two studies by the methodologist Carroll (1988a, 1988b) leads to a similar conclusion concerning the usefulness of existing film theory. In Carroll’s view, the classic texts on film theory emphasize the specific characteristics of the medium, while more or less disregarding its use and function (Carroll, 1988a). For this reason such contributions are not particularly helpful in explaining cinematic phenomena. Modern theory, on the other hand, which according to Carroll begins with the dawn of film semiology, suffers from an excessively broad perspective and a plethora of widely varying phenomena that, for the sake of convenience, have been lumped together. Moreover, the vehicle of the metaphor, which is commonly used to explain phenomena, is totally unsuitable for that purpose.⁴ I would, however, suggest that some caution should be exercised with respect to the conclusion that in order to describe the main elements of film we are obliged to start more or less (Bordwell) or even entirely (Carroll) from scratch. I agree with Carroll that the classic film theories contain a great many valuable elements and characteristics that are typical of the film medium. The work of Münsterberg (1915/1980) and Arnheim (1933), as well as the studies of the predominantly French filmologues who wrote for the Revue Internationale de Filmologie immediately after the Second World War, contain valuable observations—not least for the film psychologist—by the very fact that they refer to the specifics of the medium. Modern film theory is based on the notion that certain characteristics of the fiction film are shared with other media,⁵ while a number of those characteristics have long been the object of observation well beyond the confines of the cinema. The theoretical notions pertaining to the film as narrative have long had their parallels in the fields of literature and drama research. Attempts to clarify the meaning and affects of film can benefit greatly from the observations that have been collected in these fields.

For purposes of this introduction, I confine myself to a tentative description of the concept of narration as the process by which fictional events are presented in an ordered and temporally structured manner, thereby producing a certain effect upon the listener (in our case, the viewer). The structuring by means of narration goes deeper than a simple ordering of events. The verbal narrative employs highly concrete vehicles of language, including syntax, vocabulary, and figures of speech. The film as narrative similarly manipulates individual and easily observable characteristics of the medium in order to convey subtle meanings and produce highly specific effects. Film technology, including the acting, directing, and camera work, serve to present fictional events in such a way that they produce the intended effect on the viewer.

The work of David Bordwell (1985) on the film narrative is indispensable to this study. While it would take us too far afield to examine in detail all of his theoretical concepts, it is important to note three aspects of Bordwell’s approach. First, the theory is comprehensive. The narrative does, of course, represent only one—highly abstract—point of view from which the film can be described. However, in Bordwell’s approach, even the most directly observable phenomena of the surface structure, that is, technical and stylistic features of individual films, can be understood within the framework of the theory of film narrative. Second, Bordwell’s theory comprises a body of films that may be seen as the dominant genre, the traditional, full-length feature film. This implies, furthermore, that the theory encompasses at least some phenomena that are also characteristic of a much older narrative tradition, such as Aristotelian drama and the traditional folk tale or legend, which means that it is based on a greater wealth of observations. Third, Bordwell based his theory on the activity of the viewer. And because he described this activity largely in terms of existing cognitive-psychological insights concerning the processing of information, the link with a cognitive-psychological theory of emotion would appear to present no great difficulties, at any rate in comparison with other film theories.

The Psychological Theory of Emotion

The tradition of reflecting upon emotion is at least as old as the theories on drama and literature that have come down to us through the ages. Most of the great philosophers have had something to say about human emotions.⁶ And ever since psychology attained the status of an independent scientific discipline at the end of the last century, the theory of emotion has played an important role in research and the formation of psychological theory. One need only think of William James; the behaviorists; the field theorists who followed in the footsteps of Lewin; Freud, of course; and finally Schachter, all of whom have left their mark on the most recent work within the cognitive theory of emotion.

When emotion is studied from a cognitive-psychological perspective, as I do here, the steering function is perhaps the most important characteristic of emotion. Watching films is seen as a complicated process of information processing. All processing of information by means of the human system is governed, on the one hand, by the characteristics of the environment and, on the other hand, by the limitations of a system formed by biological and cultural evolution. One may expect a cognitive theory of emotion to indicate exactly how this steering of the processing of information takes place.

In the last few years we have seen the appearance of a great many publications on emotion and the relationship to cognition, (i.e., the processing of information). The scope of this introduction does not permit a discussion of these studies.⁷ It is, however, important to note here that very few of these publications are so general as to cover a broad spectrum of emotional phenomena and their determinants. Such a spectrum must be extensive enough to include the aesthetic emotions, more specifically, those that may present themselves in the course of watching a film.

In this study, the theory of emotion developed by Frijda (1986) serves as the basis for a description of the affective processes of the film viewer. In anticipation of a more detailed discussion in chapter 3, it will suffice to say that this theory will help us in two ways. First, it provides a working definition of what constitutes a genuine emotion. This definition covers emotion in general, as it occurs in daily life; it does not deal specifically with the situation of the film viewer, and its plausibility is based in equal measure on the general situation. Thus we are justified in concluding that films produce genuine emotion if we can show that within the situation of the film viewer the criteria for a genuine emotion have been met in the sense of the general theory of emotions, which has been validated on grounds that are unrelated to our research question.

Second, Frijda’s theory describes in great detail how information is processed, making it easier to highlight certain aspects of the complex processing of information on the part of the viewer. The theory accounts for the mechanisms governing expe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Preface
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Psychological Functions of Film Viewing
• 3 Film and Emotion: Theoretical Background
• 4 The Structure of Interest
• 5 Thematic Structures and Interest
• 6 Character Structures, Empathy, and Interest
• 7 The Psychological Affect Structure of the Feature Film
• 8 Conclusion: The Feature Film as an Emotion Machine
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index