CIN301Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Film Theory, Film Criticism, Stoicism
Document Summary
Emphasis on empirically testable and verifiable conscious/rational mental processes. This can run the risk of a normative or universalizing empiricism. Tends toward small-scale local theory and piecemeal theorizing. Rather than what carroll and bordwell call grand theory . Resistance: a key concept in psychoanalysis that refers to obstacles people erect in order to protect themselves against access to the unconscious and its disturbing content. The fundamental tenet of a cognitive approach [to film] is that the spectator"s affective experience is dependent on cognition, on mental activity cued not only by film form but also by story content. In viewing films, cognition would include inferences, hypotheses, and evaluative judgments. Resistant cinema must encourage alienation and refuse pleasure. Ideological formalism: certain film forms have inherent, universal ideological effects. Attends to aspects of brecht"s work that frequently get ignored. Concludes that ideological criticism should be asking whether a film effects a transformation in the way we regard the world.
