This textbook acknowledges that most students entering an introductory film/television class alre... more This textbook acknowledges that most students entering an introductory film/television class already have a great deal of knowledge about media (unlike introductory students in an accounting class, for instance).This book addresses the assumptions students bring to class about what “realism” is or how media cause violence, assumptions that we rarely confront directly when we teach about film and television.This textbook gives the introductory student a more precise language for discussing these concepts, which makes better class discussion possible about these vague but broadly held ideas.The book is written in an approachable, personal, non-“textbook-y” tone that makes the big ideas of media studies more accessible to students.
Table of Contents
A Note to the Student about Why This Book Is Different
“It’s Just a Movie:” Why You Should Analyze Film and Television
Discussing How Media Work
What Is Realism, Really?
How Do We Identify with Characters?
Genre Schmenre
Discussing Media and Society
“Studies Show:” How To Understand Media Violence/Effects Research
Role Models and Stereotypes: An Introduction to the “Other”
Beautiful TV is in part a discussion of the aesthetic innovations of a particular TV show (its ha... more Beautiful TV is in part a discussion of the aesthetic innovations of a particular TV show (its handling of music, special effects, etc.) and in part an argument that scholars need to study whole television series from beginning to end. This is particularly true for serial television, and Beautiful TV demonstrates both how we may examine a long-running serial narrative and why it is important to study television from a narrative perspective.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Ally?
Aesthetics
Chapter One: Practical Music, Personal Fantasy: Creating a Community of Song in Ally McBeal
Chapter Two: Getting into Ally's Head: Special Effects, Imagination, and the Voice of Doubt
Narration and Argument
Chapter Three: Redeeming Ally: Seriality and the Character Network
Chapter Four: "Is It Possible to Love Somebody Only Two Days?": Guest Stars and Eccentricity
Chapter Five: Victim of Love: Ally McBeal and the Politics of Protection
We have learned much about emotion in the last decades, thanks to innovations that allow us a muc... more We have learned much about emotion in the last decades, thanks to innovations that allow us a much more precise picture of what goes on inside people when they feel. Film Structure and the Emotion System synthesizes much of this research in neurology and cognitive psychology and then applies it to film. Given this new understanding of emotion in general, what does that tell us about people sitting in movie theaters experiencing emotion? My book presents a "mood-cue" approach to analyzing the emotional appeals of film texts, and it demonstrates the utility of that approach on a variety of movies, from classical Hollywood films (such as Casablanca and Stella Dallas) to foreign films (Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir) to independent films (Stranger than Paradise).
Table of Contents
Developing the Approach
Chapter One: An Invitation to Feel
Chapter Two: The Emotion System and Nonprototypical Emotions
Chapter Three: The Mood-Cue Approach to Filmic Emotion
Chapter Four: Other Cognitivisms
Analyzing Films' Emotional Appeals
Chapter Five: "Couldn't You Read Between Those Pitiful Lines?" Feeling for Stella Dallas
Chapter Six: Strike-ing Out: The Partial Success of Early Eisenstein's Emotional Appeal
Chapter Seven: Lyricism and Unevenness: Emotional Transitions in Renoir's A Day in the Country and The Lower Depths
Chapter Eight: Emotion Work: The Joy Luck Club and the Limits of the Emotion System
Chapter Nine: "I Was Misinformed:" Nostalgia and Uncertainty in Casablanca
Afterword
Chapter Ten: An Invitation to Interpret
Appendix: The Neurological Basis of Psychoanalytic Film Theory: Metz's Emotional Debt to Freud the Biologist
Carl Plantinga and I asked scholars to apply the insights from cognitive psychology and philosoph... more Carl Plantinga and I asked scholars to apply the insights from cognitive psychology and philosophy to a range of film texts. This anthology serves as a good introduction to cognitive film studies of emotion.
Introduction
Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith
I. Kinds of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Film, Emotion, and Genre
Noel Carroll
Sentiment in Film Viewing
Ed S.H. Tan and Nico H. Frijda
The Sublime in Cinema
Cynthia A. Freeland
The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy
Dirk Eitzen
II. Film Technique, Film Narrative, and Emotion
Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure
Greg M. Smith
Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film
Torben Grodal
Movie Music As Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score
Jeff Smith
Time and Timing
Susan L. Feagin
III. Desire, Identification, and Empathy
Narrative Desire
Gregory Currie
Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film
Berys Gaut
Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances
1. Introduction: A Few Words about Interactivity (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
2. Before ... more 1. Introduction: A Few Words about Interactivity (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
2. Before the Holodeck: Translating Star Trek into Digital Media
Janet Murray and Henry Jenkins
3. "To Waste More Time, Please Click Here Again:" Monty Python and the Quest for the CD/Film Adaptation (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
4. "Evil Will Walk Once More:" Phantasmagoria – The Stalker Film As Interactive Movie?
Angela Ndalianis
5. Busy Box Interface: The Pleasures of Winding
Brian Kelly with Scott Bukatman
6. Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space
Ted Friedman
7. Museum (Dis)Play: Imagining the Museum on CD-ROM
Alison Trope
8. Virtual Kinship in a Postmodern World: Computer Mediated Genealogy Communities
Pamela Wilson
9. Fantasies of Mastery or Masteries of Fantasy? Playing with CD-ROMs in the 5th Dimension
Vanessa Gack
10. Showing and Telling: Developing CD-ROMs for the Classroom and Research
Leslie Jarmon
11. Doing Theory in Hypermedia Practice: A Case Study of the HyperHistory Video Project
From _Serielle Formen: Von den frühen Film-Serials zu aktuellen Quality-TV- und Onlineserien_ (_Serial Forms: From Early Film Serials to Current Quality TV and Online Series_), edited by Robert Blanchet, Kristina Köhler, Tereza Smid, and Julia Zutavern (Schuren Press, 2011)
This textbook acknowledges that most students entering an introductory film/television class alre... more This textbook acknowledges that most students entering an introductory film/television class already have a great deal of knowledge about media (unlike introductory students in an accounting class, for instance).This book addresses the assumptions students bring to class about what “realism” is or how media cause violence, assumptions that we rarely confront directly when we teach about film and television.This textbook gives the introductory student a more precise language for discussing these concepts, which makes better class discussion possible about these vague but broadly held ideas.The book is written in an approachable, personal, non-“textbook-y” tone that makes the big ideas of media studies more accessible to students.
Table of Contents
A Note to the Student about Why This Book Is Different
“It’s Just a Movie:” Why You Should Analyze Film and Television
Discussing How Media Work
What Is Realism, Really?
How Do We Identify with Characters?
Genre Schmenre
Discussing Media and Society
“Studies Show:” How To Understand Media Violence/Effects Research
Role Models and Stereotypes: An Introduction to the “Other”
Beautiful TV is in part a discussion of the aesthetic innovations of a particular TV show (its ha... more Beautiful TV is in part a discussion of the aesthetic innovations of a particular TV show (its handling of music, special effects, etc.) and in part an argument that scholars need to study whole television series from beginning to end. This is particularly true for serial television, and Beautiful TV demonstrates both how we may examine a long-running serial narrative and why it is important to study television from a narrative perspective.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Ally?
Aesthetics
Chapter One: Practical Music, Personal Fantasy: Creating a Community of Song in Ally McBeal
Chapter Two: Getting into Ally's Head: Special Effects, Imagination, and the Voice of Doubt
Narration and Argument
Chapter Three: Redeeming Ally: Seriality and the Character Network
Chapter Four: "Is It Possible to Love Somebody Only Two Days?": Guest Stars and Eccentricity
Chapter Five: Victim of Love: Ally McBeal and the Politics of Protection
We have learned much about emotion in the last decades, thanks to innovations that allow us a muc... more We have learned much about emotion in the last decades, thanks to innovations that allow us a much more precise picture of what goes on inside people when they feel. Film Structure and the Emotion System synthesizes much of this research in neurology and cognitive psychology and then applies it to film. Given this new understanding of emotion in general, what does that tell us about people sitting in movie theaters experiencing emotion? My book presents a "mood-cue" approach to analyzing the emotional appeals of film texts, and it demonstrates the utility of that approach on a variety of movies, from classical Hollywood films (such as Casablanca and Stella Dallas) to foreign films (Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir) to independent films (Stranger than Paradise).
Table of Contents
Developing the Approach
Chapter One: An Invitation to Feel
Chapter Two: The Emotion System and Nonprototypical Emotions
Chapter Three: The Mood-Cue Approach to Filmic Emotion
Chapter Four: Other Cognitivisms
Analyzing Films' Emotional Appeals
Chapter Five: "Couldn't You Read Between Those Pitiful Lines?" Feeling for Stella Dallas
Chapter Six: Strike-ing Out: The Partial Success of Early Eisenstein's Emotional Appeal
Chapter Seven: Lyricism and Unevenness: Emotional Transitions in Renoir's A Day in the Country and The Lower Depths
Chapter Eight: Emotion Work: The Joy Luck Club and the Limits of the Emotion System
Chapter Nine: "I Was Misinformed:" Nostalgia and Uncertainty in Casablanca
Afterword
Chapter Ten: An Invitation to Interpret
Appendix: The Neurological Basis of Psychoanalytic Film Theory: Metz's Emotional Debt to Freud the Biologist
Carl Plantinga and I asked scholars to apply the insights from cognitive psychology and philosoph... more Carl Plantinga and I asked scholars to apply the insights from cognitive psychology and philosophy to a range of film texts. This anthology serves as a good introduction to cognitive film studies of emotion.
Introduction
Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith
I. Kinds of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Film, Emotion, and Genre
Noel Carroll
Sentiment in Film Viewing
Ed S.H. Tan and Nico H. Frijda
The Sublime in Cinema
Cynthia A. Freeland
The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy
Dirk Eitzen
II. Film Technique, Film Narrative, and Emotion
Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure
Greg M. Smith
Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film
Torben Grodal
Movie Music As Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score
Jeff Smith
Time and Timing
Susan L. Feagin
III. Desire, Identification, and Empathy
Narrative Desire
Gregory Currie
Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film
Berys Gaut
Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances
1. Introduction: A Few Words about Interactivity (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
2. Before ... more 1. Introduction: A Few Words about Interactivity (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
2. Before the Holodeck: Translating Star Trek into Digital Media
Janet Murray and Henry Jenkins
3. "To Waste More Time, Please Click Here Again:" Monty Python and the Quest for the CD/Film Adaptation (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
4. "Evil Will Walk Once More:" Phantasmagoria – The Stalker Film As Interactive Movie?
Angela Ndalianis
5. Busy Box Interface: The Pleasures of Winding
Brian Kelly with Scott Bukatman
6. Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space
Ted Friedman
7. Museum (Dis)Play: Imagining the Museum on CD-ROM
Alison Trope
8. Virtual Kinship in a Postmodern World: Computer Mediated Genealogy Communities
Pamela Wilson
9. Fantasies of Mastery or Masteries of Fantasy? Playing with CD-ROMs in the 5th Dimension
Vanessa Gack
10. Showing and Telling: Developing CD-ROMs for the Classroom and Research
Leslie Jarmon
11. Doing Theory in Hypermedia Practice: A Case Study of the HyperHistory Video Project
From _Serielle Formen: Von den frühen Film-Serials zu aktuellen Quality-TV- und Onlineserien_ (_Serial Forms: From Early Film Serials to Current Quality TV and Online Series_), edited by Robert Blanchet, Kristina Köhler, Tereza Smid, and Julia Zutavern (Schuren Press, 2011)
Uploads
Books by Greg Smith
Table of Contents
A Note to the Student about Why This Book Is Different
“It’s Just a Movie:” Why You Should Analyze Film and Television
Discussing How Media Work
What Is Realism, Really?
How Do We Identify with Characters?
Genre Schmenre
Discussing Media and Society
“Studies Show:” How To Understand Media Violence/Effects Research
Role Models and Stereotypes: An Introduction to the “Other”
Discussing Media’s Future Now
What Difference Does a Medium Make?
What Is Interactivity?
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Ally?
Aesthetics
Chapter One: Practical Music, Personal Fantasy: Creating a Community of Song in Ally McBeal
Chapter Two: Getting into Ally's Head: Special Effects, Imagination, and the Voice of Doubt
Narration and Argument
Chapter Three: Redeeming Ally: Seriality and the Character Network
Chapter Four: "Is It Possible to Love Somebody Only Two Days?": Guest Stars and Eccentricity
Chapter Five: Victim of Love: Ally McBeal and the Politics of Protection
Afterword
Table of Contents
Developing the Approach
Chapter One: An Invitation to Feel
Chapter Two: The Emotion System and Nonprototypical Emotions
Chapter Three: The Mood-Cue Approach to Filmic Emotion
Chapter Four: Other Cognitivisms
Analyzing Films' Emotional Appeals
Chapter Five: "Couldn't You Read Between Those Pitiful Lines?" Feeling for Stella Dallas
Chapter Six: Strike-ing Out: The Partial Success of Early Eisenstein's Emotional Appeal
Chapter Seven: Lyricism and Unevenness: Emotional Transitions in Renoir's A Day in the Country and The Lower Depths
Chapter Eight: Emotion Work: The Joy Luck Club and the Limits of the Emotion System
Chapter Nine: "I Was Misinformed:" Nostalgia and Uncertainty in Casablanca
Afterword
Chapter Ten: An Invitation to Interpret
Appendix: The Neurological Basis of Psychoanalytic Film Theory: Metz's Emotional Debt to Freud the Biologist
Introduction
Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith
I. Kinds of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Film, Emotion, and Genre
Noel Carroll
Sentiment in Film Viewing
Ed S.H. Tan and Nico H. Frijda
The Sublime in Cinema
Cynthia A. Freeland
The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy
Dirk Eitzen
II. Film Technique, Film Narrative, and Emotion
Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure
Greg M. Smith
Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film
Torben Grodal
Movie Music As Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score
Jeff Smith
Time and Timing
Susan L. Feagin
III. Desire, Identification, and Empathy
Narrative Desire
Gregory Currie
Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film
Berys Gaut
Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances
Murray Smith
The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film
Carl Plantinga
Greg M. Smith
2. Before the Holodeck: Translating Star Trek into Digital Media
Janet Murray and Henry Jenkins
3. "To Waste More Time, Please Click Here Again:" Monty Python and the Quest for the CD/Film Adaptation (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
4. "Evil Will Walk Once More:" Phantasmagoria – The Stalker Film As Interactive Movie?
Angela Ndalianis
5. Busy Box Interface: The Pleasures of Winding
Brian Kelly with Scott Bukatman
6. Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space
Ted Friedman
7. Museum (Dis)Play: Imagining the Museum on CD-ROM
Alison Trope
8. Virtual Kinship in a Postmodern World: Computer Mediated Genealogy Communities
Pamela Wilson
9. Fantasies of Mastery or Masteries of Fantasy? Playing with CD-ROMs in the 5th Dimension
Vanessa Gack
10. Showing and Telling: Developing CD-ROMs for the Classroom and Research
Leslie Jarmon
11. Doing Theory in Hypermedia Practice: A Case Study of the HyperHistory Video Project
Lisa Cartwright
Papers by Greg Smith
Table of Contents
A Note to the Student about Why This Book Is Different
“It’s Just a Movie:” Why You Should Analyze Film and Television
Discussing How Media Work
What Is Realism, Really?
How Do We Identify with Characters?
Genre Schmenre
Discussing Media and Society
“Studies Show:” How To Understand Media Violence/Effects Research
Role Models and Stereotypes: An Introduction to the “Other”
Discussing Media’s Future Now
What Difference Does a Medium Make?
What Is Interactivity?
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Ally?
Aesthetics
Chapter One: Practical Music, Personal Fantasy: Creating a Community of Song in Ally McBeal
Chapter Two: Getting into Ally's Head: Special Effects, Imagination, and the Voice of Doubt
Narration and Argument
Chapter Three: Redeeming Ally: Seriality and the Character Network
Chapter Four: "Is It Possible to Love Somebody Only Two Days?": Guest Stars and Eccentricity
Chapter Five: Victim of Love: Ally McBeal and the Politics of Protection
Afterword
Table of Contents
Developing the Approach
Chapter One: An Invitation to Feel
Chapter Two: The Emotion System and Nonprototypical Emotions
Chapter Three: The Mood-Cue Approach to Filmic Emotion
Chapter Four: Other Cognitivisms
Analyzing Films' Emotional Appeals
Chapter Five: "Couldn't You Read Between Those Pitiful Lines?" Feeling for Stella Dallas
Chapter Six: Strike-ing Out: The Partial Success of Early Eisenstein's Emotional Appeal
Chapter Seven: Lyricism and Unevenness: Emotional Transitions in Renoir's A Day in the Country and The Lower Depths
Chapter Eight: Emotion Work: The Joy Luck Club and the Limits of the Emotion System
Chapter Nine: "I Was Misinformed:" Nostalgia and Uncertainty in Casablanca
Afterword
Chapter Ten: An Invitation to Interpret
Appendix: The Neurological Basis of Psychoanalytic Film Theory: Metz's Emotional Debt to Freud the Biologist
Introduction
Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith
I. Kinds of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Film, Emotion, and Genre
Noel Carroll
Sentiment in Film Viewing
Ed S.H. Tan and Nico H. Frijda
The Sublime in Cinema
Cynthia A. Freeland
The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy
Dirk Eitzen
II. Film Technique, Film Narrative, and Emotion
Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure
Greg M. Smith
Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film
Torben Grodal
Movie Music As Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score
Jeff Smith
Time and Timing
Susan L. Feagin
III. Desire, Identification, and Empathy
Narrative Desire
Gregory Currie
Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film
Berys Gaut
Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances
Murray Smith
The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film
Carl Plantinga
Greg M. Smith
2. Before the Holodeck: Translating Star Trek into Digital Media
Janet Murray and Henry Jenkins
3. "To Waste More Time, Please Click Here Again:" Monty Python and the Quest for the CD/Film Adaptation (PDF version)
Greg M. Smith
4. "Evil Will Walk Once More:" Phantasmagoria – The Stalker Film As Interactive Movie?
Angela Ndalianis
5. Busy Box Interface: The Pleasures of Winding
Brian Kelly with Scott Bukatman
6. Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space
Ted Friedman
7. Museum (Dis)Play: Imagining the Museum on CD-ROM
Alison Trope
8. Virtual Kinship in a Postmodern World: Computer Mediated Genealogy Communities
Pamela Wilson
9. Fantasies of Mastery or Masteries of Fantasy? Playing with CD-ROMs in the 5th Dimension
Vanessa Gack
10. Showing and Telling: Developing CD-ROMs for the Classroom and Research
Leslie Jarmon
11. Doing Theory in Hypermedia Practice: A Case Study of the HyperHistory Video Project
Lisa Cartwright