Todd Berliner, Professor of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, teaches film aesthetics, narration, and style and American film history. He is the author of Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2010). He was the founding chairman of UNCW’s Film Studies Department and the recipient of two Fulbright Scholar awards, including the Laszlo Orszagh Distinguished Chair in American Studies. Phone: 910-962-3336 Address: Department of Film Studies University of North Carolina Wilmington 601 S. College Road Wilmington, NC 28403-5950
Paper recorded for the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image virtual conference, 9 Ju... more Paper recorded for the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image virtual conference, 9 June 2021.
Todd Berliner's commencement address to graduates of the arts and social sciences departments, an... more Todd Berliner's commencement address to graduates of the arts and social sciences departments, and 5000 guest attendees, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, 11 May 2013.
Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema (Oxford University Press), 2017
Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The... more Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The American film industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among huge populations, translate into box office success. More than any other historical mode of art, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a mass scale. If the Hollywood film industry succeeds in delivering aesthetic pleasure both routinely and, at times, in an outstanding way, then we should ultimately regard Hollywood cinema as an artistic achievement, not merely a commercial success. Hollywood Aesthetic accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design: narrative, style, ideology, and genre. Grounded in film history and in the psychological and philosophical literature in aesthetics, the book explains: 1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; 2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood movies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and 3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Hollywood movies. Offering a comprehensive appraisal of Hollywood cinema’s capacity to provide aesthetic pleasure, the book sets out to explain how Hollywood creates, for masses of people, some of their most exhilarating experiences of art.
Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief... more Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief artistic accomplishment: providing aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Grounded in film history and supported by re- search in psychology and philosophical aesthetics, the book explains (1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; (2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood mov- ies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and (3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Holly- wood movies. Hollywood Aesthetic addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design—narrative, style, ideology, and genre—aim- ing for a comprehensive appraisal of Hollywood cinema’s capacity to excite aesthetic pleasure. This article outlines the book’s main points and themes. As a précis, it is heavy on ideas and light on evidence, which is to be found in the book itself.
Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (University of Texas Press), 2010
In the 1970s, Hollywood experienced a creative surge, opening a new era in American cinema with f... more In the 1970s, Hollywood experienced a creative surge, opening a new era in American cinema with films that challenged traditional modes of storytelling. Inspired by European and Asian art cinema as well as Hollywood’s own history of narrative ingenuity, directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, and Francis Ford Coppola undermined the harmony of traditional Hollywood cinema and created some of the best movies ever to come out of the American film industry. Critics have previously viewed these films as a response to the cultural and political upheavals of the 1970s, but until now no one has explored how the period’s inventive narrative design represents one of the great artistic accomplishments of American cinema.
In Hollywood Incoherent, Todd Berliner offers the first thorough analysis of the narrative and stylistic innovations of seventies cinema and its influence on contemporary American filmmaking. He examines not just formally eccentric films—Nashville; Taxi Driver; A Clockwork Orange; The Godfather, Part II; and the films of John Cassavetes—but also mainstream commercial films, including The Exorcist, The Godfather, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dog Day Afternoon, Chinatown, The Bad News Bears, Patton, All the President’s Men, Annie Hall, and many others. With persuasive analyses, Berliner demonstrates the centrality of this period to the history of Hollywood’s formal development, showing how seventies films represent the key turning point between the storytelling modes of the studio era and those of modern American cinema.
Detour (1945) has long inspired independent filmmakers looking to make lasting cinema with almost... more Detour (1945) has long inspired independent filmmakers looking to make lasting cinema with almost no money. You can literally see Detour’s low budget in the barren sets and locations, limited set-ups, and the absence of stars—characteristic features of B-film production in the 1930s and 1940s. But the filmmakers clearly spent creative resources on many subtleties and flourishes in the storytelling, finding imaginative solutions to their financial problems. We can see in Detour’s aesthetic properties traces of the B-movie system that produced it. Budget constraints determined the film’s style, forcing unorthodox solutions to economic challenges. Poverty Row filmmakers sought creative ways to tell stories with little time for production and little money for sets, locations, and actors. Unlike their studio counterparts, they worked under loose supervision, targeted smaller audiences, and rejected glamour. In this environment, Detour is not so much an outlier as an exemplar of what could be achieved within the low-budget independent filmmaking apparatus of the studio era. Detour takes some characteristic traits of the B-film style of the period—a meandering plot, unusual characters, and a minimalist visual style—and transforms them into aesthetic virtues unavailable within the stylish style of a studio production.
This chapter studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling and e... more This chapter studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling and explains the ways in which Hollywood movies both facilitate and complicate the process of story construction. The chapter presents a theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics—supported by research in experimental psychology and illustrated with examples—that viewers take pleasure not just in narrative unity and easy understanding, as previous scholars have argued, but also in narrative disunity and cognitive challenge. Viewers take calm, spontaneous pleasure from Hollywood’s time-tested storytelling principles, especially principles of clarity and causality, that ease mental activity and satisfy the viewer’s desire for logical story resolution and immediate understanding. Viewers, however, take exhilarated pleasure from moments of narrative incongruity, convolution, and ambiguity—moments that stimulate free association, creative problem solving, insight, and incongruity-resolution. This theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics helps explain how Hollywood balances narrative unity and disunity, wedding classical storytelling principles with moments of cognitive challenge in order to generate pleasure for mass audiences.
Puzzling Stories: The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Literature, Film & Television. Ed. Steven Willemsen and Miklós Kiss, 2022
In three parts, this essay explains how artworks, including mass artworks, create aesthetic pleas... more In three parts, this essay explains how artworks, including mass artworks, create aesthetic pleasure through cognitive challenge. Part 1 argues that many theorists regard cognitive challenge as central to aesthetic value. Artists, however, tailor those challenges to the coping potential of their intended audiences. Part 2 argues that even mass audiences enjoy cognitive challenges, which stimulate creative problem solving, incongruity resolution, insight, and stress relief. Part 3 illustrates how Hollywood balances the pleasures of cognitive challenge against competing pressures for easy comprehension by mass audiences. The Philadelphia Story (1940) creates moderate challenges through slightly misshapen narrative structures and inconsistent information.
Puzzling Stories: The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Literature, Film & Television, 2022
This chapter sets out to explain how artworks create aesthetic pleasure through cognitive challen... more This chapter sets out to explain how artworks create aesthetic pleasure through cognitive challenge. My argument addresses both explicitly puzzling works and, in a more elaborate discussion, less challenging artworks designed to please mass audiences.
The argument falls into three parts. First, philosophers and psychologists often regard cognitive challenge as a key factor in aesthetic value, even when the challenge results in confusion and stress. Many valuable artworks create unpleasant experiences, and we cannot separate the value of the works from the negative emotions they instil in us. We can even describe such experiences as ‘pleasurable’ if we regard pleasure as a broad category of intrinsically rewarding emotional experiences. Emotional rewards vary among different perceivers, however, and artists tailor the intensity of their artworks’ challenges to the coping potential of their intended audiences.
Second, although theorists often distinguish mass art by its lack of cognitive challenges, research in cognitive psychology suggests that average perceivers find cognitive challenges stimulating, even exhilarating, and that lack of challenge leads to boredom. Cognitive challenges generate pleasure by creating opportunities for creative problem solving, incongruity resolution, insight and stress relief. Mass artforms, however, must balance their cognitive challenges against the competing pressure for easy comprehension by mass audiences.
Finally, we can understand how mass artworks negotiate that balance through a case study drawn from the definitive mass artform, Hollywood cinema. Seemingly simple and straightforward, The Philadelphia Story (1940) creates moderate challenges through slightly misshapen narrative structures and occasionally inconsistent information, even though the narrative may seem perfectly designed and effortlessly understood.
Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The... more Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The American film industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among large populations, translate into box office success. More than any other historical mode of art, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a mass scale. If the Hollywood film industry succeeds in delivering aesthetic pleasure both routinely and, at times, in an outstanding way, then we should ultimately regard Hollywood cinema as an artistic achievement, not merely a commercial success. Hollywood Aesthetic accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design: narrative, style, ideology, and genre. Grounded in film history and in the psychological and philosophical literature in aesthetics, the book explains: (1) the intrinsic ...
Chapter 2 illustrates an aesthetically productive balance between easy understanding and cognitiv... more Chapter 2 illustrates an aesthetically productive balance between easy understanding and cognitive challenge in classical Hollywood cinema with extended analyses of His Girl Friday and Double Indemnity. These films combine classical narrative, stylistic, ideological, and genre properties with artistic devices that complicate formal patterning and thwart audience expectations.
Chapter 3 studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling. It exam... more Chapter 3 studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling. It examines the cognitive processes at work when a film cues spectators to construct a film’s story in their minds, and it explains the ways in which Hollywood movies both facilitate and complicate the spectator’s process of story construction. The chapter offers a new theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics—illustrated with examples from whodunits, screwball comedies, twist films, and mysteries—that film viewers take pleasure not just in narrative unity and easy understanding, as previous scholars have argued, but also in narrative disunity and cognitive challenge. With support from experimental psychology, the chapter argues that viewers enjoy narratives that stimulate moments of free association, insight, and incongruity-resolution.
Chapter 4 illustrates the theory of narration presented in the previous chapter, offering an exte... more Chapter 4 illustrates the theory of narration presented in the previous chapter, offering an extended analysis of an unusual narrative pattern in Red River, which violates Hollywood’s cardinal rules regarding narrative unity, probability, causality, and story logic. Disunity in this classical Hollywood narrative adds variety to our filmgoing experience; stimulates our imagination, curiosity, and creative problem-solving processes; and liberates our thinking from the burdens and limitations of good sense.
Chapter 5 investigates the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood’s stylistic norms, as well as pleasur... more Chapter 5 investigates the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood’s stylistic norms, as well as pleasures afforded by a handful of noteworthy stylistic deviations. The chapter examines the ways in which Hollywood film style both supports a film’s storytelling function (by enhancing clarity and expressiveness) and offers aesthetic pleasures independent of storytelling (decoration and stylistic harmony). A film’s style may also compete with story (e.g., Touch of Evil), with genre (Leave Her to Heaven), or even with itself (Goodfellas) for control of a film’s mood and meaning. Such stylistically dissonant works inspire cognitive play as we adjust to stylistic cues that harbor disparate attitudes and meanings.
Illustrating some of the points made in chapter 5, chapter 6 offers an extended analysis of some ... more Illustrating some of the points made in chapter 5, chapter 6 offers an extended analysis of some complex tendencies in Raging Bull’s cinematography, editing, and sound devices. The film tests the limits of the classical Hollywood style and sometimes crosses over into avant-garde practice. Raging Bull offers an illustrative case study of the boundaries of Hollywood’s stylistic systems.
Chapter 7 examines the ways in which a film’s ideological properties contribute to aesthetic plea... more Chapter 7 examines the ways in which a film’s ideological properties contribute to aesthetic pleasure when they intensify, or when they complicate, viewers’ cognitive and affective responses. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which the ideology of a Hollywood film guides our beliefs, values, and emotional responses. In ideologically unified Hollywood films, such as Die Hard, Independence Day, Pickup on South Street, and Casablanca, narrative and stylistic devices concentrate our beliefs, values, and emotional responses, offering us a purer experience than we can find in most real-life situations. By contrast, ideologically complicated Hollywood films, such as Chinatown, The Third Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Dark Knight, advance their worldviews in a novel, ambiguous, or peculiar way, upsetting our appraisals of events and characters and complicating our intellectual and emotional experiences.
Chapter 8 demonstrates the ways in which ideological constraints in studio-era Hollywood shaped t... more Chapter 8 demonstrates the ways in which ideological constraints in studio-era Hollywood shaped the aesthetic properties of an entire body of crime films, now commonly known as film noir. The ideological restrictions of the Production Code Administration posed creative problems that noir filmmakers solved through visual and narrative contortion. The contortions created challenges for audiences, who had to decode and make sense of films that may not show complete clarity or coherence in their storytelling. Film noir remains aesthetically engaging because it operates near the boundaries of classicism without sacrificing classical Hollywood’s accessibility and formal unity.
Whereas chapter 8 demonstrates how ideology can complicate a film’s artistic design, chapter 9 sh... more Whereas chapter 8 demonstrates how ideology can complicate a film’s artistic design, chapter 9 shows how a film’s artistic design can complicate its ideology. Starship Troopers illustrates the commercial risks, and the aesthetic excitement, of a Hollywood film whose formal properties muddle up its ideological content. The film’s unconventional use of genre devices leads to ideological complexities that pose challenges for spectators trying to make sense of the film’s form and meaning. Starship Troopers employs the conventions of the Hollywood war film and the war film satire in ways that make the film’s worldview incoherent. The film’s mercurial form limited its success in a mass market but exhilarated cult audiences engaged by the film’s unusual design.
Hollywood makes quintessential genre films, and chapter 10 tackles the aesthetics of genre filmma... more Hollywood makes quintessential genre films, and chapter 10 tackles the aesthetics of genre filmmaking. It demonstrates the ways in which genre eases viewers’ grasp of narrative information and offers the pleasure of returning, as experts, to familiar scenarios. The chapter also explains the ways in which genres develop novel and complex aesthetic properties that counter a culture’s growing genre expertise. To fully exploit the pleasures of genre filmmaking for a mass audience, a genre film must fit recognizably within its genre, offering easy recognition, but it must also differ enough from previous films to make it moderately challenging for average spectators. Star Wars offers an exemplary instance of Hollywood genre filmmaking: The 1977 blockbuster found the optimal area between unity and complexity, familiarity and novelty, easy recognition and cognitive challenge for a mass audience.
Chapter 11 examines the aesthetic value of novelty in a genre’s evolution by tracing the history ... more Chapter 11 examines the aesthetic value of novelty in a genre’s evolution by tracing the history of the convention that characters in Hollywood musicals spontaneously burst into song without realistic motivation. The convention emerged in 1929 and largely vanished by the end of the 1950s. The chapter studies how studio-era filmmakers developed novel conventions that exploited the aesthetic possibilities of song in cinema. The eventual loss of the convention created new constraints on the uses of song, but it also enabled new aesthetic possibilities. Post-studio-era filmmakers transformed the convention, exposed it, and reclaimed it in ways that added novelty to spectators’ aesthetic experience.
Paper recorded for the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image virtual conference, 9 Ju... more Paper recorded for the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image virtual conference, 9 June 2021.
Todd Berliner's commencement address to graduates of the arts and social sciences departments, an... more Todd Berliner's commencement address to graduates of the arts and social sciences departments, and 5000 guest attendees, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, 11 May 2013.
Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema (Oxford University Press), 2017
Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The... more Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The American film industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among huge populations, translate into box office success. More than any other historical mode of art, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a mass scale. If the Hollywood film industry succeeds in delivering aesthetic pleasure both routinely and, at times, in an outstanding way, then we should ultimately regard Hollywood cinema as an artistic achievement, not merely a commercial success. Hollywood Aesthetic accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design: narrative, style, ideology, and genre. Grounded in film history and in the psychological and philosophical literature in aesthetics, the book explains: 1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; 2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood movies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and 3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Hollywood movies. Offering a comprehensive appraisal of Hollywood cinema’s capacity to provide aesthetic pleasure, the book sets out to explain how Hollywood creates, for masses of people, some of their most exhilarating experiences of art.
Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief... more Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief artistic accomplishment: providing aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Grounded in film history and supported by re- search in psychology and philosophical aesthetics, the book explains (1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; (2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood mov- ies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and (3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Holly- wood movies. Hollywood Aesthetic addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design—narrative, style, ideology, and genre—aim- ing for a comprehensive appraisal of Hollywood cinema’s capacity to excite aesthetic pleasure. This article outlines the book’s main points and themes. As a précis, it is heavy on ideas and light on evidence, which is to be found in the book itself.
Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (University of Texas Press), 2010
In the 1970s, Hollywood experienced a creative surge, opening a new era in American cinema with f... more In the 1970s, Hollywood experienced a creative surge, opening a new era in American cinema with films that challenged traditional modes of storytelling. Inspired by European and Asian art cinema as well as Hollywood’s own history of narrative ingenuity, directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, and Francis Ford Coppola undermined the harmony of traditional Hollywood cinema and created some of the best movies ever to come out of the American film industry. Critics have previously viewed these films as a response to the cultural and political upheavals of the 1970s, but until now no one has explored how the period’s inventive narrative design represents one of the great artistic accomplishments of American cinema.
In Hollywood Incoherent, Todd Berliner offers the first thorough analysis of the narrative and stylistic innovations of seventies cinema and its influence on contemporary American filmmaking. He examines not just formally eccentric films—Nashville; Taxi Driver; A Clockwork Orange; The Godfather, Part II; and the films of John Cassavetes—but also mainstream commercial films, including The Exorcist, The Godfather, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dog Day Afternoon, Chinatown, The Bad News Bears, Patton, All the President’s Men, Annie Hall, and many others. With persuasive analyses, Berliner demonstrates the centrality of this period to the history of Hollywood’s formal development, showing how seventies films represent the key turning point between the storytelling modes of the studio era and those of modern American cinema.
Detour (1945) has long inspired independent filmmakers looking to make lasting cinema with almost... more Detour (1945) has long inspired independent filmmakers looking to make lasting cinema with almost no money. You can literally see Detour’s low budget in the barren sets and locations, limited set-ups, and the absence of stars—characteristic features of B-film production in the 1930s and 1940s. But the filmmakers clearly spent creative resources on many subtleties and flourishes in the storytelling, finding imaginative solutions to their financial problems. We can see in Detour’s aesthetic properties traces of the B-movie system that produced it. Budget constraints determined the film’s style, forcing unorthodox solutions to economic challenges. Poverty Row filmmakers sought creative ways to tell stories with little time for production and little money for sets, locations, and actors. Unlike their studio counterparts, they worked under loose supervision, targeted smaller audiences, and rejected glamour. In this environment, Detour is not so much an outlier as an exemplar of what could be achieved within the low-budget independent filmmaking apparatus of the studio era. Detour takes some characteristic traits of the B-film style of the period—a meandering plot, unusual characters, and a minimalist visual style—and transforms them into aesthetic virtues unavailable within the stylish style of a studio production.
This chapter studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling and e... more This chapter studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling and explains the ways in which Hollywood movies both facilitate and complicate the process of story construction. The chapter presents a theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics—supported by research in experimental psychology and illustrated with examples—that viewers take pleasure not just in narrative unity and easy understanding, as previous scholars have argued, but also in narrative disunity and cognitive challenge. Viewers take calm, spontaneous pleasure from Hollywood’s time-tested storytelling principles, especially principles of clarity and causality, that ease mental activity and satisfy the viewer’s desire for logical story resolution and immediate understanding. Viewers, however, take exhilarated pleasure from moments of narrative incongruity, convolution, and ambiguity—moments that stimulate free association, creative problem solving, insight, and incongruity-resolution. This theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics helps explain how Hollywood balances narrative unity and disunity, wedding classical storytelling principles with moments of cognitive challenge in order to generate pleasure for mass audiences.
Puzzling Stories: The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Literature, Film & Television. Ed. Steven Willemsen and Miklós Kiss, 2022
In three parts, this essay explains how artworks, including mass artworks, create aesthetic pleas... more In three parts, this essay explains how artworks, including mass artworks, create aesthetic pleasure through cognitive challenge. Part 1 argues that many theorists regard cognitive challenge as central to aesthetic value. Artists, however, tailor those challenges to the coping potential of their intended audiences. Part 2 argues that even mass audiences enjoy cognitive challenges, which stimulate creative problem solving, incongruity resolution, insight, and stress relief. Part 3 illustrates how Hollywood balances the pleasures of cognitive challenge against competing pressures for easy comprehension by mass audiences. The Philadelphia Story (1940) creates moderate challenges through slightly misshapen narrative structures and inconsistent information.
Puzzling Stories: The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Literature, Film & Television, 2022
This chapter sets out to explain how artworks create aesthetic pleasure through cognitive challen... more This chapter sets out to explain how artworks create aesthetic pleasure through cognitive challenge. My argument addresses both explicitly puzzling works and, in a more elaborate discussion, less challenging artworks designed to please mass audiences.
The argument falls into three parts. First, philosophers and psychologists often regard cognitive challenge as a key factor in aesthetic value, even when the challenge results in confusion and stress. Many valuable artworks create unpleasant experiences, and we cannot separate the value of the works from the negative emotions they instil in us. We can even describe such experiences as ‘pleasurable’ if we regard pleasure as a broad category of intrinsically rewarding emotional experiences. Emotional rewards vary among different perceivers, however, and artists tailor the intensity of their artworks’ challenges to the coping potential of their intended audiences.
Second, although theorists often distinguish mass art by its lack of cognitive challenges, research in cognitive psychology suggests that average perceivers find cognitive challenges stimulating, even exhilarating, and that lack of challenge leads to boredom. Cognitive challenges generate pleasure by creating opportunities for creative problem solving, incongruity resolution, insight and stress relief. Mass artforms, however, must balance their cognitive challenges against the competing pressure for easy comprehension by mass audiences.
Finally, we can understand how mass artworks negotiate that balance through a case study drawn from the definitive mass artform, Hollywood cinema. Seemingly simple and straightforward, The Philadelphia Story (1940) creates moderate challenges through slightly misshapen narrative structures and occasionally inconsistent information, even though the narrative may seem perfectly designed and effortlessly understood.
Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The... more Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The American film industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among large populations, translate into box office success. More than any other historical mode of art, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a mass scale. If the Hollywood film industry succeeds in delivering aesthetic pleasure both routinely and, at times, in an outstanding way, then we should ultimately regard Hollywood cinema as an artistic achievement, not merely a commercial success. Hollywood Aesthetic accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design: narrative, style, ideology, and genre. Grounded in film history and in the psychological and philosophical literature in aesthetics, the book explains: (1) the intrinsic ...
Chapter 2 illustrates an aesthetically productive balance between easy understanding and cognitiv... more Chapter 2 illustrates an aesthetically productive balance between easy understanding and cognitive challenge in classical Hollywood cinema with extended analyses of His Girl Friday and Double Indemnity. These films combine classical narrative, stylistic, ideological, and genre properties with artistic devices that complicate formal patterning and thwart audience expectations.
Chapter 3 studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling. It exam... more Chapter 3 studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling. It examines the cognitive processes at work when a film cues spectators to construct a film’s story in their minds, and it explains the ways in which Hollywood movies both facilitate and complicate the spectator’s process of story construction. The chapter offers a new theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics—illustrated with examples from whodunits, screwball comedies, twist films, and mysteries—that film viewers take pleasure not just in narrative unity and easy understanding, as previous scholars have argued, but also in narrative disunity and cognitive challenge. With support from experimental psychology, the chapter argues that viewers enjoy narratives that stimulate moments of free association, insight, and incongruity-resolution.
Chapter 4 illustrates the theory of narration presented in the previous chapter, offering an exte... more Chapter 4 illustrates the theory of narration presented in the previous chapter, offering an extended analysis of an unusual narrative pattern in Red River, which violates Hollywood’s cardinal rules regarding narrative unity, probability, causality, and story logic. Disunity in this classical Hollywood narrative adds variety to our filmgoing experience; stimulates our imagination, curiosity, and creative problem-solving processes; and liberates our thinking from the burdens and limitations of good sense.
Chapter 5 investigates the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood’s stylistic norms, as well as pleasur... more Chapter 5 investigates the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood’s stylistic norms, as well as pleasures afforded by a handful of noteworthy stylistic deviations. The chapter examines the ways in which Hollywood film style both supports a film’s storytelling function (by enhancing clarity and expressiveness) and offers aesthetic pleasures independent of storytelling (decoration and stylistic harmony). A film’s style may also compete with story (e.g., Touch of Evil), with genre (Leave Her to Heaven), or even with itself (Goodfellas) for control of a film’s mood and meaning. Such stylistically dissonant works inspire cognitive play as we adjust to stylistic cues that harbor disparate attitudes and meanings.
Illustrating some of the points made in chapter 5, chapter 6 offers an extended analysis of some ... more Illustrating some of the points made in chapter 5, chapter 6 offers an extended analysis of some complex tendencies in Raging Bull’s cinematography, editing, and sound devices. The film tests the limits of the classical Hollywood style and sometimes crosses over into avant-garde practice. Raging Bull offers an illustrative case study of the boundaries of Hollywood’s stylistic systems.
Chapter 7 examines the ways in which a film’s ideological properties contribute to aesthetic plea... more Chapter 7 examines the ways in which a film’s ideological properties contribute to aesthetic pleasure when they intensify, or when they complicate, viewers’ cognitive and affective responses. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which the ideology of a Hollywood film guides our beliefs, values, and emotional responses. In ideologically unified Hollywood films, such as Die Hard, Independence Day, Pickup on South Street, and Casablanca, narrative and stylistic devices concentrate our beliefs, values, and emotional responses, offering us a purer experience than we can find in most real-life situations. By contrast, ideologically complicated Hollywood films, such as Chinatown, The Third Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Dark Knight, advance their worldviews in a novel, ambiguous, or peculiar way, upsetting our appraisals of events and characters and complicating our intellectual and emotional experiences.
Chapter 8 demonstrates the ways in which ideological constraints in studio-era Hollywood shaped t... more Chapter 8 demonstrates the ways in which ideological constraints in studio-era Hollywood shaped the aesthetic properties of an entire body of crime films, now commonly known as film noir. The ideological restrictions of the Production Code Administration posed creative problems that noir filmmakers solved through visual and narrative contortion. The contortions created challenges for audiences, who had to decode and make sense of films that may not show complete clarity or coherence in their storytelling. Film noir remains aesthetically engaging because it operates near the boundaries of classicism without sacrificing classical Hollywood’s accessibility and formal unity.
Whereas chapter 8 demonstrates how ideology can complicate a film’s artistic design, chapter 9 sh... more Whereas chapter 8 demonstrates how ideology can complicate a film’s artistic design, chapter 9 shows how a film’s artistic design can complicate its ideology. Starship Troopers illustrates the commercial risks, and the aesthetic excitement, of a Hollywood film whose formal properties muddle up its ideological content. The film’s unconventional use of genre devices leads to ideological complexities that pose challenges for spectators trying to make sense of the film’s form and meaning. Starship Troopers employs the conventions of the Hollywood war film and the war film satire in ways that make the film’s worldview incoherent. The film’s mercurial form limited its success in a mass market but exhilarated cult audiences engaged by the film’s unusual design.
Hollywood makes quintessential genre films, and chapter 10 tackles the aesthetics of genre filmma... more Hollywood makes quintessential genre films, and chapter 10 tackles the aesthetics of genre filmmaking. It demonstrates the ways in which genre eases viewers’ grasp of narrative information and offers the pleasure of returning, as experts, to familiar scenarios. The chapter also explains the ways in which genres develop novel and complex aesthetic properties that counter a culture’s growing genre expertise. To fully exploit the pleasures of genre filmmaking for a mass audience, a genre film must fit recognizably within its genre, offering easy recognition, but it must also differ enough from previous films to make it moderately challenging for average spectators. Star Wars offers an exemplary instance of Hollywood genre filmmaking: The 1977 blockbuster found the optimal area between unity and complexity, familiarity and novelty, easy recognition and cognitive challenge for a mass audience.
Chapter 11 examines the aesthetic value of novelty in a genre’s evolution by tracing the history ... more Chapter 11 examines the aesthetic value of novelty in a genre’s evolution by tracing the history of the convention that characters in Hollywood musicals spontaneously burst into song without realistic motivation. The convention emerged in 1929 and largely vanished by the end of the 1950s. The chapter studies how studio-era filmmakers developed novel conventions that exploited the aesthetic possibilities of song in cinema. The eventual loss of the convention created new constraints on the uses of song, but it also enabled new aesthetic possibilities. Post-studio-era filmmakers transformed the convention, exposed it, and reclaimed it in ways that added novelty to spectators’ aesthetic experience.
Chapter 12 explains the aesthetic value of increased complexity in genre filmmaking by examining ... more Chapter 12 explains the aesthetic value of increased complexity in genre filmmaking by examining filmmakers’ efforts to continually complicate the figure of the western hero. The chapter studies the appeal, for western cinephiles, of Hollywood’s most complex westerns of the studio era. It also demonstrates how more recent filmmakers have kept the western alive by revitalizing outdated conventions and mining new material from the genre. The western is so solid and reliable that filmmakers found they could sledgehammer its foundational myths without cracking its structure.
Dialogue in Hollywood movies abides by conventions that do not pertain to regular conversation. T... more Dialogue in Hollywood movies abides by conventions that do not pertain to regular conversation. This chapter considers four prominent conventions that help explain why the dialogue in the films of John Cassavetes is so interesting and peculiar: (1) unlike real conversations, conversations in Hollywood movies unify into an overriding narrative purpose; (2) characters in Hollywood movies communicate effectively through dialogue; (3) whereas real people tend to adjust what they are saying as they speak, movie characters tend to speak flawlessly; and (4), when a film violates movie dialogue convention, the transgression serves the causal progress of the narrative. The dialogue in John Cassavetes’ movies does not sound like conventional movie dialogue. Without an evident overriding narrative purpose, Cassavetes dialogue follows narrative detours. Rejecting the unity, effective communication, efficiency and flawlessness that characterize Hollywood movie dialogue, Cassavetes’ dialogue fixates on narrative dead ends, irrelevancies and impediments to straightforwardness.
Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, 2013
This chapter studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling. It e... more This chapter studies the aesthetic pleasures of Hollywood cinema’s approach to storytelling. It examines the cognitive processes at work when a film cues spectators to construct a film’s story in their minds, and it explains the ways in which Hollywood movies both facilitate and complicate the spectator’s process of story construction. The chapter offers a new theory of Hollywood storytelling aesthetics — illustrated with examples from whodunits, screwball comedies, twist films and mysteries — that film viewers take pleasure not just from narrative unity and easy understanding, as previous scholars have argued, but also from narrative disunity and cognitive challenge. With support from experimental psychology, the chapter argues that viewers enjoy narratives that stimulate moments of free association, insight, and incongruity-resolution.
Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 2021
This interview with Paul Schrader, conducted by Todd Berliner, took place on 19 June 2020 as part... more This interview with Paul Schrader, conducted by Todd Berliner, took place on 19 June 2020 as part of the annual meeting of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI).
Planting and payoff is a pervasive narrative device, but researchers have only begun to address t... more Planting and payoff is a pervasive narrative device, but researchers have only begun to address the basis of its aesthetic appeal. The device excites a variety of cognitive effects that help explain its power as a storytelling technique. Empirical research in cognitive psychology—including studies of expectation, music, insight, humor, expertise, aesthetics, and other areas—help us understand the cognitive mechanics of the planting-and-payoff device and the pleasures that attend it. Psychology research also helps us address some perplexing questions in narratology, such as why people feel suspense when they already know a story’s outcome. Recruiting the human tendency to prepare mentally for future events, storytellers enlist planting and payoff to choreograph expectations and enhance an artwork’s aesthetic value.
Planting and payoff is a pervasive narrative device, but researchers have only begun to address t... more Planting and payoff is a pervasive narrative device, but researchers have only begun to address the basis of its aesthetic appeal. The device excites a variety of cognitive effects that help explain its power as a storytelling technique. Empirical research in cognitive psychology—including studies of expectation, music, insight, humor, expertise, aesthetics, and other areas—help us understand the cognitive mechanics of the planting-and-payoff device and the pleasures that attend it. Psychology research also helps us address some perplexing questions in narratology, such as why people feel suspense when they already know a story’s outcome. Recruiting the human tendency to prepare mentally for future events, storytellers enlist planting and payoff to choreograph expectations and enhance an artwork’s aesthetic value.
Storytellers commonly employ a narrative device, termed "planting and payoff," to choreograph aud... more Storytellers commonly employ a narrative device, termed "planting and payoff," to choreograph audience expectations. Formalist methods within the humanities help us understand the structure of the device, and empirical research in psychology helps us understand the pleasures that attend it. A single instance of planting and payoff, however, may lead to different aesthetic responses, depending on the perceiver's ability to cope with incongruity between the plant and the payoff. The aesthetic pleasure one derives from the planting-and-payoff device is largely a factor of a narrative's structural incongruity (too much incongruity leads to confusion; too little leads to boredom) and the perceiver's capacity for coping (too much capacity leads to boredom; too little leads to confusion). Psycho illustrates each of the ways in which storytellers employ planting and payoff to generate aesthetic pleasure.
Storytellers commonly employ a narrative device, termed "planting and payoff," to choreograph aud... more Storytellers commonly employ a narrative device, termed "planting and payoff," to choreograph audience expectations. Formalist methods within the humanities help us understand the structure of the device, and empirical research in psychology helps us understand the pleasures that attend it. A single instance of planting and payoff, however, may lead to different aesthetic responses, depending on the perceiver's ability to cope with incongruity between the plant and the payoff. The aesthetic pleasure one derives from the planting-and-payoff device is largely a factor of a narrative's structural incongruity (too much incongruity leads to confusion; too little leads to boredom) and the perceiver's capacity for coping (too much capacity leads to boredom; too little leads to confusion). Psycho illustrates each of the ways in which storytellers employ planting and payoff to generate aesthetic pleasure.
Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind , 2020
"The centrepiece of our issue is a book symposium dedicated to Todd Berliner’s Hollywood Aestheti... more "The centrepiece of our issue is a book symposium dedicated to Todd Berliner’s Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema (2017). One of the features that makes Berliner’s book particularly conducive to a symposium is that—like our two articles—it balances empirical and theoretical claims and engages with relevant research across a number of disciplines. Commenting on Berliner’s book is a stellar group of scholars: James Cutting from psychology, Murray Smith from aesthetics, and Janet Staiger and Patrick Keating from film studies. I hope you find the dialogue as productive and enriching as I did." Ted Nannicelli, editor Projections
Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief... more Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema investigates the Hollywood film industry’s chief artistic accomplishment: providing aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Grounded in film history and supported by research in psychology and philosophical aesthetics, the book explains (1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; (2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood movies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and (3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Hollywood movies. Hollywood Aesthetic addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design—narrative, style, ideology, and genre—aiming for a comprehensive appraisal of Hollywood cinema’s capacity to excite aesthetic pleasure. This article outlines the book’s main points and themes. As a précis, it is heavy on ideas and light on evidence, which is to be found in the book itself.
In this reply to four commentaries on my book, Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, ... more In this reply to four commentaries on my book, Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, I address several conceptual and methodological issues raised by the respondents. Those issues include the book's focus on aesthetic pleasure; the functions of narrative, style, ideology, and genre in Hollywood cinema; the relationship between ideology and aesthetics; the use of scientifi c research in the humanities; normative aesthetic evaluations; real versus hypothetical spectators; and the practices of aesthetic film analysis.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, 2018
Scholars have defined ‘independent art cinema’ seemingly from every vantage but not from the pers... more Scholars have defined ‘independent art cinema’ seemingly from every vantage but not from the perspective of film exhibitors. Exhibitors, in fact, have the most practical stake in a valid definition because of financial and legal implications of the term. Scholars will likely never produce an acceptable philosophical definition; the relevant criteria are too complex and contested. However, exhibitors work under fairly homogeneous business pressures, making a strong, valid, widely accepted, and legally sufficient definition comparatively uncontroversial within that domain. This article argues that, within film exhibition, an independent art film: (1) is distributed by an independent distributor or specialty division of a major studio; (2) has a platform (as opposed to a wide) release; (3) plays at art houses or film festivals; and (4) eschews the narrative, stylistic, or thematic practices of contemporary mainstream films. Reviewing distribution and exhibition practices established in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as relevant court cases and interviews with legal and film industry professionals, the article explains the meaning of ‘independent art cinema’ within the domain of film exhibition.
Co-authored by a film scholar and a cognitive psychologist, this paper proposes a new model of ho... more Co-authored by a film scholar and a cognitive psychologist, this paper proposes a new model of how cinema spectators perceive coherence when watching films edited according to classical continuity principles. Drawing on research from both film studies and perceptual psychology, the paper explains how continuity editing exploits and accommodates the cognitive processes people use to perceive the physical world. It addresses a key concern of classical cinema: How the fundamental conventions of classical editing facilitate the perception of continuity. The proposed “Model of Cinema Continuity” identifies the cognitive parameters of classical film spectatorship and offers tools and predictions for analyzing films and making films. The model, therefore, has both explanatory and predictive value.
Maske und Kothurn: Internationale Beimanträge zur Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft, 2010
Dialogue in Hollywood movies abides by conventions that do not pertain to regular conversation. T... more Dialogue in Hollywood movies abides by conventions that do not pertain to regular conversation. This essay considers four prominent conventions that help explain why the dialogue in the films of John Cassavetes is so interesting and peculiar: (1) unlike real conversations, conversations in Hollywood movies unify into an overriding narrative purpose; (2) characters in Hollywood movies communicate effectively through dialogue; (3) whereas real people tend to adjust what they are saying as they speak, movie characters tend to speak flawlessly; and (4), when a film violates movie dialogue convention, the transgression serves the causal progress of the narrative. The dialogue in John Cassavetes’ movies does not sound like conventional movie dialogue. Without an evident overriding narrative purpose, Cassavetes dialogue follows narrative detours. Rejecting the unity, effective communication, efficiency and flawlessness that characterize Hollywood movie dialogue, Cassavetes’ dialogue fixates on narrative dead ends, irrelevancies and impediments to straightforwardness.
Since the 1960s, filmmakers have responded to the demise of the classical Hollywood musical, espe... more Since the 1960s, filmmakers have responded to the demise of the classical Hollywood musical, especially to the loss of the convention that characters could spontaneously "burst into song" without realistic motivation. Nashville, All That Jazz, Yentl, and Everyone Says I Love You, as well as films we do not ordinarily think of as musicals, such as The Graduate and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, have developed new conventions for presenting song in film that build upon traditions established by studio-era musicals. When MGM brought out That's Entertainment in 1974, the anthology of spectacular musical numbers seemed like Hollywood's own eulogy to the end of an era in which song and film were united. The implicit message of That's Entertainment--delivered as much by the old film clips as by Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and the other aging stars who chattily introduced the numbers--was that they don't film songs like they used to. The message was essentially...
... The Godfather spawned a litter of Mafia movies (such as The Don is Dead [1973], Lucky Luciano... more ... The Godfather spawned a litter of Mafia movies (such as The Don is Dead [1973], Lucky Luciano [1974], The Black Todd Berliner is Director of the Film Studies Program and Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. ...
This essay examines the aesthetics of sequelization, the disappointment with which audiences norm... more This essay examines the aesthetics of sequelization, the disappointment with which audiences normally greet sequels, and the ways in which sequel-makers contend with some of the burdens of sequelization. It explains why The Godfather, Part II is so much more admired than other film sequels, especially since, like most sequels, the film was initially met with disappointment by critics and audiences. The Godfather, Part II disappoints its audience in a peculiarly extravagant way. The film’s conspicuous refusal to satisfy paradoxically serves as a source of audience pleasure. Taking an inventive approach to sequelization, the film incorporates into its plot the very nostalgia, dissatisfaction and sense of loss that sequels traditionally generate in their viewers, thereby giving thematic resonance to audience’s inevitable disappointment with movie sequels.
Genre-bending films rely on viewers' habitual responses to generic codes, misleading audiences in... more Genre-bending films rely on viewers' habitual responses to generic codes, misleading audiences into expecting conventional outcomes. The French Connection (1971) exploits spectators' expectations of police-detective-film formulas and thereby catches viewers off-guard, creating a more unsettling experience than the genre traditionally provides.
Uploads
In Hollywood Incoherent, Todd Berliner offers the first thorough analysis of the narrative and stylistic innovations of seventies cinema and its influence on contemporary American filmmaking. He examines not just formally eccentric films—Nashville; Taxi Driver; A Clockwork Orange; The Godfather, Part II; and the films of John Cassavetes—but also mainstream commercial films, including The Exorcist, The Godfather, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dog Day Afternoon, Chinatown, The Bad News Bears, Patton, All the President’s Men, Annie Hall, and many others. With persuasive analyses, Berliner demonstrates the centrality of this period to the history of Hollywood’s formal development, showing how seventies films represent the key turning point between the storytelling modes of the studio era and those of modern American cinema.
The argument falls into three parts. First, philosophers and psychologists often regard cognitive challenge as a key factor in aesthetic value, even when the challenge results in confusion and stress. Many valuable artworks create unpleasant experiences, and we cannot separate the value of the works from the negative emotions they instil in us. We can even describe such experiences as ‘pleasurable’ if we regard pleasure as a broad category of intrinsically rewarding emotional experiences. Emotional rewards vary among different perceivers, however, and artists tailor the intensity of their artworks’ challenges to the coping potential of their intended audiences.
Second, although theorists often distinguish mass art by its lack of cognitive challenges, research in cognitive psychology suggests that average perceivers find cognitive challenges stimulating, even exhilarating, and that lack of challenge leads to boredom. Cognitive challenges generate pleasure by creating opportunities for creative problem solving, incongruity resolution, insight and stress relief. Mass artforms, however, must balance their cognitive challenges against the competing pressure for easy comprehension by mass audiences.
Finally, we can understand how mass artworks negotiate that balance through a case study drawn from the definitive mass artform, Hollywood cinema. Seemingly simple and straightforward, The Philadelphia Story (1940) creates moderate challenges through slightly misshapen narrative structures and occasionally inconsistent information, even though the narrative may seem perfectly designed and effortlessly understood.
In Hollywood Incoherent, Todd Berliner offers the first thorough analysis of the narrative and stylistic innovations of seventies cinema and its influence on contemporary American filmmaking. He examines not just formally eccentric films—Nashville; Taxi Driver; A Clockwork Orange; The Godfather, Part II; and the films of John Cassavetes—but also mainstream commercial films, including The Exorcist, The Godfather, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dog Day Afternoon, Chinatown, The Bad News Bears, Patton, All the President’s Men, Annie Hall, and many others. With persuasive analyses, Berliner demonstrates the centrality of this period to the history of Hollywood’s formal development, showing how seventies films represent the key turning point between the storytelling modes of the studio era and those of modern American cinema.
The argument falls into three parts. First, philosophers and psychologists often regard cognitive challenge as a key factor in aesthetic value, even when the challenge results in confusion and stress. Many valuable artworks create unpleasant experiences, and we cannot separate the value of the works from the negative emotions they instil in us. We can even describe such experiences as ‘pleasurable’ if we regard pleasure as a broad category of intrinsically rewarding emotional experiences. Emotional rewards vary among different perceivers, however, and artists tailor the intensity of their artworks’ challenges to the coping potential of their intended audiences.
Second, although theorists often distinguish mass art by its lack of cognitive challenges, research in cognitive psychology suggests that average perceivers find cognitive challenges stimulating, even exhilarating, and that lack of challenge leads to boredom. Cognitive challenges generate pleasure by creating opportunities for creative problem solving, incongruity resolution, insight and stress relief. Mass artforms, however, must balance their cognitive challenges against the competing pressure for easy comprehension by mass audiences.
Finally, we can understand how mass artworks negotiate that balance through a case study drawn from the definitive mass artform, Hollywood cinema. Seemingly simple and straightforward, The Philadelphia Story (1940) creates moderate challenges through slightly misshapen narrative structures and occasionally inconsistent information, even though the narrative may seem perfectly designed and effortlessly understood.