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Tarja Laine

University of Amsterdam, Media Studies, Faculty Member

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Dr. Tarja Laine (Finland, 1971) is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam and Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku, Finland. She is the author of Reframing Trauma in Contemporary Fiction Film (2023), Emotional Ethics of the Hunger Games (2021), Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky (2015), Feeling Cinema: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies (2011) and Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema (2007). Her essays on emotions and sensations in cinema have been published in journals such as Film-Philosophy, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Media, Culture & Society, Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, Studies of European Cinema, New Review of Film and Television Studies, PostScript and Film and Philosophy. Her research interests include cinematic emotions, film aesthetics and film-phenomenology.

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Books by Tarja Laine

Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky

Feeling Cinema: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies

Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema

Papers by Tarja Laine

Anger, Grief, and Dark Humour: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as an 'Emotional Hybrid' Tarja Laine

Crisis and Critique, 2020

This article approaches Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) as an ... more This article approaches Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) as an emotional hybrid, of which the aesthetic strategies convey and embody three inextricably intertwined affects: anger, grief, and dark humour. It argues that the emotions of the protagonists are all consuming, because these are entangled in such a way that it enlarges their personal traumas and prevents them from working through their grief and anger. It analyses anger, grief, and dark humour in the film to demonstrate that these affects are not separate, but intertwined throughout the narrative trajectory of the film in an aesthetically coherent and concise manner. The article hopes to show that this hybrid affective quality does not function as a marker of tension between different emotions. Rather, it facilitates dynamic fluctuation between these emotions, thus opening up avenues for different courses of action by the characters, which in turn are affectively recognised by the spectator. In this way the hybrid emotions function as an organising principle of the film's aesthetic structure organically from within, rather than as elements attached to the film externally. This operational logic makes Three Billboards a remarkable film in its affective-aesthetic orientation, both towards its own world and towards its spectator.

Traumatic Horror Beyond the Edge: It Follows and Get Out

Film-Philosophy, 2019

Within cinematic horror, trauma as a concept has often been used as an allegorical strategy to wo... more Within cinematic horror, trauma as a concept has often been used as an allegorical strategy to work through collective anxieties. This article on It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) strikes another note. It argues that, by their aesthetic qualities, both films are rendered traumatic in their affective orientation, both toward the cinematic world and toward the spectator. It analyses the two films through trauma as an affective-aesthetic strategy that puts emphasis on the edge of the frame as well as on the offscreen space. This strategy evokes a sinister mood that exists independently of the protagonists, allowing us to meaningfully feel the effects of their trauma as we engage with the film. Especially the use of the offscreen space in both films contributes to the "traumatic mood" of the films, but it also functions to immerse the spectator in the invisible filmic world. In this way, It Follows and Get Out embody trauma as a denial of relief from dread, which we both recognize in the characters' experience, and feel in our own bodies through the effective creation of ever-present threat.

Moves And Countermoves: Visual Technologies of Fear and Counter-Technologies of Hope in The Hunger Games Quadrilogy

Negative Feelings as Emotional Enhancement in Cinema: The Case of Ulrich Seidl's Paradise Trilog

Art as a Guaranty of Sanity: The Skin I Live In

Jean-Luc Nancy and the Cinema of Touch (book review)

The Bear Necessities: Steam of Life

Hidden Shame Exposed: Hidden and the Spectator

Imprisoned in Disgust: Roman Polanski's Repulsion

Film-Philosophy, Jan 1, 2011

Entangled Life: The Double Life of Veronique

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as an Emotional Event

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, Jan 1, 2010

Haneke's' funny'games with the audience (revisited)

SMS scandals: sex, media and politics in Finland

Media, culture & society, Jan 1, 2010

In July 2006, Finland&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen appeared for the first... more

Affective telepathy, or the intuition of the heart: Persona with Mulholland Drive

New Review of Film and Television Studies, Jan 1, 2009

The synaesthetic turn

by Tarja Laine and Wanda Strauven

New Review of Film and Television Studies, Jan 1, 2009

Failed tragedy and traumatic love in Ingmar Bergman's' Shame'

Mind the screen: media concepts according to Thomas …, Jan 1, 2008

" It's the Sense of Touch": Skin in the Making of Cinematic Consciousness

Discourse, Jan 1, 2008

Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky

Feeling Cinema: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies

Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema

Anger, Grief, and Dark Humour: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as an 'Emotional Hybrid' Tarja Laine

Crisis and Critique, 2020

This article approaches Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) as an ... more This article approaches Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) as an emotional hybrid, of which the aesthetic strategies convey and embody three inextricably intertwined affects: anger, grief, and dark humour. It argues that the emotions of the protagonists are all consuming, because these are entangled in such a way that it enlarges their personal traumas and prevents them from working through their grief and anger. It analyses anger, grief, and dark humour in the film to demonstrate that these affects are not separate, but intertwined throughout the narrative trajectory of the film in an aesthetically coherent and concise manner. The article hopes to show that this hybrid affective quality does not function as a marker of tension between different emotions. Rather, it facilitates dynamic fluctuation between these emotions, thus opening up avenues for different courses of action by the characters, which in turn are affectively recognised by the spectator. In this way the hybrid emotions function as an organising principle of the film's aesthetic structure organically from within, rather than as elements attached to the film externally. This operational logic makes Three Billboards a remarkable film in its affective-aesthetic orientation, both towards its own world and towards its spectator.

Traumatic Horror Beyond the Edge: It Follows and Get Out

Film-Philosophy, 2019

Within cinematic horror, trauma as a concept has often been used as an allegorical strategy to wo... more Within cinematic horror, trauma as a concept has often been used as an allegorical strategy to work through collective anxieties. This article on It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) strikes another note. It argues that, by their aesthetic qualities, both films are rendered traumatic in their affective orientation, both toward the cinematic world and toward the spectator. It analyses the two films through trauma as an affective-aesthetic strategy that puts emphasis on the edge of the frame as well as on the offscreen space. This strategy evokes a sinister mood that exists independently of the protagonists, allowing us to meaningfully feel the effects of their trauma as we engage with the film. Especially the use of the offscreen space in both films contributes to the "traumatic mood" of the films, but it also functions to immerse the spectator in the invisible filmic world. In this way, It Follows and Get Out embody trauma as a denial of relief from dread, which we both recognize in the characters' experience, and feel in our own bodies through the effective creation of ever-present threat.

Moves And Countermoves: Visual Technologies of Fear and Counter-Technologies of Hope in The Hunger Games Quadrilogy

Negative Feelings as Emotional Enhancement in Cinema: The Case of Ulrich Seidl's Paradise Trilog

Art as a Guaranty of Sanity: The Skin I Live In

Jean-Luc Nancy and the Cinema of Touch (book review)

The Bear Necessities: Steam of Life

Hidden Shame Exposed: Hidden and the Spectator

Imprisoned in Disgust: Roman Polanski's Repulsion

Film-Philosophy, Jan 1, 2011

Entangled Life: The Double Life of Veronique

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as an Emotional Event

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, Jan 1, 2010

Haneke's' funny'games with the audience (revisited)

SMS scandals: sex, media and politics in Finland

Media, culture & society, Jan 1, 2010

In July 2006, Finland&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen appeared for the first... more

Affective telepathy, or the intuition of the heart: Persona with Mulholland Drive

New Review of Film and Television Studies, Jan 1, 2009

The synaesthetic turn

by Tarja Laine and Wanda Strauven

New Review of Film and Television Studies, Jan 1, 2009

Failed tragedy and traumatic love in Ingmar Bergman's' Shame'

Mind the screen: media concepts according to Thomas …, Jan 1, 2008

" It's the Sense of Touch": Skin in the Making of Cinematic Consciousness

Discourse, Jan 1, 2008

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's Affective Images in The House

Lars von Trier, Dogville and the hodological space of cinema

Studies in European Cinema, Jan 1, 2006

Cinema as second skin

New review of film and television studies, Jan 1, 2006