The nature of the filmic emotions, further, including the connection between
visual image and auditory music and emotion, is one of the least-explored topic
in film studies. Emotions in film are carefully packaged and massively sold in
art films and b...
The nature of the filmic emotions, further, including the connection between
visual image and auditory music and emotion, is one of the least-explored topic
in film studies. Emotions in film are carefully packaged and massively sold in
art films and blockbusters, yet their essence and significance are rarely
considered and analyzed with much specificity and thoroughness. This thesis is,
thus, aimed to deal with this long-overlooked topic and has explored the
connection between emotion and film: more specifically between emotion and
perception; emotion and image; emotion and music; finally a combination of all
these dimensions. All the discussions in my thesis are principally based on a
cognitive-emotive perspective. In the first sight, one might think a cognitive
perspective is not an appropriate approach to filmic emotion but if once
realizing the theoretical possibility of cognitivism one would be amazed by how
much profound insight it can provide into emotional processes.
Recent cognitive researchers are realizing the importance of emotion
and the inadequacies of a Cartesian dualism between the mind and the body. And researchers are also discovering the complex interrelationship between
bodily states and thought processes - cognition. It no longer seems strange to
discuss emotions from a cognitive perspective. Thus this thesis also lies in the
same vein, asserting that emotions and cognitions cooperate to orient us in our
environment and to make certain objects more salient. Emotions help us to
evaluate our world and react to it more quickly. In the cognitive perspective,
emotion is not as formless, chaotic feelings but as structured states, and a
combination of feelings, physiological changes, and cognition. Emotion direct
both mind and body toward an object and tend to provoke action toward that
object. These properties of emotion are also applied to film image and music.
To achieve this project, in Chapter 2, I have overviewed the current
tendencies of film theories and strived to find any alternatives borrowing Noel
Carroll's term, "piecemeal theorizing" and dialectical theorizing. And I have
suggested the dialectic cognitivism as an alternative to break through theorietical
predicament.
In Chapter 3, focusing on the definition of emotion, I have strived to
understand the crucial points of various perspectives - emotivism, cognitivism,
cognitive-emotivism. And I have also shed light on the tendency of early film
theories including Mitry whose major concern is cinematic perception in film
studies. Further, to understand the perceptual process of image and the affective
qualities of it, I revisit the works of most insightful forerunners such as Israel
Waynbaum's and Gilles Deleuzes' hypotheses. Especially Waynbaum's thesis, the
recent discovery in the realm of psychology, shows us how much profound,
creative, and convention-breaking a researchers unbiased idea can be. And
Deleuzian hypothesis also gives us insight into percept - perception in becoming
- and affect whose usage has to be different from that of emotion.
And, in Chapter 4, I have discussed the indiscernable relation between
image and emotion which is not an easy task. Firstly, I will explore what the emotion is and, after that, how the emotion is brought forth to by cinematic
image and what the cognitively perceived emotion means, especially in the
encompassing field of philosophy, aesthetics and emotive-cognitive psychology.
Then I shall have the polemic and fundamental discussion on image.
Although his typology is not easily applicable to individual film texts, Deleuze's
organic and outstanding image typology, Cinema 1: the Movement-image and
Cinema 2: the Time-image draws many passionate scholars' attention to the
essence of image and turns them to an interdisciplinary region between
philosophical inquiry and film studies in the recent discourse on cinematic
image. This would be enough reason why I mention and examine his rather
philosophical image theory.
In Chapter 5, I have explored the relation between music - the most
emotional art form - and emotion itself. Especially I have strived to explain the
reason why music is conveying human emotion and "emotion" in its form,
investigating aestheticians and musicologists. Then I furthered my point to the
more specific relation between music and emotion, which is much more focused
subject in my thesis. Music is rather adjective, expressive, and emotional art
for, and thus draws many aestheticians and philosophers into its realm of study.
However, there is few profitable result to explain their relation succinctly and
precisely. I, therefore, rely on Roland Barthes discussion on music revitalizing
and underlying the classical conception of 'Musica Practica' and other
musicologist and aestheticians like Peter Kivy and Susanne Langer.
In Chapter 6, bearing in mind all these understandings of emotional
dimensions in film, I have applied these concepts to a specific genre - musical
in which all the interplays among image, words and music are taking place. In
musicals, emotional elements make the invisible visible and the unspoken
spoken. Along this path of cognitive-emotive perspective on films emotional
qualities, as far as I believe, we will gain not only a better understanding of what film music contributes to a musical, but also the emotional expressiveness
of cinema as a whole. Since the emotional power of film music is
demonstrated in any number of ways ranging from its ability to move audiences
to laughter or tears to its ability to evoke specific scenes, images, and
characters when heard apart from the film it accompanies.
And, finally in Chapter 7, I conclude this inquiry into the relation
between music and emotion by having more meticulous and thoroughly
analyzing case studies, through Rogers and Hammerstein's integrated musicals,
South Pacific (1958).
After all, what I believe and try to achieve in this thesis is to depict
how emotionally focused the film text is and that after all these strives to
figure out what the emotion in film - whether fruitful or another failed project
- this new emotive-cognitive perspective on film image and music will, at least,
guarantee the more self-denying, dialectical theorizing and, above all, open more
humanistic and emotional horizon of film theory.