Class 2 Notes (Monday, February 2nd)

Page 1

-The film is the message.

No longer suspicious of emotion

No longer suspicious/resistant to Hollywood Film

No longer reading the film for ideological messages

Paying attention to how the movies make us feel

Ideology comes in later after allowing ourselves to feel.

Emotions -- valuable information about the environment

What is the role of narrative in creating emotional memories?

-vicarious feeling

-experiencing emotions from a safe distance

Films having evolutionary purpose

-rehearsing mastery over fear

-using films as templates for future emotional responses

-narrative function as lens for understanding things like romance, the way women respond to things

Emotion Researchers

A number of pieces that try to list distinctive clips that elicit specific emotions.

Clip 1: The Champ

-crying boy over dead man

Discussion:

-no narrative to back up the scene

-desensitization

-in class, don't feel like crying

-individual barometers for what sadness is

-older film - not as relatable?

-possible male-centric

- little boy in a hyper masculine context

- older men break down in tears

Study (2012):

Heart Rate

Skin Conductivity

Pleasure/Arousal

across a number of genres to see the general emotional profiles of genres.

How reliable is self-reporting?

- number of factors can screw with data.

ex. socialization process for gender emotional display in women, fear of emotion in men

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Understanding Media Enjoyment (Green, 2004): TRANSPORTING

How is it defined?

-Emotionally absorbed + cognitively absorbed (mental and emotional focus)

How is it measured?

Green self-report scale

-Character Identification items

General Absorption items

Transportation vs. Enjoyment:

transportation denotes change, whereas enjoyment

Transportation leads to transformation - you've changed as a result of experiencing a narrative

There's some shared variance, some overlap b/w enjoyment and transportation. correlational, but not caused.

flow - optimal experience, losing track of time

- > Relation to self

- escape from aversive self-consciousness

-safe way to do identity play

- > mood

- > Parasocial interaction and identification

- real relationship with a fictional character that doesn't exist. a seeming intimacy

parasocial interaction - sense of people that you're watching is other people, like your friends in the real world.

identification - you are that person

Clip 2: Cairo:

- man and woman jump into movie from real world

Three Choices;

When faced with appealing characters do you want them to step out of the movie and be your friend or lover? (Do you focus on the parasitical engagement?)

When faced with an appealing diegesis, do you want to leave the "real world" behind and go live there?

or, both?

Cinematic Qualities promoting transportation:

a. immersive viewing circumstances

->dark, quiet, uninterrupted

->movie length of 90-120 minutes not arbitrary

b. beginnings that slide you into the diegesis/endings that slide you out

diegesis: the fictional world of the story

-> musical scores

old time epics had music starting before images even displayed.

->placement of credit sequences

-Q: thoughts on 15 mins of trailers before movie

-post credit sequences

ex. young sherlock

-> expository information

james bond - begins with chase sequence to hook you, and then they go into the story and you're hooked.

-> follow-up information

ex. Susan went to college

ex. real information, images.

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Lord of the Rings Fellowship

flickering lighting

backstory of rings

stylized images

prelim. information

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Situations and individual differences:

Which scenarios may facilitate transportation?

-place of limited choices

psychological states or tendencies?

Transportation more likely in people who have

-lower social/emotional well-being

-higher anxiety/negative mood, lower self-esteem, impulse control

This makes sense because: transportation allows one to

- escape the self

- templates for behavior

Notable outcomes:

- empathy, perspective-taking (narratives provide way for rehearsing these traits)

- in everyday life we don't have access to people's emotional states. transportation forces us to understand other people's motivations

- key tool for civilization

- "The Better Angels of our Nature" - empathy is the trait we have to cultivate, Stephen Pinker

- empirical shows that perspective taking is good for us and is good for our social skills. movies facilitate the development of empathy.

- persuasion: when you're immersed in a narrative, you're less likely to counter-argue the points of the narrative.

- immersion in narrative creates a kind of alignment with the attitudes present in a narrative --> people's guards are down when they are in the middle of a transportive experience

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Allure of Fantasy: