Horror movies consistently reflect metaphorical associations between verticality and affect, as well as between brightness and affect. For example, bad events happen when movie characters are going downwards, or when lights go off. Monsters and villains emerge from below and from the darkness. And protagonists get lost and stuck in dark underground caves, dungeons, tunnels, mines, bunkers or sewers. Even movies that are primarily set above ground or in bright light have the most suspenseful scenes happening beneath the (...) ground and in the dark. An analysis of several horror movies highlights the striking consistency with which the two metaphors “EVIL IS DOWN” and “EVIL IS DARK” are used within this genre. I will argue that these metaphors help in creating fear. Moreover, I will outline how cinematic manifestations of metaphor elaborate and extend metaphorical concepts and ultimately may have a formative role in keeping metaphors alive within a culture. (shrink)

Bioethics at the Movies explores the ways in which popular films engage basic bioethical concepts and concerns. Twenty philosophically grounded essays use cinematic tools such as character and plot development, scene-setting, and narrative-framing to demonstrate a range of principles and topics in contemporary medical ethics. The first section plumbs popular and bioethical thought on birth, abortion, genetic selection, and personhood through several films, including The Cider House Rules, Citizen Ruth, Gattaca, and I, Robot. In the second section, the contributors (...) examine medical practice and troubling questions about the quality and commodification of life by way of Dirty Pretty Things, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and other movies. The third section's essays use Million Dollar Baby, Critical Care, Big Fish, and Soylent Green to show how the medical profession and society at large view issues related to aging, death, and dying. A final section makes use of Extreme Measures and select Spanish and Japanese films to discuss two foundational matters in bioethics: the role of theories and principles in medicine and the importance of cultural context in devising care. Structured to mirror bioethics and cinema classes, this innovative work includes end-of-chapter questions for further consideration and contributions from scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel, Spain, and Australia. Contributors: Robert Arp, Ph.D., Michael C. Brannigan, Ph.D., Matthew Burstein, Ph.D., Antonio Casado da Rocha, Ph.D., Stephen Coleman, Ph.D., Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D., Paul J. Ford, Ph.D., Helen Frowe, M.A., Colin Gavaghan, Ph.D., Richard Hanley, Ph.D., Nancy Hansen, Ph.D., Al-Yasha Ilhaam, Ph.D., Troy Jollimore, Ph.D., Amy Kind, Ph.D., Zana Marie Lutfiyya, Ph.D., Terrance McConnell, Ph.D., Andy Miah, Ph.D., Nathan Norbis, Ph.D., Kenneth Richman, Ph.D., Karen D. Schwartz, LL.B., M.A., Sandra Shapshay, Ph.D., Daniel Sperling, LL.M., S.J.D., Becky Cox White, R.N., Ph.D., Clark Wolf, Ph.D. (shrink)

In “Movies, Narrative and Emotion” there is an attempt to suggest the ways in which a certain form of narrative organization, to which we can call “erotetic narration,” This can be co-ordinated with the emotional address of the motion picture in terms of what can be called “criterial prefocusing.” On this view, the primary way in which the emotions are engaged is character-directed, the protagonist’s goals providing grounds which generate the narrative questions that the movie goes on to answer.

Exploring 80s genres and movies with both a sociocultural and aesthetic eye, this book will be invaluable to historians, cinema scholars, and film buffs.

Stanley Cavell’s writing about movies, from the more theoretical and general The World Viewed (1971) to the later works on specific genres (Pursuits of Happiness, Contesting Tears), has a unifying theme: some movies as (successful) art investigate conditions of accomplished selfhood and interest in experience in medium-specific ways. This claim is explained and defended by explicating the details of the medium-specificity of the moving photographic image (and its history of uses) and by focusing on Michael Verhoeven’s film The (...) Nasty Girl (1990). Though the very ideas of accomplished selfhood and interest in experience naturally prompt some suspicion in a commercialized, pluralistic society, our responses to some movies show that we continue to aspire to a life that embodies them. (shrink)

One of the central problems in the current discussion about the climate crisis is the fact that we (in the broadest sense of the term) do not act according to the knowledge available. That is, the sciences are more or less unanimous in their claim that we need to change our ways of living drastically, and yet we do very little to change. Given that there’s no shortage of scientific evidence, the central issue is not necessarily knowledge, but how we (...) relate to what we already know. But how do such changes in how we relate to what we know come about? How can a radical shift in our way of living come about? Facts don’t seem to do it. In light of this stand-still it is easy to resort to either anger or resignation. One suggestion is that arts, and movies in particular, may help us change our attitudes to what we know. In this article, I show how that what is required is not a mere change in attitude, but that we learn to reconfigure the concepts we live by, and that many films about the climate crisis often may conceal the climate crisis for us and prevent us from engaging imaginatively with the prospect of a radically changed way of living. Not all movies that are, in an objective sense “about” the climate crisis, allows for transformative experience where we learn to conceptualize our world differently. (shrink)

Movies hold a mirror up to us, portraying the complexities of human reality through their characters and stories. And they vividly illustrate moral theories that address questions about how we are to live and what sort of people we ought to be. In this book, Christopher Falzon uses movies to provide a rich survey of moral positions as they have emerged through history. These include the ethics of the ancient world, medieval ethics, Enlightenment and Kantian ethics, existentialist ethics (...) and the ethics of the other. Each theory is explained in detail, using a number of examples from the book’s wide selection of movies. The discussion draws on a range of recent and not-so-recent films, from Hollywood blockbusters to art-house cinema. Key Features: In addition to covering thinkers one would expect in an introduction to ethics, the book discusses less canonical figures in detail as well. Similarly, the book examines both major ethical theories and theories too often glossed over in introductory texts. A wide range of movies are discussed, from Hollywood blockbusters and classics like The Dark Knight, Casablanca and Dirty Harry to lesser known films, like Force Majeure and Under the Skin. At the end of each chapter a focus on two feature films is included, with a plot summary and interpretations of several key scenes with a time marker indicating when in the film the scenes occur. A Filmography includes all movies discussed in the book and a Glossary covers key philosophical terms and figures; both with corresponding page numbers. (shrink)

Cinematic virtual reality (CVR) offers filmmakers a wide range of possibilities to explore new techniques regarding movie scripting, shooting and editing. Despite the many experiments performed so far both with both live action and computer-generated movies, just a few studies focused on analyzing how the various techniques actually affect the viewers’ experience. Like in traditional cinema, a key step for CVR screenwriters and directors is to choose from which perspective the viewers will see the scene, the so-called point of (...) view (POV). The aim of this paper is to understand to what extent watching an immersive movie from a specific POV could impact the narrative engagement (NE), i.e., the viewers’ sensation of being immersed in the movie environment and being connected with its characters and story. Two POVs that are typically used in CVR, i.e., first-person perspective (1-PP) and external perspective (EP), are investigated through a user study in which both objective and subjective metrics were collected. The user study was carried out by leveraging two live action 360° short films with distinct scripts. The results suggest that the 1-PP experience could be more pleasant than the EP one in terms of overall NE and narrative presence, or even for all the NE dimensions if the potential of that POV is specifically exploited. (shrink)

In Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind, some of the scholars who have become essential for our understanding of Stanley Cavell's writing on film gather to use his landmark contributions to help us read new films-from Hollywood and elsewhere-films that exist beyond his immediate reach and reading. In extending the scope of Cavell's film-philosophy, we naturally find ourselves contending with it and amending it, as the case may be. Through a series of interpretive vignettes, our group effort situates, for (...) the expert and novitiate alike, how Cavell's writing on film can profitably enrich one's experience of cinema generally and also inform how we might continue the practice of serious philosophical criticism of specific films mindful of his sensibility. The resulting conversations between texts, traditions, disciplines, and generations creates propitious conditions for discovering what it means to watch movies with Stanley Cavell in mind. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of films from around the world, and the ideas of a diverse selection of thinkers from Plato and Descartes to Marcuse and Foucault, _Philosophy Goes to the Movies_ introduces and discusses central areas of philosophical concern, including: *the theory of knowledge *the self and personal identity *ethics *social and political philosophy *critical thinking Ideal for beginners, this book guides the reader through philosophy using lively and illuminating cinematic examples including _A Clockwork Orange_, _Mulholland Drive_, _Blade (...) Runner_, _Modern Times_, _Wings of Desire_ and _The Lord of the Rings_. This fully revised and updated second edition features an expanded introduction providing guidance on teaching and discussing philosophy through film, as well as new material on notable philosophers such as Rousseau, Aquinas and Nietzche, and discussion of a wide range of recent films. (shrink)

Introduction -- Media and representation. On the one medium / Eric Gans -- The scapegoat mechanism and the media: beyond the folk devil paradigm / John O'Carroll -- The apocalypse will not be televised / Chris Fleming -- Film. Mirrors of nature: artificial agents in real life and virtual worlds / Paul Dumouchel -- Superheroes, scapegoats, and saviors: the problem of evil and the need for redemption / Joel Hodge -- Sanctified victimage on page and screen: The hunger games as (...) prophetic media / Debra E. Macdonald -- The mimetic e-motion: from The matrix to Avatar / Nidesh Lawtoo -- Apocalypse of the therapeutic: The cabin in the woods and the death of mimetic desire / Peter Y. Paik -- Eyes wide shut: mimesis and historical memory in Stanley Kubrick's The shining / David Humbert -- Against romantic love: mimeticism and satire in Woody Allen's Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona; you will meet a tall dark stranger; and To Rome with love / Scott Cowdell -- A beautiful crisis: Ang Lee's film adaptation of The ice storm / Carly Osborn -- Cowboy metaphysics, the virtuous-enough cowboy, and mimetic desire in Stephen Fears' The hi-lo country / Thomas Ryba -- Television. The self in crisis: watching Mad men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel / Paolo Diego Bubbio -- Media, murder, and memoir: Girardian baroque in Robert Drewe's The shark net / Rosamund Dalziell -- Conversion in Dexter / Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge. (shrink)

Foucault at the Movies brings together all of Foucault's commentary on film, some of it available for the first time in English, along with important contemporary analysis and further extensions of this work. It offers detailed, up-to-date commentary, inviting us to go to the movies with Foucault.

ABSTRACT This essay responds to Alva Noë's arguments that popular musics organize listeners through style and personality, while other musics, such as classical and jazz, organize listeners on the music itself. Noë's arguments suggest that music is an existential phenomenon, and thus that music is ontological. There is much to like here, including the idea that musics can be existentially different. However, the work of pop musics cannot be confined solely to stylistics and personality; pop also has musical interest, which (...) I explicate as the exploration of sound —timbre, groove, beat, tonality, texture, and so on. Classical, jazz, and other kinds of music may seek to emphasize the music itself, but they are also caught up in style. Music, I conclude, is rhetorical in how it organizes or “moves” us, and we must attend to all its dimensions, musical and stylistic, in order to understand how so. (shrink)

Higher education continues to see a shift toward online course delivery. Many professional graduate programs offer online courses when content does not necessarily require face-to-face contact. The use of movies to teach ethics and professionalism to medical students is not a new pedagogical approach. At a university in the United States, a shift in a tracked physical therapy curriculum triggered a course in ethics and professionalism to be delivered earlier in the program, leaving students without prior clinical experience before (...) starting the course. The instructor revised this online course using movies to provide context for the topics covered making them relatable to physical therapy practice. This article describes student reactions to the implementation of movies into this course. Students valued the addition of the movies as they provided context using relevant health care situations, ultimately helping them relate the concepts to the physical therapy profession. (shrink)

Consider such light musical pieces as Schumann's and Debussy's Arabesques, Schumann's Traumerie, Debussy's Petite Suite, Tschaikowsky's Andante Cantabile, and so on. They all strike their new listener very forcefully; indeed, if you can find music lovers who have not heard one of these you can easily move them to tears by a good performance. Yet they wear out, some with the first hearing, some with the tenth. To be really both immediately very impressive and very durable, like Debussy's Fetes and (...) Mozart's standard music, is every artist's dream, yet many serious composers prefer the durable over the immediately impressive, and take comfort in the fact that Bach's monumental works, The Art of Fugue. The Musical Offering, the Goldberg Variations, and the Mass in B Minor, take a lot of sustained effort from their audience, as do most of Beethoven's later compositions, except for his ninth symphony and similar bits. (shrink)

Popular movies present chunk-like events that promote episodic, serial updating of viewers’ representations of the ongoing narrative. Event-indexing theory would suggest that the beginnings of new scenes trigger these updates, which in turn require more cognitive processing. Typically, a new movie event is signaled by an establishing shot, one providing more background information and a longer look than the average shot. Our analysis of 24 films reconfirms this. More important, we show that, when returning to a previously shown location, (...) the re-establishing shot reduces both context and duration while remaining greater than the average shot. In general, location shifts dominate character and time shifts in event segmentation of movies. In addition, over the last 70 years re-establishing shots have become more like the noninitial shots of a scene. Establishing shots have also approached noninitial shot scales, but not their durations. Such results suggest that film form is evolving, perhaps to suit more rapid encoding of narrative events. (shrink)

Wittgenstein at the Movies is centered on in-depth explorations of two intriguing experimental films on Wittgenstein: Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein and Péter Forgács' Wittgenstein Tractatus. The featured essays look at cinematic interpretations of Wittgenstein's life and philosophy in a manner bound to provoke the lively interest of Wittgenstein scholars, film theorists, students of film aesthetics and artistic modernism, and those concerned with the world of Cambridge in the first half of the twentieth century.

In this paper, I identify and provide an explanation for a heretofore unrecognized puzzle in feminist aesthetics and the philosophy of horror. Many horror movie fans have an aversion to rape scenes. This is puzzling because genre fans are not equally bothered by the depiction of other types of violence and cruelty. I argue that we can make sense of this selective aversion by appeal to the notion of ‘distance’, which philosophers of horror use to explain why people are attracted (...) to horror movies in the first place. When we consume horror, we ‘distance’ ourselves from the scary things depicted, which allows other mechanisms to kick in that lead to overall enjoyment. I argue that ‘distance’ often collapses when viewers are confronted with depictions of rape because rape is common in real life and a gendered form of violence that is implicated in social injustice. (shrink)

In certain cases, children can react strongly in favor of product placements inserted in movies. Scholars therefore argue that existing disclosures might be one strategy in protecting children from any negative effects. However, disclosure research indicates that viewers should both notice disclosures and, in cases of textual cues, read them. We conducted an experiment with 139 children (Mage = 8.46; SD = 1.12; girls = 53.2 %) and tested the influence of textual disclosure format on disclosure awareness as well (...) as brand-related effects. When comparing with no disclosure, results showed that exposure to an existing textual disclosure positively affects disclosure awareness while exposure to an expanded version of it (i.e., by using more textual elements) did not. Further analyses revealed that prior movie exposure positively affected brand evaluation. However, disclosure awareness reversed this effect. We conclude that children appear to be socialized with the existing textual disclosure and that disclosure awareness might be of importance in shielding children against persuasive influence. (shrink)

Academic philosophy may have lost its audience, but the traditional subjects of philosophy--love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith--remain as compelling as ever. To reach a new generation, Paul W. Kahn argues that philosophy must take up these fundamental concerns as we find them in contemporary culture. He demonstrates how this can be achieved through a turn to popular film. Discussing such well-known movies as _Forrest Gump_ (1994), _The American President_ (1995), _The Matrix_ (1999), _Memento_ (2000), _The History of Violence_ (...) (2005), _Gran Torino_ (2008), _The Dark Knight_ (2008), _The Road_ (2009), and _Avata_r (2009), Kahn explores powerful archetypes and their hold on us. His inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, he uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, arguing that narrative is the critical concept for understanding both. Second, he explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. Engaging with genres as diverse as romantic comedy, slasher film, and pornography, Kahn explores the social imaginary through which we create and maintain a meaningful world. He finds in popular films a new setting for a philosophical inquiry into the timeless themes of sacrifice, innocence, rebirth, law, and love. (shrink)

_Why is the moving image so important in our lives? What is the link between the psychology of Jung, Freud and films? How do film and psychology address the problems of modernity? _ _Visible Mind_ is a book about why film is so important to contemporary life, how film affects us psychologically as individuals, and how it affects us culturally as collective social beings. Since its inception, film has been both responsive to historical cultural conditions and reflective of changes in (...) psychological and emotional needs. Arising at the same moment over a century ago, both film and psychoanalysis helped to frame the fragmented experience of modern life in a way that is still with us today. Visible Mind pays attention to the historical context of film for what it can tell us about our inner lives, past and present. _Christopher Hauke_ discusses a range of themes from the perspective of film and analytical psychology, these include: The Face, The Shadow, Narrative and Story, Reality in Film, Cinema and the American Psyche, the use of Movies in the Psychotherapy Session and Archetypal themes in popular film. Unique to Visible Mind, six interviews with top film professionals from different departments both unlocks the door on the role of the unconscious in their creative process, and brings alive the reflexive critical thinking on modernity, postmodernity and Jungian psychology found throughout Visible Mind. _Visible Mind_ is written for academics, filmmakers and students who want to understand what Jung and Freud's psychology can offer on the subject of filmmaking and the creative process, for therapists of any background who want to know more about the significance of movies in their work and for film lovers in general who are curious about what makes movies work. (shrink)

review of Falzon *Philosophy goes to the Movies*.

This chapter contains sections titled: Some Issues in the Philosophy of Film Film Narration: Symmetry or Asymmetry? The A Priori Argument Three Models of Implicit Cinematic Narrators Absurd Imaginings and Silly Questions Literary Narrators Medium‐Specific Explanations.

_Business Ethics Through Movies: A Case Study Approach_ examines a wide range of ethical dilemmas, principles and moral reasoning that arise in contemporary business through a series of popular films and real-world case studies. Engages readers in learning about ethical theory by using movies and both national and international case studies in business as the vehicle for analysis and reflection Facilitates comprehension of ethical issues by showing how characters in films confront issues, make choices, and face the consequences (...) Draws from a variety of actual cases in Business Ethics – from the 1982 Tylenol poisoning and the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster to recent examples such as the Foster Farms salmonella outbreak and the chemical spill in West Virginia Reveals the important role that ethics plays in setting the moral foundation of a business or corporation Develops critical thinking skills through applying analytical checklists to ethical dilemmas raised in films and in actual cases in Business Ethics. (shrink)

Purpose Along with their immense benefit, online channels of communication and information-sharing also present a myriad set of challenges. The unauthorized downloading and sharing of copyrighted content such as music and movies is one such issue. This study aims to examine the factors related to the unauthorized downloading of content amongst young internet users in an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach An online structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 219 internet users between 17 and 24 years of age. (...) The partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the primary data. Findings The study findings report that monetary savings and social influence are the main drivers underlying the propensity to engage in unauthorized downloading amongst young adults. Perceptions of harm caused to artists and producers appear to be a deterrent. Though the respondents perceive the quality of content downloaded from unauthorized sites to be less than desirable, and there is also a higher perceived threat from viruses, this does not appear to deter unauthorized downloading behaviour amongst this segment of consumers. Research limitations/implications Combating unauthorized downloading and other forms of questionable online behaviours is a challenge for multiple stakeholders. Consumption of unauthorized digital content is examined in the context of online consumers whose demographic profile is often associated with this category of questionable behaviour. The study adds to the extant understanding of the aetiology of what are often considered online unethical and illegal behaviours and makes both practical and theoretical contributions to the subject field. Originality/value The study examines an important aspect of rapidly evolving internet technologies. The internet provides a veil to individuals engaging in unethical online activities. Despite the existence of laws declaring these activities to be illegal, instances of copyright violations of music and movies abound. The insights regarding the drivers and deterrents of a form of online unauthorized activity are used to present a set of strategies aimed at addressing such behaviours. (shrink)

Combining philosophy of art with film criticism, Strohl flips conventional notions of good and bad on their heads and makes the case that the ultimate value of a work of art lies in what it can add to our lives. By this measure, some of the worst movies ever made are also among the best.

Artworks are attentional engines, or artifacts intentionally designed to direct attention to formal features that are diagnostic for their artistically salient aesthetic, expressive, and semantic content. This is nowhere more true than the movies. Moving pictures are constructed from a suite of formal and narrative devices carefully developed to capture, hold, and direct our attention. These devices are tools for developing content by controlling the way information is presented throughout the duration of our engagement with a movie. In this (...) respect moving pictures are analogous to visual routines used to direct and bias attention in natural behavior - they are artifacts used to deliver information on the fly as it is needed for the development of the narrative. This article reviews some of the fundamental devices movie makers use to discharge this function - such as variable framing and criterial prefocusing – and discusses their relation to our underlying cognitive, affective, and neurological architecture. These formal devices are designed to guide and control salient aspects of viewers behavioral responses to mass market movies. Therefore, we argue that it is no surprise to discover that that they are fine tuned to the architecture of emotion, perception, and cognition. (shrink)