Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images

Book excerpt: Philosophers and students of the arts have wondered since the time of Aristotle about the nature of aesthetic experience, and how this experience can seemingly be evoked by works of art. For more than a century producers and directors of motion pictures have made decisions about how to craft them based upon assumptions about complex stylistic devices and the effects such patterns of organization have on viewers. Over the past few years film scholars have made considerable progress in analyzing the manifold connections that exist between stylistic patterns and aesthetic effects for moving images of all kinds. In doing so, they have increasingly drawn upon insights and methodologies derived from psychology. The international conference from which this volume takes its contributions and its title, was organized to encourage the seeking of descriptive models pertaining to those elements of filmic construction that account for specific aesthetic experience. The focus of the current selection of twenty essays is therefore on the elements of filmic narration and their presumed aesthetic effects. The editors are pleased to strengthen the link between film studies and psychology in the interest of gaining tangible insight into the ancient mystery of the link between art and aesthetic experience.