Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers

Download or read book Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers written by Julian Hanich and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why can fear be pleasurable? Why do we sometimes enjoy an emotion we otherwise desperately wish to avoid? And why are the movies the predominant place for this paradoxical experience? These are the central questions of Julian Hanichâe(tm)s path-breaking book, in which he takes a detailed look at the various aesthetic strategies of fear as well as the viewerâe(tm)s frightened experience. By drawing on prototypical scenes from horror films and thrillers like Rosemaryâe(tm)s Baby, The Silence of the Lambs, Seven and The Blair Witch Project, Hanich identifies five types of fear at the movies and thus provides a much more nuanced classification than previously at hand in film studies. His descriptions of how the five types of fear differ according to their bodily, temporal and social experience inside the auditorium entail a forceful plea for relying more strongly on phenomenology in the study of cinematic emotions. In so doing, this book opens up new ways of dealing with these emotions. Hanichâe(tm)s study does not stop at the level of fear in the movie theater, however, but puts the strong cinematic emotion against the backdrop of some of the most crucial developments of our modern world: disembodiment, acceleration and the loosening of social bonds. Hanich argues that the strong affective, temporal, and social experiences of frightening movies can be particularly pleasurable precisely because they help to counterbalance these ambivalent changes of modernity.