Cinema.....a fascination, a lure, magic on screen, entertainment, pastime, culture, industry.....the qualifiers are many than the lines can hold....
The word cinema for me is the world....visual.... opening a plethora of sub worlds of imagination and creativity that run wild, but monitored through various mindscapes. The fascination that it holds moves beyond what words can express.
A movie buff like me watches films for entertainment and the researcher in me views it closely for unearthing the hidden layers of understanding.......where do these levels converge? A question I ask myself every time...Am I watching this film for entertainment? or Am I studying it? Answer is simple but complex and strangely leaves me always perplexed whether enjoying or researching should take the upper hand.
This helps me connect with Jarvie's strange but intriguing observation of cognition and affect at work in a cinema viewing experience:
Will my level of understanding then vary? Should my experiences then be different? 'Objective' and 'Subjective' the words bombard my mind.... the movie buff in me draws a line on turbulent waters..........
The word cinema for me is the world....visual.... opening a plethora of sub worlds of imagination and creativity that run wild, but monitored through various mindscapes. The fascination that it holds moves beyond what words can express.
A movie buff like me watches films for entertainment and the researcher in me views it closely for unearthing the hidden layers of understanding.......where do these levels converge? A question I ask myself every time...Am I watching this film for entertainment? or Am I studying it? Answer is simple but complex and strangely leaves me always perplexed whether enjoying or researching should take the upper hand.
This helps me connect with Jarvie's strange but intriguing observation of cognition and affect at work in a cinema viewing experience:
My answer comes to a point where I can derive pleasure, keep my feelings of guilt at bay and enjoy the audio-visual experience that unfurls before me. The researcher can opt for a confluence where passion and pragmatism can shake hands. This leads to the next question ....So in viewing Rashomon we cognitively "know" and affectively "feel" in relation to a series of events that never took place, that are not real, that are "only a film." Furthermore, as the very first philosopher to write about the film, Hugo Munsterberg, argued, we experience and feel the world all the while knowing it is not real; knowing that its apartness from our world is absurd, yet enjoying it. We are not fooled. How can this be, and what is the nature of the suspension of credibility that allows cognition and affect to work, but not so as to decieve us into mistaking the film's world for real?
Will my level of understanding then vary? Should my experiences then be different? 'Objective' and 'Subjective' the words bombard my mind.... the movie buff in me draws a line on turbulent waters..........
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