Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

xvi
influence other film texts, but the final type of formalist analysis situates a film
within the context of its viewer.
Cognitivism is the study of the specific way in which the mental processes of
a viewer are affected by the reception of a work of art. Bordwell and Noël Carroll
define and categorise cognitivism thus, “We think that cognitivism is best
characterized as a stance. A cognitivist analysis or explanation seeks to understand
human thought, emotion, and action by appeal to processes of mental representation,
naturalistic processes, and (some sense of) rational agency.” (1996; xvi)
[parentheses in the original] In his essay “Film, Emotion, and Genre”, (1999)
Carroll puts a strong emphasis on how film creates emotional affect, highlighting its
significance in a cognitive approach. He claims that “it is crucial for a theoretical
understanding of film that we attempt to analyse its relation to the emotions,” (218)
and concluding that “when it comes to analyzing the relation of film to the emotions,
a cognitively oriented approach to film theory has much to offer.” (232) This
appears to be what Berliner is discussing when he says
Psychology research helps us understand the workings of the mind and
the ways in which people typically respond to a controlled stimulus, such
as a movie. Together with this book’s central activity – the analysis of
narrative and stylistic devices – such methods can help us reconstruct
some of the moment-to-moment experiences that attend an individual
film. (2010; 22)
This thesis, much like Berliner’s Hollywood Incoherent utilises all three, but
I place a different stress on these elements. Whereas Berliner seems to heavily