Film and affect, theories entwined
the case of the war genre in Aaving private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)
pp. 513-541
in: Thomas Blake (ed), The Palgrave handbook of affect studies and textual criticism, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
This essay on film and affect explores one of the most important developments in film studies in the last thirty years: the shift from psychoanalytic 'screen" theories to a more cognitivist and/or phenomenological understanding of affect in the 1980s-present. Elaborating in part on phenomenological theories of cinema (especially Vivian Sobchack), theorists like David Bordwell, Carl Plantinga, Steven Shaviro, and Eugenie Brinkema, among others, understand viewers of cinema very differently: they underscore how not only actors or apparatus work with affect and emotion , but also how narrative itself relies on, fosters, and reaches its zenith by manipulating the affective responses and emotional investments of viewers. To explain and explore such theories, the essay analyzes war films, including Spielberg's much celebrated Saving Private Ryan, to explore the workings of affect in cinema.
