TY - JOUR
T1 - Cinematic Enwaterment. Drowning bodies in the contemporary film experience
AU - D'Aloia, Adriano
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Over the last twenty-five years, as the actor’s physical body has gradually disappeared from the cinematic screen, the bodily dimension of the film experience has increased. In a scenario in which cinema has spread to a myriad of monitors and displays and the film experience seems to lose its integrity, the spectator is still seeking a strong and involving experience, still demanding stories made up of images and sounds that can still arouse the senses. My hypothesis is that contemporary cinema is facing this mutation by developing a number of specific and recurrent “experiential figures”. These figures are cases of strong and effective bodily tension, in which spectators’ motor, perceptual, emotional and mental activities are embodied into a “sensible substance”. Such a substance extends its features from the screen to the psychological space of the experience and transforms it into a unique “sensible environment”. One of these figure is the body in the water. Since its beginnings, cinema has recognized that water can visually give matter and meaning to human desires, dreams and secrets, eliciting suspense and fear. Using different aesthetical and technical strategies, contemporary cinema shows immersed and drowning bodies to represent and express intimacy and protection, suspense and fear, obsession and depression, state of shock, past or infancy trauma, hallucinations and nightmares, etc.
The case of “water-embodiment” (or enwaterment) is significant because of its relevance to the point where psychoanalysis and philosophy meet. In this provisional paper, presented at the International Film Studies Conference “Emergent Encounters in Film Theory. Intersections Between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy”, held at King’s College of London on March 21st 2009, I attempt to investigate what is actually meant today by making a bodily and sensible experience of film by analyzing the substance of water and the figures of the drowning and immersed body. Cinema embodies aquatic modalities of perception and expression, pulling the viewer into a liquid environment that is the confluence between the film-body and the filmgoer-body.
AB - Over the last twenty-five years, as the actor’s physical body has gradually disappeared from the cinematic screen, the bodily dimension of the film experience has increased. In a scenario in which cinema has spread to a myriad of monitors and displays and the film experience seems to lose its integrity, the spectator is still seeking a strong and involving experience, still demanding stories made up of images and sounds that can still arouse the senses. My hypothesis is that contemporary cinema is facing this mutation by developing a number of specific and recurrent “experiential figures”. These figures are cases of strong and effective bodily tension, in which spectators’ motor, perceptual, emotional and mental activities are embodied into a “sensible substance”. Such a substance extends its features from the screen to the psychological space of the experience and transforms it into a unique “sensible environment”. One of these figure is the body in the water. Since its beginnings, cinema has recognized that water can visually give matter and meaning to human desires, dreams and secrets, eliciting suspense and fear. Using different aesthetical and technical strategies, contemporary cinema shows immersed and drowning bodies to represent and express intimacy and protection, suspense and fear, obsession and depression, state of shock, past or infancy trauma, hallucinations and nightmares, etc.
The case of “water-embodiment” (or enwaterment) is significant because of its relevance to the point where psychoanalysis and philosophy meet. In this provisional paper, presented at the International Film Studies Conference “Emergent Encounters in Film Theory. Intersections Between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy”, held at King’s College of London on March 21st 2009, I attempt to investigate what is actually meant today by making a bodily and sensible experience of film by analyzing the substance of water and the figures of the drowning and immersed body. Cinema embodies aquatic modalities of perception and expression, pulling the viewer into a liquid environment that is the confluence between the film-body and the filmgoer-body.
KW - Empathy
KW - Empatia
KW - Enwaterment
KW - Esperienza filmica
KW - Film experience
KW - Mirror Neurons
KW - Neuroni specchio
KW - Empathy
KW - Empatia
KW - Enwaterment
KW - Esperienza filmica
KW - Film experience
KW - Mirror Neurons
KW - Neuroni specchio
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/3005
UR - http://www.comunicazionisocialionline.it/2010/3/5/
M3 - Article
SN - 2037-0415
SP - 31
EP - 39
JO - COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI ON-LINE
JF - COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI ON-LINE
ER -