Moving Pictures: a new theory of film

genres, feelings and cognition

Lam Tran

Author Information
Torben Grodal
Professor of Film and Media Studies at University
of Copenhagen
Noted film scholar and writer of many essays on
film analysis

Simplified Logical Outline

Premise: People emotions and thoughts influence
their opinions of films.
Proposition: Film genres bring together emotions and
sensations as mental structures that impact viewers
minds.
Reasoning: Different types of genres bring out
different emotions and thoughts from their unique
audiences.
Evidence: Recent neuroscience and cognitive
science studies with film-viewers have shown
specific parts of their brains activate while watching
different genres.

Horstkottes Usage of
Article
While the viewer of a movieis able to imagine
the filmic diegesis as an additionof the real, the
foregrounding of different drawing stylesand
endless variety of ways in which panels can speak
to each other requires a new comics literacy that
engages much more closely with individual
choices (33)
-Cf. Grodal 1997: 29
Horstkotte references Grodals line of reasoning to
argue that although comics do derive some of their
elements from films, the two subjects are
fundamentally different in the way they should be
analyzed.

Referenced Page in Grodals

Work
The referenced page is mainly focused on this
diagram: the construction of reality as a
sequence
of cognitive
procedures
Behavior
Interior sources
of
with full
intent;
objects with
full modalitydefinition

Future
oriented
plans,
hypotheses,
visions

consciousness: memory,
imagination

Central processing of possible source and

status of present content of consciousness,
representing the status in consciousness
by different feelings and possibly by
status-propositions

Play,
acting,
communica
tive acts,
phenomen
a with
limited
modalitydefinition:
mirror,
backdrop,
film, image

Sensation-cognition problems such as

hallucinations and erroneous top down
hypotheses

Filmis also a laying bare of the devices by which

the brain constructs experiences out of different

Correctness of Horstkottes
Citation
Horstkottes reference is generally correct: on this
page, and even throughout his book, Grodal
argues that film and other arts are a
construction on top of reality.
Although the major gist is correct, the reference is
somewhat simplified, lumping together Grodals
arguments (different genres, sequence of cognitive
procedures in the mind) so that it is usable in just
one sentence of the entire essay.

Discussion Questions
Whats so unique about graphic novels that
Horstkotte argues they should have new
hermeneutics when other modern media, such as
film, might not?
Is Horstkottes proposed multi-leveled
hermeneutics for graphic novels applicable to
some films? If so, what kinds?