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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
PhD Thesis Project - The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind. The Syntax of Emotions in Fictional Movies
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2021-09-10
2014-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Francesca Scotto Lavina
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Sapienza – Università di Roma
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PhD Thesis Project - The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind. The Syntax of Emotions in Fictional Movies
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The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind.
The Syntax of Emotions in Fictional Movies
Francesca Scotto Lavina / Ph.D. Thesis Project1
Sapienza – Università di Roma




   Neuroscientists argue brain mechanisms underpinning emotions are essential
in constructing the self.2 According to Damasio emotionally competent stimuli
arouse emotions as actions programmes provoking body status changes. As a
consequence, neural circuits activation makes the brain form perceptual images,
which awaken feelings among unconscious primordial ones (linked to internal
milieu and similar to affects). Therefore, feelings come through in mental im-
ages, which give the subject the awareness of his new body status. This mecha-
nism triggers also an as-if body loop: the subject’s brain simulates programmes
of action by connecting mental images of the self selected by the somatic marker
with schemas already existing in implicit and explicit memory.3 The process is a
continuous flow involving empathy and activation of the mirror neurons.4 The
emerging branch of Neurocinematics investigates which neural correlates are
related to film experience.5 Recently, film scholars have focused on empathy and
emotions as well. In his Vues d’ensemble Raymond Bellour takes into considera-
tion Stern’s and Damasio’s neuroscientific perspectives.6
   This Ph.D. project aims to elicit emotional mechanisms involved in the relation-


1
  Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Paolo Bertetto and Professor Antonella Ottai. For information:
francesca.scottolavina@gmail.com.
2
  The
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       neuroscientists Panksepp and Damasio agree on involvement of both neocortex and subcor-
tex, that is linked to seven primary-process emotional networks. See Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neu-
roscience. The Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
3
  Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, Phantheon Books, New York 2010. See also Joseph
Ledoux, The Emotional Brain, Simon & Schuster, New York 2010; Francisco J. Varela, Evan
Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience,
MIT Press, Boston 1991; Mauro Mancia, Sentire le parole. Archivi sonori della memoria implicita e
musicalità del transfert, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2004.
4
  Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and
Emotions, Oxford University Press, Cambridge 2008.
5
  Uri Hasson, Ohad Landesman, Barbara Knappmeyer, Ignacio Vallines, Nava Rubin, David J.
Heeger, “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” in Projections, no. 1, Summer 2008, pp.1-
26. See also Arthur P. Shimamura, “Presenting and analyzing movie stimuli for psychocinematic
research,” in Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, no. 9, pp. 1-5, 2013.
6
  Raymond Bellour, Le Corp du cinéma. Hypnoses, émotions, animalités, P.O.L., Paris 2009 and Id.,
“Daniel Stern, encore,” in Trafic, no. 57, Spring 2006.

                                               Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIV, no. 22/23, Spring/Fall 2014
                                      Francesca Scotto Lavina


ship between the film text and the post-modern spectator.7 Film analysis is going to
integrate philosophical and psychoanalytic theories with neuroscience. It starts from
considering movies as synesthetic machines,8 which articulate spectator’s experience
in three layers: sensory scanning, narrative sorting and relational tuning.9 According
to research hypothesis films become emotionally competent stimuli, if they evoke
identifications going beyond cognitivism.10 Moreover, primary and secondary iden-
tifications11 must be connoted by emotion images, e.g., mental images awakening
feelings and simulating the Dasein of the spectator’s self into the text by emotions.
    Cinematic images arouse amodal perception.12 Vertov’s cine-eye becomes a cine-
body endowed with eye (lens) and (camera) movements, by which spectator achieves
primary identification.13 Technology (special effects, 3D, performance capture) en-
hances it by the immersive experiences. The process configures a primordial feeling
and arouses primary-process emotional networks, which will cause feelings.
    Cinematic language creates a taxonomy of emotion images. The whole of frames
(the minimum unit of text) gives rise to the whole of kinemorphs (Kinesics minimum
unit) consisting in gestures, facial expressions14 and their vitality affects. Their decod-
ing by mirror neurons, subcortex and neocortex circuit triggers empathy, and the
as-if body loop simulating the action on the screen in the brain.15 Finally, the cognition
evokes intersubjectivity consciousness16 and social emotions17 through the neocor-
tex. The use of different shots, camera angles, music, lights and cutting can modulate
the involvement of neural correlates and increase the tensive logic of narration18 by
focusing characters’ actions and symbolic details and emphasizing their function of

7
  See Veronica Pravadelli, Post-moderno e nuova spettatorialità, in Giorgio De Vincenti, Enrico Ca-
rocci (eds.), Il cinema e le emozioni. Estetica, espressione, esperienza, Ente dello spettacolo, Roma
2012, pp. 379-400.
8
   Paolo Bertetto, Le macchine sinestetiche e l’identificazione. A proposito di cinema, sensazione,
emozione, in Giorgio De Vincenti, Enrico Carocci (eds.), Il cinema e le emozioni. Estetica, espres-
sione, esperienza, cit., pp. 87-118.
9
  Ruggero Eugeni, Semiotica dei media, Carocci, Roma 2010.
10
   David Bordwell, Noel Carrol, Post-Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies, University of Wisconsin
Press, Madison 1996.
11
   Jacques Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, Marc Vernet, Estétique du film, Nathan Edition,
Paris 1994.
12
   Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books, New York 1985, pp. 47-72.
13
   On embodiment see Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts. Embodiment and Moving Image Culture,
University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 2004.
14
   Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, Unmasking the Face. A Guide to Recognizing the Emotions from
Facial Expressions, Malor Books, Cambridge 2003.
15
   Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions. Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film, Oxford University
Press, New York 2009.
16
   Daniel Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, Norton and Company,
New York 2004.
17
   Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, cit, pp. 99-100.
18
   Algirdas J. Greimas, Jacques Fontanille, Sémiotique des passions. Des états de choses aux états
d’âme, Paris Seuil, 1991. For instance at climax of The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme,
1991) no sooner has the spectator entered the killer’s refuge through the empathic simulation of
agent Starling’s action than the light is off and he’s staring at her through the killer’s gaze, feeling
both his jouissance and Clarice’s fear.
192
                             The Grammar of Cinematic Body-Mind


signifiers. The whole process realizes the transition from the movement images to
emotion images19 and from figurative level of the text to figural.20
   In addition, the more the themes dealt with by film text are relevant to the in-
dividuals, the more the emotions flow in terms of both secondary identifications
and tendency to simulate actions.21
   The screen is the Lacanian mirror, which stresses the gaze22 (emotion images
are what vision lacks) and configures the ipseity, postulated by Ricoeur. Movies
succeeding in reconfiguring the self recall the fascination of the infant due to
the attuning and the vitality affects,23 the projective identification24 and the play-
ing dynamics.25 These mechanisms allows spectator to experiment the self and
is similar to Freud’s notion of poetic creation26 and Gallese’s idea of liberated
simulation.27 Should spectator’s final reaction be the creation of concepts, he will
reconfigure his self firmly. On the biochemical point of view it means establishing
new neural patterns according to Edelman’s Neural darwinism theory.28
   Given these methodological premises, case studies chosen, such as The Hurt
Locker by Kathryn Bigelow (2008), Crash by Paul Haggis (2004), Dial M for
Murder (3 D) by Alfred Hitchcock (1954), The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan
Demme (1991), will be analysed in order to elicit both the folds29 of film text
realizing emotional flow and what puts it at risk.30
   The research aims to pave the way for neurocinematic trials to verify the given
hypothesis and improving new film analysis approach, which can be used in mar-
keting and educational programmes.


19
   The concept would recall the mental image describes by Deleuze as thirdness in Cinema 1. The
Movement Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1986. Deleuze argued connections
between the brain and the cinematic language also in Cinema 2. The Time Image, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1989 and in his interview with Cabasso.
20
   Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Continuum, London 2003. On the concept
of figural see Paolo Bertetto, Lo specchio e il simulacro, Bompiani, Milano 2007.
21
   Ed Tan, Nico Frida, Sentiment in Film Viewnig in Carl R. Plantinga, Greg M. Smith (eds.), Pas-
sionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999.
22
   Jacques Lacan, Écrits, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1966.
23
   Daniel Stern, Forms of Vitality. Exploring Dynamic Experience in the Arts, Psychotherapy and
Development, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 2010.
24
   Melanie Klein, Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, in Melanie Klein, Paula Heimann, Susan
Isaacs, Joan Riviere, Developments in Psychoanalysis, Hogarth Press, London 1952.
25
   Donald W. Winnicot, Playing and Reality, Routledge, New York 1989.
26
   Which lets consciousness feel jouissance and activate sublimation process. On this matter see
Massimo Recalcati, Il miracolo della forma, Bruno Mondadori editore, Milano 2007.
27
   Vittorio Gallese, Michele Guerra, “Emboding Movies. Embodied Simulation and Film Studies,”
in Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, no. 3, 2012.
28
   Gerald M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism. The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, Basic Books,
New York 1987 and Second Nature. Brain Science and Human Knowledge, Yale University Press,
London 2006.
29
   Referring to the meaning Bellour gave to Deleuze’s term fold in “Le Dépli des emotions,” in
Trafic, no. 43, Septembre 2002, pp. 93-128.
30
   See Francesco Casetti, L’occhio dello spettatore, ISU Università Cattolica, Milano 2000 and Eye of
the Century. Film, Experience, Modernity, Columbia University Press, New York 2008.
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