Joe asked:

Is there such a thing as a philosophy of media, or a philosophy of film which concentrates on human
emotions and the need for the viewer to see these emotions? I am very interested in this topic and
would be very grateful for any advice on books or internet sites in this area.

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There are a number of approaches worth looking at.

'Reception Studies' is an area of film studies. It looks at the audience's (primarily emotional) reaction
to film. There is an excellent and incredibly comprehensive bibliography — albeit slightly out of date
— produced by Austin. (Bruce A. Austin, The Film Audience: An International Bibliography of
Research(Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1983.) You can wade through this extensive
bibliography covering just about every aspect of the audience reaction to films. He has also written
more recent articles. Also look out for Janet Staiger who has written extensively e.g. Janet Staiger,
'Film, Reception and Cultural Studies', Centennial Reviewvol. 36 no. 1, 1992, pp. 89-104. See also a
series of books by Stokes and Maltby (Eds) published by the British Film Institute about who formed
early film audiences and the emotional appeal of 'the movies'.

The subject inevitably spills over into the 'do violent films cause violence' debate (Martin Barker and
Julian Petley (eds.), Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate(London: Routledge, 1997)) and the effect
of slasher/horror films (Ron Tamborini and James Stiff, 'Predictors of Horror Film Attendance and
Appeal: An Analysis of the Audience for Frightening Films', Communication Researchvol. 14 no. 4,
August 1987, pp. 415-436).

You could also look at Film Philosophy — particularly the excellent and very readable book of that
name by Ian Jarvie. Jarvie is a sociologist by training and 'comes at' philosophy of film in a
psychologically inflected way. There is also a good section on emotional response in Allen, Richard
and Murray Smith Film Theory and Philosophy(Clarendon Press, 1997). See in particular the articles
by Carl Plantinga 'Notes on Spectator Emotion' and by Murray Smith 'Seeing from the Inside'.

Film Studies itself has touched on this area. See the very influential compilation by David Bordwell
Post Theorywhich has loads of stuff on e.g. empathy and film, role of film music in impacting
emotions. Noel Carroll (was a film prof, then moved into philosophy then into pure aesthetics) is worth
reading. See his Theorising the Moving Image(Cambridge University press, 1996) which includes his
weird theory of what emotional factors are triggered by film suspense.

If you still an unfinished urges then try out film psychology as a subject where there are a number of
complex studies e.g. one by Zizek based on Freudian/ Lacanian based analysis of the psychology of
the cinema ('Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan'.)

You should enjoy the often contradictory analyses contained in these different approaches. You might
even conclude that no-one really knows how/ why some films work at creating emotional and others
don't. If you find the answer then a bright future awaits you in Hollywood!

Andrew Browne

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