Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: emotion, engagements and orientation
- Dedication
- Introduction: why study television?
- Part One Theoretical background
- 1 ‘Desperately Seeking the Audience’: models of audience reception
- 2 Personal Meanings, Fandom and Sitting Too Close to the Television
- 3 Global Meanings and Trans-cultural Understandings of Dallas
- 4 Theorising Emotion and Affect: feminist engagements
- 5 Theorising Emotion in Film and Television
- Part Two Case studies
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Theorising Emotion in Film and Television
from Part One - Theoretical background
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: emotion, engagements and orientation
- Dedication
- Introduction: why study television?
- Part One Theoretical background
- 1 ‘Desperately Seeking the Audience’: models of audience reception
- 2 Personal Meanings, Fandom and Sitting Too Close to the Television
- 3 Global Meanings and Trans-cultural Understandings of Dallas
- 4 Theorising Emotion and Affect: feminist engagements
- 5 Theorising Emotion in Film and Television
- Part Two Case studies
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘Luke, trust your feelings’
(Star Wars)The last chapter critically reviewed the literature on emotion and affect primarily within feminist theory in order to outline some of the key developments in research on the concept of emotion. This chapter will turn to film theory, where the concept of emotion has been explored primarily through research by cognitive film theorists. Television is still a new area in terms of work on emotion and affect, so it is necessary to draw on theoretical ideas within film studies in order to think about how these ideas might be transposed to television studies. There are some obvious problems with the movement from film theory to television theory – such as differences in ‘gaze’, as Chapter 2 raised, or differences in audiences, as Chapter 1 considered, but alongside developments within cultural theory, as the last chapter discussed, this is the best way to work towards a model of how we can consider and evaluate the concept of emotion in television.
Two examples
In Star Wars, as Luke prepares himself to fire on the Death Star, Obi-wan Kenobi encourages him to ‘trust his feelings’; it is an iconic moment and precedes the rebel victory over the ‘dark side’ of the force. Obi-wan's insistence that Luke ‘trust his feelings’ instead of the computer targeting system privileges gut instinct over scientific/ technical accuracy and gives feelings/emotions new significance. Indeed the whole series emphasises the powerful role feelings play in our lives.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Media AudiencesTelevision, Meaning and Emotion, pp. 72 - 86Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2009