The Life of Feeling and Aesthetic Anxiety in Film and Television
The reasons why we connect with songs, movies, games and more, often boils down to emotions and affect. As Karl Inglesias (2005) notes, this is achieved through empathic impact with the audience. But how far do we go to understand how we can shape the reactions of the people who consume our creative endeavours? One answer lies with Giuliana Bruno (2018) who draws on many scholars to discuss how affective response is driven by senses, memories and emotions. More than this, Bruno considers how film can become the vessel by which emotions can be steered and mapped. In this way, the classic notion that audiences need to feel connected to, or represented by, the creative work at hand makes sense and encourages a process that can ultimately be replicated.
When speaking to the affect life or what Carroll (2003) calls the life of feeling, the cognitive side of emotions must always be considered:
“..the ordinary notion of emotion can be exceedingly broad and elastic, sometimes ranging so widely as to encompass hardwired reflex reactions (like the startle response), kinesthetic turbulence, moods, sexual arousal, pleasures and desires, as well as occurrent mental states like anger, fear and sorrow.”
Importantly, affect is embedded in human experience, in our perceptions, and in revealing the innate emotional functions present in art and our ability as creators to control what and how people affectively respond to a certain point (O’Sullivan 2001).
Writers and directors, for example, are responsible for shaping characteristic and representative situations in screen media where emotional responses are expressed multimodally. That is, there is not only physical and visual expressions in art, but narrative, music, lighting, editing and other technical affordances for aesthetic affect (O’Sullivan 2001; Feng and O’Halloran 2013; Bordwell 2002).
But let’s break this down by using an emotion we want to elicit while remembering that real emotions can, and do, differ from the versions we see on the screen even though they provoke authentic responses (Wiley 2003).
Affective Anxiety
Written and directed by Damien Chazelle and led by the incomparable J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller, Whiplash (2014) was a movie that saw a music conservatory mentor push a young jazz drummer ‘beyond the boundaries of reason and sensibility’. The entire film puts the audience in a state of constant tension, anxiety, disgust, and worry. Not only does the movie blur the lines of morality, but enters discursive topics like unbridled determination, modern torture for success and the justification for brutal behaviour.
At one point in the film, there is a particularly anxiety-inducing scene that makes the viewer feel uncomfortable and shocked at the events unfolding. The abuse of the whole film feels like it’s at its height in the moments when Andrew goes above, and well and truly beyond, to attend a performance.
Through intense standalone dialogue, no-frills editing with classic back-and-forth between the main parties exchanging, and believable acting, the scene then shifts in speed. With jump cuts that hasten the story and the viewer’s heartrate, the use of fast percussive music, and panic within the dialogue, the anxiety builds…and then it’s suddenly taken away with a heart-stopping car accident that is met with silence other than the sounds of broken glass. The literal slowing of movement is only a small reprieve for the audience as we see the battered protagonist bloody and bruised, proceed to rush to the performance regardless and force himself to play; a representation of the damaged conditioning and unrealistic priorities he believes and a moment that makes the audience stressed, worried and sympathetic towards the talented by misguided musician who is at his breaking point.
The use of music (and lack thereof), shots and editing, acting and narrative are only some of the techniques employed by the filmmakers to create this anxiety and tension. What this means, is that, aesthetically speaking, the capacity to which a television show, for example, can provide an empathetic template for viewers, is rooted in creating functional affect.
If I consider only these four elements and apply them to a series I’m developing, I would always start with the bones — the script. Anxiety as the core response would require storytelling entrenched in authenticity. I would have the protagonist at the centre of the story, with conflicts happening to them not around them. Changes in speed to build and release tension would be paramount. These shifts would be achieved through heights and valleys in the structure of the story. Additionally, technical aspects like editing will help these tempo changes. However, one of the most important tools to create an entertaining but not adverse aesthetic experience of anxiety would be in the use music as an emotive cue and the purposeful use of silence in the absence of dialogue.
It’s seems like a juxtaposition to be manufacturing experiential aesthetics. However, portraying emotions as authentically as possible helps develop these fiction worlds that can hold personal, political, and social impact.
*Written for CIM402 — Critical Inquiry — SAE Institute. Blog Task 3, Part A
References
Bordwell, D. (2002). Intensified continuity visual style in contemporary American film. Film Quarterly, 55(3), 16–28.
Bruno, G. (2018). Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film. London: Verso.
Carroll, N. (2003). Engaging the Moving Image. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Feng, D., & O’Halloran, K. L. (2013). The multimodal representation of emotion in film: Integrating cognitive and semiotic approaches. Semiotica, 2013(197), 79–100.
Iglesias, K. (2005). Writing for Emotional Impact. Livermore: WingSpan Press.
O’Sullivan, S. (2001). The aesthetics of affect: Thinking art beyond representation. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 6(3), 125–135.
Wiley, N. (2003). Emotion and Film Theory. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 26, 169–187.
