Feelings in Conflict: A Clockwork Orange and the Explanation of Audiovisual Emotions

Abstract

Controversial films like Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange represent a challenge for current theories of emotion elicitation. Combining theories of emotional appraisal, film comprehension, and the formal analysis of film, this article outlines a model of audiovisual responses to films that distinguishes between four levels of information processing and corresponding emotional reactions: 1. the perception of images and sounds triggers perceptual affects, sensations, and moods; 2. the development of mental models of a represented world, its inhabitants and events, calls forth diegetic emotions like sympathy, empathy, and situation-related feelings; 3. grasping indirect or more abstract meanings leads to thematic emotions; and 4. reflection on the communication process and its elements (text, producer, recipient) leads to communicative emotions. These four levels of emotional reactions interact in time, leading to the development of complex emotion episodes.

The Creation of Closeness: Identity Tourists in Who Do You Think You Are?

“…The article uses Eder's (2006Eder's ( , 2008Eder's ( , 2010) theory of character closeness to identify the means by which the producers of the Australian series of WDYTYA have created a "closeness" for the viewer to the featured celebrities. To achieve this, 12 episodes of the two Australian series of WDYTYA were examined by using a combination of content analysis and a semiotic reading of the visual and acoustic channels (the vision plus the accompanying audio, music, and other sounds).…”

“…The article demonstrates that the program makers used a range of Eder's (2006Eder's ( , 2008Eder's ( , 2010 techniques to encourage viewers to become close to the on-screen characters, and as a result, the programs are more influential and emotional than they might otherwise be. In creating such powerful programs, the viewer is willingly taken on a journey into the life of the Australian celebrity and is able to develop a special relationship with the celebrity on a range of levels including physical, mental, intimate, imagined, and affective.…”

Playing with Fear: The Aesthetics of Horror in Recent Indie Games

“…16 However, Tan notes that films also invite their spectators to experience a different kind of emotions, the objects of which are not entities within the storyworld of the film but rather aspects of the film itself as an aesthetic artifact as well as the filmmakers and production processes "behind" it. These artifact emotions, may then also form the basis of positive as well as negative aesthetic evaluations (see also Eder 2008;Frome 2006).…”

Multimodalidad, emoción y publicidad. Un estudio empírico sobre Youtube

“…No cabe duda de que tanto la música (Juslin & Sloboda, 2001), las imágenes (Messaris, 1994) como la conjunción de ambas (Eder, 2008) nos afectan profundamente.…”