Cinema's Bodily Illusions: Flying, Floating, and Hallucinating

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In a powerful challenge to mainstream film theory, Cinema's Bodily Illusions bridges genres and periods by focusing on cinema's power to evoke illusions: feeling like you're flying through space, experiencing 3D without glasses, or even hallucinating. Arguing that cinema is a technology to modulate perception, Scott C. Richmond demonstrates that cinema's proprioceptive aesthetics make it an urgent site of contemporary inquiry.

Reviews

"In laying out his theory of proprioceptive aesthetics in cinema, Cinemas Bodily Illusions makes a boldly provocative contribution to the study of bodies, film screens, and media technology. Rescuing cinematic illusion from the perjorative sense with which modernist film scholarship disparages it, Scott C. Richmond finds a visceral (rather than cerebral) thematization of the resonance between ordinary perception and cinematic perception."Jennifer M. Barker, author of The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience

"Richmonds theory and method offers an important tool for doing some of the critical work that spectator theory cannot. Cinemas Bodily Illusions may become an influential vein within postmodern phenomenology. It offers a critical method for understanding the aesthetic moment outside of representational blinders."PopMatters

Author Bio

Scott C. Richmond is assistant professor of cinema and digital media in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.