Expansion of the Spatial Perceptions of the Audience Through Empathic Relationship with Filmic Bodies

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Associate Professor, School of Performing Arts and Music, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Art, Art University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

3 Associate Professor, School of Architecture, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

4 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Cinema and Theatre, Art University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Studying about formation and evolution of cinema reflects an intense desire for analyzing and dissecting the human body, and also an aspiration for capturing the corporeal movements. Concentration on the Centrality of human body in the development of the early cinema, is a point that has been noticed by film theoreticians, especially those affected by "the corporeal turn" in contemporary film studies.  It is noteworthy that some of the early film theoreticians also emphasized on the significance of the corporeal aesthetic in relation to the moving images of film, and believed that the cinematic experience is defined in relation with its corporeal immediacy characteristic. In the first decade of the emergence of the medium, films had been generally based on form, Figure and dynamic of human's moving body.  It has been argued that the only asset of cinema in its early days of formation was the form of human body. The Most part of the works of Pioneers such as Muybridge, Marey and Méliès, were explorations about the physiology of human body, And the human's animated body was the constitutive component of their works. Analyzing the efforts of these pioneers' efforts and achievements, provide a path to genealogically trace back the root of cinema in the physiological laboratories of the end of the nineteenth century, instead of the conventional optical paradigms underlines by psychoanalytic film theories. The present article attempts to highlight this inherently corporeal nature of the medium, and by employing and rereading of the concept of empathy, to examine and investigate about the audience's spatial and corporeal relationship with filmic bodies and spaces. Empathy is the act of "felling in" and shaped the central concept of the German psychological approach to aesthetic in the 19th century.  The notion was initially raised by Vischer and thereafter had been developed by Lipps, Schmarsow and Wölfflin. These authors believed that the sense of physical involvement in a piece of  artworks (including painting, sculpture and architecture) leads to the formation of emotional reactions in the observer, and as much extent that the artist be more skillful at transferring the bodily knowledge, the viewer more effectively could establish relationship with the art work. As Edith Stein, in her phenomenological approach to empathy points out when one person empathically throw himself into another thing, he gains a new consciousness about the space and his own navigation center, and this literally implies to dwelling in another space and place. In the case of cinema, Empathy causes the viewer to form a kind of corporeal relationship with the filmic bodies. In the process of watching the film, the spectator projects himself into the character's situation, and due to temporal and spatial nature of empathy, he involves in the time and space that characters have occupied, therefore he can also experience their physical and spatial circumstances. Therefore, films can be considered as valuable resources that provide the possibility of strange and impossible spatial experiences for their audiences, and in this way expand their corporal and spatial consciousness.
 

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References

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Journal of Fine Arts: Performing Arts & Music
Volume 23, Issue 3
September 2018
Pages 49-58

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