Description
Why can fear be pleasurable? Why do we sometimes enjoy an emotion we otherwise desperately wish to avoid? And why are the movies the predominant place for this paradoxical experience? These are the central questions of Julian Hanichs path-breaking book, in which he takes a detailed look at the various aesthetic strategies of fear as well as the viewers frightened experience. By drawing on prototypical scenes from horror films and thrillers like Rosemarys Baby, The Silence of the Lambs, Seven and The Blair Witch Project, Hanich identifies five types of fear at the movies and thus provides a much more nuanced classification than previously at hand in film studies. His descriptions of how the five types of fear differ according to their bodily, temporal and social experience inside the auditorium entail a forceful plea for relying more strongly on phenomenology in the study of cinematic emotions. In so doing, this book opens up new ways of dealing with these emotions.
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