B O O K R E V I E W S / 1 0 3

Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2008) and The Filming of Modern Life: Euro-
pean Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s (MIT Press, 2011), and coeditor of Wittgen-
stein, Theory, and the Arts (Routledge, 2001). He is currently finishing a book
titled Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism.

References
von Wright, G.H. 1971. Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, eds., Cognitive Media Theory (New York and
London: Routledge, 2014), 345 pp., $42.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-41562-987-4
Reviewed by Mette Hjort

Cognitive Media Theory, an American Film Institute Film Reader edited by Ted
Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, brings together 18 scholars associated with
the founding moments and later phases of the by now well-established field
known as cognitive film studies. A central aim of the volume is to revisit the
term “cognitive film theory” and to demonstrate that it is both fruitful and
legitimate to expand the field well beyond film (somewhat narrowly under-
stood) to media more generally. The collaborative project aims to ask defini-
tional questions (e.g., What is cognitive theory in film and media studies?) and
to raise issues having to do with methodological relevance and scope (e.g.,
What questions are best answered by means of insights yielded by the sci-
ences?). In addition to targeting the community of scholars associated with
the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI, established in
2006) and the award-winning journal Projections (created in 2009), the vol-
ume seeks to engage scholars who might be described as “fellow travelers,”
open to asking the kinds of research questions that cognitive media theorists
typically ask and to embracing the “rational inquiry” (7) and “dialectical model
of theorizing” (8) that the field promotes. The aim is also to engage readers
who are largely unfamiliar with the research paradigm in question, and in this
regard the intention is to demonstrate that cognitive media theory admits of
pluralism, with some research questions being best answered by means of
concepts and findings associated with the natural sciences, others by means
of methods associated with the humanities, and still others by means of a
hybrid, interdisciplinary approach.
The tone of Nannicelli and Taberham’s “Introduction: Contemporary Cog-
nitive Media Theory” is judiciously constructive, even capacious. The polemi-
cal tone adopted by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll in their introduction to
Post-Theory (1996), by now a canonical text in the field, is implicitly eschewed
in favor of a dialogic approach that seeks to clarify the extent to which widely
accepted charges leveled against cognitive film studies to date arise from
1 0 4 / P R O J E C T I O N S

misconceptions regarding its proponents’ assumptions, methods, and val-

ues. Critics’ concerns are evoked in ways that are oriented towards mutual
understanding, with David Rodowick’s influential article “An Elegy for Theory”
(2007), being given special attention in the introductory chapter. A winner of
the Katherine Singer Kovacs Award for Outstanding Essay, Rodowick’s article
is seen as articulating worries that must be laid to rest if the field is to gain
greater recognition. This, in large measure, is the task that Cognitive Media
Theory takes up. Indeed, there is a sense in which the volume, among other
things, is an extended, collaborative response to Rodowick’s claim that cogni-
tivists are engaged in “a de facto epistemological dismissal of the humanities”
(Rodowick, cited on 11).
In addition to a succinct characterization of the charges leveled against
cognitivist film and media theory, Nannicelli and Taberham’s introduction
provides evidence of the diverse nature of the scholars associated with the
paradigm in question, as well as a clear account of their shared, and thus
defining, commitments as cognitivists. Contrary to influential critical views,
alignment with “cognitive science narrowly or . . . even broadly construed” (7)
is identified by the editors as a feature that may or may not characterize a
given cognitivist’s approach. According to the editors, the commonalities con-
stitutive of the cognitivists’ shared identity have to do not only with the em-
phasis on “rational inquiry” and a “dialectical model of theorizing,” but with
a strong interest in research foci relating to “the human mind,” understood
as a phenomenon that is part of the natural world. It is in their rationalist
approach to inquiry and argumentation, and in their commitments to “men-
talistic” and “naturalistic” (8) perspectives, that the core elements of the par-
adigm are to be sought. In terms of clarifying misunderstandings, the editors’
emphatic comment regarding the role of culture is helpful: cognitivists, they
rightly insist, by no means deny the role of society and culture, but choose in
the first instance to focus their efforts on “intersubjective regularities” that
are traceable to a shared evolutionary history, or, as they put it, to a shared
“cognitive architecture” (8). In the third part of their four-part introduction,
the editors single out two of the volume’s chapters for special attention. The
point of developing a contrastive account of the chapters by Tim J. Smith and
Margrethe Bruun Vaage—“Audiovisual Correspondences in Sergei Eisen-
stein’s Alexander Nevsky: A Case Study in Viewer Attention” and “Blinded by
Familiarity: Partiality, Morality, and Engagement with Television Series,” re-
spectively—is to provide support for the editors’ contention that cognitivist
media theory cannot legitimately be charged with scientism. Together the
chapters by Smith and Bruun Vaage thus serve to establish the breadth of
a spectrum of approaches embraced by the cognitivist project. Whereas ex-
perimental data generated by methods associated with the natural sciences
figure centrally in some of these approaches, “experiential and ‘textual’ evi-
 B O O K R E V I E W S / 1 0 5

dence” characteristic of the “methods and explanations of the humanities”

(4) are crucial in others.
Cognitive Media Theory encompasses four sections, each with three to five
chapters. The titles of these sections are aptly chosen and provide a good in-
dication of the aims of the volume: “The State of Cognitive Media Theory: Cur-
rent Views and Issues,” “Psychological Research and Media Theory,” “Cognitive
Theory and Media Content,” and “Cognitive Theory and Media Forms.”
The first section includes contributions by Murray Smith (“‘The Pit of Nat-
uralism’: Neuroscience and the Naturalized Aesthetics of Film”), Malcolm
Turvey (“Evolutionary Film Theory”), and Daniel Barratt (“The Geography of
Film Viewing: What Are the Implications of Cultural-Cognitive Differences
for Cognitive Film Theory?”). There is a fine match between the way in which
Smith constructs his argument and the larger aims of the volume. Smith be-
gins by providing reasons for seeing the emerging field of neuroaesthetics as
one warranting attention from cognitive film and media scholars, and goes
on to attempt to “pinpoint the specific, novel, and irreducible contributions
that have or might be made by such research” (31). Arguably an extension
of some of Smith’s earlier research contributions and interests, this attempt
takes the form of a careful consideration of “two particular forms of affective
response: the startle response and empathic mirroring” (31). The analysis is
usefully grounded in a consideration of specific cinematic examples (Iron Man
[Jon Favreau, 2008] is, for example, referenced at some length in connection
with the “startle cue”). Well attuned to the charges that see cognitivists as
uninterested in the contributions of culture, Smith points to the phenomenon
of latah in Southeast Asian cultures, as a possible instance of the “startle re-
sponse [having been] culturally extended” (36). Smith’s convincing conclusion
is that “neuroscience may furnish important evidence of the existence of a
psychological process, and . . . may provide a nuanced picture of the character
of such a process” (41). He insists that even in those instances where neuro-
science merely confirms “what we already knew,” a valuable contribution is
made. Progress is not always a matter of novelty and the “epistemological
value” (42) of an empirically robust and conceptually rigorous process of con-
firmation deserves to be acknowledged.
Having considered charges leveled against the “adaptationism” of evolu-
tionary psychology, Turvey, citing Torben Grodal (2009), focuses his efforts on
determining the extent to which this field’s guiding premise—that “animals
and humans are born with certain mental specifications and capacities that
have been selected by evolution and that have enabled their ancestors to
survive” (Grodal, cited on 48)—has “explanatory value for film studies” (48).
Turvey’s conclusion supports the editors’ contentions about the pluralist na-
ture of cognitive media theory in its current phase of development: “while
evolutionary psychology has had the salutary effect of foregrounding the uni-
1 0 6 / P R O J E C T I O N S

versally shared, innate dimensions of art-making and consumption, humanis-

tic explanations of the manifold reasons why humans made and consume art
will remain central to the study of film and the other arts for the foreseeable
future” (58). For Turvey, the “epistemological value” described by Smith cannot
suffice, for if evolutionary psychology is to be embraced by film and media
scholars, one reason would be that it is able to “tell us [something] non-trivial
[and new] about film” (51).
Barratt’s contribution takes as its starting point the “long-held assumption
in the field of cognitive science . . . that the fundamental nature of human
cognitive faculties is universal and that cultural differences are only superfi-
cial” (62). Drawing on Richard E. Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought (2003)
and the book’s contention that “Westerners and East Asians have different
cognitive styles” (62), Barratt’s aim is to identify the implications of “research
on cultural cognitive differences” not only “for the universalist account of the
human mind/brain” (63), but for cognitive film theory. Making reference to
Jerry Fodor’s concept of modularity, Barratt argues that universalist claims are
consistent with brain activity at the levels of modular perception and mod-
ular cognition. Cultural influences can, however, be detected at the level of
non-modular cognition and Barratt concludes that the non-modular pro-
cesses have implications for “film viewing activities [such] as perception and
aesthetic appreciation, and narrative comprehension and character engage-
ment.” Inasmuch as these processes are seen as best investigated by means
of a marriage of “neoformalist” and “empirical” methods (79), the chapter
supports the idea that contemporary cognitive media theory is oriented, not
towards scientific reductionism, but in the direction of genuinely interdisci-
plinary efforts that reach across the divide between what C.P. Snow ([1959]
2001) famously described as “two cultures.”
Part two, —“Psychological Research and Media theory”—brings together
chapters by Tim J. Smith (“Audiovisual Correspondences in Sergei Eisenstein’s
Alexander Nevsky: A Case Study in Viewer Attention”), Ed S. Tan (“Engaged and
Detached Film Viewing: Exploring Film Viewers’ Emotional Action Readiness”),
and Kaitlin L. Brunick and James E. Cutting (“Coloring the Animated World: Ex-
ploring Human Color Perception and Preference through the Animated Film”).
Smith’s chapter asks a high-stakes question that would do much to le-
gitimate cognitive media theory, should it prove possible to provide an evi-
dence-based affirmative response to it. This question is as follows: “Can
empirical psychology . . . provide ways to directly test the insights generated by
the theoretical study of film?” (85). It is Smith’s contention that the tools and
methods of empirical psychology can in fact be mobilized in the desired man-
ner. To demonstrate this point Smith used eye-tracking technology to chart
the dynamics of viewer attention while members of two focus groups en-
gaged with the “Battle on Ice” sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky
 B O O K R E V I E W S / 1 0 7

(1938). Considering the empirical results of the relevant eye tracking exercises
alongside the director’s own detailed analysis of this sequence, Smith discov-
ers a significant match between Eisenstein’s intuitive thinking about viewer
attention and audio-visual design, on the one hand, and the features of ac-
tual viewer engagement with the film, on the other. The extent of the match,
Smith claims, is partly explicable in terms of what the science of perception
teaches us about the human eye and its (limited) visual acuity, with other fac-
tors having to do with the way in which sound affects the processing of visual
information. Smith presents his analysis as a “template for future investiga-
tions into audiovisual correspondences in film, as well as related phenomena
in cross-modal attention and perception” (100). His intervention is ultimately
a call for a productive to-and-fro between film and media theory—whether
in the form of researchers’ pronouncements or practitioners’ articulations of
the principles of practice—and empirical testing facilitated by developments
in the technology of eye tracking. Rich in detail and insight, his chapter shows
that there is much to be gained from this approach.
Tan takes up issues that have often been discussed in terms of a so-called
paradox of fiction. Instead of asking why viewers whose emotions are (or ap-
pear to be) aroused by film tend to forego the sorts of behaviors that are nor-
mally prompted by the emotions in question, Tan focuses his inquiry on the
concept of “action readiness.” Given the assumption that “action readiness is
an essential part of emotion,” the issue, for Tan, is to determine “what action
readiness means in the cinema” (107). Tan’s intervention is thought provoking
inasmuch as he entertains the possibility of various “forms of action readiness
in response to film” (107), with a given form, as experienced by the audience,
adding “a lot to the cinematic experience” (120). In Brunick and Cutting’s chap-
ter, the nature of viewers’ cognitive experiences of films is also the main focus.
In this case, the aim is to shed light on how the “cognitive experience of color”
(125) shapes those experiences. The chapter’s scope is broad, with the authors
providing definitions of color, an account of how animators have used color,
and a focused discussion of the role of color in animated films aimed at chil-
dren. The latter part of the chapter is designed to draw attention to the color
strategies that inform the making of specific types of films and is especially
rewarding.
With its five contributions, the third section, “Cognitive Theory and Media
Content,” is the longest in the book. Ranging from theories of mood to avant-
garde film, across violence, comedy, and postcolonial humor, the section is also
the volume’s most eclectic. In “Mood and Ethics in Narrative film,” Carl Plant-
inga rightly asserts that “the importance of mood in the cinema . . . is under-
estimated”, with the “nature of cinematic moods [having] only [been] tenta-
tively examined” (142). Drawing on the work of philosophers, Plantinga begins
by considering the nature of moods and goes on to argue that there is more at
1 0 8 / P R O J E C T I O N S

stake in the moods suggested by films than mere “tone or atmosphere” (143).
Moods, Plantinga convincingly argues, are “of central concern for an ethics of
narrative cinema” (149) inasmuch as they have implications for a film’s world-
view or perspective, for a film’s tendency to contribute to either “moral under-
standing or moral confusion” (152), and for the effects that narrative films have
on spectators (153). Plantinga’s detailed analysis of moods forges an insight-
ful and productive link between arguments pertaining to film and affective
states, and debates about film and ethics, thereby helping us to see that cine-
matic mood is anything but trivial.
In “Effects of Entertaining Violence: A Critical Overview of the General Ag-
gression Model,” Dirk Eitzen returns to the still vexed issue of the relationship
between “imagined violence and actual violence” (158). He carefully considers
the so-called general aggression model, described as focusing on “how ag-
gressive thoughts spark aggressive impulses, which in turn contribute to ag-
gressive behaviors” (170). Having identified weaknesses with the model, Eitzen
argues convincingly for a revised model that makes room for inhibition and
self-control, where what is primed through the engagement with such video
games as Grand Theft Auto, “is not just violent ideas and impulses, but anti-
violent responses as well” (171).
The next chapter focuses on comic entertainment, with Torben Grodal pro-
posing an account of the phenomenon in terms of the PECMA (Perception,
Emotion, Cognition, and Motor Action) model that he first developed in Mov-
ing Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition (1997). This
account is presented as a “general” one, inasmuch as it purports to identify the
“different mechanisms in the embodied brain that support and regulate comic
entertainment and the evolutionary origin of these mechanisms” (177). Humor
is also at the core of Patrick Colm Hogan’s chapter on “Postcolonial Humor,
Attachment, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer,” yet there is little sense of con-
tinuity here. The piece, in fact, is quite different from the other contributions,
inasmuch as there is little evidence of even an attempt to engage in the kind
of rational inquiry and dialogic model of theory formation that the editors
see as a defining feature of cognitive media theory. Left largely underspecified,
and thus to be surmised by the reader, are the logical connections between
the four sections of the chapter—devoted to “the difference between condi-
tions and attitudes after the onset of colonialism,” to “the general nature of
humor and its relation to properties of childhood,” to humor and colonialism,
and, finally, to Ozu’s Early Summer (196). In this case, the argument, and, thus,
its pay-offs are simply unclear to this reviewer.
The final chapter in section three is coeditor Paul Taberham’s “Avant-Garde
Film in an Evolutionary Context.” Having established that evolutionary accounts
of aesthetics tend to dismiss avant-garde art and modernist art, Taberham
canvases the broad strokes of two evolutionary accounts of art’s origins—
 B O O K R E V I E W S / 1 0 9

dubbed the “sexual display” and “socialization accounts.” Noting that avant-
garde and modernist art emerged as late as some 150 years ago and that the
taste for the relevant art forms are not widespread, Taberham concludes that
“the appreciation of avant-garde art is not itself an adaptive behavior” (227).
Construed as an extension of behavior that is properly adaptive, appreciation
of the relevant art forms is also seen as depending on “institutional, industrial,
and cultural factors” (227) for its emergence. Aware that theories of evolution-
ary psychology have been charged with presenting “just-so stories,” unmoored
from “testable evidence,” Taberham carefully presents his use of evolutionary
psychology as a “hypothesis-generator rather than a source of ‘the facts’” (228).
In the fourth and final section, the relation between “Cognitive Theory and
Media Forms” is variously explored in four chapters written by William See-
ley and Noël Carroll, Andreas Gregersen, Margrethe Bruun Vaage, and Greg M.
Smith. In Seeley and Carroll’s “Cognitive Theory and the Individual Film: The
Case of Rear Window,” the premise is that theorizing in a cognitivist vein (like
other forms of theorizing about film), is seen by film critics and film practi-
tioners as being largely an autonomous language game played by scholars
whose putative insights admit of very little “knowledge transfer,” to use a cur-
rent idiom. The authors’ aim is to demonstrate that cognitivism offers “a way
of understanding movies ever more deeply” and to this end they mobilize a
“series of cognitivist concepts” in the context of an analysis of a single film
by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window. The concepts in question include “variable
framing, indexing, scaling, bracketing, erotetic narration, . . . and criterial pre-
focusing” (251), many of which have been fully developed in “core” texts be-
longing to the early phase of cognitive film theory. Criterial prefocusing, for
example, is a structuring element in Carroll’s account of horror in The Philoso-
phy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (1990).
In “Cognitive Theory and Video Games,” the discussion shifts to the new
media that the cognitivist community currently seeks to encompass through
attempts, for example, to understand how making room for clearly relevant
objects of study might change, and not merely expand, the field. The chap-
ter by Andreas Gregersen is an especially lucid account of how “the formal
structures of many video games fit with fundamental structures of human
cognition.” Gregersen further develops the “formal/functional” (253) approach
by taking seriously the simple fact that “people do not just view video games,”
but “play them.” By giving due attention to players as “embodied intentional
agents” (254) whose responses are shaped by the “fundamental structures of
human cognition” (253), Gregersen is able to develop convincing functional ex-
planations for some of the more striking (perhaps even notorious) features of
video games belonging to the action and adventure genres. While his conclu-
sions about form and function are proffered as pertaining to the video game
genres under discussion, the more general point about embodied action is
1 1 0 / P R O J E C T I O N S

seen as more generally true: “[A] conceptualization of player agency as inten-

tional embodied action will . . . be a necessary although not sufficient compo-
nent of any cognitive analysis of video games” (263).
Margrethe Bruun Vaage’s chapter takes well established debates about
spectators’ engagement with characters through processes of “alignment”
and “allegiance” (terms originally proposed by Murray Smith) onto the ter-
rain of television. In Smith’s account, developed in Engaging Characters: Fic-
tion, Emotion, and the Cinema (1995), alignment does not suffice to produce
sympathy for—or allegiance with—a character, sympathy being a matter of
moral assessment or evaluation. Bruun Vaage takes seriously the “difference
between fiction film and long-term narration such as television series” (275),
and she situates the sense of familiarity that viewers develop in relation to
morally ambiguous characters within the context of philosophical research
on the moral implications of “partiality” (271) and the evolutionary pay-offs of
“caring for in-group members” (272). Making reference to viewers’ attitudes
toward such characters as Tony Soprano in The Sopranos and Walter White
in Breaking Bad, Bruun Vaage argues that familiarity supported by long-term
narration makes the link between alignment and allegiance a systematic one.
When the link arises in connection with characters who are antiheroes, the
pleasures of engagement, she claims, have to do with viewers’ assessment of
their responses as “puzzling and fascinating” (277). Inasmuch as the emphasis
appears to be on viewers’ second-order assessments of their initial responses,
it is worth pointing out that there are thought-provoking parallels to be drawn
here to one of the more persuasive of solutions proposed to the so-called par-
adox of negative emotion or paradox of tragedy. Analytic aesthetician Susan
Feagin’s (1983) contributions come to mind and would be well worth exploring
in the context of future research on television series featuring anti-heroes as
a main attraction.
Entitled “Coming Out of the Corner: The Challenges of a Broader Media
Cognitivism,” Greg M. Smith’s chapter offers a compelling conclusion to the
book. Smith outlines the history of the development of cognitive film studies,
and in the course of so doing he speaks of “first-generation film cognitivists”
and “second-generation film cognitivists,” the latter phrase being glossed as
“those who were trained within the paradigm” (287). Evoking a certain tempo-
ral framework and institutional history, this distinction points to the field’s ro-
bustness, while setting the stage for the highly relevant questions that Smith
would have its proponents consider. It is a matter, he suggests, of thinking not
only about future research directions, but also about how to build the kind
of research community that is needed at this point. The main thrust of his
argument is that the cognitivist “community’s history has led towards certain
kinds of media and away from others.” With other media such as television
and games increasingly commanding the attention of cognitivists, the issue
 B O O K R E V I E W S / 1 1 1

of how “joint assumptions” (286) might be challenged by an expansion of the

cognitivist project well beyond film is well worth considering. Smith’s point
is that greater capaciousness with regard to the cognitivists’ objects of study
may entail a rethinking of the project’s relation to other fields and approaches.
It is worth quoting a few lines from Smith’s conclusion, for they return us
to some of the main claims of the editors’ introduction: “Is there a place for
researchers on hallucination and fetishization within film cognitivism? We
are open to work on Wittgenstein and film; how about someone who min-
gles Darwin and Derrida? My instinct is to say yes, if this research from other
fields shares one or more of our early commitments” (297). If demonstrating
the pluralist nature of the cognitivist project (especially as it is to be carried
forward by second- and even third-generation cognitivists), is one of the aims
of Cognitive Media Theory, Smith’s explicit naming of topics, traditions, and
scholars associated with what are generally seen as quite different, even rival
paradigms, helps to evoke a capacious cognitivist future. Rhetorically, the vol-
ume’s collective conversation ends on a note that effectively signals a desire
for openness and inclusiveness.
Cognitive Media Theory is a rich, rigorous, and generous-minded publica-
tion that deserves to be widely read. The volume is clearly the result of careful
planning and detail-minded editing, with authors being encouraged to write
in response to a well-defined remit arising from the sorts of goals that the ed-
itors identify in their introduction. It is worth noting that this is a book that
manages that rarest of academic hat-tricks: an intervention at the highest level
of professional scholarly work, the volume is also pedagogically relevant, with
many of the chapters lending themselves to inclusion in the “required” or “fur-
ther reading” categories of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.

Mette Hjort is chair professor of Visual Studies and Associate Vice President at
Lingnan University. She has published four monographs, including The Strat-
egy of Letters (Harvard University Press, 1993) and Small Nation, Global Cinema
(University of Minnesota Press, 2005). Her edited books include, most recently,
The Education of the Filmmaker in Europe, Asia, and Australia (Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2013) and The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa, the Middle East, and
the Americas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Her current research is funded by
The Hong Kong Research Grants Council and focuses on the implications of
practice-based film education for filmmakers’ values and social aspirations.

References
Bordwell, David, and Noël Carroll. 1996. “Introduction.” Pp. xiii–xvii in Post-Theory: Recon-
structing Film Studies, ed. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll. Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press.