Can You Break the Tyranny of Film?: The power of viewers’ film genre preferences and knowledge on attentional selection

AbstractThis article explores contemporary film genre preferences through an in-depth sociological analysis of taste cultures in film preferences amongst youth aged 16–18 in Flanders (the northern Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Building on a representative sample of 1015 respondents we statistically analyze the assumption that contemporary media audiences demonstrate mobility and that they are eager to shape their media consumption in accordance with their personal preferences. This article examines whether societal structures that have been found to reflect media preferences remain in place, or whether these structures have eroded with the (supposed) increase in individual choice – an argument often voiced in the context of convergence culture. An analysis of the variables gender, educational level and ethnicity illustrates that societal structures are still reflected through film genre preferences amongst Flemish youth.

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Does Perceived Stress of University Students Affected by Preferences for Movie Genres? an Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study in China

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.761340 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Ning Qiao

Keyword(s):

University Students ◽

Perceived Stress ◽

Gender Gap ◽

Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽

High Stress ◽

Smoking History ◽

Relative Risk Ratio ◽

Online Questionnaire ◽

Film Genre ◽

Genre Preferences

This study aims to explore whether different preferences for movie genres were related to different perceived stress of college students. An online questionnaire was designed and it was filled out by 1,549 students voluntarily. The 10-item perceived stress scale (PSS-10) and multinomial logistic regression were used to access the perceived stress and the association between the movie preference genres. Over 90% of participants had mild to serious levels of stress. Differences were found between participants with different stress perception states in terms of smoking history, active exercise, and sleep duration (p < 0.05). The participants who showed a preference for suspense movies more probably had lower stress [relative risk ratio (RRR)1 = 0.34, RRR2 = 0.26, p < 0.05], while students who showed preferences for crime film and disaster film more probably had higher stress (RRR = 2.03, p < 0.05, RRR = 3.15, p < 0.05). And the significant gender gap in different film genre preferences was observed in this study (p < 0.05). The males who showed preference for horror movies were more probably to have moderate stress (OR = 3.68, p < 0.05), and females who showed a preference for disaster movies were more probably to have high stress (OR = 3.27, p < 0.05). The perceived stress of Chinese university students is high after 1.5 years of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The personal preferences for certain film genres were significantly associated with perceived stress. As different film genre preferences, such as the preference for disaster, crime, and horror, are associated with high perceived stress, it may turn out to be useful to pay more attention to an individual’s film viewing. The teachers need to be concerned with the media usage history and preferences of their students and may advise students with high-level stress to avoid potentially harmful media content.

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Differential effects of film genre on viewers’ absorption, identification, and enjoyment.

Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts ◽

10.1037/aca0000353 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jacqueline M. Thompson ◽

Ben Teasdale ◽

Sophie Duncan ◽

Evert van Emde Boas ◽

Felix Budelmann ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Differential Effects ◽

Film Genre

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Early and late attentional selection for action control: A computational approach

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e636952013-234 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Ronald Hubner

Keyword(s):

Action Control ◽

Computational Approach ◽

Attentional Selection ◽

Selection For ◽

Selection For Action

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Devotional Transformation

Postscripts The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds ◽

10.1558/post.v1i2_3.237 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 1 (2-3) ◽

pp. 237-257

Author(s):

Ravi Vasudevan

Keyword(s):

Religious Belief ◽

Film Genre ◽

Narrative Structures ◽

The Status ◽

Film Spectatorship ◽

The Relationship

This article focuses on the specific Indian cinematic form of the Hindu devotional film genre to explore the relationship between cinema and religion. Using three important early films from the devotional oeuvre—Gopal Krishna, Sant Dnyaneshwar, and Sant Tukaram—as the primary referent, it tries to understand certain characteristic patterns in the narrative structures of these films, and the cultures of visuality and address, miraculous manifestation, and witnessing and self-transformation that they generate. These three films produced by Prabhat Studios between the years 1936 and 1940 and all directed by Vishnupant Damle and Syed Fattelal, drew upon the powerful anti-hierarchical traditions of Bhakti, devotional worship that circumvented Brahmanical forms. This article will argue that the devotional film crucially undertakes a work of transformation in the perspectives on property, and that in this engagement it particularly reviews the status of the household in its bid to generate a utopian model of unbounded community. The article will also consider the status of technologies of the miraculous that are among the central attractions of the genre, and afford a reflection on the relation between cinema technology, popular religious belief and desire, and film spectatorship.

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Groped and Gutted

Screen Bodies ◽

10.3167/screen.2020.050104 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 31-55

Author(s):

Samantha Eddy

Keyword(s):

Mixed Methods ◽

Social Order ◽

Power Relations ◽

Mixed Methods Approach ◽

Film Genre ◽

Slasher Film ◽

Sexually Violent ◽

Creative Space ◽

Feminist Identification

The realm of horror provides a creative space in which the breakdown of social order can either expose power relations or further cement them by having them persist after the collapse. Carol Clover proposed that the 1970s slasher film genre—known for its sex and gore fanfare—provided feminist identification through its “final girl” indie invention. Over three decades later, with the genre now commercialized, this research exposes the reality of sexual and horrific imagery within the Hollywood mainstay. Using a mixed-methods approach, I develop four categories of depiction across cisgender representation in these films: violent, sexual, sexually violent, and postmortem. I explore the ways in which a white, heterosexist imagination has appropriated this once productive genre through the violent treatment of bodies. This exposes the means by which hegemonic, oppressive structures assimilate and sanitize counter-media. This article provides an important discussion on how counterculture is transformed in capital systems and then used to uphold the very structures it seeks to confront. The result of such assimilation is the violent treatment and stereotyping of marginalized identities in which creative efforts now pursue new means of brutalization and dehumanization.

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Intuition, Evidence, and Carroll's Theory of Narrative

Projections ◽

10.3167/proj.2020.140104 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 37-57

Author(s):

Jonathan Frome

Keyword(s):

Explanatory Power ◽

Narrative Structure ◽

Audience Engagement ◽

Film Genre

AbstractOver the last thirty years, Noël Carroll has elaborated his theory of erotetic narration, which holds that most films have a narrative structure in which early scenes raise questions and later scenes answer them. Carroll's prolific publishing about this theory and his expansion of the theory to issues such as audience engagement, narrative closure, and film genre have bolstered its profile, but, despite its high visibility in the field, virtually no other scholars have either criticized or built upon the theory. This article uses Carroll's own criteria for evaluating film theories—evidentiary support, falsifiability, and explanatory power—to argue that erotetic theory's strange position in the field is due to its intuitive examples and equivocal descriptions, which make the theory appear highly plausible even though it is ultimately indefensible.

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