scholarly journals Living in the Present: Rethinking the Paradox of Suspense through Videogames

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Atkinson ◽  
Farzad Parsayi

In the study of film, Nöel Carroll (2001) coined the term the “paradox of suspense” to refer to a situation in which rewatching a film continues to invoke suspenseful feelings. According to the paradox, the tension associated with anticipation and uncertainty persists even though the spectator definitely knows what will happen (Carroll 2001). Many of the articles on the paradox and suspense examine the narrative events shaping spectator or player knowledge (Branigan 1992; Gerrig 1997; Ortony, Clore, and Collins 1988; Prieto-Pablos 1998; Smuts 2008; Yanal 1996), however, this paper takes a slightly different approach by addressing factors that contribute to the feeling of suspense irrespective of the awareness of specific narrative events. By examining videogames, we also shift the frame of reference from narration to gameplay and the way players prepare for suspenseful events. We argue that videogames require a particular attitude manifest in the gameplay that continues to foster suspense even in the replaying of a game.

1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. Morris-Jones

Those who kindly invited me to give this lecture showed some resistance to its sub-title. I insisted on ‘a view from the sidelines’ because I wished to emphasize that my remarks would be based on my own presence at the events of 1947 and confined to those matters with which I had direct acquaintance. This is still largely true: mine is in part an undisguisedly personal tale. But the matter is rather more complicated. For one thing, while I was certainly a spectator I was also able for a couple of months in 1947 to scamper on to a segment of New Delhi's field of fateful play, even to get a touch or two of the ball, before returning to my place on the terraces. But for the purpose of this lecture I could not content myself with recollections; I have, as it were, examined the slow re-plays of the television cameras. In trying to match my memories, diaries and letters from 1947 with the files at India Office Records, there have, I confess, been phases of bewilderment on the way to such modest and provisional enlightenment as I can offer. It is not simply that in the 34 years the world has moved on, the perspective has changed; that is a problem which the historian's whole skill is devoted to overcome. The difficulty is aggravated when the spectator cum minor actor in the drama of yesteryear puts on the historian's robe; for not only the world but he with it has changed.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
María-del-Rosario Fernández-Falero

The challenge of the electronic commerce for the new century is going to be the step to the digital television, so that we go away to having to adapt at the rate of a television been founded on the diffusion, to a set of services of digital video based on the access. Of this form, the spectator of television is going to meet the possibility of interacting with the way, which supposes a change in the industry of the broadcast, so then though till now they were the distribution companies of information and entertainment the only ones with possibilities of controlling such events, the possibility of interaction the way on the part of the spectators of the digital television it will allow them intervening in the diffusion of information, which supposes a significant change for the hearing of the television. The companies must elaborate contents directed a users who are going to have access to will: it is necessary to offer them what want, when they want - this is VOD (video on demand) - Then the digital television not only is going to modify the way of doing television, but also the way of seeing television. The electronic market is guaranteeing positions in the commercial Spanish panorama, growth that becomes clear in the increase so much of the number of users as of the volume of business, of the number of economic operations by Internet and of the number of web pages of companies dedicated to the trade across the Net. This positive evolution of the market shows how a way technologically so new as it is Internet, has allowed that in only 15 years it could speak about a historical evolution of the same one. This makes foresee that the step and evolution of the electronic market from Internet to the digital television could have a similar evolution in acceptance and consolidation. Finally, the future of the electronic commerce not only is subject to the appearance of new commercial models, but also to the technology; this way, the following step, technologically speaking, it is that of the digital television, which interactive and to allow to the user a use similar to that of Internet, does to the being that the challenge of the electronic trade is to go on to this way and to evolve in agreement with the characteristics of the same one. The first problem to which one is going to face this market is that of the user's change: in Spain the Internet user (according to the AECE, Spanish Association of Electronic Trade) is for the most part a male, with an age understood between 25 and 34 years; the television, nevertheless, is a very spread way and within reach of all, which will suppose a change both in the content and in the way of presenting the information (definitively, the product that is wanted to sell). El reto del comercio electrónico para el nuevo siglo va a ser el paso a la televisión digital, de manera que nos vamos a tener que adaptar al cambio de una televisión fundada en la difusión, a un conjunto de servicios de video digital basados en el acceso. De esta forma, el espectador de televisión se va a encontrar con la posibilidad de interactuar con el medio, lo que supone un cambio en la industria de la teledifusión, pues si bien hasta ahora eran las empresas distribuidoras de información y entretenimiento las únicas con posibilidades de controlar tales eventos, la posibilidad de interacción con el medio por parte de los espectadores de la televisión digital permitirá a estos intervenir en la difusión de información, lo que supone un cambio significativo para la audiencia de la televisión. Las empresas deben elaborar contenidos dirigidos a un usuario que va a tener acceso a voluntad: hay que ofrecerle lo que quiera, cuando quiera -es decir VOD (video on demand)- Luego la televisión digital no sólo va a modificar la forma de hacer televisión, sino también la forma de ver televisión. El mercado electrónico está afianzando posiciones en el panorama comercial español, crecimiento que se hace patente en el aumento tanto del número de usuarios como del volumen de negocio, del número de operaciones económicas por Internet y del número de páginas web de empresas dedicadas al comercio a través de la Red. Esta evolución positiva del mercado muestra cómo un medio tecnológicamente tan joven como es Internet, ha permitido que en apenas 15 años se pueda hablar de una evolución histórica del mismo. Esto hace prever que el paso y evolución del mercado electrónico desde Internet a la televisión digital pueda tener una evolución parecida en aceptación y consolidación. Finalmente, el futuro del comercio electrónico no sólo está sujeto a la aparición de nuevos modelos comerciales, sino también a la tecnología; así, el siguiente paso, tecnológicamente hablando, es el de la televisión digital, la cual por ser interactiva y permitir al usuario un uso parecido al de Internet, hace que el reto del comercio electrónico sea pasar a este medio y evolucionar de acuerdo con las características del mismo. Uno de los primeros problemas a los que se va a enfrentar este mercado es el del cambio de usuario: en España el usuario de Internet (según la AECE, Asociación Española de Comercio Electrónico)es mayoritariamente varón, con una edad comprendida entre 25 y 34 años; la televisión, sin embargo, es un medio muy difundido y al alcance de todos, lo que supondrá un cambio tanto en el contenido como en la forma de presentar la información (en definitiva, el producto que se desea vender).


Perichoresis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Phia Steyn

Abstract The purpose of this article is to explore the religious responses within the Orange Free State republic to the environmental crises in the period c. 1896 to c. 1898. During this time the state was subjected to severe drought, flooding, and the outbreak of various diseases. The article examines the way in which these afflictions where interpreted by the Christian and wider community in terms of God’s wrath for unrepented sins. The persistence of synchronistic elements of folk religion was seen to have brought plagues like those found in Exodus which were visited upon the Pharaoh and his kingdom. This interruptive frame work led to calls for national repentance, but also a resistance to scientific and medical resolutions to the crises. It also reinforced racial divisions. Black Africans were perceived as the carriers of the disease so their movement was prohibited. The article goes on to show how the effect of this biblical frame of reference protected the concept of God as the ever-present active God in every aspect of life against the scientific rationalism of the age, while at the same time ironically hindering the work of mission and the life of the church.


2019 ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Barbara Cassin

Cassin distinguishes between the way Freud read the Greeks, reinterpreting their great myths in allegorical fashion, and Lacan’s more nuanced attention to the philosophical arguments, notably of the Sophists and Presocratics, and their understanding of language, speech, or logos. As Lacan says, “The psychoanalyst is a sign of the presence of the sophist in our time, but with a different status,” and Jacques the Sophistbecomes an extended commentary on this sentence.Sophistry is often presented as philosophy’s negative alter ego, its bad other, yet the two are shown to be inextricably bound together. Cassin uses the term “logology,”coined by Novalis, to connect the shared approach of both Lacan and the Sophists to language, which becomes uncoupled from universal truth as an Aristotelian frame of reference.


2015 ◽  
pp. 115-128
Author(s):  
Emily Hughes

This chapter studies the genre and narrative of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002). The narrative of Talk to Her flits between a double- and single-stranded plot line, plays with time with sometimes careless abandon, and contains coincidences that verge of the ridiculous. But yet, far from alienating the spectator, the narrative of Talk to Her pleasingly draws one in and lures the spectator into a position where they are able to suspend their disbelief, enjoy and engage with the plot. The spectator familiar with Almodóvar's films somewhat expects an unconventional narrative and thus is likely to find it unobtrusive. Meanwhile, like most Almodóvar's films, Talk to Her is hard to classify in terms of genre. Unlike the Hollywood system that relies heavily on either star or genre marketing, the marketing for Almodóvar's films relies heavily on his own status as an award-winning auteur film-maker. Talk to Her is thus not bound by generic convention in the way that many Hollywood films are.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Emőke Simon

Abstract Considered as one of the main figures of the avant-garde lyrical cinema, Stan Brakhage questions perception. His language of inquiry constantly confronts the spectator with the limits of visual experience of the world and the multiple possibilities of their transgression. Critically addressing one of his short films, Visions in Meditation n°l (1989),1 this analysis aims to discuss the way movement may become a principle of perception, that is to say, according to Gilles Deleuze’s definition - a mode of transgressing the frame of representation. Reappropriating the cinematographic grammar and submitting it to a vibrating movement, Brakhage invents a rhythm which paves the way for a transcendental experience, meanwhile proposing a reflection on the meditative possibilities of the film in terms of the image in meditation. Gilles Deleuze’s way of thinking of cinema in Cinema 1: Movement-image, as well as Slavoj Žižek’s writings on cinema, allows one to consider movement in its cinematographic and philosophical meaning, a project which in Brakhage’s case seems to be primordial


Paragraph ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Piccini

Concerns with screening embodiment have focused on the way in which cinema invites the spectator to consider a lived sense of the human body as a material subject that feels its own subjectivity. In this paper, I suspend the return of gesture to the transcendental human body. Gesture practises and produces complex and diverse bodies, bodies that do not precede their intra-actions but emerge through them. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad, I consider gesture in television that concerns archaeological practices in order to ask how gesture operates in this televisual subgenre to invite new ways of thinking about the human and other-than-human. Focusing on archaeology on television, I consider entangled gestures as intra-acting, material-discursive boundary-making practices that congeal and fix what we come to know as discrete, bounded bodies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-174
Author(s):  
Doru Aftanasiu

Abstract What could we possibly mean by the expression “composition role”? To this question we will try to find an answer as comprehensive as possible. Are we talking only about those “character roles” mentioned by Stanislavsky? This reference can be considered, since all those character roles require stage composition, the way Stanislavsky described his own acting experiences. But is this the only landmark? Should we label as composition roles only the characters that demand text-triggered stage composition? Indeed, there are characters that assume, within their construction, elements that do not belong to the actor as an individual. But are these the only cases when the term applies? The composition role is therefore not limited to only a few obvious milestones identified in the text. On a closer look, some characters may require a stage composition based on external elements, even if this problem is not apparent. Yet we must not misunderstand things and come to the conclusion that all roles, following a deep psychological analysis, become composition roles. If we agree that the construction of a character involves many elements pertaining to externalization, we must consider the cases where such suggestions originate from the director. Some directors claim scenic effects from the actors, sometimes contradicting the natural line of the character created by the author, maybe even completely modifying its construction. How reprehensible, however, is the acting effect? Has it only arisen from a desire to simulate virtuosity? The term “effect” in composition can be accepted in the sense of the element helping to achieve the contrasts indispensable to the stage creation, about which Michael Chekhov speaks in To the Actor. He confers to it a broader acceptance. Solutions not related to elementary normality can give the actor an unbearable sense of awkwardness, inevitably leading to effort. This effort will not go unnoticed by the spectator. And the spectator, almost always without hesitation, gives a negative verdict to such a performance. And yet, visible manifestations that seem to be chaotic can be lived from the inside, which averts effort in interpretation and artificiality. The actor can avoid some clumsiness in emotions, clumsiness that is spoken about by Dario Fo, among others.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2021-2) ◽  
pp. 68-83
Author(s):  
Peter de Cupere

The sense of smell is a powerful sense that offers many possibilities. To speak of olfactory art, there must be the intention to use odour or olfaction as both context and concept of the work of art. For this, we speak about the terms Olfactory Context and Olfactory Concept. The Olfactory Context can be divided into the Intrinsic and Intentional Odour Values. The intrinsic odour value brings with it their significance, while the intentional odour value gives an extra meaning to a smell. In addition, the Olfactory Perception is part of the Olfactory Concept of the artwork. To perceive this, the smell must be transferred to the spectator. The way in which an odour is transferred in a work largely determines how the smell is interpreted in relation to the work. The odour transfer and odour situation determine how an odour gets to the viewer. We call these methods of odour transfer Olfactory Transfers and divide them into five categories: Flowers, Smell Devices, Scent Spaces, Time and Translations. In most cases, Olfactory Transfers are used in crossovers. Together with the various possibilities of using the Olfactory Context, they also demonstrate the Complexity of Olfactory Art. The 1st Olfactory Art Manifest explains the differences in olfactory art, while the 2nd Olfactory Art Manifest demonstrates the Complexity of Olfactory Art.


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