Cognitive Science and Theorizing about Moving Images

In a recent post David Bordwell discusses the uses of a cognitive approach to film studies- an approach perhaps codified by the creation of the the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image in 2006. Bordwell is President of the Society. His initial statement about two broad approaches to theorizing about film are good food for thought for new researchers such as undergraduates, and point to the particular interdisciplinarity of film studies.

"There are, roughly, two ways to think about doing film theory. One way is to look at a body of research or reflection in some established area (history, philosophy, psychology, etc.) and ask: What can it tell me about movies? So you might look at Freudian psychoanalysis or Gestalt perceptual psychology as a whole and then home in on ideas that seem to have relevance to cinema.

The other way to do film theory is to look closely at some filmic phenomenon and ask: What’s the best way to understand this aspect of movies? Your reading and thinking might then lead you to adjacent fields of inquiry for help. In the first instance, you start broad and move to particular cases. In the second, you start with particular cases and explore what broader ideas or information can shed light on them."

Bordwell goes on to give examples of how ideas from the cognitive sciences can be used to explain how we understand or engage with motion pictures, and how he has seen it as an alternative to the psychoanalytic approach. I often remind undergraduate students doing library research in cinema studies to look to resources in the social sciences as well as humanities. There's a wealth of information in research tools like PsycInfo to offer inspiration for fresh approaches at every level of scholarship.