Abstract
This article examines the role of moods in aesthetic experience by focussing on film. It considers specifically the function of moods in relation to narrative and aesthetic perspectives which a film provides and which recipients are invited to adopt. I distinguish superficial transitory moods from profound enduring ones. This differentiation is important with regard to the question why moods in film matter and why they are different from emotions. I will focus on Lars von Trier’s film “Melancholia” and claim that the moods of the leading characters can at one and the same time count as moods and perspectives on the world. Their moods are strongly connected to how they perceive their world, evaluate it, and “are” in the world. By being put into a mood that assails human beings holistically, viewers get acquainted with a perspective of a fictional character in an encompassing manner that includes mind and body. However, it will be discussed whether the viewers feel profound or superficial moods when engaging in the moods of the film and the characters and whether they are infatuated or can remain aesthetic distance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
If we say that an aesthetic object has an emotion or a mood it is meant metaphorically: The object does not have the affect itself but represents and expresses it.
These two implications are, however, not seperate. When an artwork succeeds in inducing a mood in a viewer that is crucial for aesthetic appreciation, it might also lead to an “aesthetic resonance” with the work as a whole.
I use the concepts “film”, “movie” and “moving image” interchangeably. The differences are not relevant to the present investigation, which focuses on fictional narrative films.
However, Smith subordinates moods too strongly to emotions proper instead of recognizing them as autonomous affective states which have a central aesthetic role for their own. Cf. Smith 2003, 38 and 41 pp.
This epistemic impact can also be attributed to emotions. However, it is important that knowledge has to be understood here in a broader sense than as justified true believe: A broader concept of a so called non-propositional knowledge also implies something like practical knowledge (how to do something), empathic knowledge (how other’s feel), and phenomenal experiential knowledge (cf. Jacobson 1996; Gabriel 2012; Rowe 2009).
The German word “Stimmung” refers not only to moods of a human being or an artwork but can also refer to the atmosphere of an environment, landscape, building etc. “Atmosphere” is a crucial concept, especially in German phenomenology, for example in relation to affective states or to aesthetic experience. The German philosopher Hermann Schmitz defines emotions as atmospheres which pervade space and time and are transformed by subjects into private emotions. (Schmitz 1998).
Lars von Trier can be mentioned in a row with two other contemporary arthouse filmmakers, namely Michael Haneke and David Lynch. All three show a fascination with cinematic moods. At the same time they cultivate a cinema of “confusion” by using paradoxical strategies. They combine diegetic absorption and confusing confrontation and by so doing reveal both the aesthetic significance and the manipulative power of film. Cf. Loren and Metelmann 2013; Sinnerbrink 2012, 151).
It belongs to the genre which Grodal calls „passive melodrama“: stories in which the characters are passive victims of fate (Grodal 2004, 137 and 149). However, Melancholia also gives room for active change, at least in the case of the depressive Justine who becomes more active the nearer the planet comes.
As Grodal has shown „self-sacrifice“is a typical motif in Lars von Trier’s melodramas (Grodal 2004, 137).
Of course in art history the notion of “central perspective” is also important. I will leave this meaning aside here, though.
Cf. Fn 7.
References
Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2000). The subtlety of emotions. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Methuen / Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Brooks, C. (1956). The well wrought urn: Studies in the structure of poetry. San Diego / New York / London: Harvest Books.
Carroll, N. (2003). Art and mood. The Monist, 86(4), 521–555.
Carroll, Noël (2011). On some affective relations between audiences and the characters in popular fictions. In A. Coplan & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy. Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (pp. 162–184). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J. (2005) (first 1934). Art as experience, New York: Perigee Books.
Fingerhut, J., Hufendiek, R., & Wild, M. (2013). Philosophie der Verkörperung. Grundlagentexte zu einer aktuellen Debatte. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Gabriel, Gottfried (2012). Carnap, pseudo-problems, and ontological questions. In: Carnap’s ideal of explication and naturalism, ed. Pierre Wagner. Basingstoke: Palgrave, S. 23–33.
Gaut, B. (2006). Identification and emotion in narrative film. In N. Carroll & J. Choi (Eds.), Philosophy of film and motion pictures. An anthology (pp. 260–270). Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Goldie, P. (2002). The emotions. In A philosophical exploration. Oxford: University Press.
Grodal, T. (1997). Moving pictures. A new theory of film genres, feelings, and cognition. Oxford: Clarendon Press / Oxford University Press.
Grodal, Torben (2004). Frozen flows in von Trier’s Oeuvre. In: Visual authorship. Creativity and intentionality in media, Ed. By Torben Grodal, Bente Larsen, Iben Thorving Laursen, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen, 129–168.
Hufendiek, R. (2015). Embodied emotions. A Naturalist approach to a normative Phenomenon. London: Routledge.
Jacobson, D. (1996). Sir Philip Sidney's dilemma: On the ethical function of narrative art. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 54(4), 327–336.
Kant, I. (1914). The critique of judgement, translated with introduction and notes by J.H. Bernard (2nd ed. revised). London: Macmillan.
Loren, S., & Metelmann, J. (2013). In D. Lynch & L. von Trier (Eds.), Irritation of life. The subversive melodrama of Michael Haneke. Marburg: Schüren.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1994). The phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.
Plantinga, C. (2009). Moving Viewers. American Film and the Spectator's Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Plantinga, C. (2012). Art moods and human moods in narrative cinema. New Literary History, 43, 455–475.
Robinson, J. (2012). On being moved by architecture. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism., 70(4), 337–353.
Rowe, M. (2009). Literature, knowledge, and the aesthetic attitude. Ratio XXII, 4, 375–397.
Schmitz, H. (1998): Der Leib, der Raum und die Gefühle, Ostfeldern: arcaden.
Scruton, R. (1997), The aesthetics of music, Oxford.
Sinnerbrink, R. (2012). Stimmung: Exploring the aesthetics of mood. In: Screen 53:2 148–163.
Smith, M. (1997). Engaging characters. Fiction, emotion, and the cinema. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Smith, G. M. (2003). Film structure and the emotion system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sobchack, V. (2004). Carnal thoughts. Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Von Trier, L. (2011). Melancholia. Denmark et al.
Voss, C. (2004). Narrative Emotionen. Eine Untersuchung über Möglichkeiten und Grenzen philosophischer Emotionstheorien. Berlin / New York: De Gruyter.
Voss, C. (2013). Der Leihkörper. Erkenntnis und Ästhetik der Illusion. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Wellbery, D. (2003). Stimmung. In: Historisches Wörterbuch Ästhetischer Grundbegriffe, hg. Karlheinz Barck et al., Bd. 5. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 703–733.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the participants of the workshop The Meaning of Moods and of the Kolloquium of Angelika Krebs which both held place in December 2015 at the University of Basel. Special thanks to Stephan Meyer from the University of Basel. Furthermore I am most grateful for the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers!
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schmetkamp, S. Gaining Perspectives on Our Lives: Moods and Aesthetic Experience. Philosophia 45, 1681–1695 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9843-y
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9843-y