Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition

Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition analyses the universal attraction to films about emotional attachment.

Mette Kramer provides the first empirical consideration of the biological importance of films about social bonds, such as romantic films and melodramas in this captivating work, Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition. Whilst romantic films and melodramas have suffered from the negative reputation of communicating non-adaptive emotions, films about relationships continue to fascinate, leaving film theory with unanswered questions related to the fascination and function of relationships films.

This book focuses on Hollywood films for her analysis, as in Western culture, North American films influence our shared understanding of love and interpersonal schemas of relationship. Highlighting its relationship to contemporary cognitive film theory, Kramer concentrates on engagement with films about relationships, seen through the lens of attachment theory. Apart from focusing on recurring thematic and aesthetic characteristics in emotive films, this book emphasizes the role of identification, affect and cognition, along with their relationship to significant theorists within cognitive film theory: sympathetic character engagement (Noel Carroll), empathetic character engagement (Murray Smith) and intersubjective emotional resonance (Torben Grodal) from an attachment perspective.