Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics

238 Pages·2016·0.81 MB·English

by  Dean Keith Simonton

Great Flicks
This page intentionally left blank
Great Flicks
Scientifi c Studies of Cinematic
Creativity and Aesthetics
Dean Keith Simonton
1
2011
1
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence in
research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offi ces in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simonton, Dean Keith.
Great fl icks : scientifi c studies of cinematic creativity and aesthetics / by Dean Keith Simonton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-975203-4
1. Motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures—Aesthetics. 3. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) I. Title.
PN1995.S498 2010
791.4301—dc22 2010009152
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To Kazie,
my fi lm companion
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
This book came about as the result of a serendipitous event. Since 1975
I’ve been churning out hundreds of publications on genius, creativity, and
aesthetics. Over those years, I would study outstanding creators and
creations in science, psychology, philosophy, fi ction, drama, poetry, paint-
ing, sculpture, classical music, and even opera—but absolutely nothing
about cinema. Moreover, since 1990 I’ve been teaching a popular course on
“Genius, Creativity, and Leadership.” Yet not once did I ever discuss cine-
matic creativity or aesthetics. And then one day a student asked, in quest of
a term paper topic, “What about fi lm?” Indeed, what about fi lm? After all,
isn’t it a form of creativity? Can’t there be a cinematic genius? Doesn’t
cinema deserve its own empirical aesthetics? At once I realized that the
question was a good one. I also recognized that I could not give an equally
good answer. Surely I had done no research on the matter. Nor was I famil-
iar with much relevant research. Published studies could be counted on the
fi ngers of one hand. So bad was the ignorance that the poor student had to
change to another topic for his term paper. He wanted to write a review and
critique of the research, but there wasn’t enough published in scientifi c
journals that was worth reviewing and critiquing.
H ence, I set to work, methodically compiling a huge database on liter-
ally thousands of fi lms. The earliest fi lms dated from the late 1920s and
about 200 new ones were added annually. For each fi lm, I recorded tons of
information, at least to the extent that the data were available. In 2002 the
fi rst analysis of this database was published, and many other investigations
were published since then. These articles appeared in such scientifi c
vii
viii Preface
journals asPsychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, the Journal of
Creative Behavior, the C reativity Research Journal , Empirical Studies of
the Arts, and even S ex Roles, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology ,
Psychology and Marketing , and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society .
I also began to present my fi ndings at professional meetings in North
America and Europe.
I n addition, I did everything in my power to read every pertinent scientifi c
study, no matter what the discipline. So I’ve poured through journals in
sociology, economics, management, marketing, communications, journalism,
broadcasting, history, musicology, statistics, and, naturally, psychology.
I cast a wide net because the subject has a broad interest. The only restric-
tion on the scope was that the study had to be s cientifi c and that it had to
have some relevance to the question of c inematic creativity and aesthetics .
By “creativity” I mean the processes that yield creative cinema, and by
“aesthetics” I mean the processes that lead us to judge a fi lm to be creative.
A fi lm is deemed “creative” if it claims both novelty and impact. It’s new
and it works.
These restrictions aside, I hope that this book can reach the broadest
possible audience. Judging from theater attendance and DVD rentals, a
respectable number of people are interested in fi lm. And many of these
moviegoers have probably asked themselves, “What makes a great fl ick?”
This volume should provide some answers.
Contents

1. Prologue: Scientist as Cinema Connoisseur? 3
2. Oscars, Golden Globes, and Critics:
Consensus or Dissension? 9
3. Story, Sights, Tricks, and Song: What
Really Counts? 33
4. Rave Reviews, Movie Awards, and Box
Offi ce Bucks: Which Doesn’t Belong? 49
5. The Script: Does the Narrative’s
Nature Matter? 79
6. The Auteur: Are Directors Experts or Artists? 114
7. The Stars: Sexism in Cinema? 131
8. Music: Is Silence Golden? 152
9. Razzies: Is Bad the Opposite of Good? 176
10. Epilogue: The Science of Cinema 190
ix