Therapy and Emotions in Film and Television: The Pulse of Our Times

211 Pages·2015·4.575 MB·English

by  Claudia Wassmann (eds.)

Therapy and Emotions in Film and Television
A lso byClaudia Wassman:
Die Macht der Emotionen: Wie Gefühle unser Denken und Handeln beeinflussen
The Brain as Icon – Reflections on the Representation of Brain Imaging
on American Television, 1984–2002. In R. Heil, A. Kaminski, M. Stippak,
& A. Unger (Eds.), Tensions and Convergences: Technological and Aesthetic
Transformations of Societyy(pp. 153–162)
Evaluating Threat, Solving Mazes, and Having the Blues. In J. A. Fisher (Ed.),
Gender and the Science of Difference: Cultural Politics of Contemporary Science and
Medicine (pp. 67–87)
Therapy and Emotions in
Film and Television
The Pulse of Our Times
Edited by
Claudia Wassmann
Universidad de Navarra, Spain
Selection and editorial matter © Claudia Wassmann 2015
Chapters © Contributors 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-57889-4 ISBN 978-1-137-54682-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137546821
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Therapy and emotions in film and television : the pulse of our times / [edited
by] Claudia Wassmann, Universidad de Navarra, Spain.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Psychoanalysis and motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures – Psychological
aspects. 3. Television programs – Psychological aspects. 4. Emotions in motion
pictures. 5. Emotions on television. I. Wassmann, Claudia, 1959– editor.
PN1995.9.P783T63 2015
791.430199—dc23 2015020304
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments viii
Notes on Contributors ix
1 An Introduction: Therapy and Emotions in Film and
Television 1
Claudia Wassmann
2 The Big Holiday, Work, and the British Family,
1930–Present 17
Sandra Trudgen Dawson
3 American Anger Control and the Role of Popular Culture 34
P eter N. Stearns
4 Beyond Emotional Intelligence: Anger, Emotional
Stupidity, and Lifestyle Issues 52
Ursula Oberst
5 Empty Husks: Age, Disability, Care, Death, and Amour 72
Sally Chivers
6 Re-enacting Trauma in Film and Television:
Restaging History, Revisiting Pain 89
Stella Bruzzi
7 The Relationships between Therapy Culture,
Psychology and Cinema: The Case of Woody Allen 9 9
M iguel Ángel Huerta Floriano
8 Therapy Cultures in Society: A Polycontextual Approach 115
R obin Kurilla
9 The Emotional Framing of Terrorism in Online Media:
The Case of C harlie Hebdo 134
Omar V. Rosas
10 A Tentative Conclusion: The Pulse of Our Times 153
Claudia Wassmann
v
vi Contents
R eferences 169
Filmographyy 186
Index 189
List of Illustrations
Figures
2.1 The Drive Duporth Holiday Camp 1 8
2.2 Squires Gate Holiday Camp 21
2.3 Pig & Whistle Bar, Butlin’s Holiday Camp, Clacton 22
5.1 Screen capture from A mourr (2012) directed by
Michael Haneke 78
5.2 Screen capture from Amourr (2012) directed by
Michael Haneke 83
6.1 S creen capture from Abaham Bomba, Shoah (1985)
directed by Claude Lanzmann 92
6.2 Screen capture from Abraham Zapruder (1963) frame 312 93
6.3 Screen capture from Abraham Zapruderr (1963) frame 313 94
6.4 Screen capture from T he Act of Killingg (2012) by Joshua
Oppenheimer 97
7.1 Screen capture from S pellboundd (1945) directed by
Alfred Hitchcock is a reference point in the portrayal of
therapy in cinema 107
7.2 Screen capture from the opening sequence of
Annie Hall (1977) directed by Woody Allen is a
kind of confession 109
7.3 Woody Allen uses a split screen technique to
confront therapy sessions, screen capture from
Annie Hall (1977) 112
9.1 E ditorial from L e Monde ‘Libre, debout, ensemble’ (2015) 139
9.2 ‘Point de vue de Boris Cyrulnik, neuropsychiatre.’
15 January 2015. Screen captureTV7 1 48
Table
8.1 Film themes 118
vii
Acknowledgments
This collective volume is the result of an international conference
titled T aking the Pulse of Our Times: Media, Therapy and Emotions, which
I convened at the University of Navarra, Spain, in November 2014.
My sincere thanks go to all of the participants of the conference as
well as to the members of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS)
at the University of Navarra. In particular, we would like to thank
Ana Marta González, head of the research project ‘Emotional Culture
and Identity’, for her support of our ideas, and also Estefanía Berjón
for her kind and wonderful help in organizing the conference.
Our special thanks go to Daniel Moulin, University of Navarra,
and Sebastian Greppo, Center of the University of Chicago in Paris,
who provided productive feedback and corrections for some of the
chapters in this volume.
The workshop and this collective volume are part of the research
project ‘Scientific Concepts of Emotion and Cultural Identities’
(SCECI), conducted by Claudia Wassmann. The project studies the
scientific concepts of emotion that psycho-medical research has
produced between 1950 and 2000, and investigates if and how these
concepts have informed emotional culture(s) and identity in post-
industrial societies in Western Europe, assessed through the lens
of cultural productions such as films and television. This research
was supported by the European Commission FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF
Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships For Career Development
[Grant Agreement PIEF-GA-2012–327538 SCECI].
We also wish to thank Chris Penfold at Palgrave Macmillan for
seeing promise in this collected volume.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Stella Bruzziis Professor of Film and Television Studies and Director
of Research at the University of Warwick. From 2006 to 2008 she
was Head of Department and from 2008 to 2011 she was Chair of
the Faculty of Arts. She did her BA at Manchester University, and
her PhD at Bristol, also working for three years as a researcher for
the BBC. In 2013 she was made a fellow of the British Academy. Her
primary areas of research include documentary film and television;
fashion and film; and masculinity and fathers in Hollywood cinema.
In 2011 she was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship
for her study titled ‘Approximation: Documentary, History and
Staging Reality’, which she is currently writing up as a monograph
(forthcoming 2016–17). She is the author of the following mono-
graphs: Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (1997);
New Documentaryy (2000 and 2006); B ringing Up Daddy: Fatherhood
and Masculinity in Post-war Hollywoodd (2005); Seven Up (2007); Men’s
Cinema: Masculinity and Mise-en-Scène in Hollywoodd(2013).
Sally Chivers is Professor of English Literature and Founding
Executive Member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society at Trent
University, Peterborough, Canada. She is the author of From Old
Woman to Older Women: Contemporary Culture and Women’s Narratives
and T he Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema as well as
co-editor of T he Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film. She has
also authored journal articles and book chapters on representations
of aging and disability in Canada and beyond. She is a member of
the international research team ‘Re-imagining Long-Term Residential
Care’ which seeks promising practices to transform institutional care
for seniors. Her current research focuses on the interplay between
aging and disability in the public sphere, with a focus on care narra-
tives in the context of austerity.
Sandra Trudgen D awsonis acting Assistant Director of Programming
and Communications in the Honors Program at Northern Illinois
University where she also teaches in the History Department and
ix