It's hard to know where to start when trying to capture, in a few sentences, the enormous contribution that David made to my life, and those of my peers—such was its depth and extent. So I will begin at the beginning, or at least what was the beginning for me. Just after finishing up my undergrad degree in English at the University of Liverpool in 1984, I was looking to throw myself into the world of film. I'd taken a single film course, for which we'd been assigned the first edition of Film Art . These people seem to know a thing or two about film , I thought, so I guess I'll apply to their program, even if it is in this strange place called Wisconsin . I sent a handwritten note of inquiry to David, along with formal applications to Madison, NYU, and USC. David wrote back—and remember, this is the mid-1980s, when even a short reply required rather more effort than a few clicks on a computer keyboard—with a characteristically warm and encouraging response. (Meanwhile, from the East Coast and the West Coast: silence.)
Abstract The concept of contingent universality was introduced by David Bordwell in “Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision,” in response to generalized cultural constructionism. It was a valuable alternative to the dominant theoretical ideas of the time, especially that of arbitrariness (applied to film due to a misguided analogy with Saussurean “signifiers”). The present article begins by sketching Bordwell's account of contingent universality and briefly noting some of its benefits. It goes on to outline some of the problems raised by the concept of a contingent, cinematic universal and how these might be resolved, concentrating on the case he explores—shot/reverse shot—and drawing examples from Med Hondo's Soleil Ô .
Abstract Building on David Bordwell's praise of Ken Kwapis as a “director of consequence” and his formalist approach to studying directing, this article examines Kwapis's TV work to demonstrate how network television directors can achieve artistic distinction through conventional work. Drawing on interviews, his personal papers, and close episode analysis, this study shows how Kwapis's philosophy that “emotional content is where directorial authority lies” helped him create meaningful variations within standardized commercial frameworks. Using the two episodes of Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000) Kwapis directed as a case study, the article contributes to television studies’ understanding of directorial agency while expanding scholarly approaches to studying television authorship beyond “quality TV” and showrunner-centered analyses.
Abstract Contrary to common opinion within film scholarship, viewers experience inconspicuous mobile long takes as no more engaging, immersive, or continuous than scenes with cuts. Their primary aesthetic benefits, if any, lie in the transitions between different arrangements of camera positions and mise-en-scène elements. We should think of the mobile long take as a type of transition device with some distinct aesthetic benefits: Whereas cuts typically toggle between discrete stagings, long takes with camera and character movement enable spectators to observe one staging rearrange into another. Touch of Evil 's second long take has none of the self-conscious virtuosity of the film's famous opening shot, yet it was as carefully choreographed and difficult to stage. Analyzing the shot helps us determine whether inconspicuous mobile long takes add aesthetic benefits to a film. Such shots may offer no benefit, but, if they do, it's primarily in the transitions—when, right before our eyes, objects rearrange into multifarious, visually interesting, unpredictable, organic-seeming, and narratively meaningful movements of the camera and mise-en-scène.
Abstract David Bordwell's work has been widely received as primarily focusing on cognitive aspects in film aesthetics and its experience by spectators. Indeed, he specifically emphasized cognitive inferences in narrative films, even explicitly excluding affective aspects from his approach. But at the same time, he put forward a multi-level understanding of film aesthetics and spectatorship and followed a holistic understanding to filmic spectatorship that could not be reduced to “higher cognition.” The article will revisit Bordwell's concept of narrative cues to reflect on its implications and potentials for embodied and affective approaches to film aesthetics. It will be discussed whether and how stylistic devices can channel “explicit meanings” on an embodied and affective level, also beyond culturally and cognitively grounded meanings.
Abstract Mainstream complex films like Pulp Fiction and Memento have captivated audiences while challenging classical norms through narrational complexity. David Bordwell's seminal work mapped these formal strategies, emphasizing they are not qualitatively different from classical ones. However, there is growing recognition that these films offer a unique experience, where coherence is built through effortful and variable processes. Building on this, we introduce the TENCo model—Triadic Engagement with Narrational Complexity—which moves from narrative structure to how complexity is experienced. Drawing from media psychology and cognitive film theory, TENCo conceptualizes engagement as a dynamic process involving cognitive, affective, and appreciative dimensions. It distinguishes between narrational complexity (formal disruptions), complication (informational density), and perceived complexity (subjective experience), offering a framework to explain why some viewers persist through confusion while others disengage. TENCo emphasizes iterative meaning-making and emergent understanding, expanding Bordwell's analytical rigor to account for how complexity is processed, felt, and appreciated.
Abstract In Planet Hong Kong and other writings, David Bordwell greatly advanced the academic study of Hong Kong cinema. From a perspective of “stealth poetics,” Bordwell illuminated the craft practices, aesthetic norms, and spectatorial effects that characterize filmmaking in the region. Yet his work drew the ire of scholars wedded to an allegorical hermeneutics of Hong Kong cinema. In this article, I contrast Bordwell's bottom-up analysis with the culturalism that governs the scholarship. I rebut several tenacious criticisms that have clung to Bordwell's account of Hong Kong film, from Bordwell's status as a cultural outsider to his reliance on Hollywood cinema as a key frame of reference. Lastly, I seek to extend Bordwell's work by advancing a poetics of Hong Kong acting and performance.
David Bordwell's passing in 2024 reverberates throughout film studies, but especially for his many colleagues, mentees, former students, and cinephiles generally. It would be hard to exaggerate David Bordwell's role in the development of cognitive film studies. His work pointed the way for many of us in its rigor and precision. His attention to form and style and how they relate to viewer psychology has been unsurpassed. Bordwell was a tireless writer and blogger, and his work has a central place in film scholarship. He showed how fruitful the combination of cinema poetics and cognitive psychology could be. In fact, a poetics of film that ignores viewer perception and comprehension now seems thin and incomplete.
David Bordwell's reformulation of film historiography reintroduced style as a historical and empirical category, positioning it between the formalist rigor of semiotics and the contextual concerns of social and industrial history. Drawing from Jan Muka & rcaron;ovsk & yacute;'s concept of the aesthetic norm, he reinterpreted it through Ernst Gombrich's problem-solution model and the cognitive-psychological framework of schemata and mental models. By integrating sociological, psychological, technological, and functional dimensions of film style, Bordwell's historical poetics established a method for understanding how filmmakers negotiate competing functions and constraints to solve expressive problems. The "norm" thus serves as his Archimedean point-a balance between individual agency and collective convention that renders film stylistics intelligible without recourse to deterministic or essentialist histories.
David Bordwelltirelesslychampioned interdisciplinary approaches to the cognitive study of cinema, which inspired generations of film and media scholars. While his impact on cognitive psychologists is indelible, we are at an inflection point in the field of film psychology. Many psychological researchers now use fiction film as experimental material because it arguably mimics a naturalistic context to study attention, perception, and cognition. It is time to follow Bordwell's lead and make the same interdisciplinary argument to scholars within the fields of media psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience who use film as a naturalistic stimulus in their studies. Their programs of research will be incomplete if uninformed by theories and scholarship from the perspective of film studies because that scholarship helps characterize the practices of filmmaking, which affect how a film is cognitively and affectively experienced. To make our argument, we reflect upon Bordwell's influence on our own programs of research.
This article explains how David Bordwell's theory of classical Hollywood cinema changed over the years, comparing his writings from 1985 with later publications such as Reinventing Hollywood. While Bordwell continued to argue that narrative was a dominant principle in classical cinema, his definition of narrative grew more expansive, placing less emphasis on the causal chain and more emphasis on narrative dynamics. Extending this insight about classical narration to the study of classical style, I argue that stylistic devices, such as cinematography, do much more than causal clarification. Even in a storytelling context, a classical film may use cinematographyto hint, conceal, mislead, and reveal. Classical style can be eye-catching and emotionally charged, not in spite of narrative, and not in addition to narrative, but because of it.
Abstract This article analyzes the emotional attitudes of hospitality, trust, and gratitude in the context of the rescuer(s)-rescued relations found in contemporary superhero films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and DC Universe (DCU). The analysis is based on Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence's concept of the American monomyth. It would seem that the key factor for the monomythic adventures to even begin is the hospitality displayed by the threatened community toward the rescuer(s), and the trust laid upon them. And, at the end of a monomythic story, there ought to be expressions of gratitude on the part of the rescued toward their rescuer(s). However, the relations between the oppressed and their redeemers in the twenty-first-century monomythic stories are far more complex. In this article, I analyze factors and variables contributing to the complexity relations between the oppressed, the institutions representing the oppressed, and the (super)heroes.
This article re-examines “pleasure,” a key concept in feminist discourse on the ethical implications of rape representations, by analyzing the viewer's experience of sexual violence through the lens of psychophysiological processes underlying sexual arousal and the empathy mechanisms that underpin it. Drawing on psychological and neuroscientific evidence, the article argues that rape depictions evoke “motivational wanting” processes, in which hedonic pleasure is not an intrinsic component. Additionally, it suggests that different cinematic designs foster distinct wanting experiences, shaped by the interplay of three primary factors. Ultimately, this article provides an initial step toward a theoretical framework for nuanced discussions that move beyond the homogeneous notion of “pleasure,” thereby enabling the exploration of distinct wanting experiences to which ethical meanings can be ascribed.
Abstract This study conducts a systematic review of quantitative research examining the relationship between color and film genres, specifically focusing on the attributes of hue, saturation, and brightness. An extensive search of Web of Science and Scopus identified eight important articles on US film productions published in English. Given that most prior studies in this domain have been qualitative, the advent of quantitative studies offers novel insights. The results suggest that the correlation between color and genre is predominantly modest; still, distinct patterns were seen, including low saturation in action and adventure films, high saturation in animated films, and low brightness in horror films. Proportional weights of the provided findings were computed to assess consistency across research, emphasizing limited still important genre-specific color traits.
This article explores how narrative strategies—specifically dramatic irony and surprise—shape viewer engagement in the first season of the dystopian puzzle TV series Severance (Apple TV+, 2022–). It examines how these devices manage cognitive load and information distribution to influence both anticipatory and retrospective engagement. The analysis focuses on how dramatic irony and surprise operate within the temporal prolongation and multiplot structures of serialized television. Dramatic irony sustains engagement by creating a knowledge advantage for the viewer, prompting proactive and reactive inferences. Surprise, conversely, disrupts expectations and triggers cognitive restructuring as viewers re-evaluate earlier narrative events. We show how Severance strategically regulates information flow and viewer assumptions to deliver impactful plot twists that deepen character engagement and explore themes of identity and control. As a case study, the series highlights how streaming-era narratives leverage slow-building mysteries and strategic information management to balance emotional tension with cognitive complexity.
The article argues that the medium of serial television has the same matter as the medium of film, namely, moving images, but it does not have the same form, understood as the principle governing both the artist's manipulation of the matter and the audience's appreciation of the manipulated matter. It is argued that the medium of serial television shares with conceptual art a form that calls attention to underlying concepts whereby displays and episodes are constructed in conceptual art and serial television respectively. One might object that the episodes of a TV series, unlike the displays of a work of conceptual art, are ordered in a way that suggests that we should appreciate them as a whole narrative. The article replies that this does not prevent concept of a TV series from being the focus of appreciation but rather makes serial television conceptual in a peculiar way.
Medical television dramas have become a prominent genre, blending personal and professional narratives within healthcare settings. These series explore the lives of healthcare professionals, ethical dilemmas, and complex doctor–patient relationships while incorporating critical social issues such as abortion as pedagogical tools that shape public perceptions of healthcare and social debates. This article examines how medical dramas like New Amsterdam integrate sensitive topics into their storytelling, contributing to narrative ecosystems theory. Through this framework, the analysis explores mechanisms such as character embedding, narrative alignment, and long-term memory, demonstrating how social issues are woven into narratives and influence discourse. By analyzing the New Amsterdam episode “Maybe Tomorrow,” the article illustrates how narrative ecosystems function in serialized television and mirror societal debates on sensitive topics. The findings offer theoretical insights into narrative ecosystem dynamics, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between media narratives and social discourse, emphasizing medical dramas’ role in reflecting and influencing ongoing sociopolitical conversations.
This article takes the miniseries Unbelievable as its case study to explore how television series can use expectations toward the first episode for rhetorical effect. The first episode portrays the rape of a young woman and her ensuing encounter with male police officers who do not believe her, in line with rape myths. Yet this series sets up expectations in the first episode only to break with them. In the second episode, a pair of female detectives is introduced, and slowly and meticulously they connect the dots to find and prosecute a serial rapist. I argue that the marked change from the first and the second episode works as a plot twist, frame shifter beginning to articulate a feminist vision of police response to rape.
By accommodating the antihero programs in the context of aesthetic cognitivism on the one hand and philosophical theorizing about evil on the other, I explore insights—ethical goods, as Carl Plantinga refers to them—that these works give us into social and phenomenological aspects of evil, and I argue that they also serve as a philosophical probing of immorality and wickedness. I claim that antihero program is a subgenre of crime fiction and that it continues crime fiction's traditional interest in evil individuals and immoral actions, and I strengthen this view by relying on contemporary research in criminology. My account is based on analysis of the aesthetic features of these works, on the particular aspects of viewers’ long-term commitment to serialized fiction and the affective relations they develop for the characters, most notably their cognitive interest in the stories and the effective ties for the characters.
A key determinant of viewers' ability to derive moral understanding from movies may be their ability to understand and reflect upon the beliefs that underlie behavior. We therefore tested whether a measure of theory of mind would predict reflection on a movie and viewers' moral understanding of the film. We asked participants to write expressively about a lesson they derived from a film they had previously seen or were shown. Two studies demonstrated that theory of mind negatively predicted reflection but positively predicted moral understanding. This suggests that theory of mind aids in the online processing of films but may render further reflection superfluous. Furthermore, exploratory analyses indicating that a film's deviation from one's moral foundations spurs retrospective imaginative involvement.
