Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition - by Mette Kramer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition is the first empirical consideration of the biological importance of films about social bonds, such as romantic films and melodramas. 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"--

Book Synopsis

Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition is a bold intervention that seeks to center the bodily and affective dimensions of film traditionally regarded as "feminine".

The author uses attachment theory in an interdisciplinary framework with an emphasis on biology and a species-based understanding of pro-social behavior to approach films about attachment motivations.

By blending affective and cognitive neuroscience research with tendencies deeply embedded in the humanities, this book makes a major contribution to the field of cognitive film theory. The focus on attachment theory also makes a meta-generic address via its focus on romance and melodrama that makes it useful for other narratives that overlap affective and generic boundaries. The book presents a model of attachment-film experiences with its inbuilt shifts in affective and cognitive regulative processes and makes an ambitious case for how engagement with attachment film viewing can be understood from both a universal and an individual perspective.

Review Quotes

Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition provides a unique approach in advocating for studying film that traverses the natural sciences and the humanities. This positions the book alongside others that also draw on neurological studies to inform their film analysis and adopts a clear and forceful cognitivist approach to the study of 'attachment films.'
Stephen Charbonneau, Associate Professor, School of Communication & Multimedia Studies, Florida Atlantic University, USA

The book's focused attention on ideas of social attachment, its consideration of frequently neglected but important genres, and its single-minded commitment to a specific model of cognitive study - derived from Bowlby - make it an important intervention in the field of film studies. Work on cognition continues to be a growth area in film studies, though arguably one dominated by a few key figures, among which Mette Kramer is now counted.
Joe Kember, Professor of Film and Visual Culture, University of Exeter, UK

About the Author

Mette Kramer is a Danish scholar in film studies and cognitive psychology. She earned a PhD in film studies and cognitive psychology and has written on emotion, cognition and film in a number of articles. She is the co-author of Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film (2018) and is currently writing a book on the psychology of attachment style in romantic relationships.