Spectatorship as a play on moral ambiguities: Neuro-evolutionary semiotic approach to lowly arousal emotions
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Jui-Pi Chien
Abstract
This study seeks to outline a neuro-evolutionary semiotic model for our perception and interpretation of moral ambiguities in the wake of neuroaesthetics. This model is actually an integration of the Saussurean network of differences and the recently discovered default mode network: it serves on the one hand to rectify automatic responses generated by the mirror system in real-life situations, and on the other, to expand the applicability of the sign system for our appreciation of eerie or scary details found in the arts. Such a framework functions not only to blur binary oppositions set between high and lowly arousal emotions, but also to enhance our skills and confidence in dealing with uncertainties and oddities found in the arts. As opposed to experimental schemes devised in neuroaesthetics, which quantify our instant ratings of specific audial and visual inputs, the neuro-evolutionary model allows us some freedom and flexibility to re-evaluate our perceptions of motives concealed in characters’ behaviors. This study therefore enlarges on a qualitative approach to conceptualizing spectatorship in the world of art. We as intelligent and self-governing spectators should manage to align with odd characters’ positions so as to regain meaning, understanding, and harmony from our dealings. By way of comparing and contrasting two film characters’ dealings with valuable paintings and endearing families, the author argues for the fruitful functioning of the neuro-evolutionary sign system in revising our biases against seemingly immoral characters. It is observed that the sign system is characterized with the capacity of multiplying meaningful connections between characters’ motives, choices, and actions. It enables us to sort out and to appreciate strings of actions that enlarge on characters’ persistence and consistence of achieving certain goals. All in all, our choice of engaging with the daunting and the disconcerting fosters not only our pleasure and intelligence of viewing, but also the survival of odd characters in our community.
Acknowledgements
The author is indebted to two film scholars Henry Bacon (Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki) and Valentin Nussbaum (Institute of Art History, National Taiwan Normal University) for their sharing of thoughts concerning Virgil’s traits; MA assistant Eric Kao for his favor of putting together film reviews found on the worldwide web.
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Filmography
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Curtis, Simon. 2015. Woman in gold. UK.
©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Passing-by “Ça va?” checks in clinic corridors
- Globalization and its determinative influence upon the humanities: A semiotic/hermeneutic diagnosis
- Gendering the nation: A case study on the postage stamps of Cyprus
- Clues as information, the semiotic gap, and inferential investigative processes, or making a (very small) contribution to the new discipline, Forensic Semiotics
- What we talk about when we talk about texts: Identity compressions and the ontology of the “work”
- We like to talk about smell: A worldly take on language, sensory experience, and the Internet
- Mapping our underlying cognitions and emotions about good environmental behavior: Why we fail to act despite the best of intentions
- Naive geography and geopolitical semiotics: The semiotic analysis of geomental maps of Russians
- The Transformations of Abduction: From the Inferential Model to the Logic of Relatives
- The “unknown voice” in Western history since Socrates
- Semiotic study for the analysis of communications within organizations: Theoretical approach from organizational semiotics
- Semiotics of ideocriticism: Four strategies of modeling
- Spectatorship as a play on moral ambiguities: Neuro-evolutionary semiotic approach to lowly arousal emotions
- Comparing the semiotic construction of attitudinal meanings in the multimodal manuscript, original published and adapted versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Semiotic modeling and education
