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Imagination and Perception in Film Experience

2020; Michigan Publishing; Volume: 7; Issue: 20201214 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3998/ergo.12405314.0007.005

2330-4014

Enrico Terrone,

Aesthetic Perception and Analysis

Reporting one's experience of the film Alien, one might say that one saw Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley fighting the monster, but one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster.This paper aims to figure out the experience that the verbs "to see" and "to imagine" characterize in such reports.For this purpose, I first introduce four requirements for an account of film experience.Secondly, I examine the main theses on the role of imagination and perception in film experience, arguing that none of them satisfies all the requirements.Thirdly, I propose a new thesis according to which the spectator of a fiction film imagines being a subject of a different kind, namely, a disembodied subject of experience who can perceive events that occur in a world in which that subject has no place.I argue that this thesis satisfies all the requirements.B oth perception and imagination seem to play a crucial role in our engage- ment with fiction films but whether they really do so, and which role they possibly play, is controversial.On the one hand, a fiction film, as film, is a depiction that invites us to perceive the events portrayed.On the other hand, as fiction, it invites us to imagine the story told.Thus, after watching the film Alien (1979), one might say that one saw Ripley fighting the monster but one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster.Are these two reports compatible?If they are, how can we combine them so to make sense of them?If, instead, they are not, which of them should we give up?In order to answer these questions, we need, first of all, to specify what we mean by 'perception' and 'imagination' and how we distinguish them.Among the traditional criteria for distinguishing perception from imagination, Shen-yi Liao and Tamar Gendler (2019: §2.3) mention intensity, involuntariness, and causal relationship with the relevant object.In his "Sartrean Account" of per-