Since my main essay is concerned with how film is able to influence attitudes and behaviours in a training context, I decided to consider the perspectives film theorists and psychology researchers have offered on the ability of film in general, to affect audience attitudes and behaviours.
The reference work that I use to explore past discussions is narrative transportation theory as it will form a key component of my essay. Narrative transportation theory argues that through a combination of attention, imagery and emotions, a person may become immersed in a narrative world (Green & Brock, 2000). When this happens, ‘individuals are more likely to adopt beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours that are implied by the story’ (Murphy, etal, 2013, p116).
Hugo Münsterberg
As early as 1916, Hugo Münsterberg, an American psychologist, recognised in The Photoplay: A Psychological Study that the American population ‘prefer to be taught by pictures rather than by words and that film, as the replacement of magazines, offered a unique opportunity as a medium for introducing new ideas and spreading information’ (Münsterberg, 1916, p27).
Münsterberg maintained that attention, perception, memory and emotions are the foundations for creating imagined worlds. He uses numerous examples to elaborate how filmic techniques such as closed up, cross-cuts and editing, imitate these psychological functions. In this sense he shows himself to be a formalist who does not require a film to show real life, but rather that in the viewing experience, there is ‘inner harmony and agreement’ of the narrative (p73). This resonates with Narrative Transportation Theory that lists ‘narrative coherence’ an element that must be present in a film for transportation to occur (Green in Frank and Falzone, 2021). Münsterberg argues that films create imagined worlds that liberate the viewer from the constraints of ‘real life’ and this allows the film to suggest certain associations that may not have previously been perceived (Münsterberg, 1916, p46).
He further identified that films have a strong component of ‘suggestability’ and that some behavioural effects of films may have negative effects on society. He believed that ‘any wholesome influence emanating from the photoplay must have an incomparable power for the remoulding and upbuilding of the national soul’ (p223). Although he strongly advocated for Universal Cultural Lyceum to produce and distribute educational films, he also acknowledged the attraction of entertainment films and recognised the potential for educating an ‘indifferent audience’ through messages that were absorbed while being entertained (p 224).
Vsevolod Pudovkin
In his book Film Technique, Pudovkin, a Russian Formalist, focussed on how editing and staging a film, and understanding how techniques such as contrast, parallelism and symbolism affect the perceptions and feelings of the viewer. He recognised that editing film to shift focus could be similar to how viewers manage their attention in everyday existence (Pudovkin, 1960).
Frankfurt School
Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School, who studies the effects of mass media on society in America, claimed that mass media, including television, transmitted and trained the ‘required societal values’ and removed the responsibility for educating away from families. Marcuse considered that the audience ‘does not really know what is going on; the overpowering machine of entertainment and entertainment unites him with the others in a state of anesthesia from which all detrimental ideas tend to be excluded’ (Marcuse, 1955, p104). Theodor Adorno, also a Frankfurt School member, considered classic Hollywood narrative films, to be so simplistic in presentation that audiences did not question what they viewed and sub-consciously absorb the ideology of the film. This has anecdotally been referred to as the hypodermic needle model (Doughty & Etherington-Wright, 2022). This approach seems to imply that the viewer has no agency, and the filmmaker exclusively determines the meaning of the film.
This understanding of the spectators’ lack of agency is likewise promoted by Jean-Louis Baudry’s apparatus theory, in which he argues that the camera acts as a form of substitute for a dominant ideology (Baudry and Williams, 1974). In this sense, the camera and the way it is used ensured that the viewer remained unconscious of the devices preventing them from reflecting on the meaning of the film in any way other than the one intended.
Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall, referring to television productions, claimed that filmic messages encoded by a broadcaster must be decoded by the viewer before the message can have any effect, and that it is during these moments of decoding that a differentiation of meaning can occur (Hall, 1973, p 3). The effect Hall refers to could be variously to entertain, persuade or instruct. He recognises that when a broadcaster encodes a message, to a degree they delimit the parameters within which decoding will occur, nonetheless, they cannot guarantee which codes a person will use to decode (p17). In this sense Hall considers the filmic message to be a construction between the intended message and the message as understood through an individual’s cultural background, economic circumstances and personal experiences.
David Bordwell
Bordwell argues that a cognitivist approach to film theory allows ‘constructivist explanations in terms of mental representations functioning in a context of social action’ (1989, p.17). From this follows the argument that perception, or watching a film, is not simply passive absorption of visual and auditory stimuli, but rather that it needs to be transformed cognitively into something that can be inferred. To elaborate this point, if in a film scene taking place in a kitchen and a woman puts a plate of eggs and bacon in front of a girl sitting at the breakfast table, the viewer will infer that the child is her daughter and that it is morning since the meal is a breakfast meal. This inference is a construct that arises from more than just the visual stimuli.
Tan in a selective meta-analysis of cognitive psychology literature aimed at understanding the filmic experience, concluded that cognitive analyses of narration in film has enabled a significant improvement in how films are comprehended (2018, p1). A key element of comprehending films, and therefore being transported into the story world, appears to be the ability of the viewer to build mental schemas of scenes across the cuts in scenes. Bordwell explains that the presentation of the ‘establishing shot’, followed by ‘detail shots’ is a classic continuity technique that enables viewers to perceive continuity (Bordwell and Thompson, 2015).
Summary
Early theorists such as Munsterberg, Pudovkin, Marcusse and Adorno recognised the power of film to influence society, however they claimed that this ability was due almost exclusively to the makers of the film and that viewers had no agency in the process. Adorno held a more extreme view that American films were so simplistic that audiences failed to question the dominant ideology of the films. Whereas more recent theorists such as Hall confirm the effect of film on viewers but also contend that the intended filmic message is not guaranteed as audiences are able to construct meaning based on their experiences. Finally, Bordwell and Thompson argue for understanding the cognitive processes involved in film comprehension and translating these into techniques that aid a viewer in forming a coherent mental schema, to enable transportation into the story world.
References
Baudry, J.L. and Williams, A. (1974) Ideological effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus. Film Quarterly, Winter, 1974-1975, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 1974-1975), pp. 3947 Published by: University of California Press.
Bordwell, D. (1989) ‘A case for cognitivism’. Iris, 9, 11–40.
Bordwell, D and Thompson, K. (2015) Film Art. An Introduction. Tenth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Doughty, R. and Etherington-Wright, C. (2022) Understanding Film Theory. 2nd Ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Frank, L and Falzone, P. (2021) Entertainment-education. Behind the Scenes. Case studies for theory and practice. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 701–721.
Marcuse, H. (1955) Eros and Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.
Münsterberg, H. (1970) The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1916); reprint (New York: Dover Press, 1970).
Murphy, S. T., Frank, L. B., Chatterjee, J. S., & Baezconde-Garbanati, L. (2013). Narrative versus nonnarrative: The role of identification, transportation, and emotion in reducing health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 116–137.
Pudovkin, V. (1960) Film Technique. New York: Grove.
Tan, E. (2018) A psychology of the film. Palgrave Communications 4, 82. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0111-y