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- Title
Beyond the pleasure principle: Exploring the limits of a pervasive term.
- Authors
Bayman, Louis
- Abstract
This article aims to discuss pleasure as a way of understanding film. I do not seek to judge the correctness, political or otherwise, of certain pleasures, or to offer any overarching theory of pleasure. Instead I investigate what film scholars talk about when we talk about pleasure. Understanding pleasure more as an attitude to film spectatorship rather than an object in and of itself, I consider the importance not solely of the rational pursuit of prima facie pleasures but also of more enigmatic emotional needs relating to intimacy, pain and the confirmation of shared values. Separating cinematic pleasure from any necessary association with positivity, I caution against the potential for pleasure to be instrumentalized as part of a neo-liberal ethic of happiness.
- Subjects
PLEASURE; FILM criticism; NEOLIBERALISM; HAPPINESS; EMOTIONS in motion pictures; POPULAR films
- Publication
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 2016, Vol 14, Issue 2, p123
- ISSN
1474-2756
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1386/ncin.14.2.123_1