The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience

by Jennifer M. Barker

Overview

The Tactile Eye expands on phenomenological analysis and film theory in its accessible and beautifully written exploration of the visceral connection between films and their viewers. Jennifer M. Barker argues that the experience of cinema can be understood as deeply tactile—a sensuous exchange between film and viewer that goes beyond the visual and aural, gets beneath the skin, and reverberates in the body. Barker combines analysis of embodiment and phenomenological film theory to provide an expansive description of cinematic tactility. She considers feminist experimental film, early cinema, animation, and horror, as well as classic, modernist, and postmodern cinema; films from ten national cinemas; and work by Chuck Jones, Buster Keaton, the Quay Brothers, Satyajit Ray, Carolee Schneemann, and Tom Tykwer, among others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520258426
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/27/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jennifer M. Barker is Assistant Professor of Moving Image Studies in the Department of Communication, Georgia State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Eye Contact
Tactility
Film's Body
Moving Pictures
Touch and Go

1. Skin
Textural Analysis
Film's Skin
Eroticism
Pleasure
Horror
History Mon Amour

2. Musculature
Through a Glass Deftly
Empathy
Here and There
A Tenuous Grasp
Apprehension

3. Viscera
Heart-stopping
Hiccups
La Petite Mort
Child's Play
Conclusion: Inspiration
Breathtaking
The Wind in the Trees
Everywhere and Always
The Big Swallow

Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Tactile Eye brings the cinematic experience to the emergence and convergence of our and the film's bodies."—Anthropological Notebooks

"Straightforward."—The Senses & Society

Editorial Reviews

Straightforward.

The Senses & Society

The Tactile Eye brings the cinematic experience to the emergence and convergence of our and the film’s bodies.

Anthropological Notebooks