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This article was downloaded by: [McGill University Library]On: 16 December 2014, At: 12:16Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Contemporary EuropeanStudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjea20
Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinkingand Narrative MoviesEster Salettaa
a Bergamo, ItalyPublished online: 16 Dec 2013.
To cite this article: Ester Saletta (2013) Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies,Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 21:4, 568-569, DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2013.865370
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2013.865370
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568 Book Reviews
So, what new contribution does the book bring to our table? The authors say that dismantling ‘is a
particular and, in many respects uniquely complicated sub-category of policy change, where the
political urge to hide is particularly evident . . . ’ (221). More ominously, they say that ‘the concept of
dismantling strategies now needs to be further expanded . . . ’ (220). It is difficult to see why.
Nevertheless, for those who make policy at both national and local levels, for Masters students,
lobbyists and analysts, this book will make a modest addition to their bookshelves.
Derek Hawes University of Bristol, UK
[email protected] q 2013, Derek Hawes
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2013.865369
Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies Nitzan BEN-SHAUL
Berghahn Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-85745-5918 £43.00c (hbk), 189 pp.
Given that the popularity of standard Hollywood narrative movies is generally based on a predictable
story leading to a conventional outcome, to a closed state of mind and a reassuring life perception,
Ben-Shaul’s book intends to demonstrate that there is also a small group of narrative movies,
essentially based on the revaluation of suspense and surprise effects, whose internal structures
improve alternative knowledge paths, that is the optional thinking that ‘refers to our cognitive ability
to assess or to generate diverging, converging, or competing sequences of optional reasons for,
consequences of, or solutions to different life problems’ (157). Briefly: the movie optional thinking
narrative strategy helps the viewer’s mind to open up to non-conventional or not already prefigured
ways of thinking. The fact that the viewer’s life perception may be different from the conventional one
stimulates a process of hypothesis generation and validation which could not reach a decision point,
that is, a closure with the consequence that the viewer’s mind remains open to thoughts of choice and
possibility. The five chapters of Ben-Shaul’s book describe from a cognitive-psychological
perspective how the great majority of the most popular narrative films (see, e.g., Steven Spielberg’s
Duel, Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense) block the optional thinking in viewers, while some other examples from the formalist, the neo-Marxist and the
postmodern movie area (see, e.g., Jean Luc Godard’s La Chinoise, Mike Figgis’s Timecode, David
Cronenberg’s eXistenZ) may engender optional thinking processes even though they are still
unsuccessful. According to Ben-Shaul’s investigation, both the interplay between cataphora (early
cues) and anaphora (the later recall of these clues), helping to establish and maintain the coherence
inside the narrative texture, and the viewer’s empathetic relation to characters reinforcing the
viewer’s self-esteem, are the two main narrative strategies adopted by popular movies to slow down
the viewer’s optional thinking activity, as ‘there was no way things could have taken a different course
than the one proposed’ (41). Apparently, the formalist, neo-Marxist and postmodern approach is seen
as different to the conventional film communication. The formalists pay more attention to form than to
narrative, and their approach encourages the viewer’s optional thinking activity whenever
a style that has accumulated a distinct ambiance and meaning is made explicit by drawing
attention to the meaning accumulated by the stylistic/formal configuration, and if this
attention to a meaningful style alternates with attention to a narrative (illusion) that constructs
a story whose locale, subject matter, and contents do not pertain to that associated with the
style deployed. (70)
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Book Reviews 569
The neo-Marxist strategy, which criticizes formalism for its disregard of content, strengthens the
narrative deconstruction especially based on Althusser’s Self-reflection, which refers to a mirrored
Self-image of a detached ideal Subject that does not correspond to the sensed material referent. This
neo-Marxist approach is a false optional thinking because it repeats an ideological life view and
therefore leads again to a mind closure as ‘our identification with this imaginary ideal Subject
suggests that if we strive to see the world from its point of view we will attain the desired fullness in
our lives’ (75). Also the postmodern tenets, rooted in intertextuality, split subjects and simulacra (see
Julia Kristeva’s Desire in Language and Roland Barthe’s Image, Music, Text), are once more the
protagonists of a fallacious process of optional thinking as postmodernism ‘in its suggestion to tally
exchange constancy by a (self-contradictory) notion of total inconstancy, renders incomprehensible
both the concept of optional thinking and that of closed mindedness’ (99). By contrast, films like
Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Tom Twykers’s Run Lola Run, Peter Howitt’s Sliding Doors and Tim
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland ‘lead viewers to construct, entertain, compare, and assess different
points of view or optional narrative trajectories out of the film’s audiovisual flow, without foregoing
the components that make movies popular’(122). Owing to the modular structure of its five chapters,
Ben-Shaul’s comparative and interdisciplinary study shows a variety of conceptual interconnections
mostly between linguistics, philosophy, anthropology and sociology in language that at times may be
too specialized and repetitive. Thus, the reader may have problems understanding the complex
argumentation, were it not for the many examples from well-known films which help overcome the
initial lexical obscurity of the discourse. In general, this book should be of interest to scholars in a
number of fields and could be a useful didactic instrument for students attending courses on
Communication Studies. The discussion may also be of interest to film audiences in general, as it
offers a new hermeneutic approach to the understanding of films we see daily on TV or at the cinema.
Ester Saletta Bergamo, Italy
[email protected] q 2013, Ester Saletta
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2013.865370
Global Society and Human Rights Vittorio COTESTA
Brill, 2012, ISBN 978-9-00422-1475 e89.00 (hbk), 175 pp.
This volume brings together a collection of Cotesta’s work including elements previously published
as book chapters elsewhere, along with papers presented in seminars or congresses. The aim of this
volume is ‘to grasp and reconstruct the processes of global unification and the shaping of a common sense of humanity: the conviction, in different cultures, of the unity of mankind and the existence of
inalienable human rights’ (1).
There are ten chapters. The Introduction sets out the main theme, which threads through the rest of
the volume. Cotesta proposes that:
global society can be the context for the actual assertion of human rights. Together with the
global network of relations bonding humanity is the awareness that such relations must be
legally regulated. The efforts towards such a goal are motivated by the idea that each
individual has inalienable rights, regardless of place of birth, economic and cultural
conditions, sexual orientation, political beliefs and so forth. (1)
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