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This article was downloaded by: [McGill University Library] On: 16 December 2014, At: 12:16 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Contemporary European Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjea20 Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies Ester Saletta a a Bergamo, Italy Published 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 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies

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

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies

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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Page 3: Cinema of Choice. Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies

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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