Book review of "The Tactile Eye: touch and the cinematic experience" by Jennifer M. Barker, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Vavrova, Daniela (2010) Book review of "The Tactile Eye: touch and the cinematic experience" by Jennifer M. Barker, University of California Press, Berkeley. Anthropological Notebooks, 16 (2). pp. 78-79.

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Abstract

[Extract] The motion picture is not just a reflection upon the perception of our lived reality, but takes us - its viewers - into a relationship with the world we dwell in. Jennifer M. Barker calls this relationship inspiration – 'a full-bodied opening into and suffusion or one with the other that goes beyond surface, middle, and depth' (p. 146).

The Tactile Eye brings the cinematic experience to the emergence and convergence or our and the film's bodies. The chapters or the book carry titles such as Skin, Musculature and Viscera, dealing with a diversity or human experience including eroticism, pleasure, horror, empathy, apprehension, heart-stopping, hiccups, or breathtaking. While watching a film, the human body reacts haptically, kinaesthetically, muscularly and viscerally. So does the film's 'body', through the screen's surface, its shimmering, off- and on-screen spaces, and through 'breathing' of the lenses. One concentrates visually as well as 'auditively', one feels muscular tension, one's feelings are shown on one's face expressions and gestures. The experience of a film is something meaningful to us because of our bodies. One feels it, one actually dives into one's own body, first to be swallowed and then spit out into the world. '[F]ilms can pierce, pummel, push, palpate, and strike us; they also slide, puff, flutter, flay, and cascade along our skin' (p. 36).

Item ID: 14928
Item Type: Article (Book Review)
ISSN: 1408 – 032X
Keywords: film, body, eye
Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2010 01:25
FoR Codes: 20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2001 Communication and Media Studies > 200199 Communication and Media Studies not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes: 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950204 The Media @ 50%
95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950205 Visual Communication @ 50%
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