Projections

We are pleased to present the Winter issue of Projections, concluding our three-issue volume for 2025, which is the first issue in which we served as action editors for all of the articles. Before introducing the articles, we would like to take a moment to thank all of our referees for their careful and generous reviews over the past year. Their expertise and commitment are essential to maintaining the scholarly quality of the journal. We are equally grateful to our associate editors, Alaina Schempp, Tim Smith, and Margrethe Bruun Vaage, whose advice makes the review and production process both rigorous and efficient.

A key determinant of viewers’ ability to derive moral understanding from movies may be their ability to understand and reflect upon the beliefs that underlie behavior. We therefore tested whether a measure of theory of mind would predict reflection on a movie and viewers’ moral understanding of the film. We asked participants to write expressively about a lesson they derived from a film they had previously seen or were shown. Two studies demonstrated that theory of mind negatively predicted reflection but positively predicted moral understanding. This suggests that theory of mind aids in the online processing of films but may render further reflection superfluous. Furthermore, exploratory analyses indicating that a film's deviation from one's moral foundations spurs retrospective imaginative involvement.

This article presents a functional framework for analyzing films with multiple protagonists. Building on Tamar Yacobi's work on the center of interest, this narrative schema is characterized by a more even distribution of interest among characters, regulated by a set of compositional indicators. In order to complement David Bordwell's explanation of how we recognize the protagonist(s) in a narrative film, this article discusses seven indicators of centrality—explicit, quantitative, sequential, analogical, perspectival, thematic, and stylistic—which help us locate and analyze the compositional features that create the impression that certain films have multiple protagonists. The framework is illustrated through a brief analysis of Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighboring Sounds (O Som ao Redor, 2012).

This article re-examines “pleasure,” a key concept in feminist discourse on the ethical implications of rape representations, by analyzing the viewer's experience of sexual violence through the lens of psychophysiological processes underlying sexual arousal and the empathy mechanisms that underpin it. Drawing on psychological and neuroscientific evidence, the article argues that rape depictions evoke “motivational wanting” processes, in which hedonic pleasure is not an intrinsic component. Additionally, it suggests that different cinematic designs foster distinct wanting experiences, shaped by the interplay of three primary factors. Ultimately, this article provides an initial step toward a theoretical framework for nuanced discussions that move beyond the homogeneous notion of “pleasure,” thereby enabling the exploration of distinct wanting experiences to which ethical meanings can be ascribed.

Digital theatre broadcasting has risen in popularity, yet it remains relatively novel, meaning the production norms for such content have yet to be established. We measured heart rate synchrony within three live streamed performances and provided data to the filming team to inform the creative direction for the following performance. The audience demonstrated greater heart rate synchrony on the final night compared to the first two nights and rated the final night as significantly more enjoyable. We also measured movement data and narrative engagement and found that movement negatively correlated to narrative engagement and narrative engagement positively correlated with enjoyment. These results highlight the benefits of using physiological assessment of moment-by-moment audience experience and the potential for these data to shape the creative process.

Nathan Carrol, ed. The Cinematic Sublime: Negative Pleasures, Structuring Absences. Bristol: Intellect Ltd., 2023, 214 pp., $34.95 (paperback), ISBN: 9781789387537.

Angelo Emanuele Cioffi. Philosophical Theories of Political Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2022, 192 pp., $190 (hardback).

Julian Hanich and Martin P. Rossouw. What Film Is Good For: On the Values of Spectatorship. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023, 432 pp., $95 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780520386808