In a recent book, _Descartes' Error_, neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio describes his work with patients who have damage to particular areas of the frontal cortex that attach affect to experience. These people can show absolutely no impairment in any of the standardized tests of reasoning, including tests that require them to weigh complex moral issues, yet they simply cannot cope with ordinary tasks in what Damasio calls the personal and social realms of life. Evidently, these people can tell and understand stories. Without expressly addressing the question of their narrative competence, Damasio gives examples of it. Yet they experience and exhibit little emotional response to stories. They follow the chain of cause and effect just fine, but without doing what we often call "getting it," in human and emotional terms. For example, one particularly icy Iowa morn, a patient arrived at Damasio's office. When Damasio asked him about the drive, he responded that the drive had been quite ordinary, although it had required some attention to the mechanics of driving on ice. As an illustration--woven into a lengthy discourse on the mechanics of driving on ice--the patient told of a driver ahead of him that morning who had skidded on a patch of ice, panicked, hit the brakes, and careened into a ditch. Moments later, the patient negotiated the same patch of ice calmly, surely, and dispassionately. The patient recounted this tale, Damasio reports, "with the same tranquility with which he had obviously experienced the incident." He turned the incident into a narrative--a narrative intrinsically bound up with the business of "problem solving"--but without really "getting it." So what? One influential theory of the classical Hollywood cinema suggests that the primary pleasure audiences derive from Hollywood movies is the pleasure of problem solving, which is akin to the pleasure of working on a puzzle in anticipation of finding a solution. According to this theory, anything that interferes with the anticipation of and drive toward narrative outcomes is likely to also inhibit the pleasure that viewers pay for. The evolution of classical "transparent" storytelling techniques is the primary evidence upon which this theory rests. An alternative theory, which better accounts for melodrama, horror, spectacle, other visceral and libidinal thrills of movies, and some kinds of comedy, is that viewers are paying for emotional responses, which narrative transparency facilitates but does not guarantee. I am exploring this theory at the moment in an essay on comedy, which even in its "classical" Hollywood embodiments is full of things that interrupt the drive toward narrative outcomes, from pratfalls to non sequiturs to self-reflexivity. Still, comedy is one of the things people pay for in movies, and always have. I wrote an letter to Damasio asking him whether his patients ever laugh and how he thinks they might respond to "The Pawnshop" (one of Chaplin's best comic shorts, which even my four- and seven-year olds find uproariously funny). To my surprise, Damasio responded, Give me a list of short comic sketches to try out with my patients, and we'll see. While we're at it, he said, why don't we check out horror and other kinds of emotional responses to movies? He asked me to suggest especially emotionally-charged short scenes of various kinds to test out with his patients. The trick is to come up with short scenes that ordinarily produce powerful affective responses even when taken out of context. Here's where I need your help. Can you suggest stand-alone scenes that you think produce extraordinary responses in any of the following categories? Mirth Sadness Anxiety Disgust or shock Excitement I choose these categories because they seem to be attached to some of the basic attractions of movies besides narrative: comedy, melodrama, suspense, horror, and spectacle, respectively. Examples that come to my mind immediately are the battle of Agincourt in Branagh's _Henry V_ (an example of spectacle), the booby-trapped basement in _Home Alone_ (slapstick comedy), and the opening sequence of Robert Gardner's _Forest of Bliss_ in which a pack of wild dogs mercilessly savage another dog (which must be one of the most horrible moments in the history of cinema). I'll repay everyone who responds to this query by sending them the results of Damasio's experiments. Gratefully yours, ******************************************* Dirk Eitzen Department of Theatre, Dance & Film Franklin & Marshall College Lancaster, PA 17604 717/291-4297 ******************************************* ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]