Performing brains on screen / Fernando Vidal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vidal, Fernando, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body in motion pictures.

Neurosciences in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2022.

Summary:

Performing Brains on Screen deals with film enactments and representations of the belief that human beings are essentially their brains, a belief that embodies one of the most influential modern ways of understanding the human. Films have performed brains in two chief ways: by turning physical brains into protagonists, as in the "brain movies" of the 1950s, which show terrestrial or extra-terrestrial disembodied brains carrying out their evil intentions; or by giving brains that remain unseen inside someone's head an explicitly major role, as in brain transplantation films or their successors since the 1980s, in which brain contents are transferred and manipulated by means of information technology. Through an analysis of filmic genres and particular movies, Performing Brains on Screen documents this neglected filmic universe, and demonstrates how the cinema has functioned as a cultural space where a core notion of the contemporary world has been rehearsed and problematized.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on References and Images

1. Brainhood and the Cinema

Introduction

The “Deficit Model” and the Agency of Film

Bs to Zs

Filmic Brains in the Neurobiological Age

2. Brains in the Pulps

Resources

Scientifiction, Textual and Visual

Advertisement and “Prophetic Insight”

Before Gernsback

Weird Tales

Stories Astounding and Amazing

3. Naked Brains and Living Heads

Brain Movies

Body Parts

The Donor Portion

Living Heads

Some Filmic Allografts

Paradox of the Naked Brain

4. Personal Survival

Immortality and the Brain

Adam and Tithonus

Staying the Same, Becoming Someone Else

5. Frankenstein’s Brains

Shelley’s Novel and Frankenstein Films

The Final Touch: Frankenstein (1931)

The Universal Series

The Hammer Series

Beyond Universal and Hammer

6. Memories, Lost and Regained

A Preference for Retrograde Amnesia

Localizing Memory in the Filmic Brain

Personal Identity and the Authenticity of Memory

Erasing Memories

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Dark City (1998)

7. “Imagine, They Are in the Human Mind”

Bibliography

Films

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-003-70121-3

90-485-6190-6

90-485-4155-7

9781003701217

OCLC:

1302006720