Philosophy and Film: Immersion in Hitchcock

The widespread experience of ‘being lost in a narrative’ (Nell 1988)—sometimes called ‘transportation’ (Gerrig 1993) or ‘immersion‘ (Ryan 2003)—has been the object of a vast literature in psychology, communication science and narratology. In philosophy, engagement with narrative works has been a recurrent topic of inquiry; however, the specific topic of immersion has until recently been largely neglected. Moreover, philosophers very rarely take into consideration the empirical evidence provided by psychological literature.

The aim of this event is to explore the experience of (narrative) immersion in film from both a philosophical and an empirical perspective, with a focus on Hitchcock’s use of immersive techniques. After an introduction to the issues by Paloma Atencia-Linares, Lecturer in Philosophy of Arts and Aesthetics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), there will be a screening of Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Hitchcock’s ‘favourite’ among his own films. The screening will be followed by a roundtable and Q&A with Dr Atencia-Linares as well as Vittorio Gallese, Professor of Psychobiology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Parma, and Murray Smith, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Kent.