Beast People Onscreen And In Your Brain

A new take on our bio-cultural evolution explores how the "inner theatre" of the brain and its "animal-human stages" are reflected in and shaped by the mirror of cinema. Vampire, werewolf, and ape-planet films are perennial favorites—perhaps because they speak to something primal in human nature. This intriguing volume examines such films in light of the latest developments in neuroscience, revealing ways in which animal-human monster movies reflect and affect what we naturally imagine in our minds. Examining specific films as well as early cave images, the book discusses how certain creatures on rock walls and movie screens express animal-to-human evolution and the structures of our brains. The book presents a new model of the human brain with its theatrical, cinematic, and animal elements. It also develops a theory of "rasa-catharsis" as the clarifying of emotions within and between spectators of the stage or screen, drawing on Eastern and Western aesthetics as well as current neuroscience. It focuses on the "inner movie theater" of memories, dreams, and reality representations, involving developmental stages, as well as the "hall of mirrors," ape-egos, and body-swapping identifications between human beings. Finally, the book shows how ironic twists onscreen—especially of contradictory emotions—might evoke a reappraisal of feelings, helping spectators to be more attentive to their own impulses. Through this interdisciplinary study, scholars, artists, and general readers will find a fresh way to understand the potential for interactive mindfulness and yet cathartic backfire between human brains—in cinema, in theater, and in daily life.

A new take on our bio-cultural evolution explores how the "inner theatre" of the brain and its "animal-human stages" are reflected in and shaped by the mirror of cinema. Vampire, werewolf, and ape-planet films are perennial favorites—perhaps because they speak to something primal in human nature. This intriguing volume examines such films in light of the latest developments in neuroscience, revealing ways in which animal-human monster movies reflect and affect what we naturally imagine in our minds. Examining specific films as well as early cave images, the book discusses how certain creatures on rock walls and movie screens express animal-to-human evolution and the structures of our brains. The book presents a new model of the human brain with its theatrical, cinematic, and animal elements. It also develops a theory of "rasa-catharsis" as the clarifying of emotions within and between spectators of the stage or screen, drawing on Eastern and Western aesthetics as well as current neuroscience. It focuses on the "inner movie theater" of memories, dreams, and reality representations, involving developmental stages, as well as the "hall of mirrors," ape-egos, and body-swapping identifications between human beings. Finally, the book shows how ironic twists onscreen—especially of contradictory emotions—might evoke a reappraisal of feelings, helping spectators to be more attentive to their own impulses. Through this interdisciplinary study, scholars, artists, and general readers will find a fresh way to understand the potential for interactive mindfulness and yet cathartic backfire between human brains—in cinema, in theater, and in daily life.

To what extent is theatre a contagious practice, capable of undoing and enlivening people and cultures? Theatres of Contagion responds to some of the anxieties of our current political and cultural climate by exploring theatre's status as a contagious cultural force, questioning its role in the spread or control of medical, psychological and emotional conditions and phenomena. Observing a diverse range of practices from the early modern to contemporary period, the volume considers how this contagion is understood to happen and operate, its real and imagined effects, and how these have been a source of pleasure and fear for theatre makers, audiences and authorities. Drawing on perspectives from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and affect theory, essays investigate some of the ways in which theatre can be viewed as a powerful agent of containment and transmission. Among the works analysed include a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a contemporary queer take on Hamlet; Grand Guignol and theatres of horror; the writings and influence of Artaud; immersive theatre and the work of Punchdrunk, and computer gaming and smartphone apps

This textbook provides a global, chronological mapping of significant areas of theatre, sketched from its deepest history in the evolution of our brain's 'inner theatre' to ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern developments. It considers prehistoric cave art and built temples, African trance dances, ancient Egyptian and Middle-Eastern ritual dramas, Greek and Roman theatres, Asian dance-dramas and puppetry, medieval European performances, global indigenous rituals, early modern to postmodern Euro-American developments, worldwide postcolonial theatres, and the hyper-theatricality of today's mass and social media. Timelines and numbered paragraphs form an overall outline with distilled details of what students can learn, encouraging further explorations online and in the library. Questions suggest how students might reflect on present parallels, making their own maps of global theatre histories, regarding geo-political theatrics in the media, our performances in everyday life, and the theatres inside our brains.

Compares monumental designs and performance spaces of Christian, Buddhist, and related sanctuaries, exploring how brain networks, animal-human emotions, and cultural ideals are reflected historically and affected today as "inner theatre" elements. Integrating research across the humanities and sciences, this book explores how traditional designs of outer theatrical spaces left cultural imprints for the inner staging of Self and Other consciousness, which each of us performs daily based on how we think others view us. But believers also perform in a cosmic theatre. Ancestral spirits and gods (or God) watch and interact with them in awe-inspiring spaces, grooming affects toward in-group identification and sacrifice, or out-group rivalry and scapegoating. In a study of over 80 buildings – shown by 40 images in the book, plus thousands of photos and videos online – Pizzato demonstrates how they reflect meta-theatrical projections from prior generations. They also affect the embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended (4E) cognition of current visitors, who bring performance frameworks of belief, hope, and doubt to the sacred site. This involves neuro-social, inner/outer theatre networks with patriarchal, maternal, and trickster paradigms. European Churches and Chinese Temples as Neuro-Theatrical Sites investigates performative material cultures, creating dialogs between theatre, philosophy, history, and various (cognitive, affective, social, biological) sciences. It applies them to the architecture of religious buildings: from Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant in Europe, plus key sites in Jerusalem and prior “pagan” temples, to Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and imperial in China. It thus reveals individualist/collectivist, focal/holistic, analytical/dialectical, and melodramatic/tragicomic trajectories, with cathartic poetics for the future.

A standout resource on the emerging field of applying neuropsychology and the latest findings in sleep and dream research to religious experience, this book investigates the proven biological links between REM dreams and religious ideas, covering past and current schools of thought in both the science of dreams and the science of religion. Across time and around the world, billions of people with highly dissimilar backgrounds and cultures have felt spiritual or religious inspiration that shaped their lives and supplemented their mental strength—and in many cases, this inspiration came via a dream. The "how" and "why" of this common phenomenon is one that science has largely failed to explain. In this book, nationally recognized behavioral neuroscientist Patrick McNamara taps the latest science in sleep and dreams as well as neuropsychology to investigate one facet of the answer from the "inside out"—the human brain's role. The first study of its kind in an emerging field, Dreams and Visions: How Religious Ideas Emerge in Sleep and Dreams provides a comprehensive summary of past theory and examines the latest science on dreams, REM sleep, cognitive approaches to religion, and neuroscience approaches to religion. Readers will come away with an in-depth understanding of how and why god beliefs and spiritual convictions so often emerge in our dreams. Dedicated sections address special dream types like visitation dreams, nightmares, precognitive dreams, "big" dreams, lucid dreams, paralysis dreams, twin dreams, and more.

Director, producer and screenwriter Joss Whedon is a creative force in film, television, comic books and a host of other media. This book provides an authoritative survey of all of Whedon's work, ranging from his earliest scriptwriting on Roseanne, through his many movie and TV undertakings--Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible, The Cabin in the Woods, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.--to his forays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The book covers both the original texts of the Whedonverse and the many secondary works focusing on Whedon's projects, including about 2000 books, essays, articles, documentaries and dissertations.