Abstract
Film is a typical affective art. From the perspective of affect theory, the aesthetics of cinematic violence originates from postindustrial “cinematic body” which has a strong propensity for affect. Such aesthetics aims at creating formalized violent images to activate viewers’ immediate affective reactions, thus compensating for the declining affectivity of traditional grandiose narratives and apathetic individuals. The aesthetics of cinematic violence can be explored in the following two aspects: the poetic and the brutal. In recent years, mainland China has witnessed the rise of “brutal narrative” and the construction of localized “affective politics”, which imply the turn of Chinese cinema to postindustrial aesthetics of violence.
Keywords
affect theory, aesthetics of cinematic violence, cinematic body, the poetic; the brutal, affective politics
First Page
32
Last Page
42
Recommended Citation
Gai, Qi, and Guihai Lin. 2022. "The Aesthetics of Cinematic Violence and the Mechanism of Affect Theory." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 42, (4): pp.32-42. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol42/iss4/4
