A Sharp Trip after DMT or a Bardo of Dying? The Potential of Cognitive Theories of Film on an Example of an Analysis of Alternative States of Consciousness in Enter the Void by Gaspar Noè Cover Image

Ostry trip po DMT czy bardo umierania? Potencjał kognitywnych teorii filmu na przykładzie analizy zmienionych stanów świadomości w Enter the Void Gaspara Noè
A Sharp Trip after DMT or a Bardo of Dying? The Potential of Cognitive Theories of Film on an Example of an Analysis of Alternative States of Consciousness in Enter the Void by Gaspar Noè

Author(s): Anna Maria Piskorska
Subject(s): Film / Cinema / Cinematography, Sociology of Religion
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie
Keywords: cognitive film theories; auteur cinema; cognitive schemas; symbolic schemas; psychedelic experience; DMT; Tibetan Book of the Death

Summary/Abstract: This article shows how films can be used as contemporary research tools in order to get to know people’s inner states, with particular focus on changed states of consciousness such as psychedelic experience and near-death experience. On the basis of cognitive film theory (presented by Tzvetan Todorov, Edward Branigan, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson) that goes beyond aesthetic reception of a film and studies the structures of cognition, the author of the article makes an attempt to analyze the film entitled Enter the Void directed by Gaspar Noè – an example of auteur cinema in two areas: its structures (a subjective view as a stylistic identifier) and its reception (the idea of cognitive schema and the assimilation of new schema, perception and narrative schema) with special attention paid to symbolic schemas (the comparison of Enter the Void – an aesthetic model and Tibetan Book of the Dead – a religious model).

  • Issue Year: 11/2016
  • Issue No: 217
  • Page Range: 84-105
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Polish