Przyjemność na granicy dyskomfortu
Pleasure on the Verge of Discomfort

Summary/Abstract: The paper is a review of a book by Barbara Szczekała entitled "Mind-game films. Gry z narracją i widzem" ["Mind-game Films: Games with Narrative and Spectator"] (2019). The subject of the book is the current of “mind game films”, and the book is particularly concerned with the issue of the viewer’s reception of such films. Two modes of reception are confronted with each other. In the first one the emphasis is put on the complexity of mind-game films. The viewer’s task would be to straighten up this complexity, to complete a puzzle, to answer the riddles and solve mysteries. The reception is rational in nature, and the whole issue is put in the framework of cognitive psychology. This mode is juxtaposed to another one (the author opts for it), according to which the admirers of such films strive especially for embodied affects. Three such affects are described in detail: terror of identification, excess of accumulation and cognitive discomfort. Although these affects are rather unpleasant, the author insists that they attract the viewer to this kind of cinema.

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