ABSTRACT

This article refines previously made claims that evocative animated documentaries enable us to gain knowledge about unfamiliar states of mind and mental experiences through prompting our imagination. Building on recent scholarship in philosophy of mind, cognitive film theory and film and animation studies, I argue that it is evocative animated documentaries that do not, counterintuitively, invite audiences to identify or empathise with individual characters or documentary subjects that effectively prompt knowledge-through-imagination. This is because these films elicit a primarily epistemological rather than emotional response. The films in question, which include the Animated Minds films (2003–ongoing) and An Eyeful of Sound (Samantha Moore, 2010), feature documentary subjects that stand in for a mental health condition or psychological state that we are invited to primarily understand rather than feel. It is in this way that these evocative animated documentaries are less like fiction than their live-action documentary counterparts, despite their animated form. Applying philosophical ideas on the relationship between imagination and knowledge to a new filmic context, this article offers a way of understanding how these films work and how they are effective as documentaries of subjective, psychological experience

摘要

本文完善了先前提出的主张，即令人回味的动画纪录片使我们能够通过激发我们的想象力来获得有关不熟悉的心理状态和心理经验的知识。基于最近在心智哲学，认知电影理论以及电影和动画研究方面的学术研究，我认为是令人回味的动画纪录片并没有反直觉地邀请观众识别或同情个体人物或纪录片，从而有效地促进了知识的传播。 -想像力。这是因为这些电影引起的主要是认识论而不是情感上的反应。有问题的电影，包括Animated Minds电影（2003年进行中）和《 Eyeful of Sound》（萨曼莎·摩尔，2010年），其特色是纪录片主题，代表我们应首先了解而不是感受的心理健康状况或心理状态。通过这种方式，尽管它们具有动画形式，但这些令人回味的动画纪录片却比真人纪录片更不像小说。将关于想象力和知识之间关系的哲学思想应用于新的电影环境，本文提供了一种理解这些电影的工作方式以及作为主观，心理体验的纪录片如何有效的方式