Richard Allen
My research interests as a scholar began in the areas of film theory and the philosophy of film. My first book, "Projecting Illusion" (Cambridge University Press, 1997), defended a sophisticated version of the illusion theory of representation. In addition, I edited, with Murray Smith, one of the first anthologies of analytic film theory entitled "Film Theory and Philosophy" (Oxford University Press, 1999) and a volume on "Wittgenstein, Theory, and the Arts" (Routledge, 2001), with Malcolm Turvey.Since then my research has focused mostly upon film poetics and aesthetics. I am internationally renowned as a scholar of Alfred Hitchcock. I organised the "Hitchcock Centennial Conference" in 1999 that coincided with the publication of "Hitchcock: Centennial Essays" (BFI, 1999), and I have coedited two other anthologies on Hitchcock. In addition to writing 15 scholarly articles on Hitchcock, I am the author of "Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony" (Columbia University Press, 2007) that examines the relationship between sexuality and style in Hitchcock’s work. Between 2001-2017 I edited, with Sid Gottlieb, the "Hitchcock Annual" (Columbia University Press).More recently, I have been working on Hindi cinema, commonly known as Bollywood. I collaborated with Ira Bhaskar (Jawarharlal Nehru University) on curating a film festival in Abu Dhabi and New York -- "Muslim Cultures of Bombay Cinema"--and writing an accompanying book: "Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema" (Tulika, 2009). I have authored several articles in the field and I am completing a manuscript entitled "Bollywood Poetics" that systematically explores key narrative and stylistic idioms of post-independence Bombay Cinema.My newest research is about the relationship between Affective Piety and Melodrama which seeks to re-conceive the history of melodrama. I am collaboration on this project with art historian, Isabelle Frank. My article, “The Passion of Christ and the Melodramatic Imagination,” has recently been published in "Melodrama Unbound," edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams.For many years I was a Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. I am now Chair/Professor of Film and Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University, Hong Kong. I am planning a major conference on "Computational Media Art" that will take place in Hong Kong in January 2019.
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example of Noël Carroll in The Philosophy of Horror (1990). Melodrama
is defined by a distinctive mode of address in which morality is dramatized
through an appeal to our emotions. More narrowly conceived as the
“tearjerker,” it is designed to solicit tears through the orchestration of pathos.While melodrama is associated above all with a genre of nineteenth century theater, it is considered here as a mode that persists from at least the medieval period into the present, encompassing discrete art forms, such as theater, opera, and fi lm. Furthermore, as it evolves historically, it develops more complex idioms. Classical melodrama, or the melodrama of good versus evil, which dwells on the pathos of suffering innocence, is contrasted with romantic melodrama or the melodrama of moral antinomy (Singer), which explores the pathos of sacrifice. A series of distinctions are drawn between sympathy, pathos, empathy, and identification, and the relationship of each to the other and to our moral responses are briefly delineated. The article contests Murray Smith’s theory of empathy as central or personal imagination and defends a distinctive concept of identification, based upon its roots in the medieval French “identifier,” to “regard as the same.” It concludes with a brief defense of melodrama against the charge that it is emotionally contrived and exploits our moral sentiments for meretricious ends.
affective piety recedes in an often secular world. We might say that in Under Capricorn Hitchcock declares his hand as a maker of melodramas and does so in terms that make explicit the indebtedness of melodrama to the rhetorical form of Christian affective piety, of sin, suffering, redeeming love, even as the import of this story is transformed by being
transposed into a secular story of suffering and redemption through love.
example of Noël Carroll in The Philosophy of Horror (1990). Melodrama
is defined by a distinctive mode of address in which morality is dramatized
through an appeal to our emotions. More narrowly conceived as the
“tearjerker,” it is designed to solicit tears through the orchestration of pathos.While melodrama is associated above all with a genre of nineteenth century theater, it is considered here as a mode that persists from at least the medieval period into the present, encompassing discrete art forms, such as theater, opera, and fi lm. Furthermore, as it evolves historically, it develops more complex idioms. Classical melodrama, or the melodrama of good versus evil, which dwells on the pathos of suffering innocence, is contrasted with romantic melodrama or the melodrama of moral antinomy (Singer), which explores the pathos of sacrifice. A series of distinctions are drawn between sympathy, pathos, empathy, and identification, and the relationship of each to the other and to our moral responses are briefly delineated. The article contests Murray Smith’s theory of empathy as central or personal imagination and defends a distinctive concept of identification, based upon its roots in the medieval French “identifier,” to “regard as the same.” It concludes with a brief defense of melodrama against the charge that it is emotionally contrived and exploits our moral sentiments for meretricious ends.
affective piety recedes in an often secular world. We might say that in Under Capricorn Hitchcock declares his hand as a maker of melodramas and does so in terms that make explicit the indebtedness of melodrama to the rhetorical form of Christian affective piety, of sin, suffering, redeeming love, even as the import of this story is transformed by being
transposed into a secular story of suffering and redemption through love.