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Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. While puzzling storytelling, strange incongruities, inviting enigmas and persistent ambiguities have been central to the effects of many literary and cinematic traditions, a great deal of contemporary films and television series bring such qualities to the mainstream—but wherein lies the attractiveness of perplexing works of fiction? This collected volume offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empirical perspectives from leading scholars across these fields.
“Puzzle films have often been thought to be marginal and eccentric parts of our media landscape. But they stand revealed in this diverse collection as important prototypes for wide-ranging innovation in cinema and television. These ingenious and lively essays harvest the insights of recent work on puzzling narratives to show that contradiction, anomaly, and impossibility have been central to screen storytelling for decades. From The Philadelphia Story through 8 ½ and the work of Godard, up to Twin Peaks’ hallucinatory third season and other instances of complex TV, the authors show that rigorous reflection on puzzle films can illuminate central questions of narrative construction and reception.” • David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin--Madison
Introduction
Steven Willemsen and Miklós Kiss
Part I: THE ATTRACTIONS OF COGNITIVE CHALLENGE IN (POST-)CLASSICAL NARRATIVES & GENRE FICTION
Chapter 1. Aesthetics and ‘Active Discovery’: The Pleasure of Moderate Cognitive Challenge in Mass Art
Todd Berliner
Chapter 2. Narration, Implicature, and the Deceptive Puzzle Film
Warren Buckland
Chapter 3. Cognitive Challenge in Complex Science Fiction: Knowledge, Reason and Threat in Narratives of Time Travel and Extraterrestrial Contact
Hilary Duffield
Chapter 4. Strange Loops and Nonhuman Realities: Complex Narrative Faces the Climate Crisis
Marco Caracciolo
Part II: MESMERIZED MINDS & BODIES: ART-CINEMA & MODERNIST AESTHETICS
Chapter 5. The Puzzling Film Environments of Fellini’s 8½
Steffen Hven
Chapter 6. 2 or 3 Things? Polyphony, Cognitive Challenge and Aesthetic Pleasure in Godard’s (Counter) Cinema
Maria Poulaki
Chapter 7. Embodying Fragmentation in Film: The Spatio-temporal Logic of Cinematic Modernism
Maarten Coëgnarts
Chapter 8. The Most Difficult Riddle
András Bálint Kovács
Part III: NOVEL PLEASURES IN CONTEMPORARY SERIAL TELEVISION: FROM COMPLEXITY TO CONFUSION
Chapter 9. Multiform Television
Matthew Campora
Chapter 10. ‘I Can’t Keep Track of Any of It Anymore’: Cognitive Challenge and Other Aesthetic Appeals in Community
Jason Gendler
Chapter 11. How Not to Comprehend Television: Notes on Complexity and Confusion
Jason Mittell
Part IV: READING, VIEWING, ENGAGING: CONCEPTUALIZING THE PLEASURES OF BEING CHALLENGED
Chapter 12. Challenges of Enjoying Morally Ambiguous Character Drama: The Dexter Case
Ed S. Tan, Monique Timmers, Claire M. Segijn, Suzanna J. Opree, Guus Bartholomé
Chapter 13. The Fascination of Failure: On Predictability, Unpredictability and Postdictability in Art
Marina Grishakova
Chapter 14. Expressive Challenge and the Metaphoricity of Literary Reading
Don Kuiken
Chapter 15. Who Likes Complex Films? Personality and Preferences for Narrative Complexity
Steven Willemsen, Katalin Bálint, Frank Hakemulder, Miklós Kiss, Elly Konijn, Kirill Fayn
Index