Abstract
The main purpose of the research is to reconstruct the concept of passion in order to construct a model for analyzing how the concept works and for understanding it from a cultural perspective. The focus questions are: What is the difference between emotion and passion? How can passion be analyzed? What is the best scenario for analyzing passion?The concept of passion is constructed on the basis of its relation to reasoning, acting, and morality. From these relations, it is concluded that passion emerges when the whole existence of an individual is invested with one single thing and stages a strength or impulse for acting. Passion manages to compose and recompose subjectivity as we meet and miss others; these compositions are codified according to a social "happy medium"?.
On stage, passions become a sort of language that has been studied from various disciplines, such as semantics, physiognomy, proxemics and kinetics. But the definition we have agreed upon, an analysis model is required. This model should include the construction of a character, the surrounding furniture or context, a life story, relations, objects, feelings, and passions under construction and in a process of evolution.
Passions are fully meaningful in narration. There, the construction of subjectivity becomes clear, and subjectivity is actually transformed. Narration not only describes human passions but also "stages"? them and shows how they flow. In narration, life is not told in real time but in a time that is felt, a time that reflects the way we feel it. Narration is a metaphor of life inspired in the sensations generated by such life.
Even though passions have been analyzed in literature, what would be the best means to describe and analyze their transformations? Only the cinema can provide a mechanism that can be used as a scale model of reality and as an analogical model of human behavior. Passion compositions, passions influenced by multiples vectors, peaks, and events, can all be found in films. Characters behavior is dictated by very script of the film. When compared, in the language of the cinema we find the metaphors of our own experience of time and objects; in narration, we find the interpretation of our own lives and passions.
The model has three levels: The level of lexical metaphors that provide a whole universe of meaning to each passion; the level of narration that makes actions or behavior meaningful, where characters play an important role along with their temperaments, events and transformations; and the level of passion compositions, that is, the world of relations, interactions and evolution of characters.
The model was put to the test with two Colombian fiction films. It was concluded that passionate behavior can be described by using the model, for it allows to find meaning in the actions, behavior and passions of a character, and to identify his/her passion compositions in general.
| Date of Award | 30 Sept 2005 |
|---|---|
| Original language | Spanish |
| Supervisor | Esteve Riambau Moller (Director) |