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Several critical statements proposing that general theory - also known as Grand Theory - should be banned from the discipline of film studies have motivated me to discuss the validity of general theory within film studies. Nine years ago, I proposed a general theory of the film experience and the central dimensions of film aesthetics in my book Moving Pictures.1 The central model of this book described the flow from perception, through emotional activation and cognitive processing, to motor action. Since then, I have named this model the PECMA flow (short for perception, emotion, cognition, and motor action). An additional feature of the PECMA flow model is the evaluation of reality-status, based on combining a radical constructivism with evolutionary realism. In this paper, I will attempt to show that a series of problems within film theory and film criticism - for example, the questions of excess, linear vs. non-linear forms, realism, and reality effects - have relatively simple explanations within a general theory of how the brain processes film.
I. General Theories or Middle-Level Theories?
In a recent review of Moving Pictures, Tico Romao claims that it is the wealth of smaller scale theories 'rather than the tenability of [Grodal's] principle thesis that makes Moving Pictures a rewarding read'.2 Romao does not, however, point out any specific flaws in my principle thesis, except that it does not allow for describing film as a strongly culturalist-historical product. Further, Romao does not explain how a problematic thesis yields a wealth of rewarding smaller scale theories; he just echoes the mantra that you should do middle-level research and concrete analysis.
Romao is not the only film scholar who dislikes general theory à la the PECMA flow model. Asbjørn Grönstad has criticised the approach put forward in Moving Pictures for being a psychological theory as opposed to a film-aesthetic theory,3 and Christer Mattson makes a similar point.4 Both Grönstad and Mattson cite David Bordwell5 - and implicitly Bordwell and Noël Carroll's Post-Theory6 - as an 'expert witness' for their criticism of neurocognitive film theory (and the flow model). They argue that general theory is reductionistic and irrelevant for understanding the specifics of film: film studies should be concerned with middle-level or piecemeal theorizing and close textual analysis (what...