Horror + Art = the Sublime Experience

It’s not news to those who know me that I am a huge movie buff and an avid fan of horror films. I also very much enjoy looking at art and going to art museums. In fact, an ideal day for me would probably involve a nice scary movie and a trip to the MoMA.

Researchers Kendall J. Eskine, Natalie A. Kacinik, and Jesse J. Prinz recently published a most intriguing article in the academic journal Emotion entitled Stirring Images: Fear, Not Happiness or Arousal, Makes Art More Sublime about their study that investigated “the emotional basis of sublime experiences (i.e., the experience of perceiving something that evokes feelings of astonishment and amazement) in an effort to determine which emotions underlie awe-inspiring experiences when viewing works of art” (Eskine et al.).
Continue reading →

Kony 2012: Invisible Children Gone Viral

On February 20th, 2012 the charitable organization Invisible Children launched a campaign with the release of a 30-minute Internet video on Vimeo entitled “Kony 2012”. The video was released to gain awareness of the many crimes committed by Joseph Kony, the leader of an international (although the video focuses primarily on Uganda) guerilla group by the name of the Lord’s Resistance Army with hopes that this awareness will result in more American support ultimately leading to his arrest.

Despite the video being the subject of this blog post, my goal is to focus on the viral nature of the video and the Kony 2012 campaign, and not to get into a political discussion about Joseph Kony or the Invisible Children organization.
Continue reading →