The Three Bodies of Narration: A Cognitivist Poetics of the Actor’s Performance.

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to take a cognitivist approach to achieve an adequate understanding of the actor’s performance as a narrative an aesthetic factor. By way of introduction, a context is offered that explains what the actor’s performance has nearly always been considered in audiovisual works and previously in theatre, as something separate from the narration, a category reserved for diegesis. This is followed by a presentation of the general cognitivist conception as the most suitable approach to achieve this purpose, based on the central features of the concept of recognition, from which arises the central proposal of viewing actors as generators of the spectator’s attention, which is the first necessary condition for any story. The central part of the article is concerned with presenting the three main modes in which the actor’s presence arouses the spectator’s attention, elucidated with examples and an explanation of their narrative scope in each case. First, the value of the body in eliciting the neutral attention of the spectator to the character; secondly, the value of the exceptionality of the body in pertinent increments of spectator interest, which give rise to the emotions that are central to cognitivism, such as sympathy and empathy, which are thus determining factors in narrative processes; and finally, the article takes up one of the main debates in the field to offer an alternative to cognitivism and the main outcome of this research: acting, in its artistic sense, generates attention and emotions comparable with the most widely debated moral factors, such as allegiance. It is thus valid to consider that the actor’s performance as an artistic practice is the element with the greatest narrative depth insofar as it constitutes the stablest basis for the spectator’s attention.