The missing link: Meunier on imagination and emotional engagement

In this chapter I consider the originality and applicability of Jean-Pierre Meunier’s phenomenological account of cinematic identification. I focus in particular on the key role assigned to imagination in his account of spectator identification, and describe some suggestive parallels with contemporary theorists’ accounts of imagination (as perceptual engagement, mental simulation or make-believe, and Murray Smith’s threefold ‘structure of sympathy’). Finally, I consider some difficulties in Meunier’s model – his overly clustered concept of ‘identification’; a tension between formal-phenomenological analysis and background cultural-historical pre-understanding; and his focus on character identification at the expense of background ‘world’ apprehension – that could be modified in order to enhance his original contribution to philosophical film theory.