Narrative Engagement: Film and the Moral Imagination

By Carl Plantinga

This book distinguishes between 'smooth' and 'generative' engagement to show how film form and content can greatly impact the film viewer's embodied imagination. Drawing from notable scholarship in film and media studies, aesthetics and media psychology, the book shows how these disciplines approach similar issues from varied perspectives.

It develops a model of narrative engagement and its subtypes, showing how these can account for the moral imagination in relation to character engagement, the medium and its characteristics, film form, emotion, the 'feel-good' film and rough hero narratives. The book ends with a call to viewers, educators and institutions to find ways to encourage active moral imagining in engagement with films.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1399563467
• ISBN13: 9781399563468
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Length: 264 Pages