When nonacademics learn that I am writing a book, the polite conversationalist will ask what my work is about. After I reply that my book looks at film structures and emotion, inevitably their response is something like, “Isn't that an enormous subject? There must be so much written about film and emotion.” Because emotions are so central to most people's cinematic experiences, they assume that film scholars must have placed the topic of emotion at the top of their research agenda. Most nonacademics are surprised to learn that there is relatively little written by cinema scholars on film and emotion per se.

But cinema studies is not unique in its neglect of emotion as a topic of study. From the fifties to the seventies, few academic disciplines gave precise attention to the topic of emotions. Cultural anthropologists had difficulty reporting such highly “subjective” states of mind using traditional methods of observation on other cultures. Instead, they focused on more externally observable differences, such as those in language and ritual performances. Sociology's agenda led academics to areas in which socialization was most clearly at work. These thinkers recognized that emotions were manipulated by society, and so they tended to view emotions in a purely instrumental fashion, as means to an end. Social forces relied on fear or love to create prejudice or empathy, but few sociologists questioned the basic nature of these emotions.

In psychology, behaviorism's influence led theorists away from anything located within the “black box” of the human organism.