"Anxious" Aesthetic

The status of Hollywood disaster movie in movie family is quite high. It has the images of senses-shock and the plot of the ups and downs. And now it has become one of Hollywood’s sign, especially due to the development of digital technology in recent years. The research papers for the disaster movie are also slowly increasing. But these papers do not analyze it from the aesthetic psychology. It is believed that this is where the art of film displays its charm.Therefore, consistent with the clue of transformation of human psychological anxiety from daily mood to the aesthetic pleasure, this paper begins in that the disaster movie’ s aesthetic connotation is to display anxiety by analyzing the generation context of disaster movie, performance themes, aesthetic characteristics and emotional value. To dig out the disaster movie’s real artistic value, we get that the disaster movie can display and purify the emotion of the human collective unconsciousness inherent anxiety and the anxiety produced in the context of times consciousness through its artistic means of processing. It also inspires our dynamic vitality and the beauty of humanity’s lofty, self-confident, fraternity by showing human’s defeat to the disaster.The paper is divided into four parts. In the first part, we start with the research on definition of disaster movie as type film, analyze the historical and cultural context of disaster movie’s production and development, establish the film’s important role in the description and show of emotional atmosphere and give the paper rationality and legitimacy to study on the research dimension of anxiety psychology.The second part mainly analyzes the themes of human’s anxiety in the disaster movie. This work is mainly to analyze the intention of the disaster movie and dig out the relationship between anxiety and fear of human’s consciousness and unconscious with the disaster movie deeply. Disaster movies produced in an age of anxiety, it embodies in these themes:the worry and anxiety for the ecological environment, the living order, the survival status and identity. These emotions exist in our daily consciousness. On the other hand, in our collective unconscious, a prototype of anxiety is handed down from generation to generation. Based on the investigation and research of the four major themes, we clarify the general types of disaster movies.The third part is the research of the disaster movie’s aesthetic characteristics. We divide it into four sections. They are:the entertainment show of disaster, the technique of narrative closure, the image of grotesque monster and the typical characters. We are not simply analyzing characteristics itself. Based on the research of the disaster movie’s aesthetic characteristics, we mainly want to show the beautification of anxiety. In another word, this part is to study the process that anxiety’s transform from daily emotional into aesthetic object. The whole train of thought is based on human psychological anxiety to study disaster movies as well.The fourth part is the research on the value of the disaster movie in aesthetic pleasure. The disaster movie, as a kind of aesthetic object, brings us a variety of emotional experiences and these experiences bring pleasure to us. First what we get is a visual pleasure and instinct satisfy, and it is mainly to coincide with our unconscious. At the level of consciousness,we gain pleasure from the purification of anxiety and understanding of human lofty. The two parts make disaster movie the characterization of era, and a popular art consumer.In conclusion, We also criticize the main problems of the Hollywood disaster movie and analyze the reference for Chinese disaster movie, in order to see the brilliance of it at an early date.