Beast-People Onscreen and in Your Brain: The Evolution of Animal-Humans from Prehistoric Cave Art to Modern Movies (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution) - Hardcover

A new take on our bio-cultural evolution explores how the "inner theatre" of the brain and its "animal-human stages" are reflected in and shaped by the mirror of cinema. * Creates a new model exploring the "inner theater" of human reality perceptions, fantasies, memories, and dreams in relation to art, ritual, everyday actions, and cultural events * Employs neuroscience research, evolutionary theory, and various performance paradigms, drawing on what is known about the animal ancestry and neural circuitry of the human brain to probe the framework of our bio-cultural evolution * Explains how the "emotion pictures" found in prehistoric caves represent turning points in human awareness * Examines a wide range of beast-people films ranging from the 1931 Dracula to the Twilight series (2008-2012) and the 2014 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, showing how viewers connect to the films and the potential positive and negative impacts they have

Mark Pizzato, MFA, PhD, is professor of theatre and film at UNC-Charlotte, where he teaches theatre history, theory, playwriting/screenwriting, and various topics in film.