The Aesthetics of Horror Films: A Santayanan Perspective 3030843459, 9783030843458

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
1: Introduction
References
2: Aesthetic Optimism
2.1 The Aesthetic Bankruptcy of Evil
2.2 The Doctrine of Essence
2.3 Aesthetic Optimism: The Deduction
2.4 The Unintelligibility of the Aggregative View
2.5 The Doctrine of Expression
References
3: Fear in the Cinema and the Definition of Horror
3.1 The Definition of Horror
3.2 The Cognitive Profile of Fear
References
4: Horror and Its Dark Visions
4.1 The Scare-Value of Horror: The Three Axes of Fear
4.2 Horror as Sport: Expansions
References
5: Horror and Its Dark Witnesses
5.1 Being Mean to Dolls: Horror as Ritualistic Effigy Punishment
5.2 A Bloody Symphony for the Dregs: Horror as Downward Social Comparison
5.3 At Least Someone Dead Envies You: Horror as Survival
5.4 Playing Dead: Horror as Submission
5.5 Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

The Aesthetics of Horror Films A Santayanan Perspective

Forrest Adam Sopuck

The Aesthetics of Horror Films

Forrest Adam Sopuck

The Aesthetics of Horror Films A Santayanan Perspective

Forrest Adam Sopuck Ottawa, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-84345-8    ISBN 978-3-030-84346-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

“Perfect taste is itself a limitation, not because it intentionally excludes any excellence, but because it impedes the wandering of the arts into those bypaths of caprice and grotesqueness in which, although at the sacrifice of formal beauty, interesting partial effects might still be discovered.”—Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, p. 109.

To Morrissey and Alfie, my faithful, feline companions.

Acknowledgements

This book is the product of my complete devotion to the popular genre of horror beginning at a young age coupled with an acquired discipline for research. I owe my father for encouraging me to discover the world on my own terms, and I owe my mother for demonstrating by example the personal fulfilment of a job well done. I must also thank my dearest Claudia, my talented brother Bennett, my Grandmother, and my Uncle Paul, for their love and support. In the backdrop of the writing process were the weekly philosophical conversations with my Grandmother, Anne, as well as the fiery, bi-weekly philosophical exchanges with my long-time friend and former M.A. supervisor, Phil Dwyer. My thoughts on the topic also benefited from conversations with friends or colleagues, including Ian MacDonald, Cameron Boult, and Karl Pfeifer.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Aesthetic Optimism  9 3 Fear in the Cinema and the Definition of Horror 51 4 Horror and Its Dark Visions 67 5 Horror and Its Dark Witnesses 97 Index127

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Abbreviations

A AS Confessions CP Enchiridion EPM GM Inquiry New Essays RB SAF SB WP

The Anti-Christ An Æsthetic Soviet Saint Augustine: Confessions Crowds and Power The Enchiridion An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals The Genealogy of Morals An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense New Essays on Human Understanding Realms of Being Scepticism and Animal Faith The Sense of Beauty The Will to Power

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1 Introduction

Abstract  This chapter introduces the driving issues that govern the subject matter of this book and presents an overview of the central claims that will be defended. Some provisional discussion of Santayana’s view on the nature of beauty and the paradoxical nature of horror is provided, and a cursory description of the modified Santayanan account from which I approach the aesthetics of horror is offered. A preliminary sketch of the “sport model” of horror’s aesthetic is provided, and a key concept that will factor into later analyses, namely, “necropolitics”, is articulated. The chapter establishes a road map for the rest of the book: It identifies the topics covered and the logical order in which they are covered, and begins to situate the theoretical project within the context of scholarship on the nature of horror. Keywords  Beauty • Pleasure • Negative emotion • Necropower • Status quo It is somewhat mysterious why I gravitated to the horror genre as a child. Its principal subject matter—mortal threat, injury, gore, suffering, and death—is offensive and even revolting. These films are intent on © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5_1

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inducing fear and disgust in the viewer—negative emotions that are intrinsically unpleasant. As George Santayana would put it, horror films are often “vitally repulsive” (SB 25). Why, then, are they enjoyable? If they are not enjoyable, they fail to be or communicate art, since art is concerned with beautiful objects, and thus things that are intrinsically enjoyable. Indeed, the bond between beauty and pleasure is so strong that Santayana goes so far as to declare beauty to be a form of pleasure: Beauty, he writes, “…is pleasure objectified.” (SB 52) How may horror films, relative to their principal subject matter, be objects of pleasure? This is a paradox over which much ink has been spilled1, and a complete evaluation of relevant positions will not be undertaken here, though, to anticipate, the solution that will be advanced contrasts with two main opposing types of solution, namely, “co-existentialism” and “integrationism”.2 The view that will be defended takes initial instruction from Santayana’s early analysis of the paradox of negative emotion in art.3 In my understanding, horror’s representations of “evil”—e.g., suffering, gore, mortal harm, threat, death—negate, under conditions to be specified, the aesthetic value of the objects in which they are contained. Nevertheless, this does not render horror films aesthetically worthless. Rather, there is at least one form of aesthetic enjoyment to which horror lends itself in virtue of its principal primary function to induce rational fear. This form of aesthetic enjoyment turns on entertaining the aversive scenarios the films represent and evaluating their possible applications in one’s own case. Horror films, like bull-fighting, boxing, and other high-stake sports, carry a degree of risk. For the attraction of a challenge, a dare, or thrill, the viewer practically evaluates the severity, believability, and personal likelihood of premises or scenarios represented in the films. Opposed to experiencing sustained or intractable fear, the viewer attempts to judge the aversive scenarios as personally inapplicable. In the activity of mentally overcoming the film, the viewer has an opportunity for aesthetically

 E.g., see Carroll (1990), Levinson (2013), Martin (2019), Menninghaus et  al. (2017), Smuts (2007, 2009). 2  See Carroll (1990, 191) 3  E.g., see SB (222). 1

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loaded self-admiration. This model of horror’s aesthetic enjoyment I call “the sport model”, given horror’s affinity to high-stake sport on this model. My preferred modified Santayanan framework for this model is expounded in Chapter 2. The position that representations of evil in horror, under certain conditions, negate the aesthetic value of the object in which they are contained will be grounded in the critical reconstruction of themes in Santayana’s early aesthetic theory found in The Sense of Beauty in light of his mature doctrine of essence and corollary views delivered in his later writing. Chapter 3 sketches the neo-judgementalist account of emotions as well as the simulated/non-simulated emotions distinction that inform subsequent analyses. This chapter borrows (with some critical stage-­ setting) from Robert C. Roberts’ account of emotion as well as figures such as Kendall Walton, Gregory Currie, and Berys Gaut. This chapter also differentiates horror from other film genres. I adopt the view that horror is distinct from other genres in terms of its principal primary function, i.e., to induce fear. Included are discussions of “pure” vs. “hybrid” genres of horror and the roles of the motifs of violence and gore in the genre. A general sketch of some of the different ways horror can induce rational fear is provided. Chapter 4 describes the mechanics of sport-viewing horror films. It details an account of one way horror films can pose some risk to the viewer (like any opponent in high-stake sport); namely, they can induce significant and rational fear by communicating aversive scenarios that the percipient judges as sufficiently A) severe, B) believable, and C) personally unavoidable such that she considers them real threats to herself or to those for whom she cares. The scare-value of a number of plot, cinematic, and visual devices will be discussed, and a logical trajectory of advances in horror’s scare-value will be traced; this trajectory is proportional to increases in the motifs of arbitrary or indiscriminate harm, violence, and misfortune within the genre. The nature and diverse functions of horror need to be understood in a way that appreciates the situational-dependency of their vital significance.4 Furthermore, there is a need to demystify fear in the cinema, and  Cf. Hanich (2010, 17).

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though some have effectively done this5, the sport model is an invaluable resource in this regard. It construes the fear of horror as proceeding through the regular cognitive channels of fear (bypassing the philosophical bugbear of “fearing fiction”, for instance), and supplies three interrelated metrics through which the scare-value effectiveness of films may be objectively evaluated. The aesthetic value of horror, according to this model, consists in the opportunity horror provides for percipients to engage in aesthetically loaded self-admiration; in this respect, horror also bears a resemblance to a form of childhood socio-dramatic play, and moreover parallels Santayana’s account of the sublime. Chapter 4 also provides important expansions on the sport model and fields a number of anticipated objections. A “trophy” reading of the model is developed, one that is consistent with Santayana’s account of expression (critically reinterpreted), according to which the aesthetically loaded significate suggested by a symbol (virtually) merges with that symbol to become expression. Chapter 5 describes a number of prospective auxiliary functions of horror that stem from its representations of evil. The four auxiliary functions of horror covered in this chapter I consider to be particularly apt for “necropolitical” exploitation. I borrow this notion from Achille Mbembe (2003). The “necropower” of a nation state is its “…generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations.” (Mbembe 2003, 14) “Death” is broadly construed by Mbembe so as to include not merely biological death, but also the negation of livelihood, e.g., “political death”, “cultural death” (2003, 18).6 Necropolitics, I take it, comprehends all morally arbitrary state-­ imposed diminishments of livelihood, since this falls under the category of what he means by the “instrumentalization of human existence”. This final discussion is designed to fall within the orbit of Santayana’s early views on art, which include the following truism: “A work, nominally a work of art, may also appeal to non-ӕsthetic feelings by its political bias, brutality, or obscenity.” (SB 225)  E.g., see Hanich (2014); Carroll (1987, 56; 1990, 79-87) on “thought theory”.  See also his account of “the living dead” and “stateless people” (found in the same paper); cf: Agamben (2005) on the “state of exception” and “bare life”. 5 6

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The four proposed necropolitical functions derive from horror’s representations of violence, gore, mortal threat, suffering, misfortune, or death. One aspect of horror that lends itself to political exploitation is that it often symbolizes ideal justice: It is like the burning or mock execution of an effigy. By being a vehicle for aggrieved populations to simulate feelings of retribution or justice, horror works, plausibly, to dispel aggressive or revolutionary impulses that threaten to overturn the status quo in unjust social systems. The question of how horror movies represent just punishments when the punishments they depict appear grossly disproportionate and are committed by evil actors is considered. Three further necropolitical functions of horror are presented. There is, I argue, a connection between developments in the scare-value effectiveness of horror and its progression towards representations of indiscriminate or arbitrary violence, and this is a troubling trajectory, since it tends to promote the satisfaction of morose or obscene pleasures—unlike the pleasure derived from perceived corrections of moral disorder or injustice, which, at least when such perceptions are veridical, is not particularly objectionable. Horror’s necropolitical functions beyond symbolizing idealized justice, as I see them, turn on its propensity to serve as a basis for percipients to simulate a perverse, though natural, satisfaction from witnessing undeserved suffering or misfortunes of others. Accordingly, the second and third necropolitical auxiliary functions of horror developed turn on the well-noted phenomenon of “downward social comparison7”, which involves deriving feelings of self-­enhancement through observing misfortune in others. A “logic of aggrievement” or propositional formulation of this phenomenon is articulated. The discussion also takes instruction from Elias Canetti’s account of the survival drive (found in Crowds and Power and (in a condensed version) in The Conscience of Words). I suggest that simulations of feelings of self-­ enhancement through downward social comparison are more stable than non-simulated versions of them given that the latter are often interrupted by contrary (negative) emotions of guilt and pity. Horror functions, I propose, to preserve the status quo within systems of power that turn on morally arbitrary distributions of goods and harms, and it does so by  See Wills (1981).

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initializing the production of simulated feelings of self-enhancement in aggrieved populations. The final necropolitical auxiliary function of horror that will be considered I call “horror as submission”. Late-era Nietzsche’s views of guilt and pity are invoked, and an association between Nietzsche and Canetti on the survival drive is proposed. It is shown how from a “life-denying” universalization and inversion of an axiom of the logic of aggrievement, one derives a basis for those in positions of fortune and privilege to feel guilty. This, I propose, prepares the ground for representations of indiscriminate or arbitrary violence or misfortune in horror to be used by privileged populations to experience ameliorations in feelings of guilt regarding their better fortune, as well as feelings of pity for the less fortunate, through imaginatively identifying with the characters that are victimized in the films. It is proposed that horror as submission likewise functions to preserve the status quo within necropolitical systems of power. This analysis of the necropolitical functions of horror partially converges with Noël Carroll’s summary assessment of the potential for horror’s political exploitation, exhibited in the following passage of his seminal book, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart: …I have no doubts that a given work of horror could serve the interests of the status quo, nor that a critic might be able to show how a given work or group of works does this. What I do not think can be shown is that horrific fiction is necessarily complicit ideologically; I even doubt that it could be shown that all existing works of horror are irredeemably repressive politically. And, in any case, showing that horror is ideologically useful to the forces of political and/or cultural repression would not really account for the persistence of the appeal of the genre. For the genre would have to have some appeal of its own already in order to be enlisted in the service of the status quo. (1990, 205)

In my view, horror has an appeal independent of its political function, namely, its potential sport- aesthetic value. However, the enlistment of horror for the purposes of preserving the status quo in unfair systems of human organization does not depend on some sort of injection or

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retrofitting of exogenous, politically-charged themes (e.g., racist tropes) into the genre, as Carroll implies. Rather, the materials for political exploitation in horror are proper to horror and congruous with advances in its scare-value effectiveness; to employ a cliché, the call is coming from inside the house (of horror). Horror’s necropolitical functions, in my view, are seamlessly woven into the genre and the framework of its appeal. Thus, I do not share Carroll’s confidence that horror, at least in the context in which it occurs now, is not “necessarily complicit ideologically”, since its logical trajectory, given its principal primary function, involves an exploration of representations of arbitrary or indiscriminate violence, harm, suffering, and human misfortune generally, and such representations appeal to base, inalienable instincts of ours, and can assist in the preservation of contexts of systematic aggrievement, contexts that are prevalent today.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carroll, Noël. 1987. The Nature of Horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1): 51–59. ———. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. New York: Routledge. ———. 2014. Judge Dread: What we are Afraid of when we are Scared at the Movies. Projections 8 (2): 26–49. Levinson, Jerrold. 2013. Introduction. In Suffering Art Gladly: The Paradox of Negative Emotion in Art, ed. Jerrold Levinson, x–xvi. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Martin, G.  Neil. 2019. (Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films. Frontiers in Psychology 10: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02298. Accessed 19 May 2021. Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Trans. Libby Meintjes. Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40.

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Menninghaus, Winfried, Valentin Wagner, Julian Hanich, Eugen Wassiliwizky, Thomas Jacobsen, and Stefan Koelsch. 2017. The Distancing-Embracing Model of the Enjoyment of Negative Emotions in Art Reception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40: 1–63. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17000309. Accessed 19 May 2021. Santayana, George. 1896/1905. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.   Smuts, Aaron. 2007. The Paradox of Painful Art. Journal of Aesthetic Education 41 (3): 59–77. ———. 2009. Art and Negative Affect. Philosophy Compass 4 (1): 39–55. Wills, Thomas Ashby. 1981. Downward Comparison Principles in Social Psychology. Psychological Bulletin 90 (2): 245–271.

2 Aesthetic Optimism

Abstract  This chapter presents a modified Santayanan view on the nature of aesthetic objects, according to which evil or its representation, properly understood, negates the aesthetic value of the object in which it is contained. This contrasts with Santayana’s official early view—a variant of “co-existentialism”. By interpreting themes from Santayana’s early aesthetic theory through the lens of his later account of complex essencehood, I propose a revision to this view. The proposed revision affirms the intrinsic positivity of art, and is what I call “aesthetic optimism”. It also rejects more generally Santayana’s early conception of aesthetic objects as units of pleasurable feeling and imagistic profiles compounded together during episodes of immediate appreciation. Keywords  Beauty • Co-existentialism • Essence • Evil • Projection • Sentimentalism

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5_2

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2.1 The Aesthetic Bankruptcy of Evil I propose that any film that is understood by the viewer to document, signify, or involve factual violence, suffering, mortal threat, injury, or death1—i.e., evil—cannot, at that instant, be a source of aesthetic enjoyment for that viewer. Milo and Otis (1986) was enjoyable until I took seriously the (albeit unsubstantiated) rumours that its production was fraught with animal cruelty (see Billson 2018). To put it in Santayana’s terms, at the moment of this realization, the “…work abdicates that aesthetic quality which was its original essence…” (AS 198) Though horror films often turn on a feigned pretence to historical fact2 or are said to be “inspired” by real events3, they cannot be understood by the viewer to be documentations of factual evil when they are aesthetic objects for him, and, a fortiori, no film that is recognized or thought to actually contain footage of real harm4 qualifies, in that instance, as an aesthetic object.5 This proposal takes root, in part, in key principles of Santayana’s early aesthetic doctrine, and in particular, from his affirmation that “…the pleasant is never…the object of a truly moral injunction.” (SB 25) Santayana’s early doctrine involves a “…reduction of all values to immediate appreciations, to sensuous or vital activities…” (SB 29)6 According to Santayana’s early sentimentalist account7, beauty has no transcendent value, being, or existence outside of perception; in short, Santayana’s early sentimentalism is subjectivist:

 E.g., Jack the Ripper (1976); Ed Gein (2000); Chopper (2000); Ted Bundy (2002); Gacy (2003); Hillside Strangler (2004); Karla (2006); Cannibal (2006); The Snowtown Murders (2011). 2  E.g., The Amityville Horror (1977); The Changeling (1980); The Lighthouse (2019). 3  E.g., The Exorcist (1973); Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). 4  E.g., Faces of Death (1978); Cannibal Holocaust (1980). 5  Matt Hills (2005, 129–145) calls into question the strict separation of “horror” the art genre and “true horror”, the intersection of which, one might think, is present in true crime films like those mentioned above, and elsewhere. I deny such intersections as a matter of principle. 6  Cf. RB (152): “The sense of beauty is not a feeling separable from some intuition of form; on the other hand, it is a feeling, not a verbal or intellectual judgement.” 7  Cf. EPM (294): “… [Taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises in a manner a new creation.” 1

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Beauty…is a value…it cannot be conceived as an independent existence which affects our sense and which we consequently perceive. It exists in perception, and cannot exist otherwise. A beauty not perceived is a pleasure not felt, and a contradiction.” (SB 45)8 Values spring from the immediate and inexplicable reaction of vital impulse, and from the irrational part of our nature… [B]eauty is a species of value… (SB 19–20)

Santayana contrasts this view with “rationalistic” accounts of beauty that conceive “excellence and beauty [to]…flow by some logical necessity from the essences of objects simultaneously in our mind…” or which “…deduce [them]…from the describable qualities of things…” (SB 199) Rather, beauty is constituted in the interests, passions, appetites, and imaginative delights of sentient beings (SB 29), and in particular, it is a function of their emotional reactions. In Santayana’s view, the feelings of moral sense and those of aesthetic judgement are functions of “appreciative perception” (SB 16), and thus, both belong to the basic category of “judgments of value” (SB 23). Emotions, in his view, are understood to be the locus of values, and emotions are consequents of ultimately primitive and instinctual preferences (SB 18–23). Judgements of value are distinct from purely intellectual judgements or “judgments of fact” (SB 23)9, which have only derivative value, if any (Ibid.). Moral good and evil are also values, and thus, the same perception-­ dependence that is characteristic of beauty is also enjoyed by them, in Santayana’s earlier view. That is, all judgements of value are based in

 See also SB (49): “An object cannot be beautiful if it can give pleasure to nobody: a beauty to which all men were forever indifferent is a contradiction in terms.” 9  Cf. EPM (294): “… [T]he distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: the latter gives us sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue.” 8

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emotional appearance10, and “[t]here is no value apart from some appreciation of it…” (SB 18)11 Though Santayana argues that intellectual or rational judgements, i.e., judgements of relation and judgements of fact, have no direct value or aesthetic effect, he thinks they nevertheless have an instrumental value insofar as they promote “…safe and economical action and…the pleasures of comprehension.” (SB 20)12, and in particular, they may augment our ability to perceive the beauty of a thing: If we approach a work of art or nature scientifically, for the sake of its historical connexions or proper classification, we do not approach it ӕsthetically. The discovery of its date or of its author may be otherwise interesting; it only remotely affects our ӕsthetic appreciation by adding to the direct effect certain associations…To know the truth about the composition and history of things is good… [in part] because of the enlarged horizon it gives us…” (SB 20; 22)13

Beauty, according to Santayana, is inherently pleasing or has a “pleasing effect” (SB 260); it “…is…a positive value that is intrinsic; it is a pleasure.” (SB 50) As a sentimentalist, Santayana considers beauty to be constituted by this pleasure. Putting it concisely, he remarks: “Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of things…” and that “[i]t is the sense of the presence of something good…” (SB 47–48; 49) However, beauty is not simply a pleasure, but a “pleasure objectified”, on the relevant view, which is to say, it is a “felt value” (SB 210) that we  To anticipate, Santayana’s sentimentalism of value is congruous with the neo-judgementalist theory of emotions. According to this theory, emotions do not consist of full-blown intellectual acts, but rather quasi-perceptual/pseudo-judgemental concern-based construals or emotional appearances. 11  Cf. SAF (280): “These strange and irrational pronouncements of spirit, calling events good or evil, are…grounded on nothing but on a creeping or shrinking of the flesh.” I shall bypass the exposition of the finer distinction Santayana makes between moral and aesthetic judgements, a distinction the cogency of which has come under attack (e.g., see Altman (1998), who argues that, on closer inspection of Santayana’s doctrine, aesthetic judgements collapse into moral ones). 12  See also SB (23). 13  Of course, quite often the truth, or suspicion of truth, regarding a film can negate its pleasurableness, as the Milo and Otis (1986) example illustrates. 10

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project onto things. This is what distinguishes aesthetic pleasures from other forms of pleasure: Every real pleasure…is not sought with ulterior motives, and what fills the mind is no calculation, but the image of an object or event, suffused with emotion. (SB 39) There is the expression of a curious but well-known psychological phenomenon, viz., the transformation of an element of a sensation into the quality of a thing. If we say that other men should see the beauty we see, it is because we think those beauties are in the object, like its colour, proportion, or size. Our judgment appears to us merely the perception and discovery of an external existence, of the real excellence that is without….[M]odern philosophy has taught us to say…[that all]…element[s] of the perceived world…are sensations; and their grouping into objects imagined to be permanent and external is the work of certain habits of our intelligence. (SB 44–45) Every idea which is formed in the human mind, every activity and emotion, has some relation, direct or indirect, to pain and pleasure. If, as is the case in all the more important instances, these fluid activities and emotions precipitate, as it were, in their evanescence certain psychical solids called ideas of things, then the concomitant pleasures are incorporated more or less in those concrete ideas and the things acquire an ӕsthetic colouring [my emphasis]. (SB 110)

There are two sorts of projection being considered in these passages. One must distinguish the projection of beauty onto physical objects of perception—which are not objects of intuition, in Santayana’s view14, but are rather the objective causes of our intuitions—from the projection of beauty onto mental images or the objects of intuition.15 The  See Sect. 2.2.  It is unfortunate that the term “perception” in SB is used to refer to moments of intuition (e.g., “…the perception of beauty…” (SB 10). In his later writing, he tends to consciously reserve the term for naming only that “…stretching forth of intent beyond intuition…” (SAF 282) or operations of mind that “…designate…things only externally…things…which are substances”—i.e., the objects “…posited by animal faith …” (RB 112) With this lack of standardization in terminol14 15

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former, call it, perceptual projection16, is a matter of falsely believing that what in reality is an emotional quality or mere sensation is a quality of physical objects.17 The latter, call it imagistic projection, is the relevant sense in which beauty is “pleasure objectified”, according to the early view, since aesthetic objects are by definition non-physical objects of intuition.18 Santayana employs the notion of “suffusion” in order to clarify the relevant sense of projection, i.e., imagistic projection, according to which qualities of aesthetic feeling are projected qualities of “certain psychical solids”. In imagistic projection, aesthetic feeling is not a projected quality merely in the sense that it is (falsely) believed to reside in an object—as is the case in perceptual projection—but rather, the property phenomenally resides inside the visible (tactile, auditory, olfactory, etc.) boundaries of the object (in this case, an image). In imagistic projection, the pleasure and the object of that pleasure are co-located, such that “…what fills the mind is…the image of an object or event, suffused with emotion.” (SB 39) That is to say, when we see something as beautiful, we are viewing an image coloured or superimposed by an emotional quality (in quasi-­concrete form). As Santayana explains, “… [I]t is the essential privilege of beauty to so synthesize and bring to a focus the various impulses of the self, so to suspend them to a single image…” (SB 235).19 Santayana does not always carefully distinguish perceptual from imagistic projection in SB; he sometimes shifts between the two distinct forms in a way that can confuse matters.20 But this is not to say that he did not recognize the distinction. Santayana later acknowledges the misleading nature of his formulation of aesthetic projection in SB; the following ogy between the early and later works noted, I shall proceed to use the term “perception” in the broad sense in which it is used in SB, namely, as synonymous with awareness or experience. 16  Cf. RB (370; 458). For a good contemporary example of perceptual projectionism, see Boghossian and Velleman (1991, 106) 17  Cf. RB (43). 18  Note that “image” for Santayana comprehends more than the intuitive data of vision, but is rather used as a catch-all term denoting the objects of intuition. For instance, Santayana speaks of the images of both sight and touch (SB 47). 19  See also SB (239): “… [B]eauty belongs properly to sensible things…” 20  E.g., see SB (44–49; 234–235).

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passage from his paper entitled “The Mutability of Æsthetic Categories” is an indication of his dissatisfaction with his earlier formulation in this regard: My whole little book The Sense of Beauty was written from a subjective point of view, and nothing was further from me than a wish to hypostatize either beauty or pleasure…I should not now use the phrase ‘objectified pleasure,’… [for] pleasure…does not need to be objectified in order to be fused into an image felt to be beautiful: if felt at all, pleasure is already an object of intuition; and the beautiful image is never objective in any other sense. Nevertheless I am far from disowning my old view in its import…I might [now] perhaps say that beauty was a vital harmony felt and fused into an image under the form of eternity. (1925, 284)21

However, it should also be noted that a more charitable reader might consider any perceptual projection of beauty to imply the aesthetically relevant imagistic projection; for, as Santayana says, “The qualities which we now conceive to belong to real objects are for the most part images of sight and touch.” (SB 47) But then a projection of qualities of aesthetic feeling onto physical objects, plausibly, implies first noticing them in the images of sight and touch, and thus, presupposes imagistic projection. It is important to distinguish the actual physical artifact or material composition (e.g., the physical painting) from the aesthetic object or the object of beauty, which is to say, the art proper. The true aesthetic objects, in Santayana’s view, are mere objects of intuition, and thus, not the actual physical pieces. The physical objects we typically refer to as “art” are merely the occasions of our immediate appreciations; that is, they are “monument[s]” to these aesthetic “moments of inspiration…” (SB 262). As he later explains, “Æsthetic values are essentially individual and occasional, and the greatness of masterpieces remains purely nominal until intuition in somebody recognizes and confirms it.” (AS 190) The representations of harm, suffering, gore, mortal threat, injury, or death—representations of evil—are antithetical to the perception of  The full significance of this passage will become clearer once the doctrine of essence has been introduced, but for now, the point to be gleaned from it is that Santayana later recognized the misleading nature of his earlier formulation of aesthetic projection. 21

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beauty, on his view, since representations of evil are “vitally repulsive” (SB 25). The perception of evil is antagonistic to the perception of beauty: [Beauty]…is never the perception of a positive evil, it is never a negative value. That we are endowed with the sense of beauty is a pure gain which brings no evil with it. (SB 49)

This theme is retained in his later work: Art, as I use the word here, implies moral benefit: the impulsive modification of matter by man to his own confusion and injury I should not call art, but vice or folly. (RB 353)

One cannot be pleased and repulsed by one and the same feature in the same instant. Because beauty is a form of pleasure, one that is objectified, and perceptions of evil induce negative feelings, no beauty can inhere in representations of evil, recognized as such: … [N]o ӕsthetic value is really founded on the experience or the suggestion of evil…There may…be an expressiveness of evil; but this expressiveness will not have any ӕsthetic value. The description or suggestion of suffering may have a worth as a science or discipline, but can never in itself enhance any beauty. (SB 258)

This is not to say that beauty and the representation of suffering, in Santayana’s early view, cannot exist alongside one another, but rather that representations of evil are not through their inclusion in a larger composition ever made beautiful, and nor do they directly or aesthetically contribute to the beauty of that composition. To put it succinctly, “Nothing but the good of life enters into the texture of the beautiful.” (SB 260) I shall side-step the issue that some individuals suffer from an impairment that reduces their capacity for sympathetic response, and that for such individuals, the perception of suffering may not induce the characteristic negative affect.22 Santayana tacitly admits that it is not an a priori   On the abnormal neurological correlates of psychopathy, see Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007). 22

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truth that suffering can never be the direct object of pleasure—see SB (224) on the nature of the cruel tyrant and his propensity for schadenfreude. Rather, it is an empirical truth that holds for the majority of people, or for people with ordinary cognitive constitutions, that the witnessing of suffering induces a sympathetic response. However, note that sympathy for fellow creatures has a rational basis, according to Santayana; it is not simply a function of inclination: In pain, in terror, in all such moral suffering as is akin to pain, the enemy is external…[C]orporal works of mercy engage the spirit whole-heartedly and more urgently than any ideal object of aspiration. We do not ask whether the wretch lying robbed and wounded by the wayside deserves to be helped. He needs help, and that suffices to secure unreservedly our spiritual sympathy. His calamity is external to him. In respect to it, there is integrity in his soul, however distracted and criminal may have been the business that led him onto this plight. We disregard these circumstances, which we feel to have been accidents in that blind life, snares into which a poor animal soul was drawn insensibly, filth that clotted and distorted it against its primary intent. Now in his extremity the broken ruffian is again a child. He asks only to breathe, to sleep, to be nourished, not to be tormented. And with that elementary Will in him the Will in every spirit is unanimous: all recognize the common enemy, physical misfortune, physical disaster. These may reduce the scope of spirit in each soul, but they remove all antipathy between one soul and another: they inspire humility in each and charity to all. (RB 682)

In this respect, the psychopath can not only be considered abnormal, but also ignorant or irrational; he fails to recognize the universality of our fundamental existential condition as spiritual or conscious beings. Fear, according to Santayana, is a feeling that is antithetical to aesthetic feeling: The appreciation of beauty and its embodiment in the arts are activities which belong to our holiday life, when we are redeemed for the moment from the shadow of evil and the slavery to fear, and are following the bent of our nature where it chooses to lead us. (SB 25)

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The representation of evil is a source of fear not least because it, to borrow Santayana’s phrasing, can give rise to a “…suggestion of our own danger… [and as such, may] produce a touch of fear…” which, “…if it could by chance be objectified enough to become ӕsthetic…make[s] the object hateful and repulsive, like a mangled corpse.” (SB 244)23 However, certainly it appears as though viewers derive pleasure from viewing true crime dramas, for instance.—Otherwise, what explains their popularity?—And perhaps some viewers even derive pleasure from viewing actual footage of human tragedy (the popularity of shows that document contemporary executions, drug interventions, or other forms of human misery and wretchedness is perhaps a testament to this).24 Since the documentation of actual suffering is a defining characteristic of such pieces, and viewers are fully aware that what they are viewing are documentations of real events, have we not good reason to think that representations of evil can be the objects of aesthetic enjoyment, contra Santayana? There are resources in SB to respond to this sort of objection. First, one may concede that in such instances the viewer experiences genuine aesthetic feelings yet generally deny that the representations of evil are truly the object of those feelings. This is the basic strategy Santayana adopts in the following passage: … [A] conflagration may be called an evil, because it usually involves loss and suffering; but if, without caring for a loss and suffering we do not share, we are delighted by the blaze, and still say that what pleases us is an evil, we are using this word as a conventional appellation, not as the mark of a felt value. We are not pleased by an evil; we are pleased by a vivid and exciting sensation, which is a good, but which has for objective cause an  More on the relation between representations of evil and the inducement of fear is provided in subsequent sections. Note that here we observe Santayana extending his notion of aesthetic projection to include the projection of unpleasant emotions. I shall reserve “aesthetic objects” for denoting beautiful things, “aesthetic feeling” for denoting objectified pleasure, “aesthetic projection” for denoting the imagistic projection of pleasure, and so forth. But this is merely a terminological decision hinging on the popular or common usage of the term “aesthetic”. I do not deny that unpleasant qualities of feeling can be imagistically (or perceptually) projected qualities (see Sect. 2.4). 24  Such reality television programs will be considered in Chap. 5. 23

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event which may indeed be an evil to others, but about the consequences of which we are not thinking at all. (SB 223)25

As one sees, Santayana thinks that even when one aesthetically appreciates something that, as a matter of fact, involves an evil, like when one delights in a bright, intense flame of a deadly fire—consider the Hindenburg disaster of 1937—the evil is not actually being attended to, which is to say, it doesn’t enter-into the perceived (aesthetic) object of the feeling. Secondly, one may concede that what the viewer experiences when viewing representations of evil are pleasures, but that the representations are parodied, caricatured, or otherwise distorted in such a way that they are sanitized of negative affect. This is the strategy we observe in the following passage: A great deal of brutal tragedy has been endured in the world because the rudeness of the representation, or of the public, or of both, did not allow a really sympathetic reaction to arise. We all smile when Punch beats Judy in the puppet show. The treatment and not the subject is what makes a tragedy…By treating a tragic subject bombastically or satirically we can turn it into an amusement for the public; they will not feel the griefs which we have been careful to harden them against by arousing in them contrary emotions. A work, nominally a work of art, may also appeal to non-­ ӕsthetic feelings by its political bias, brutality, or obscenity. (SB 224–225)26

Take cartoon representations of violence, for instance, or Santayana’s own example of violent puppet shows: They seem to involve representations of evil, and these representations are themselves the objects of our perception, so it cannot be that we are not attending to them, and thus, the first strategy for explaining-away our amusement is a non-starter. The notion that the negative affect such representations normally arouse is  Cf. RB (8): “…[T]he impetuous philosopher…may dwell so much on the instinctive and pleasant bonds which attach men to what they call beautiful, that he may bury the essence of the beautiful altogether under heavy descriptions of the occasions on which perhaps it appears.” 26  Note that the feelings aroused by such “political bias, brutality, or obscenity” are “non-ӕsthetic” because they are not projected qualities of the piece; rather, they are localized in the perceiving subject. 25

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cognitively blocked by a sort of pre-emptive arousal of contrary pleasurable emotions—as the penultimate sentence in the preceding passage suggests—is also problematic. For, in that case, if the pleasure is induced from the perception of the representations of evil themselves, then this runs contrary to Santayana’s governing stipulation regarding the aesthetic bankruptcy of representations of evil. If, on the other hand, the governing assumption is respected, and the representations of evil are not responsible for these pleasurable feelings, then this second strategy seems to be really no different than the first, namely, the strategy of denying that representations of evil are truly the object of perceptions giving rise to pleasurable feeling, but this strategy has already been ruled-out. Finally, if it is admitted that representations of evil enter into the object of perception in this case, and it is simply that the pleasurable feeling is derived from features of the object of perception other than its component representations of evil per se, then this strategy collapses into a variant of the third strategy, to which we now turn.27 Thirdly, one may admit that representations of evil can enter into a (complex) aesthetic object, yet proceed to reject that they are responsible for the pleasing-effect of that object. Accordingly, it is not the representations of evil in true crime dramas or footage of actual tragedy that are aesthetically pleasing, but rather these pieces are aesthetically pleasing in spite of containing these representations; i.e., the beauty of these pieces is always located in their other features (e.g., the organization of colours in the backdrop, the cinematography, or the architectural landscape or natural scenery that also happen to be depicted; the heroism of those trying to help the addict; and so forth). This strategy can be detected in the following passages: Only by the addition of positive beauties…can evil experiences be made agreeable to contemplation. (SB 222) The effect of the pathetic and comic is…never pure; since the expression of some evil is mixed up with those elements by which the whole appeals to  In a moment a distinction will be considered that helps shed light on the nature of this second strategy. 27

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us…To these sources all the aesthetic value of comic and tragic is due; and the sympathetic emotion which arises from the spectacle of evil must never be allowed to overpower these pleasures of contemplation, else the entire object becomes distasteful and loses its excuse for being… [H]istory is full of failures due to bombast, caricature, and unmitigated horror. In all these the effort to be expressive has transgressed the conditions of pleasing effect. (SB 259–260)

This third strategy is a form of “co-existentialism”. Santayana thinks that the beauty of tragedies, for instance, is predicative of the “…rank, beauty, and virtue in our heroes, nobility in their passions and in their fate, and [the] sort of glorification of life without which tragedy would lose… in depth of pathos — since things so precious are destroyed…” (SB 228) The actual representations of evil have no positive aesthetic charge, on this view (SB 222)—though this is not to say that they play no role in the generation of perceptions of beauty. Carroll describes the core of co-existentialism in the following: On the co-existentialist view, the feeling of pleasure with reference to distressful fictions is a case of one feeling being strong enough to overcome the other…In the case of a melodrama, the co-existentialist account says that sadness and pleasure exist simultaneously, with the pleasure compensating for the sadness. (Carroll 1995, 289)28

Similarly, Santayana considers the aesthetic object of tragedy, for instance, to involve competing quantities of aesthetic feeling and negative emotion, and if there is on balance quantitatively more represented evil than beauty in the object, and thus more negative emotion than positive, the object is immediately reduced to a moral repugnance—an “unmitigated horror” (SB 260) and “positive evil” (SB 50).29 Santayana has reason to prefer the first or second over the third strategy, since, upon inspection of central features of his early aesthetic  For objections to co-existentialism, see Neill (1992); Shaw (2001).  Cf. RB (131): “No cataclysm of nature, however disruptive, can ever embody evil. Evil can be realised there only if, in virtue of a previous organic harmony, a spirit was there incarnate, in which the disruption could generate the intuition of a hated change.” 28 29

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doctrine taken in connection with his mature account of essence, the notion that representations of evil (properly qualified) may factor as elements within beautiful wholes must be rejected. In other words, Santayana’s view that a thing may be beautiful in spite of containing representations of evil is incoherent, given his broader commitments. Before addressing the grounds for the revision I propose, however, a few critical remarks regarding Santayana’s notion of “representation of evil” (SB 223) are in order. These remarks should help clarify and make sense out of the obscure second strategy proposed for explaining the pleasure apparently derived from representations of evil. It is clear from the surrounding text of the preceding passage (SB 259–260) that by “representation of evil” he means both true depictions as well as purely fictional representations. And of course, footage or the description of real suffering presents or communicates an empirical case of evil; thus, any perception of such footage is anti-aesthetic, and displaces beauty in the finite area of the artistic composition, on the relevant view. Under the governing assumption, co-existentialism requires an additive model of aesthetic compositionality.30 Santayana misses the mark slightly here; there seems to be no thought of actual suffering implicated by merely entertaining fictional suffering. It is one thing, I propose, to entertain the notion of fictional entities suffering, and quite another to entertain or fantasize that real people or creatures are suffering, or that suffering is a true empirical description, or even, for that matter, that the suffering imagined is within the realm of worldly possibility, just as an innocent child may watch Bugs Bunny or a violent puppet show without the thought of any true malice or injury. In this sort of innocuous form of imagining, the representations of evil are sanitized in the way the second strategy above proposes. In purely fictional universes of dark fantasy or comical violent cartoons, we are typically not invited to imagine factual suffering. The same cannot be said, however, of the anti-Semitic cartoons of Der Stürmer, for instance, which are materials designed for reprobate uses of the imagination.

 This anticipates a discussion of the distinction between aggregative and essential complexity that occurs in the next section. 30

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Thus, one must distinguish imagining fictional suffering from imagining factual suffering, where the latter involves imagining that suffering is or may be a true empirical description. The imagery in each case may well be the same, but the belief in the reality or empirical possibility of the suffering in the latter case distinguishes the two.31 No thought of factual suffering need arise in the case of merely imagining fictional evil, since it need not suggest the existence or possibility of such evil. The anti-­aesthetic or anti-hedonic value of fictional representations of suffering, I propose, is confined to that form of representation not merely entertained, but which invites entertaining an empirical possibility or existence of evil. Otherwise, fictional representations of evil do not displace beauty (or potential beauty) or, for that matter, pleasure; they may be treated as empty images that have no negative visceral significance.32 As Santayana insists, …[A] mind discounting all reports, and free from all tormenting anxiety about its own fortunes or existence, finds in the wilderness of essence a very sweet and marvellous solitude…where all things are crystallised into the image of themselves, and have lost their urgency and their venom. (SAF 76)33

Representations of evil and ugliness are properly distinct, on Santayana’s account; ugliness is a deprivation of the beautiful; it is a negative quality, which is to say the absence of a quality (SB 49). Evil, on the other hand, is a real quality, and not a mere lack (SB 50). Ugliness is not normally antithetical to aesthetic feeling or beauty, since it presupposes some acquaintance with or thought of the beautiful, just as a hole presupposes some positive entity surrounding it. Ugliness is inherently an aesthetic notion, and implicates the beautiful. On the other hand, evil is a real quality (not a mere lack of a characteristic, but a characteristic itself ), one the perception of which negativizes beauty. Evil is a  There is a precedent for this sort of account: See Cherry (1988) on the distinction between “surrogate” and “autonomous” fantasies. 32  Cf. SB 50. See Smuts (2016, 387–388) for objections to the moral significance of this distinction. 33  See also SAF 65; RB 114; SAF 53: “I like the theatre, not because I cannot perceive that the play is a fiction, but because I do perceive it; if I thought the thing a fact, I should detest it: anxiety would rob me of all my imaginative pleasure.” 31

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moral notion or object of moral judgement rather than an object of taste or aesthetic interest. The ugly is…not the cause of any real pain. In itself it is rather a source of amusement. If its suggestions are vitally repulsive, its presence becomes a real evil towards which we assume a practical and moral attitude (SB 25).34

Given the moral innocence of ugliness, the deprivation of beauty is not to be confused with the privative conception of evil found in some strands of theodicy. However, Santayana’s analysis in SB extends into meta-­ theological critique, as he diagnoses the attraction of the privative account in theodicy35 as a misapplication of the aesthetic principle to the moral case; that is, the privative conception of evil confuses the nature of evil with that of ugliness (SB 50).36 It has perhaps occurred to the reader that evil per se and the perception of evil are prima facie quite different things. Suffering, harm, pain, death, injury, threat: These are all states of affairs that exist independently of  Nevertheless, Santayana thinks that a world with a preponderance of ugliness is a form of evil, since the thought that the world lacks so much of a good characteristic (beauty) is a moral repugnance, and “…adds to the burden of mortal life…” (SB 222); “When the ugly ceases to be amusing or merely uninteresting and becomes disgusting, it becomes indeed a positive evil…[T]hat evil is nothing but the absence of good: for even the tedium and vulgarity of an existence without beauty is not itself ugly so much as lamentable and degrading. The absence of ӕsthetic goods is a moral evil…” (SB 50) 35  E.g., see Enchiridion (XIV, p. 184). 36  He also considers the notion that evil in itself positively contributes to the good—a line of thought exemplified in the aesthetic solution to the problem of evil—to be equally confused, as the following passage demonstrates: 34

… [I]t sometimes happens, in moments less propitious, that the soul is subdued to what it works in, and loses its power of idealization and hope. By a pathetic and superstitious self-­ depreciation, we then punish ourselves for the imperfection of nature. Awed by the magnitude of a reality that we can no longer conceive as free from evil, we try to assert that its evil also is a good; and we poison the very essence of the good to make its extension universal. We confuse the causal connexion of those things in nature which we call good or evil by an adventitious denomination with the logical opposition between good and evil themselves; because one generation makes room for another, we say death is necessary to life; and because the causes of sorrow and joy are so mingled in this world, we cannot conceive how, in a better world, they might be disentangled. (SB 261)—See also SB (204).—On the aesthetic solution, see Whitney (1994, 21); Lovejoy (1936, 72); Confessions (VII.13.19. p. 183–184).

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whether I perceive them or not. Their evilness depends on sentient creatures with interests, and is mind-dependent in this more global sense, but such evil can exist beyond my perception of it—i.e., in other sentient creatures—and in this respect, there is a distinction between evil and its perception or representation—even if evil is a value, and as such, on the relevant view, is reduced to an object of “immediate appreciations” (SB, 29) or “felt value” (SB 223). More to the point, why should the perception of evil or its representation be antithetical to beauty? For, isn’t it possible, firstly, that a film might be interpreted as a factual account and yet not really be factual, or that it may be a factual account and fail to be interpreted as such? But then is it not conceivable that a film that contains factual depictions of evil could be an aesthetic object for the viewer functioning under the false belief that it is not a factual account? Inversely, isn’t it possible that a viewer may fail to derive aesthetic enjoyment from a film because he believes it to be a true account of evil even though it is entirely fictional and even when the film should otherwise be an object of beauty for him? Santayana would agree that the relevant issue is whether a film is experienced or understood by the viewer as containing factual depictions of evil, and not whether or not it actually contains such depictions or documents “physical evils” (SB 30): There is…nothing in all nature, perhaps, which is not an evil; nothing which is not unfavourable to some interest, and does not involve some infinitesimal or ultimate suffering in the universe of life. But when we are ignorant or thoughtless, this suffering is to us as if it did not exist. The pleasures of drinking and walking are not tragic to us, because we may be poisoning some bacillus or crushing some worm. To an omniscient intelligence such acts may be tragic by virtue of the insight into their relations to conflicting impulses; but unless these impulses are present to the same mind, there is no consciousness of tragedy. The child that, without understanding of the calamity, should watch a shipwreck from the shore, would have a simple emotion of pleasure as from a jumping jack; what passes for tragic interest is often nothing but this. (SB 223–224)

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This is an iteration of the first strategy discussed above offered for explaining the apparent case of deriving pleasure from evil or its representation. Unwittingly or ignorantly perceiving an object that is simultaneously “to us as if it did not exist” is perception as bare visual differentiation or non-­ epistemic seeing.37 That we must not merely be aware of evil but also recognize it as evil in order for it to arouse the relevant negative affect indicates that Santayana understands the perception of evil in the relevant sense to be conceptually mediated.38 That the perception of evil in the relevant sense is a species of conceptually mediated awareness coheres with the ultimate visceral inertness and causal impotence of mere imagistic presentation, according to Santayana—apart from “images” or qualities of feeling themselves, perhaps.39 “An essence is an inert theme…” (RB 20), Santayana writes. “… [A]ll essences are inert and nonexistent… [They] have no power to maintain themselves or to generate one another, any more than one word or note in the air has the power, in the absence of a vocal instrument, to breed the next word or the next note.” (RB 276) Bare visual imagery or, as shall be articulated in the next section, the unsubstantial essences that are the only objects of our intuition, are “immaterial absolute theme[s]” (SAF 39), and are in themselves causally inefficacious. To be sure, we have emotional reactions to them sometimes originally or as a result of instinct (like revulsion or disgust upon the mere intuition of some odours, for example), but nothing about those qualities (odours) intrinsically has any causal efficacy; it is only insofar as pain or pleasure is infused into them 37  Dretske’s (1969) definition of non-epistemic seeing is as follows: “S seesn D = D is visually differentiated from its immediate environment by S….[where] S’s differentiation of D is by visual means, in terms of D’s looking some way to S…” (1969, 20) Seeingn, is “…logically independent of whatever beliefs we may possess.” (1969, 17) “… [V]isual differentiation…is a pre-intellectual, pre-discursive…capacity which a wide variety of beings possess. It is an endowment which is largely immune to the caprice of our intellectual life. Whatever judgments, interpretations, beliefs, inferences, anticipations, regrets, memories, or thoughts may be aroused by the visual differentiation of D, the visual differentiation of D…is quite independent of these accompaniments. It can take place with or without them…” (Dretske 1969, 29) 38  See Crowther (2006) for a discussion that stakes-out the relevant conceptualist positions in this regard. 39  However, even these in themselves, apart from their association with the body or physical psyche through sensation, are inert: “As an intuition, if such it may be called, pain is empty, yet as a sensation it is intense, arresting, imperative; so that it exemplifies the very essence of evil for the spirit: to exist in vain, to care intensely in the dark, to be prodded into madness about nothing.” (RB 679)

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that they have any motive force or, to borrow Santayana’s terminology, take on an “emotional tinge” (SB 85). There is no beauty in representations of evil themselves, and representations of evil do not aesthetically (as opposed to merely causally) contribute to the beauty of the whole: These are the two governing Santayanan postulates. But a more extreme position can be motivated on Santayanan grounds. The extreme position maintains these two governing postulates, but adds a third, namely, that there can be no representation of evil, recognized as such, in an aesthetic object whatsoever. This more extreme position is grounded in the application of features of Santayana’s mature doctrine of essence and corollary views to the two governing postulates found in his early account of beauty.

2.2 The Doctrine of Essence Taking a step back for a moment, let us acknowledge that one should expect a great concomitance between Santayana’s earlier views found in SB and his later ontological account. As we shall see, Santayana relies quite heavily on artistic examples within the later explication of his notion of complex essencehood, for instance, but it is a peculiarity of his later work generally that the appeal to aesthetics constitutes explanatory bedrock.40 The arts have a sort of primacy in the exposition of his doctrine of essence precisely because their subject matter—beauty—is perfectly open to inspection. Aesthetic objects are wholly present in, to borrow Santayana’s phrase, “…revelation[s] of essences in intuition.” (RB 121) There is, therefore, a good reason why Santayana’s exposition of essence so often terminates in comparisons to art, as the appeal to the aesthetic is clarifying: … [P]oetry is, in one sense, truer than science, and more satisfactory to a seasoned and exacting mind. Poetry reveals one sort of truth completely, because reality in that quarter [i.e., art] is no more defined or tangible than poetry itself; and it clarifies human experience of other things also, earthly 40

 E.g., see RB (219–220; 352).

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and divine, without falsifying these things more than experience falsifies them already. Science, on the contrary, the deeper it goes, gets thinner and thinner and cheats us altogether… (RB 233)

A thing’s essence, according to Santayana, is its qualitative or identifying character, i.e., what it is: “Essences…are primordial and distinct forms of possible being…” (RB 430)41 To borrow a contemporary notion, essences are characterizing properties, or in more familiar parlance, whatnesses. Richard Sylvan (1995) gives us a concise explanation of “characterizing predicates” (mutatis mutandis, properties) below: Characterizing predicates are those which specify what an item is like, in itself. They tell how an item is in fact. They give its description. A good dossier of an item would perhaps give its characterization first, by way of its characterization features. (Sylvan 1995, qtd. in Hyde et al. para. 61)42

Santayana makes a parallel point about the nature of essences: “Essences do not need description, since they are descriptions already.” (RB 67) Santayana’s central ontological division is that of essence from existence, that is, what type of thing something is (i.e., the “logical being” (RB 416) of this or that character) from the fact that something is—i.e., whether something existing exemplifies this or that character (RB 4–5). A thing’s existence, therefore, adds nothing further to the identity or intrinsic properties of a thing; existential fact does not “…bring to any essence an increment in its logical being…” which is to say, in what it intrinsically is (RB 416).43 Accordingly, it is not the case that existence is a characterizing property, and therefore, radical contingency infiltrates all existential fact, since it is not inscribed in anything’s essence that it exists. In the tradition of Plato, Santayana holds that there is a realm of essence wherein atemporal, nonspatial universals reign eternal; in this realm lies prefigured every possible form of being whatsoever, and these transcendent universals have ontological priority over all existent things:  See also Santayana (1920, 168); RB (23).  Cf. Santayana (1915, 66–67, 1918, 425); RB (32; 67). 43  See also Santayana 1915, 67: “Existence adds no new character to the essence it hypostasizes, since the essence of any existing thing is its full character…” See also Sullivan Jr. (1952, 221). 41 42

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“Nothing…more truly is than character. Without this wedding garment no guest is admitted to the feast of existence…” (RB 24)44 Essences are ontologically prior to existents because the realm of essence, in Santayana’s view, comprises an infinite variety of qualitatively distinct essences (RB 35; 71). From the infinite variety of essence it follows that any possible form, that is, any type of thing that could receive existential instantiation, is already prefigured by an eternal form somewhere in the catalogue of essence: …[W]hatsoever form an existence may happen to assume, that form will be some precise essence eternally self-defined…[E]vents can never overtake or cover the infinite advance which pure Being has had on existence from all eternity. (RB 122)

In accordance with this, call it, radical essentialism, any alteration of character, however miniscule (e.g., the placement of the part in my hair) constitutes an exchange of one essence for a separate one. In Santayana’s view, there is never a qualitative variation that is not essential to some essence in the realm of being, and whenever that precise qualitative variation occurs, its special essence is perfectly realized. It therefore follows on this view that essences are incorruptible, since any corruption implies that an essence could survive some sort of degradation or qualitative transformation, but this is impossible, since the moment there is any qualitative change, according to Santayana, an old essence is shed and a new one instantaneously takes its place (SAF 112–114).45 Santayana distinguishes simple essences from complex essences. Simple essences are universals involving no more than a single, internally homogeneous theme. As such, they are inimical to logical analysis, since they have no simpler constituents in which to be resolved. Simple essences consist of a uniform, undifferentiated theme—as Santayana says, a “[p]ure unity” or a “pure quality” (RB 70). They include the essence of

44 45

 See also RB (18; 93).  See also RB (122).

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straightness (RB 38), visible brightness (RB 146), a uniform odour, and an isolated musical note (RB 70), for example. Complex essences, on the other hand, are universals that are internally diversified or have a multiplicity of elemental themes. For example, a square’s essence is that of a thing that involves an organization of elements (lines, vertices, angles, etc.) that are in certain definite relationships. Similarly, the essence of the Loch Ness monster, a mathematical formula, a succession of events, a horizon or skyscape: Each consists of a specific distribution of subordinate or elemental themes organized in accordance with a master overarching theme (that precise type of skyscape, that precise type of mythical creature, that type of succession of events, etc.). Essences have certain relations intrinsically, according to Santayana, namely: 1) the mutual relations of contrast or affinity they have to one another (“contrastive relations” (Sprigge 1974, 83)), and 2) the relations of elemental themes in a complex essence to one another and to the wholes in which they participate (“holistic relations” (Sprigge 1974, 83)).46 Take a geometrical example: The interior angles of a triangle are holistically related in such a way that their sum equals 180 degrees. Conversely, a triangle is contrastively related to a square insofar as it could not be a triangle if it did not have fewer sides than a square does. Existence, in Santayana’s view, requires that essences acquire accidental or “external” relations. Crucially, they must be put in spatial and temporal situations relative to one another (RB 44)47: “… [E]verything that exists exists by conjunction with other things on its own plane…” (RB 276) On the nature of external relations, Santayana writes: “External relations are due to the position, not the inherent character, of the terms.” (RB 206) Such relations, like distance, relative angle, before and after, bigger and smaller, etc., are predicative of essences only when essences are enmattered (RB 273).48

 See RB (71; 131).  See also SAF (32); RB (76–77; 121; 203; 418). 48  Cf. SAF (217). 46 47

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Essences are indissoluble units, in Santayana’s view (RB 85–91)49, and this is no less true in the case of complex essences, which despite consisting of multiple elemental themes, have the constitutional integrity of an atomic individual, just as simple essences do. This constitutional integrity of essences is not transferred into the (additive or material) compositionality of the matter exemplifying them, the nature of which is one of an accidental aggregation of separate units or things cobbled together, as it were, where each constituent part is an existent essence unto itself (RB 294).50 Provided that they are without proper parts, complex essences are not compounded of simpler essences (e.g., the essence of a painting is not a compound of separate essences of brushstrokes and colours). Furthermore, the elements of complex essences have no independent identity, given that identity is proper only to the whole of an atomic individual.51 Elements can only be identified through their inclusion within the whole, and they are as such in relations of mutual containment, just “…as every stroke in a picture, if taken as part of that picture, implies the remainder.” (RB 85) The elemental themes or constituents of a complex essence, in Santayana’s view, cannot be intuited or conceived apart from the master theme or whole in which they participate. When one considers a subordinate or elemental theme of a complex essence as a separate essence and loses sight of the whole in which it participates, one no longer apprehends the element of a complex essence; rather, what was originally an element of that complex is supplanted by a separate essence that closely resembles it (RB 85; 89; 90–91). This process of substitution in thought of a complex essence for a simpler one that resembles one of its constituent elements may be called a form of aberrant abstraction.52  See also SAF (116–117).  See also SAF (121–124). 51  See Forrest (1986) and Bigelow and Pargetter (1989) on “non-mereological composition” (Bigelow and Pargetter 1989, 3). See Armstrong (1978, 67–74; 1997, 32–33) for a counterpoint, according to which complex or “structural” universals are aggregations of simpler universals. 52  Nevertheless, Santayana admits of non-aberrant or veridical forms of abstraction. He would agree with Leibniz’s view that “…abstraction is not an error as long as one knows that what one is pretending not to notice, is there.” (New Essays 57)—see SAF (123–124; 128; 272–273) on the selective attention to elements of complex essences. 49 50

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To be sure, it is a peculiarity of Santayana’s account that complex essences are understood to have constituent “elements” but not proper parts. However, this doctrine is somewhat demystified by Santayana’s corollary theory of partial equivalence, which affirms a quasi-equivalence between the constituent themes of complex essences (e.g., the straight lines in a rectangle) and corresponding simple(r) essences—e.g., the simpler essence of a straight line (RB 85).53 Sprigge calls such corresponding simpler essences and constituent elements within a complex essence “virtually identical”: …Santayana recognizes that, on the face of it, one can make a detail in a complex pattern an object of attention on its own, but he insists that, strictly speaking, we are then intuiting a different essence with an especially close affinity to the detail, such as makes it proper to call it the ‘same’…I introduce my own term for Santayana’s idea here and call such essences virtually identical. (1974, 74–75)54

The reality of external relations or things aggregated together is lost when such aggregations are reduced to their mere essences. Santayana insists that “… essence…contains no reference to any setting in space or time, and stand[s]…in no adventitious relations to anything. (RB 18)55, and that “… historical events…cannot be gathered up or understood…without being sublimated and congealed into their historical essences and forfeiting their natural flux.” (RB 269) The last quote concerns the nature of things in temporal succession, but the relevant point holds more generally and also covers things in spatial adjacency: “… [T]he conjunction of existences in nature must always remain successive, external, and unsynthesised…” (RB 203) Santayana thinks that existents are not possible objects of intuition; we cannot intuitively penetrate beyond the realm of mere nonexistent essences; we never intuit essences incarnated or natural objects; these are rather objects of our “animal faith” (recall RB 112), or to put it in more standard (Humean) terms, natural belief. In order, per impossibile, to  See also RB (89).  Cf. RB (57; 419). 55  See also RB (48; 429). 53 54

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intuit or be immediately acquainted with such objects, external relations would have to be possible objects of intuition—since “[t]hat a thing by its internal being should have reference to something external…is so far from being an anomaly or an exception that it is the indispensable condition of existing at all… (RB 282). This, however, is fundamentally impossible: Nothing given is either physical or mental, in the sense of being intrinsically a thing or a thought; it is just a quality of being. (SAF 92)56 Synthesis in intuition destroys the existential status of the terms which it unites, since it excludes any alternation or derivation between them. It unites at best the essences of some natural things into an ideal picture. On the other hand the conjunction of existences in nature must always remain successive, external, and unsynthesised. Nature shows no absolute limits and no privileged partitions; whereas the richest intuition, the most divine omniscience, is imprisoned in the essence which it beholds. (RB 203)

Timothy Sprigge (1974) encapsulates the relevant view in the following remark: “It is intrinsically impossible that an external relation should be intuited, since all that I intuit at a moment belongs to one over-arching complex essence.” (84) Santayana holds that intuitions are dyadic states consisting on the one hand of spiritual moments (or incarnated spirit) and on the other hand intuited objects, that is, nonexistent essences: There are…two disparate essences exemplified in every instance of spirit; one is the essence of spirit, exemplified formally and embodied in the event or fact that at such a moment such an animal has such a feeling; the other is the essence then revealed to that animal, and realised objectively or imaginatively in his intuition [an ‘objective actuality’ or ‘ideal presence’]. (RB 130)

Intuitive operations are operations of a material psyche, and as such are existential facts indexed to the flux of natural events, but considered in

56

 See also SAF (34; 161); RB (429).

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themselves they are immaterial (RB 233–234).57 Santayana thinks that spirit is a sort of immaterial vapour that matter off-gasses. Nevertheless, moments of spirit are existent essences (RB 129). In contrast, the objects of intuition are non-existent (SAF 92).58 Thus, the existential import and particularization of intuition are located in the spiritual moment of intuition and not in that moment’s presentational content.59 Finally, since spiritual moments, according to Santayana, are “a special instance” of existence, they, like all existents, cannot themselves be objects of intuition (RB 129).

2.3 Aesthetic Optimism: The Deduction As mentioned, Santayana relies on artistic examples in order to clarify the relevant notion of complex essencehood. Such examples illustrate the compossibility of the complex with the primitive. He takes it for granted that this sort of compossibility or cohabitation will be readily granted in the case of works of art: The most agitated Paradiso ever painted by Tintoretto, the most insane Walpurgisnachtstraum, is as elementary and fundamental an essence as the number one or the straight line. (RB 142) … [A]ll essences, however complex, are individuals, and they are individuals, however simple. Their parts are parts only of that whole, as the right half of a picture is the right and is a half only when the whole is given with it; otherwise it makes a whole picture by itself, and its centre is in the middle of it, not at the left-hand edge. (RB 90–91) The nature of essence appears in nothing better than in the beautiful, when this is a positive presence to the spirit and not a vague title conventionally bestowed. In a form felt to be beautiful an obvious complexity composes an obvious unity: a marked intensity and individuality are seen to belong  See also SAF (231); RB (29; 134; 205; 219; 233–234; 600). Santayana approaches property dualism here (see RB 331). 58  See also SAF (34; 270); Santayana (1918, 424). 59  See Lovejoy (1930, 109–110) for a critique of this picture. 57

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to a reality utterly immaterial and incapable of existing otherwise than speciously. (RB 153–154) The most material thing, in so far as it is felt to be beautiful, is instantly immaterialised, raised above external personal relations, concentrated and deepened in its proper being, in a word, sublimated into an essence… (RB 8)60

Drawing the connections between these later discussions of complex essencehood with the earlier aesthetic doctrine: If representations of evil are, ex hypothesis, contained in an aesthetic object, then they must be elemental themes of a complex essence, since all aesthetic objects are mere essences, given that they are all mere articles of intuition, and representations of evil cannot exhaust the elemental themes of an aesthetic object (provided the co-existentialist account). Therefore, the relevant essence must be complex. But then, given the nature of complex essencehood, these representations of evil, in Leibniz’s terminology, are “immediate requisite[s]” of the whole of which they are elements; in other words, they are “…ingredient[s] of something… [which,] when we posit [them]…we…also…by this very fact… [and] without…inference…have posited the [thing]…as well.” (After 1714, 667)61 The inverse is equally true: This, ex hypothesis, beautiful whole and any element of it that is the locus of its beauty are i­ mmediate requisites of its elemental themes of evil. The themes of evil included in the complex essence can thus only be understood as ineliminable or necessary constituents of the beautiful whole. That is to say, this theme of evil is an immediate condition of the possibility of this beautiful whole and its contrasting elements, and this beautiful whole and its contrasting elements are immediate conditions of the possibility of this theme of evil. Therefore, were representations of evil to factor as elements within a complex whole that is itself beautiful, in this case we must say that representations of evil make possible, in a direct way, the beautiful.62 This  Cf. SB 29.  See also Leibniz (1685, 271). 62  Santayana makes a parallel point regarding matter as an immediate requisite of existing things, good or bad: “Matter seems an evil to the sour moralist because it is often untoward, and an occasion of imperfection or conflict in things. But if he took a wider view matter would seem a good to 60 61

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relation of interdependence between beauty and representations of evil would have to be noncausal; it would be a holistic relation. However, for representations of evil to make possible a beautiful whole in this noncausal or holistic sense is tantamount to them making a positive contribution to the beauty of the aesthetic object (i.e., by being an immediate requisite or constitutive condition of its identity), and this is contrary to Santayana’s official second postulate, namely, that there is no thing that is beautiful in virtue of its containing representations of evil. Moreover, the beautiful features and representations of evil cannot be considered discrete parts of the object; they are mutually contained or holistically related. But then it follows that the source of the aesthetic effect of the object implicates the entirety of the object (essence), including, ex hypothesis, its representations of evil. This follows from the constitutional integrity of complex essences as atomic individuals. As such, the aesthetic effect of the object ultimately cannot be confined to a segment of the complex essence, but must, in the final analysis, be attributed to it as a whole, including to its constituent representations of evil. This violates Santayana’s official first postulate, namely, that no beauty inheres in representations of evil. Therefore, co-existentialism is incoherent within the broader Santayanan framework. The co-existentialist doctrine is only coherent within this framework on an aggregative or additive model of aesthetic composition, but such a model conflicts with aesthetic objects being mere objects of intuition and complex essences.

2.4 The Unintelligibility of the Aggregative View The imagistic or, for lack of a better term, objective datum and pleasurable quality of feeling63 must be in some way fused, united, or blended together, according to Santayana’s doctrine of beauty; the objective him, because it is the principle of existence: it is all things in their potentiality, and therefore the condition of all their excellence or possible perfection.” (RB 183) 63  In this phrasing I am respecting Santayana’s bifurcation of intuitive operations of feeling and the intuitive objects of those operations. Recall (see Sect. 2.2) that moments of intuition qua existents are not possible objects of intuition. Therefore, since aesthetic objects are by definition objects of

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quality must be coloured with qualities of vital feeling. In SB, Santayana unequivocally construes this unification of qualities of vital feeling with images as a compounding or aggregation of two metaphysically discrete qualities. The fact that the objective datum must be suffused with the quality of aesthetic pleasure is a testament to their original distinctness, after all. Moreover, in discussing imagistic projection more generally (e.g., with respect to gustatory pleasures, where flavours phenomenologically co-locate with, to borrow H.H. Price’s terminology, the “…tactual sense-datum…‘belonging to’…” (1932, 231) the inside of one’s mouth), Santayana refers to the “cohesion…between the pleasure and the other associated elements of sense”, where “the other associated elements of sense” is a stand-in for intuitive imagery (SB 48). “Cohesion” is inherently a matter of aggregation. This aggregative account of the objectification of pleasure persists in his later writing: Beauty—as the pure æsthetes have discovered—is not intrinsic to any form: it comes to bathe that form, and to shine forth from it, only by virtue of a secret attraction, agitation, wonder, and joy which that stimulus happens to cause—not always but on occasion—in our animal hearts. (AS 192)

I propose that the aggregative view of the objectification of pleasure is inconsistent with Santayana’s mature doctrine of essence and corollary views, and that he fails to fully recognize this. A truly coherent Santayanan account of imagistic projection, one that does justice to the metaphysical import of his mature doctrine of essence, must uphold the view that the pleasurable qualities of aesthetic feelings essentially inhere in the beautiful images, and that as such aesthetic objects are always complex essences consisting (minimally) of qualities of pleasurable feeling and objective or imagistic content. Bound-up with Santayana’s imagistic projection thesis is the view that naive thinkers are guilty of some sort of attribution error when it comes to aesthetic properties. The nature of this error he frames in terms that are consistent with an aggregative view of aesthetic objects. The relevant intuition, pleasurable feelings qua intuitive operations are not that which are being “objectified”, but rather, it is the qualities of pleasure or the intuitive objects of pleasurable feeling—qualities of pleasure—that are the relevant felt values or projected qualities (see Santayana 1925, 284).

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error, according to Santayana, is a matter of mistaking beauty to intrinsically reside in intuitive images (SB 47–49). This account of the error seems to persist in his later writing: Value accrues to any part of the realm of essence by virtue of the interest which somebody takes in it, as being the part relevant to his own life. If the organ of this life comes to perfect operation, it will reach intuition of that relevant part of essence. This intuition will be vital in the highest degree. It will be absorbed in its object…[N]o essences will appear to it which are not suffused with a general tint of interest and beauty…The life of the psyche, which rises to this intuition, determines all the characters of the essence evoked, and among them its moral quality…[A] presumption arises that any essence is beautiful and life-enhancing. This platonic adoration of essence is undeserved. The realm of essence is dead, and the intuition of far the greater part of it would be deadly to any living creature… [N]atural operations lend these values to the visions in which they rest. (SAF 129–131)64

Santayana does not seem to arrive at a fully coherent position here. For, as we have seen, beautiful essences are really essential complexes consisting of qualities of aesthetic feeling and objective or imagistic data. Provided that the relevant objectification of pleasure is one in which an image and emotion are phenomenologically co-located, to consider the aesthetic tinge as accidental to the beautiful image is in effect to admit the possibility of intuiting a being of aggregation. That beautiful things are beings of aggregation consisting of metaphysically discrete subjective and objective parts is impossible given the mature doctrine of essence and corollary views, since aesthetic objects are only ever objects of intuition, and no beings of aggregation are possible objects of intuition, according to this doctrine. But then the aesthetic value (or objectified quality of pleasure) of beautiful essences must be intrinsic. The realm of essence cannot be “dead” of aesthetic value; essences are not merely “…suffused with a general tint of …beauty”, but must, it seems, have it essentially; and it is rather misleading to say that the “…natural operations lend…values to the visions in which they rest…”, or that value “accrues” to essences,  See also RB 7–8.

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when in fact the aesthetic qualities of beautiful essences are inalienable to them. Santayana’s apparent statements to the contrary are in  lockstep with his early cohesion account of aesthetic projection. Recall that in the early formulation of beauty in SB, Santayana sometimes fails to clearly separate imagistic from perceptual projection, or, at least, runs the two together in a way that can lead to confusion. Perhaps a hangover of this failure characterizes his later writing, and may serve to explain why he seems not to fully recognize that the aggregative model of aesthetic objects is inconsistent with his doctrine of essence. For, if the relevant projection is one of merely false belief rather than phenomenological co-location, then the awareness of objectified pleasure would not necessarily involve the intuition of an aggregative unity or being of aggregation. However, as we have seen, perceptual projection is not the relevant sort of projection. One challenge for any rational reconstruction of Santayana’s doctrine of beauty is that the relevant attribution error bound-up with the imagistic projection thesis must be reformulated in terms that do not already presuppose an aggregative view of aesthetic objects. To this end I offer the following proposal: The relevant error is not, as Santayana appears to have thought, that we mistakenly consider the aesthetic qualities (or objectified qualities of pleasure) to intrinsically reside in the intuitive images that are beautiful, but rather, we mistakenly think that these intuitive images have the aesthetic qualities independently of the pleasurable qualities of feeling residing in them. The error, in other words, is really a form of aberrant abstraction (see Sect. 2.2) wherein images with qualities of pleasure are thought to survive being removed from those qualities; but the effect of such abstraction—given the absolute constitutional integrity and incorruptibility of complex essences—would be an exchange of those hedonically charged images or complex essences for separate ones without such charge, and consequently, without beauty. My proposed reconstruction of Santayana’s doctrine of beauty involves a radical departure from his aggregative view of aesthetic objects. But it also diverges from the early doctrine of beauty in another way: If the aesthetic quality of feeling in the image is a constituent element and continuous feature of it, and the two are therefore not metaphysically discrete, then why should the beauty of the image depend on anyone’s act of

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immediate appreciation? Such a view is at odds with the earlier doctrine of pleasure generally, according to which, recall, “…a pleasure not felt… [is] a contradiction.” (SB 45) Indeed, the reconstructed account goes even further than theories that affirm the reality of unconscious pleasures (and pains), which is to say, pleasures and pains of which one is unaware65, since according to this account, not only are qualities of pleasure and pain independent of conscious awareness, they are independent of subjective episodes of feeling altogether. This—i.e., disembodied particles of nonexistent qualities of pleasure suspended in eternity—may strike the reader as preposterous, but it is something that must be considered a possibility if one is to take Santayana’s doctrine of essence and corollary views seriously. For, whether in living intuition or in the realm of essence, qualities of pleasure are nonexistent or bare universals; there is no intrinsic or extrinsic difference between their spiritual actualizations and their reality in the realm of essence. This may be observed in the following passage (which was already given in part in the preceding section, but which I return to here now armed with the requisite theoretical background for understanding its full significance): … [W]hen I speak of the terms actually present in intuition as of so many eternal essences, I expressly deny that any such essence is to be regarded as existing. The terms of thought are universals… [A] term does not become subjective merely because an intuition of it occurs. Nothing is subjective in experience except experience itself, the passing act of intuition or feeling; the terms distinguished during that experience, such as specific qualities of colour or pleasure, are neither objective nor subjective, but neutral; at most they might be called, so long as attended to, subjective objects, such objects as subjective idealism would admit…[I]f felt at all, pleasure is already an object of intuition; and the beautiful image is never objective in any other sense. (Santayana 1925, 284)

The relevant import of this passage is clear: Objectified pleasure insofar as it is recorded in the realm of essence is no different than it is in living intuition, and that objectified pleasure, or any quality of pleasure, has the  Cf. Bramble (2013, 205–206).

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same nature and degree of reality whether or not it is actually (consciously or unconsciously) felt. However, the extraneousness of moments of immediate appreciation to the beauty of essences is already (albeit inconsistently) indicated in Santayana’s later writing; there beauty is at times considered a literal feature of the beautiful image or essence, or as a quality that is strictly inseparable from it.66 Perhaps the most unambiguous illustration of this occurs in the following passage: The only Venus which is inalienably beautiful is the divine essence revealed to the lover as he gazes, perhaps never to be revealed to another man, nor revealed to himself again. In this manifest goddess…her beauty is indeed intrinsic and eternal; and it is as impossible that its particular quality should be elsewhere, as that she should be without it. (RB 153)

One worry is that the proposed reconstruction of Santayana’s doctrine of beauty involves a complete departure from sentimentalism. Since sentimentalism, plausibly, is a central feature of any recognizably Santayanan view, it may be asked, “Is there anything recognizably Santayanan about this reconstructed account?” In a sense, the proposal does involve a departure from sentimentalism, since no longer does the beauty of an image depend on its being immediately appreciated; indeed, as we have seen, Santayana thinks that the beauty of Venus de Milo is “intrinsic and eternal” and completely inalienable from it. However, the tension between the proposed reconstruction and Santayana’s sentimentalism is assuaged by the fact that, according to the reconstructed account, even though the beauty of essences is not strictly dependent on immediate appreciations, it is nevertheless dependent on qualities of feeling, since such qualities, on this proposal, are literally integrated in beautiful essences as a subset of their constituent elements. Albeit, qualities of feeling are “sentimental essences” which, “…by their very nature, [are] incapable of passive [material] embodiment…” (RB  Here I find myself brought into considerable contact with a comparison of Santayana’s early and late conception of beauty supplied by Sprigge (1974, 89–91). 66

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131)67, and instead are only ever, to borrow Santayana’s phrasing, brought “…into living intuition.” (RB 114) However, as has already been indicated, they are nevertheless eternal, absolute, and non-existent themes which, as essences, have reality whether or not anyone actually experiences them: … [E]very caprice or marvel of form, natural or unnatural, is waiting in the limbo of essence for the hand or the eye that shall bring it to light. This field also contains all possible intensities, all the varieties of depth, of pleasure or horror, of which any one can be directly sensible… Essence, whether aesthetic or logical, has no need of being true of matter: it has a sufficient truth or reality in itself… (AS 188)

Thus, the fact that the reconstructed account affirms the dependence of beauty on parcels of qualitative feeling is perhaps enough to consider it as within the orbit of sentimentalism. Aesthetic objects, according to the reconstructed account, are mere essences that consist of indissoluble essential complexes of qualities of feeling and objective/imagistic profiles. Whether such a view violates sentimentalism is dubious, given that the dependence of beauty on qualities of feeling is preserved by this account, albeit, qualities of feeling are fully incorporated as subordinate essential elements in the beautiful images. Santayana’s sentimentalism, recall, rejects the intellectuality of value. Sentimental values reside ultimately in basic or instinctual preferences. But this feature of his sentimentalism is also preserved in the later doctrine: That some images received in the mind trigger the appearance of complex essences that consist of images virtually or partially identical to those triggering images except now with elements of aesthetic qualities of feeling built-into them while others do not is ultimately a function of instinctual appreciation.68 As Santayana insists, “If the thing is beautiful, this is…because the essence which it manifests is one to which my nature  Cf. RB 153–154.  Cf. AS 195: “Were the artist a free and absolute æsthete, equally solicited by the plethora of all possible forms, whither should his poor wits turn? I am afraid he would be condemned to eternal impotence, and would die like Buridan’s ass without being able to choose among those equidistant allurements. But nature luckily breaks the spell, accident has loaded the dice; and if a man may abstract in his conceptions from the natural objects about him, he cannot abstract from the human 67 68

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is attuned…” (RB 7) In light of these considerations, we might, plausibly, consider the proposed reconstruction a quasi-sentimentalism—sentimentalism minus the subjectivism. It lands somewhere in between sentimentalist and rationalist views, the latter of which conceive “…beauty [to]…flow by some logical necessity from the essences of objects simultaneously in our mind…” (SB 199) The rationalist dimension, thus construed, of the proposal consists in the fact that some beautiful essences have an aesthetic quality or pleasing effect when brought into living, human intuition as a matter of logical necessity, since they intrinsically possess an “objectified” pleasurable quality, given our psychological constitutions. It should be noted, however, that the pleasurableness of this or that sensuous or affective quality is a fact about the human constitution, and that this constitution is itself a contingent fact, in Santayana’s view.— Indeed, he thinks all natural facts are metaphysically contingent (SAF 284).69—As we have seen, essences in themselves are inert. This is why a “pain” that is merely intuited, i.e., without that spiritual moment being a part of a physical sensory process in a living organism, is, as Santayana says, “empty”, by which he means empty of visceral significance.70 And it must be admitted as a possibility that for another organism equipped with a psychological constitution different from that of human beings, the sensuous or affective qualities which are pleasurable qualities for us may be qualities of pain (or, as it were, qualities of indifference) for it.71 Despite this element of contingency, what I am proposing is not that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, since I depart from subjectivism, but rather that beauty is relative to an eye of a beholder (cf. RB 7). Again, the position being advanced is a sort of synthesis of rationalist and sentimentalist themes. Finally, note that such relativity does not really disrupt the transcendent reality of beautiful essences, as it is forever true, according to the nature within himself…And as nature supplies his initial notions, so she also steadies his hand and lends depth to his final allegiances.” 69  Recall Sect. 2.2. 70  Recall RB (679). 71  Cf. SB (126–127) on the difficulty, but not impossibility, of projecting painful impressions, and on the prospect of stripping “…ourselves of our human nature…”; cf. SB (47) on all emotions and sensory impressions as “…essentially capable of objectification.”

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relevant proposal, that this or that essence is beautiful; it just so happens that in order to intuit its beauty, one must be a creature of such and such a psychological constitution. This is not a trivial truth—it is not equivalent to the tautology that in order for a beautiful essence to be intuited it must be intuited—since it is possible, given the preceding, that a beautiful essence, complete with the characteristic sensuous or affective quality in which its beauty resides, may be intuited without its beauty being intuited. After all, it is possible, for instance, that this intuition occurs in an organism with a psychological constitution that renders such affective content unpleasant for it—similarly, consider a child’s distaste for a food or a drink that requires a maturity and refinement of the palate in order to be enjoyed. But who shall affirm that a thing cannot be objectively or transcendently (i.e., outside of spiritual moments) beautiful unless everyone who intuits it is capable of seeing its beauty?

2.5 The Doctrine of Expression When a percipient understands that a film or art piece contains factual descriptions of evil or real footage of evil, it cannot possibly be an aesthetic object for that percipient. This is the thesis of aesthetic optimism. One will perhaps quickly notice that this proposal, without further clarification, seems to militate against central aspects of the tradition of Christian art, e.g., those that are occupied with depictions of Jesus on the cross—which, let us suppose, was a true event. The aesthetic significance of these paintings, one might think, is a derivative of the thing they depict. This would be to conceive of such paintings as representative art, which is not beautiful merely because it achieves some perfection in its correspondence to the object it depicts.72 For, a perfect imitation or verisimilitude can only go so far when the subject is not beautiful. On the other hand, it could hardly be asserted that Christ’s suffering in itself (i.e., divorced from the sequence or procession of events surrounding it or its broader theological significance) was beautiful. Perhaps it may  Though, as Santayana remarks, imitation is one source of aesthetic pleasure in the “representative arts.” (SB 21) 72

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be argued that the suffering is made beautiful (i.e., is derivatively beautiful) insofar as it is understood as a component or element within a more comprehensive theological event (e.g., the noble martyrdom of the redeemer of humanity) that is on the whole beautiful. Given the doctrine of aesthetic optimism, however, if the painting of Christ on the cross is beautiful, its beauty does not reside in the perception of what it naturally or non-symbolically depicts (i.e., factual suffering), and moreover, no amount of contextualization can make suffering (recognized as such) appear beautiful. I think it should be maintained that these paintings do not celebrate the idea of Christ’s suffering per se, but rather that the symbol of Christ on the cross directs the mind to some other object of thought that is aesthetically loaded. That is to say, the depictions of Jesus on the cross are intended to be symbolic and not representative. On this supposition, the image of Christ’s suffering functions as a causal intermediary or sign, the intuition of which, under the appropriate interpretive framework of associations (established through convention)73, initiates the aesthetically loaded thought—e.g., a restoration of divine kinship with God. Santayana calls such symbolic art “expression”: In all expression we may…distinguish two terms: the first is the object actually presented, the word, the image, the expressive thing; the second is the object suggested, the further thought, emotion, or image evoked, the thing expressed. These lie together in the mind, and their union constitutes expression. (SB 195)74 Whereas in form or material there is one object with its emotional effect, in expression there are two, and the emotional effect belongs to the character of the second or suggested one. (SB 193)

As the first passage indicates, in expression, the expressive object functions in the first instance as a mere sign which initiates acquaintance with the object of thought responsible for the aesthetic feeling (the expressed thing), but afterward the expressive object acquires some beauty. In other 73 74

 Cf. SAF (168).  See also SB (168); Cf. SAF (168–169).

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words, the expressive thing becomes “united” or synthesized with the expressed thing to form the “expression”. The expression is itself the aesthetic object in such cases. It is an object that is a unification of feeling and image where the expressive thing undergoes an “…aesthetic modification which that expressiveness may cause in it.” (SB 197) That is, while the beauty of the materials of sensuous presentation are “…direct transmutations of pleasures and pains…” in which nothing is expressed extrinsically (SB 84), and while forms of organization (e.g., like geometrical arrangements) have an original aesthetic tinge (SB 85)75, the beauty of expression is a function of acquired perception and the extrinsic representational capacity of a sign.76 Given the reconstructed account of beauty presented in the preceding sections, we must amend Santayana’s early doctrine of expression, which suffers from the same general defect of considering aesthetic objects as beings of aggregation, i.e., as composites consisting of metaphysically discrete parts of qualities of pleasure and imagistic data.77 According to the revised account, all aesthetic objects are indissoluble, atomic, yet complex wholes consisting (minimally) of elements of qualities of feeling and imagistic data. None are beings of aggregation. The coherent account of expression, I propose, given my overall reading of the texts, is (roughly) the following: Expression involves the cognitive movement from a sign (expressive image) to its significate (the aesthetically loaded thought, image, or emotion expressed). Once the significate has been introduced, an exchange of essences occurs, and a separate, totalizing complex essence (expression) is presented, one that contains elements virtually identical to the sign and significate previously intuited (i.e., the expressive image and the quality of feeling proper to the thing expressed).78 In the beauty of form or material, on the other hand,  See SB (163–164): “We have accordingly in works of art two independent sources of effect. The first is the useful form, which generates the type, and ultimately the beauty of form, when the type has been idealized by emphasizing its intrinsically pleasing traits. The second is the beauty of ornament, which comes from the excitement of the senses, or of the imagination, by colour, or by profusion or delicacy of detail.” 76  Cf. Inquiry (6. XXI., p. 177) on “artificial signs”. 77  See SB (197–198)—discussed in Sect. 4.2. 78  In the process of expression, the initial or pre-synthetic association that is postulated to exist between essences virtually identical to the elements of the resultant aesthetic whole is one of sign 75

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the initial image triggers the aesthetic object in virtue of innate suggestion or original (instinctual) association, and the aesthetic object consists of an image virtually identical to this initial triggering image, but now intrinsically saturated with aesthetic pleasure. To borrow Santayana’s phrasing, “…this value [is]…inherent in the process by which the object itself is perceived…” (SB 235) In the case of expression, on the other hand, the initial image triggers the aesthetic feeling through acquired suggestion or convention-based association, and the aesthetic object is not introduced or triggered directly from the initializing image, but rather proceeds through a more circuitous route. I will return to the doctrine of expression (in connection with Judeo-Christian art but also in connection with the sport model of horror) in Chap. 4.

References Altman, Matthew C. 1998. Santayana’s Troubled Distinction: Aesthetics and Ethics in The Sense of Beauty. Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society 16: 25–34. Armstrong, D.M. 1978. A Theory of Universals: Volume 2: Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Augustine, 1892. The Enchiridion. In The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A New Translation. Vol. IX: On Christian Doctrine; The Enchiridion; On Catechising; and On Faith and the Creed. ed. Marcus Dods, 173–260. Translated by J.F.  Shaw and S.D.  Salmond. Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark, George Street. ———.1953. The Fathers of the Church: A new Translation, Volume 21: Saint Augustine: Confessions. Translated by Vernon J.  Bourke. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. and thing signified, and as such, one of external relation. This distinguishes the nature of synthesis in expression from that of the synthesis of form. The pre-synthetic association of separate essences that is postulated within the discovery of form is one of internal relation. That is to say, the process of synthesis that introduces the complex aesthetic object in the case of form is one that, in the first instance, already anticipates the internal relation of elements virtually identical to the separate essences intuited at the beginning of the process (on formal synthesis, see SB 97).

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Bigelow, John, and Robert Pargetter. 1989. A Theory of Structural Universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1): 1–11. Billson, Anne. 2018. Chicken Decapitation and Battered Cats: Hollywood’s History of Animal Cruelty. The Guardian (London). Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/24/chicken-­decapitation-­ battered-­cats-­hollywood-­animal-­cruelty. Boghossian, Paul A., and J. David Velleman. 1991. Physicalist Theories of Color. Philosophical Review 100: 67–106. Bramble, Ben. 2013. The Distinctive Feeling Theory of Pleasure. Philosophical Studies 162: 201–217. Carroll, Noël. 1995. Why Horror? In Arguing about Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates, ed. Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley, 275–294. London: Routledge. Cherry, Christopher. 1988. When is Fantasising Morally Bad? Philosophical Investigations 11 (2): 112–132. Crowther, T.M. 2006. Two Conceptions of Conceptualism and Nonconceptualism. Erkenntnis 65 (2): 245–276. Dretske, Fred. 1969. Seeing and Knowing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Forrest, Peter. 1986. Ways Worlds Could Be. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1): 15–24. Hills, Matt. 2005. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hume, David. 1751/1777. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. In Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 168–323. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hyde, Dominic, Filippo Casati, and Zach Weber. 2019. Richard Sylvan [Routley]. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2019, edited by Edward N.  Zalta. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2019/entries/sylvan-­routley/. Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen, and Antonio Damasio. 2007. We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education. Mind, Brain, and Education 1 (1): 3–10. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1685/2001. On Part, Whole, Transformation, and Change [Selections]. In The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672–1686, Translated by Richard T.W.  Arthur. 271–274. London: Yale University Press. ———. After 1714/1989. The Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics. In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Philosophical Papers and Letters [Selections], 2nd

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Edn. Synthese Historical Library, vol. 2. Translated and edited by Leroy E.  Loemker, 666–674. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1765/1996. New Essays on the Human Understanding. Translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1930. The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the Existence of Ideas. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company. ———. 1936. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. London: Harvard University Press. Neill, Alex. 1992. On a Paradox of the Heart. Philosophical Studies: An international Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 65 (1/2): 53–65. Price, H.H. 1932/1972. Perception. London: Methuen & Co. Reid, Thomas. 1764/1997. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Edited by Derek R.  Brookes. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Santayana, George. 1896/1905. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.   ———. 1915. Some Meanings of the Word Is. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 12 (3): 66–68. ———. 1918. Literal and Symbolic Knowledge. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 15 (16): 421–444. ———. 1920. Three Proofs of Realism. In Essays in Critical Realism: A Co-Operative Study of the Problem of Knowledge, 163–186. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. ———. 1925. The Mutability of Aesthetic Categories. The Philosophical Review 34 (3): 281–291. ———. 1927/1936. An Æsthetic Soviet. In Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews. eds. Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, 187–198. London: Constable and Company, LTD. ———. 1923/1955. Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications Inc. ———. [1937]1972. Realms of Being. One-volume edition, with a new introduction by the author. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc. Shaw, Daniel. 2001. Power, Horror and Ambivalence. Film and Philosophy Special Edition on Horror: 1–12.

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Smuts, Aaron. 2016. The Ethics of Imagination and Fantasy. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, ed. Amy Kind, 380–391. London: Routledge. Sprigge, Timothy. 1974/1995. Santayana: An Examination of His Philosophy. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Sullivan, Celestine, Jr. 1952. Essence and Existence in George Santayana. The Journal of Philosophy 49 (7): 220–226. Sylvan, Richard. 1995. Item Theory Made Easy. Unpublished typescript, Sylvan Papers, folder #1234, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. Whitney, Barry L. 1994. An Aesthetic Solution to the Problem of Evil. Philosophy of Religion 35: 21–37.

3 Fear in the Cinema and the Definition of Horror

Abstract  This chapter presents the view that horror’s principal differentiating function is to induce fear. Some of the worries that have been noted in the literature regarding this thesis are dispelled. Topics considered include the distinction between “pure” and “hybrid” forms of the genre, the multifarious import of representations of violence and gore, and the instrumental value of objects of disgust within the project of fear inducement. A number of ways that horror films can induce rational fear are sketched. The analysis appeals to the simulated/non-simulated emotions distinction and relies on Robert C.  Roberts’ neo-judgementalist account of emotions. Keywords  Art-horror • Fear • Neo-Judgementalism • Recalcitrant emotion • Simulated emotion • Thought theory

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5_3

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3.1 The Definition of Horror Horror is distinct from other genres insofar as its principal primary function or modus operandi is to induce fear, however momentary, controlled, or severe, in the percipient. In this respect, the definition of horror advanced here falls within the ballpark of Carroll’s definition1: Like works of suspense, works of horror are designed to elicit a certain kind of affect. I shall presume that this is an emotional state, which emotion I call art-horror. Thus, one can expect to locate the genre of horror, in part, by a specification of art-horror, that is, the emotion works of this type are designed to engender. (Carroll 1990, 15)

Carroll argues that horror’s quintessential emotions are both fear and disgust (1990, 22-24; 28-29): “Art-horror requires evaluation both in terms of threat and disgust.” (1987, 55) I will remain agnostic on whether the inducement of disgust is a primary function of horror2, and instead focus on what I consider to be an incontrovertible primary function of the genre, namely, the inducement of fear in the viewer. The basis for my agnosticism in this regard is as follows: In many cases, the inducement of disgust can be understood as a by-product or instrument within the general project of fear inducement and not as an independent function of horror. For instance, gore may be disgusting, but it is also scary, since the thought of dismemberment, for example, is scary. Similarly, zombies may be disgusting because they are often full of rotting wounds, but their wounds make them scarier because they indicate that their ability to sustain physical damage and continue functioning is superhuman, and thus, suggest the inadequacy of conventional forms of self-defence.  See Carroll (1990, 14-15) on the dangers of applying the strategy of defining genres in terms of the emotions they are intended to induce across all genres. 2  Carroll’s analysis tends to focus on horror films involving monsters, and thus, it is easy to see why he might have thought that disgust was a key element in horror. His analysis, I submit, is monster-­ centric. As he observes, “… [O]n my account, horror is signalled by the presence of monsters who cannot be accommodated naturalistically by science.” (1990, 145) Not all horror films involve monsters (“moral monsters” notwithstanding). 1

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Moreover, disgust must be distinguished from moral repugnance. Disgust is a “primitive and inarticulable” visceral revulsion (Roberts 2003, 253-255). Moral repugnance is a function of our sense of right and wrong. I have no sense that the rotting carcass of a deer is morally wrong, but it is certainly disgusting. In many cases, when we say that we are disgusted by the evil actions of a villain in a horror film (e.g., see The House That Jack Built (2018) for a particularly vile character), what we really mean is that we think the character is morally repugnant. Once the above qualifications and distinctions are recognized, the range of horror films that truly function to evoke disgust for disgust’s sake becomes limited.3 Thus, since a primary function of horror is to be understood as a noninstrumental or basic function that is ubiquitous across the genre, it is questionable whether the inducement of disgust is a primary function of horror. In order to remain neutral on disgust as a primary function of horror, however, I shall refer to the inducement of fear as horror’s principal primary function (thus allowing that there may be other primary functions, albeit comparatively less central to the genre). The assumption that horror’s principal primary function is to induce fear, where fear is understood in accordance with the cognitivist tradition of emotion, is not one that is universally accepted. For example, Matt Hills disputes this, writing that “…by restricting discussion to object-­ directed emotion, such theories have removed objectless affects (such as mood and anxiety) from scholarly analysis altogether.” (2005, 24) I cannot engage with this debate here, except to say that by defining horror in terms of primary and auxiliary functions, I am implicitly leaving room for the sort of analysis of affect in horror Hills thinks is a necessary aspect of any full accounting of horror’s possible aesthetic. My view accommodates such analyses, since it is open to pluralism in this regard. I only claim that these additional dimensions of horror that go beyond its primary function(s), which is to say, are not in the service of fear inducement (and, perhaps, disgust) are secondary or auxiliary aspects of the genre.  This is not to say, however, that the inducement of disgust is not one of the primary functions of some horror films (see, e.g., Nekromantik (1987) and its sequel, Nekromantik 2: Die Rückkehr der Liebenden Toten (1991)). I am merely calling into question the status of disgust as a primary, genre-­ wide function of horror. 3

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Representations of violence, gore4, death, and mortal threat are horror’s common motifs, and these are often accentuated by startle-triggers (which we will consider below). In the other pure genres (in contrast to the hybrid genres), the inducement of fear tends to be merely instrumental to some other end. For example, pure science-fiction often will attempt to induce fear for the sake of creating a sense of awe, puzzlement, wonder, and intrigue. In pure thrillers, on the other hand—not to be confused with the hybrid category “horror-thriller”—fear is used in the manufacturing of a series of exhilarating moments or rushes (“thrills”). While it is characteristic of thrillers that fear often facilitates such moments, the focus or primary intent of a thriller is not to scare.5 Representations of violence and misfortune often can have a base, slapstick comedic value—to get a sense of this, one need simply observe the popularity of such television shows as America’s Funniest Home Videos, or classic comedy acts like Abbot and Costello, or even children’s cartoons.6 Likewise, horror’s representations of gore also place it in proximity to humor, and more precisely, gross-out humor.7 Thus, there is a natural proximity between horror and humor, since the thought of human misfortune can give way to humour or fear, depending on the treatment of the subject. And indeed, horror films often feature morbid slapstick or gross-out humor—there is an entire subgenre (horror-comedy) devoted to the exploration of this.  See, e.g., The Beyond (1981); Make them Die Slowly (1981); Cat in the Brain (1990).  For an interesting account of the connection between thriller and horror, see Grodal (1999, 245-252). 6  Santayana considers the comedic value and amusement of such things to consist of shock or surprise, or the impingement of “an unexpected idea” upon a “…prosaic background of common sense and every-day reality…” (SB 248). For alternative accounts, see Manfredi et al. (2014) on the neuro-physiology of the humour of misfortune; CP 223: “Every sudden fall which arouses laughter does so because it suggests helplessness and reminds us that the fallen can, if we want, be treated as prey.” Elias Canetti’s view here converges with what has been called “the superiority theory of humour” (see, e.g., Zillman and Cantor (1976), and likewise the notion of “downward social comparison” (Wills 1981), discussed in detail in chapter 5. Canetti’s related views in connection with the notion of downward social comparison will also be considered in chapter 5. 7  For a good example of gross-out comedy, see: Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)—“Part V: Live Organ Transplants”. For slapstick or gross-out comedy in horror, see: Flesh for Frankenstein 3D (1973); Basket Case 2 (1990); Ghoulies III: Ghoulies go to College (1991); DeadAlive (1992); Leprechaun (1993). 4 5

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The use of comedic relief in horror films is to be distinguished from horror-comedy. A horror film may naturally (i.e., in the service of fulfilling its principal primary function) utilize comedic relief, since an effective (scary) narrative arc for horror stories is in the shape of a rollercoaster track, one with steep, perilous dips (startling moments), periods of recovery (moments of relief ), as well as slow, ill-omened climbs (moments of suspense). Comedic relief can be used to break-up the intensity of the film and reset the audience in preparation for the next scare. Therefore, films in the pure genre of horror can consistently contain elements of comedy or humor, that is, without deviating from the principal primary directive of horror proper. But in a horror-comedy, where to be funny is one of the film’s primary functions (and is not merely an instrumental end), comedy is being used for more than mere comedic relief within a broader project of fear inducement. “Horror-comedy”, properly speaking, is an oxymoron; horror films and comedy films have incommensurable primary functions, in my view. There is never a simultaneous achievement or interweaving of both functions, since being afraid and being tickled by humor are never overlapping states of mind (despite the quirky behavior of nervous laughter in the presence of a perceived threat). And the films tend to either fail to satisfy one or the other of their primary functions, or if they serve both, are fractured, since the fulfilments of the two functions are in competition. The same cannot be said of horror-thriller or “horror-drama”. Thriller, drama, and horror are commensurable genres, since dramatic and thrilling moments are already integral to forms of fear inducement (e.g., “jump-scares”), and the inducement of thrills and fears is often instrumental to creating forms of drama (e.g., in tragedies). These functions, therefore, are continuous or can overlap. Similarly, fearful and dramatic moments are sometimes integral to the unfolding of forms of suspense or thrill, since the building of suspense often piggy-backs on the representation of complex interpersonal narratives, or those that pull at one’s heart strings, and likewise suspense is often built on impending threat.8 There are homogeneities amongst the three genres: horror, thriller, and drama  On the role of suspense in horror, see Carroll (1990, 128-144).

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(and, for that matter, suspense). Much the same can be said of horror and science-fiction (as has been indicated). Violence and gore are not necessary motifs in the genre of horror. There was plenty to be scared of in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) without much explicit depiction of graphic violence or gore.9 Richard Sylbert—production designer of the film—once said that Rosemary’s Baby was “…‘the greatest horror film without any horror in it.’” (qtd. in Jacobs 2018) One must, perhaps, take opinions about the film that originate from the film crew with a grain of salt. Putting the superlative aside, however, most of the film does not, at least explicitly, operate on the themes of violence or gore, and yet there is, in my view, much scare-value in it. Violence has a natural proximity to fear, since we often fear things on the basis of their ability to cause physical injury, and witnessing violence provokes fear in a number of ways. But many threats aside from violence may induce fear, e.g., the threat of humiliation, the threat of betrayal, the threat of exclusion, the threat of cognitive or physical decline, etc.10 Horror’s principal primary function does not impose restrictions on what sort of fear the films should induce; and since fears needn’t always be directed at the threat of bodily injury or violence, it follows that violence and gore are not necessary motifs in the horror genre.

3.2 The Cognitive Profile of Fear I concur with the basic shape of Roberts’ (2003) neo-judgementalist account of the emotions11, according to which emotions are grounded in concern-based interpretive construals of states of affairs.12 That is to say, emotions are experiences wherein an object or state of affairs is  See also The Tenant (1976); Pin: A Plastic Nightmare (1988); and The Changeling (1980) for horror films the scare-value of which does not rely on explicit violence or gore. 10  Cf. Roberts (2003, 193). See Hanich (2010, 2014), Yeung (2018), and Tappolet (2010) for discussions on the nature of fear horror films invoke. 11  In so doing, my view is brought into considerable contact with Carl Plantinga’s (2009) analysis of emotions in the context of film; he also works from within the framework of Roberts’ account of emotions (see 55-58). 12  For kindred proposals, see Brady (2009), de Sosa (1991), Greenspan (1986), Stocker and Hegeman (1996), and Calhoun (1984). 9

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quasi-­perceptually taken to promote or frustrate some subset of one’s interests (desires, hopes, aversions, etc.). The basic form of the concern-­ based construal operative in fear is: “X presents an aversive possibility of a significant degree of probability; may X or its aversive consequences be avoided” (Roberts 2003, 195), where “aversive possibility” comprises those possibilities that are construed as dangerous, harmful, or merely undesirable, and are to some extent probable (Roberts 2003, 193-194). Crucially, the object of fear is a possibility that is viewed as not having yet inflicted its aversive consequences (otherwise the avoidance clause could not be characteristic of the emotion). By rational fear I mean only that the emotion is a proper response, given: a) one’s judgement of the object of fear, and b), one’s adopted framework of concerns. It is a truism that one has reason to be afraid if one has a certain set of concerns and judges one’s surroundings in a certain way, regardless of the way things really are or the legitimacy of one’s concerns. The rationality check on emotion, in other words, is a proportionality and alignment check: Does the object, as it is judged by the subject, warrant the emotional response he has to it, given his concerns? Irrational emotions, on this view, amount to “recalcitrant emotions”, i.e., those emotions that occur, as Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson (2003) explain, “…despite the agent’s making a judgment that is in tension with [them]…A recalcitrant bout of fear…is one where the agent is afraid of something despite believing that it poses little or no danger.” (129) I adhere to Roberts’ (2003, 92-106) account of recalcitrant emotions: They involve a tension between our fully-fledged judgements about the object of the emotion and the (quasi-perceptual) emotional construal of the object of emotion. For example, take a man with arachnophobia who experiences fear upon viewing what he knows to be a fake spider. In this case, his judgement of the object is as of a rubber object in the shape of a spider, but his emotional interpretation of how the object bears on his concerns operates as though he believes the object is a real spider. There is thus a disconnect between the judgement of the object, the nature of his concerns, and the emotional appearance of the object in relation to his concerns. The subject does not have contradictory beliefs about the status of the object (as both dangerous and not dangerous (à la classical

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judgementalism13)); rather, he emotionally interprets the relation of the object to his concerns as though the object were dangerous even when he knows it is not. Thus, on Roberts’ model, there is, as Michael Brady (2009) notes, “…a clash between an emotional appearance and an evaluative judgment.” (418) Why was the arachnophobe scared of the plastic spider when he knew it was not dangerous? The answer, according to Roberts, is not: Because he also believed it was dangerous.14 It is rather that his concern-­ based quasi-perceptual/pseudo-judgemental interpretive construals or emotional takings (things that do not rise to the level of judgement) are at odds with his actual judgements. Irrational emotion occurs where one’s judgements and one’s emotional construals pull in contrary cognitive (and behavioural) directions. Conversely, rational emotions are not in such tension with judgements. This is why it is legitimate to move straightforwardly from the character of the emotion to the character of a belief or judgement, or vice versa, in the case of rational emotions. And this is what, I suspect, explains the allure of classical judgementalism for explaining rational emotions. That there is this cognitive and behavioural disconnect between judgement and emotional appearances in the case of irrational emotions explains judgementalism’s well noted explanatory poverty regarding such emotions. Horror has the capacity to induce rational fear, for example15, i. By inducing startle-responses; ii. By supplying an opportunity for the percipient to engage in imaginative identification with fictional subjects of the film—requires a suspension of disbelief, and is therefore simulated fear16;  Cf. Solomon (1977); Nussbaum (2001).  For a critique of classical judgementalist accounts of recalcitrant emotions on the basis that they require the subject hold explicitly contradictory judgements, see Benbaji (2013, 578-579). The neo-judgementalist needn’t make such a postulate. 15  Note that I do not claim that this list is exhaustive of all of the ways horror can induce rational fear. 16  For kindred proposals, see Walton (1978, 1990, 1997); Currie (1995). I depart from Walton’s account, since by “simulated” I do not mean to imply not real. Simulated emotions are real; they have the same emotive force, potentially, as emotions which proceed from the normal cognitive 13 14

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iii. By inducing startle-responses that depend on the percipient’s suspension of belief or imaginative immersion into the narrative—a mixed form; iv. By communicating aversive scenarios that are perceived, by the percipient, to be scenarios that may be personally applicable; v. By representing disturbing ideas, imagery, or subject matter the very sight or idea of which the percipient takes to threaten his psychological well-being17; vi. By the percipient treating fictional characters as though they were morally considerable—another form of simulated fear; vii. By the percipient having an investment in the outcomes of fictional scenarios for the real-world effects of the perception of such outcomes.18 The second and sixth categories amount to fearing fictions. The third category is a hybrid of simulated fear. The first, fourth, fifth, and seventh categories constitute forms of non-simulated fear. We shall explore (iv) in detail, which complies with Carroll’s “Thought Theory” of horror’s emotion, according to which, for instance, … saying we are art-horrified by Dracula means we are horrified by the thought of Dracula where the thought of such a possible being does not commit us to a belief in his existence. Here, the thought of Dracula, the thing that art-horrifies me, is not the event of my thinking of Dracula but the content of the thought, viz., that Dracula, a threatening and impure

channels; that they are engineered or manufactured by a partial suspension of disbelief is irrelevant to their strength and vivacity. For a distinct account, cf. Robinson (2005); for a limited defence of Walton on “quasi-emotions”, see Dos Santos (2017)—and for a response, see Williams (2019). See Carroll (1990, 74-79) for objections to Walton’s account. 17  For an in-depth exploration of this type of fear in the cinema, see Hanich (2014). 18  Imagine a father and a child going to see Bambi (1942): The child has certain real concerns for Bambi’s mother, let’s suppose. The child has a stake or personal investment in the movie in the form of a concern. This concern does not rely on a suspension of disbelief, given that the child might not yet have the ability to differentiate a true account from a fictional one. The father may be struck with fear when he sees the hunters gaining on Bambi’s mother. However, he does not have a stake in Bambi’s mother per se, but only in his child’s psychological distress.

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being of such and such dimensions, might exist and do these terrible things. (Carroll 1987, 56)19

Before going into detail regarding (iv), let us for a moment give consideration to (i), since it is a rather ubiquitous form in horror films, and (ii), i.e., simulated emotions of fear, since the notion of simulated emotions will factor into later analysis. The emotion of “spook” is operative in cases of (i). Spook is an emotion directed at a vague, immediate threat (Roberts 2003, 202). It is an involuntary fear response to loud, sudden noise.20 Horror films often induce fear by spooking the audience through “jump scares”. Many of the horror movie franchises from the 2000s (e.g., Saw (2004), Paranormal Activity (2007), The Ring (2002)) rely rather heavily on startling loudness, and are intended to induce a series of exhilarating, “heart-attack” moments.—Indeed, this exploitation of startle-response is rather endemic of modern horror titles to this day.—But there is only so much that may be said of the value of startling loudness, and I may achieve largely the same effect by unwittingly stepping on a balloon.21 A distinction must be made between simulated fear and non-simulated fear. Horror can induce both forms. By simulations of fear, I mean that fear which proceeds from a specious personal investment in the well-­ being of a fictional character (i.e., vi), or from a process of imaginative “aspectual identification” (Gaut 2006, 263), according to which the spectator imagines herself “in the shoes” of characters in the film, and in so  See also Carroll (1990, 79-87).  Strictly speaking, Roberts distinguishes fear from spook as well as from anxiety, fright, and terror (2003, 198-202). However, he nevertheless thinks that spook “…belong[s] in the family of fear, inasmuch as [in the case of spook] the subject construes himself as under threat – an aversive possibility with a certain degree of possibility.” (2003, 202) What differentiates fear from spook, according to Roberts, is that the aversive possibility characteristic of spook is ambiguous (Ibid.). In my view, the family resemblance amongst the cognitive profiles of spook and fear, as Roberts formulates them, is strong enough to side-step their finer distinctions. Much the same, I think, can be said regarding the family resemblance amongst fear and fright, terror, and panic.—Cf. Roberts (2003, 200): “Terror and panic are both very intense variants of fear or fright.” Cf. Tappolet (2010, 333) on the scholarly “…agreement that two main kinds of fear have to be distinguished: anxiety and fright (or panic).”—Common and scholarly usage permit one to treat spook as a species of fear. 21  Though, I do not want to deny that there is some skill involved in pulling-off a good jump scare, something that requires cinematographic principles of suspense and misdirection. 19 20

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doing virtually adopts the point of view of fictional characters (i.e., ii, iii). These forms of fear inducement I call “simulated” since they typically rely on suspending disbelief. Simulated fear involves some witting or, perhaps in that instance, unwitting self-deception where one treats as important for its own sake the welfare of a non-existent thing, or the concerns and situation of fictional entities as, to some extent, one’s own. In accordance with (ii), simulated fear can depend on an …act of imaginative identification [that] involves imagining — not, strictly speaking, being that other person, but rather imagining being in her situation…[W]e imagine the world from her physical and psychological perspective… (Gaut 2006, 262)

Since such acts do not normally alienate the percipient from her sense of embodiment, physical integrity, or awareness of real environmental threat, the identification with the character in the film is aspectual, meaning that it includes an identification with some of the character’s psychological or situational properties, but not all of them. As Berys Gaut goes on to explain: … [T]he question to ask whenever someone talks of identifying with a character is in what respects does she identify with the character? The act of identification is aspectual. (2006, 263)22

Since we are not sent careening out of the film during bouts of simulated fear, we do not delude ourselves into believing that we are actually in the same physical threat the character is represented as being in. Rather, we identify with the character’s psychology in a disembodied way. We identify with the character’s concern, for instance, not to be cut, and when he is presented with the threat of being cut, we are afraid ourselves. But we are not afraid of being cut; rather, we are afraid of having our concern not to be cut, insofar as it is treated as equal to his concern, undermined. And when the character is represented as about to be cut,  For a counterpoint, see Carroll (2001, 306-316); Matravers (2011). For a canonical discussion of imaginative identification (though not under that name), see: Wollheim (1984, 71-72) on “central imagining”; see also Smith (1994). 22

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we experience a frustration of our own concern, but we do not “make-­ believe” that we are physically present to the danger, but rather, that we are psychologically present to the danger. My suggestion implies that I can think that my concern not to be cut has been violated without thinking I’ve been cut. This may seem peculiar, but if one is to take Gaut’s account of aspectual identification with fictional characters seriously, or, for that matter, the notion of “vicarious emotions23”, it must be considered a serious possibility. In this respect, Gaut’s (2006) insights on the aspectual nature of identifications with fictional characters seem to solve a number of difficulties. The requisite suspension of belief does not involve entertaining contradictory beliefs. On my view, when I fear fictions through aspectual identification with the character, I recognize that I am not in real physical danger and yet also believe that some of my concerns are actually threatened. This does not involve any conflict in judgement over my actual circumstances. Moreover, my analysis prevents conceiving of simulated emotion as a form of irrational emotion. In the case of simulated emotion, there is no conflict between judgements and emotional construals. Non-simulated fear in the cinema, by contrast, proceeds through the regular cognitive channels, where the perceived threat is not mediated by a suspension of disbelief. The most interesting way horror achieves this, in my view, is through (iv), that is, by representing possible aversive scenarios for the percipient or spectator. An extended treatment of this form of fear in the cinema is in order.

References Benbaji, Hagit. 2013. How is Recalcitrant Emotion Possible? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 577–599. Brady, Michael S. 2009. The Irrationality of Recalcitrant Emotions. Philosophical Studies 145: 413–430.

 E.g., see Waytz and Mitchell (2011); Gordon (1986). For an example of applying the doctrine of vicarious emotions to the case of fictional engagement, see Currie (1995). For a critique of Currie’s “simulation theory” of fictional engagement, see: Turvey (2006). 23

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Calhoun, Cheshire. 1984. Cognitive Emotions? In What is an Emotion? Classic Readings in Philosophical Psychology, ed. Cheshire Calhoun and Robert C. Solomon, 327–342. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canetti, Elias. 1962/1984. Crowds and Power. Translated by Carol Stewart. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Carroll, Noël. 1987. The Nature of Horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1): 51–59. ———. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. ———. 2001. Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Currie, Gregory. 1995. Imagination as Simulation: Aesthetics Meets Cognitive Science. In Mental Simulation: Evaluations and Applications, ed. Martin Davies and Tony Stone, 151–169. Oxford: Blackwell. D’Arms, Justin, and Daniel Jacobson. 2003. The Significance of Recalcitrant Emotion (or, anti-quasijudgmentalism). In Philosophy and the Emotions, ed. Anthony Hatzimoysis, 127–145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Sousa, Ronald. 1991. The Rationality of the Emotions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dos Santos, Miguel F. 2017. Walton’s Quasi-Emotions Do Not Go Away. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75: 265–274. Gaut, Berys. 2006. Identification and emotion in Narrative Film. In Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, ed. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi, 260–270. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Gordon, Robert. 1986. Folk Psychology as Simulation. Mind and Language 1 (2): 158–171. Greenspan, Patricia S. 1986. Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification. London: Routledge. Grodal, Torben. 1999. Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. New York: Routledge. ———. 2014. Judge Dread: What we are Afraid of when we are Scared at the Movies. Projections 8 (2): 26–49. Hills, Matt. 2005. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Jacobs, Laura. 2018. The Devil Inside: Watching Rosemary’s Baby in the Age of #MeToo. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/ watching-­rosemarys-­baby-­in-­the-­age-­of-­metoo. Accessed 19 May 2021.

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Manfredi, Mirella, Roberta Adorni, and Alice Mado Proverbio. 2014. Why do we Laugh at Misfortunes? An Electrophysiological Exploration of Comic Situation Processing. Neuropsychologia 64: 374–334. Matravers, Derek. 2011. Imagination, Fiction, and Documentary. In Narrative, Emotion, and Insight, ed. Noël Carroll and John Gibson, 173–184. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plantinga, Carl. 2009. Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Roberts, Robert C. 2003. Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, Jenefer. 2005. Deeper than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Santayana, George. 1896/1905. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Smith, Murray. 1994. Altered States: Character and Emotional Response in the Cinema. Cinema Journal 33 (4): 34–56. Solomon, Robert. 1977. The Passions. New York: Anchor. Stocker, Michael, and Elizabeth Hegeman. 1996. Valuing Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tappolet, Christine. 2010. Emotion, Motivation, and Action: The Case of Fear. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. Peter Goldie, 325–334. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turvey, Malcom. 2006. Imagination, Simulation, and Fiction. Film Studies 8: 116–125. Walton, Kendall. 1978. Fearing Fictions. The Journal of Philosophy 75: 5–27. ———. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1997. Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction. In Emotion and the Arts, ed. Mette Hjort and Sue Laver, 37–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waytz, Adam, and Jason Mitchell. 2011. Two Mechanisms for Simulating Other Minds: Dissociations between Mirroring and Self-Projection. Current Directions in Psychological Science 20 (3): 197–200. Williams, Christopher. 2019. Why Quasi-Emotions Should Go Away: A Comment on Dos Santos. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77 (1): 79–82.

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Wills, Thomas Ashby. 1981. Downward Comparison Principles in Social Psychology. Psychological Bulletin 90 (2): 245–271. Wollheim, Richard. 1984. The Thread of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yeung, Lorraine. 2018. The Nature of Horror Reconsidered. International Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2): 125–138. Zillman, Dolf, and Joanne R. Cantor. 1976. A Disposition Theory of Humor and Mirth. In Humor and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications, ed. Antony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot, 93–115. London: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

4 Horror and Its Dark Visions

Abstract  This chapter presents a theory I call “the sport model of horror”. By appealing to this model, I clarify the effectiveness of a number of horror’s quintessential plot, cinematic, and visual devices, and trace a logical trajectory of advances in horror’s scare value, one that ultimately tends towards increases in representations of indiscriminate violence (and arbitrary harm) within the genre. The chapter explores a number of peculiarities and important expansions concerning the model. A Neo-­Santayanan doctrine of expression factors into these expansions, and supplies a novel framework by which to understand how horror films are themselves proper aesthetic objects despite the fact that it is an activity of the percipient that is the primary aesthetic object, according to this model. Keywords  Expression • Self-admiration • Socio-dramatic play • Sublime • Verisimilitude • Trophies

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5_4

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4.1 T  he Scare-Value of Horror: The Three Axes of Fear The horror genre is populated by fictional representations of grave threat, suffering, injury, gore, and death. Its principal primary function is to induce fear in the percipient. The most interesting way it achieves this, in my view, is through (iv), which is to say, by communicating some thought of aversive possibility for the percipient. Whether it communicates a vision that is sufficiently compelling so as to induce fear will depend on three factors: A. The perceived severity or intensity of the harm or threat depicted; B. The perceived plausibility of the threat; C. The extent to which the percipient can favourably disassociate herself and others for whom she has concern from the fictional victim. In other words, the effectiveness of a horror film’s effectuating (iv) will be a function of its perceived values along three axes: the axis of severity, the axis of believability, and the axis of inability of personal avoidance. “Personal avoidance”, in the sense I’m using it, is a function of what has been called “psychical distance”.1 The extent to which the film can reduce the viewer’s ability to disassociate himself and those for whom he has a concern from the represented victims determines the value of the film on the axis of inability of personal avoidance. This notion of distance is not to be confused with the literal ability to personally avoid the film (by turning off the T.V., for instance). It is important to clarify the distinction between axes (B) and (C). Believability concerns whether the film’s threats are merely perceived to be within the bounds of possibility in the actual world. The inability of personal avoidance goes a step further: It involves the estimation of the personal likelihood of such threats or the probability that the viewer or those for whom he has concern will be subject to such threats.2 It is one  See Bullough (1912) for the canonical statement of this notion.  See Carroll (1990, 76), Neill (1993), and Tappolet (2010) on the distinction between fearing out of concern for oneself and fearing out of concern for others. 1 2

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thing to perceive a threat as physically possible and quite another to perceive it as a potential threat in one’s own case. The latter implies the former, but not vice versa. When horror effectuates (iv), it does so not by eliciting some thrill or set of exhilarations; nor does it rely on simulated emotion. Rather, horror in accordance with (iv) is a game of proposing hypothetical aversive scenarios for the percipient. Horror thus understood is a sort of competition according to which the percipient gauges how the threatening scenario communicated could personally apply—i.e., whether the dispositions, external circumstances, and decision-making of the represented victim(s) are applicable to herself or to those for whom she has concern. The question is whether the percipient can, in her view, differentiate herself and those for whom she cares from the represented victim in such a way so as to preclude herself and those she holds dear from the type of threat being communicated. If the percipient finds the scenarios sufficiently severe, believable, and unavoidable, this will induce in her a proportional fear. The percipient “wins” if she plays the game and ultimately walks away unscathed by the film in the relevant way. The fear induced by actual footage of human beheadings, car crashes, suicides, and other real, graphic violence can be understood from within the matrix developed for (iv): Such footage will score high on believability, since it looks, and is typically known, to be a recording of actual events, and so is understood to be within the realm of the physically possible. It will score high on severity, since it presents mortal injury and death (though there is one caveat here regarding the axis of severity to be considered below). Its value on the axis of inability of personal avoidance depends on the respective perceived similitude to the victim the percipient and those for whom she has concern have, and is as such variable, insofar as different perceived respective degrees of separation between the victim and the percipient or those within the scope of her concern may obtain. Indeed, since its scores in believability and (at least objective (see below)) severity are maximized, variations in the footage’s capacity to induce fear in terms of (iv) will likely be a function of differences in the perceived degree of personal avoidance. So, for instance, if the percipient shares special characteristics with the victim relevant to the victim’s being targeted, and this fact is known to him, then the footage will induce a

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more intense fear. Likewise, if the victim bears such resemblances to individuals within the scope of the percipient’s concern, and this fact is known to him, then the footage will induce the proportional fear. To put it in popular parlance, footage is scarier when it hits closer to home, all else being equal. Just as we often say that a joke is not funny when it hits too close to home, so too is horror often not enjoyable when it hits too close to home. In both instances, the pleasing effect and aesthetic value of the object are negativized. Returning to the domain of horror films, let us illustrate the nature of these three axes using examples. Take The Blair Witch Project (1999): It will not likely have as high a scare-value on the axis of inability of personal avoidance for a percipient who is viewing it in a theatre in the city as opposed to one, say, viewing the film on a portable television in a tent in the wilderness (at least in the moment of viewing it). Eraserhead (1977) had a much higher scare-value on the axis of inability of personal avoidance for my friend than for me, even though we watched it together, since he was an expecting father at the time, whereas I was not (the film deals with the theme of irregular birth). And Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror (1977), which tells the tale of a family terrorized by poltergeist activity in an old, Colonial-style home, was a scary read for me as a child living in an old, creaky prairie farmhouse. According to a recent report, there has been an influx of interest in films dealing with pandemic scenarios3 during the Sars-Cov2 pandemic (Kelly 2020). If my view is correct, at a certain point, the films fail to induce fear precisely because the scenario they communicate fails to adequately meet the avoidance clause of fear, since they already obtain in the viewer’s real life—though of course, they will likely be scary for those who are not already suffering to the same degree as the represented victims in the films. In this regard, the qualifier “close” in “hitting too close to home” is operative: For, if the film communicates a scenario that, as it were, is already in one’s home, it will not be a suitable object of fear. It must be stressed that the three factors that determine the scare-value of horror concern evaluations on behalf of the percipient, and as such, bear the mark of that percipient’s subjectivity. Reconsider the scenario of  E.g., Carriers (2006); Contagion (2011); 93 Days (2016).

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my watching Eraserhead (1977) with a friend who was at that moment an expecting father: Insofar as he was within the scope of my concern, in watching the film I experienced some proportionate fear on his behalf. In this respect, the severity of personal threat will be evaluated on the basis of the respective degree of concern the percipient has for his individual of concern. What is a severe threat for someone for whom the percipient has marginal concern will be considered by that percipient to be less severe than a slighter severe threat that applies directly to the percipient herself (provided that her concern for herself outweighs her concern for others). For reasons such as these, it is important to consider the axis of severity as not simply a function of what may be called the objective severity of the threat—i.e., the threat evaluated from a disinterested or clinical point of view—but rather a function of the perceived or personal severity of threat, or, perhaps better, the threat insofar as it appears from a percipient’s set of working priorities. Furthermore, reconsider, for a moment, the scenario of someone watching The Blair Witch Project (1999) in a tent in the woods as opposed to in a theatre. Some (e.g., Hanich (2010, 268), Hill (1997, 61)) have observed that home viewing films is distinct from watching them in a theatre insofar as in the former case, one has personal control over turning-­off the film, whereas in the latter case, one does not. Annette Hill (1997, 65) reports that some people prefer to watch scary films at home for this reason. The same distinction applies to watching a film on a portable T.V. in a tent in the woods as opposed to watching it in a theatre. One might think that this feature of home viewing makes The Blair Witch Project (1999) less scary when it is viewed at home or in the woods on a portable T.V., since there is a better opportunity to avoid its scariness. This runs contrary to my proposal above. However, it should also go without saying that one can engage in a similar response in a theatre to turning off one’s DVD player: namely, one can get up and walk out. As Hanich (2010, 268) notes, there is a “social pressure” that tends to keep one in one’s seat in a theatre, but quite often one does not watch films alone in a home setting either, and thus, similar social pressure may pertain there also. Moreover, it should be taken as a basic assumption that when evaluating a film’s situationally-­ dependent scare-value, part of the relevant context should be that the

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viewer actually watches the film. By evaluating the scare-value of a film in terms of the degree to which one can avoid watching it, one shifts focus away from considering the scare-value of the film in operation (i.e., in terms of what objects of fear it communicates) to considering the film as itself an object of fear (i.e., a fear of the film itself for what fear watching it may bring). These are two separate (though related) issues that should not be conflated. One concerns first-order emotion in viewing film. The other concerns meta-emotions in viewing films. My discussion of how horror can induce rational fears is restricted to how watching horror can induce fears, and one can fear a film for what fears it may bring irrespective of actually watching the film. Because horror films do not trade in real footage or description of factual evil, the scenarios depicted attain their mark on the scale of believability in other ways, one of which is verisimilitude—the quality of appearing real or like actual footage. The Blair Witch Project (1999) is a case in point. Its effectiveness depends on its verisimilitude, or its look of real home video footage.4 There is an evolution of verisimilitude in horror that tracks the developments in special effects and cinematographic representations of violence, injury, death, mortal threat, etc., and this advancement in verisimilitude results in increases in believability. For instance, there is a certain lack of believability in the older horror films, one of the classic examples of which is The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972). Take the appearance of the severed heads that are placed around the New  York apartment of Norah Benson, the character played by Shirley MacLaine: They appeared fake. The Exorcist (1973), by contrast, has a higher degree of believability, in part because it operates on a similar premise (i.e., possession), but utilizes superior verisimilitude. The creation of higher degrees of verisimilitude in representations of violence and gore is one of the ways horror can get scarier.5 As a general  See also Cannibal Holocaust (1980) for a similar working of the camera into the plot.  For an example of a film with exacting gore verisimilitude, in addition to such gore being particularly graphic and unshielded—what Julian Hanich (2010, 82) calls “direct horror”—see Martyrs (2008). Note, for a good example of advancement in verisimilitude, compare the depiction of a human body without skin in Martyrs (2008) to the depiction of a human body without skin in Hellraiser (1987). 4 5

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rule of thumb, a film that operates on similar premises as another but contains a higher degree of verisimilitude will score higher in believability. Whether because of the perceived implausibility of its premises or lack of verisimilitude, when a horror show lacks believability altogether, it is said, in common parlance, to be “corny”. Moreover, a film that trades in higher degrees of verisimilitude than another is typically a better vehicle for communicating the severity of the threat being depicted. The artificiality of the doll-like decapitated heads spread around the apartment in The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972) tended to sanitize the thought of decapitation, just as cartoon violence fails to truly express the severity of the sort of violence being depicted. In such cases, the poverty of the representation or treatment of the subject can shield the viewer from imagining factual suffering; without the requisite verisimilitude, the viewer is more likely to remain within the viscerally innocuous realm of imagining fictional suffering.6 In this way, scores in perceived believability and perceived severity of threat are interrelated.7 What it is for a film to achieve a high level of verisimilitude is not a straightforward matter. It is not simply a matter of how close the depicted harm, gore, violence, etc. comes to looking like it would if it were really being observed in the flesh, for instance. The Blair Witch Project (1999) illustrates that whether a film looks like actual footage will depend, to some extent, on the way it appears to have been filmed. Is the existence of the camera addressed by the fictional scenario; that is, does the camera function as an element within the narrative? Many films that achieve some level of verisimilitude in their special effects nevertheless do not achieve a high overall level of believability, since with every sweeping,

 However, I do not deny that there are individual differences at play that determine how high the verisimilitude of the represented evils must be in order to initiate the viewer’s regression from imagining fictional suffering to thinking about factual suffering. My mother remembers being scared at the sight of the doll-like decapitated heads in The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972). On the other hand, my level of tolerance for representations of violence is significantly higher, and this I attribute in part to a long process of desensitization beginning with early formative acquaintances with cartoon violence and horror-comedy, both of which tend to prime one not to take fictional representations of evil seriously (i.e., treat them as within the realm of worldly possibility). 7  Recall SB (224–225). 6

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bird’s eye camera movement, and with the characters’ failure to acknowledge the existence of the camera, they betray their forgeries. Here it may be objected that I am going against the age-old notion that it is precisely the character’s addressing the camera (“breaking the 4th wall”) that reminds the viewer of the footage’s status as a fiction or artifact. However, the type of addressing of the camera that breaks the 4th wall occurs in a context where the actor’s acknowledgement of the camera is a manifest admission that he knows he’s being filmed, contrary to what his behaviours and the conventions of the film suggested up to that point. In the case of the Blair Witch Project (1999), on the other hand, and the subgenre of horror known as found footage generally8, the characters address the camera in a way that does not create the discontinuity in the conventions of the film that breaking the 4th wall involves. By integrating the camera into the narrative by convention, one nullifies one of the typical marks of the footage’s artificiality in the way I propose; i.e., the film appears like a behind-the-scenes documentary. A rather interesting case of verisimilitude, I propose, occurs in the experimental horror film Begotten (1989). Here, there are no supernatural pretexts for the occurrence of gore or “direct horror”—though the film involves a working-out of theological tropes (Merhige 2009)—and the gore is extremely graphic. E. Elias Merhige, the writer and director of the film, originally shot it on 16mm black-and-white reversal film, and then he laboriously rephotographed each image using an optical printer (ibid.) and, as it has been described, “…put [the film] through a multiple ‘solarization’ process to bring out astonishing new relationships between shades of black, white, and grey…”(Sterritt 1990, 11). The resulting images are grainy, high contrast, and appear overexposed; the movements portrayed are often spastic, or in slow-motion, or discontinuous. The verisimilitude of the film, I submit, is in large part retained despite such features, since the film’s appearance is (loosely) consistent with the pretext that the footage is old, damaged, black and white film.9  See also Paranormal Activity (2007).  Indeed, the fact that one of his film processing experiments leading up to the use of an optical printer involved literally applying sandpaper to film prior to recording (Merhige 2009) is evidence that that was, to some measure, Merhige’s intended effect. Further evidence in this regard is revealed in his following perspicacious remarks, which give some indication of how he interprets the look of 8 9

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Often a film will achieve a high score on one of the axes at the expense of sacrificing a higher score on one or more of the other axes, and the crafting of an effective horror film, in this respect, can involve making trade-offs. For instance, believability and inability of personal avoidance are often inversely correlated. The pure (i.e., nonsupernatural) slasher films10 often possess a high degree of believability, since axe-wielding sadists are well within the realm of worldly possibility. However, such slashers are only human, and as such, are avoidable through ordinary means of self-defence or evasive manoeuvring, e.g., running away, seeking gun power, police protection, etc.—though, to be sure, horror films quite often work to render the option of police protection inviable through representing officers as irredeemably corrupt or cartoonishly ineffectual.11 One strategy for increasing the scare-value of a film on the axis of inability of personal avoidance is to incorporate supernatural elements or themes of higher power (aliens12, demons13, witches or warlocks14, and so forth).15 In many supernatural slasher films, like, for example, Friday the 13th (1980), or Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the supernatural elements (e.g., a curse) are designed to increase the communicated threat’s the film: “…[I]magine that we had a culture, like 4,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago, that had the technology with cinema, to make movies. And that you’re looking into a sort of archaeological discovery of this world, that is now extinct, and was sort of a pre-predecessor to the world that we live in today.” (Ibid.) 10  E.g., see Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974); Halloween (1978); Pieces (1982); Silent Madness (1984); Hannibal (2001); Saw (2004); Hostel (2005); Halloween (2007). 11  There is a glut of examples of these two tropes; see, e.g., I Spit on Your Grave (2011) for an example of the former; see The Last House on the Left (1972) for an example of the latter. 12  E.g., see Alien (1979); The Thing (1982); The Fourth Kind (2009); Dark Skies (2013); Life (2017); Annihilation (2018); Colour out of Space (2019). 13  E.g., see The Gate (1986); The Unnameable (1988); Under the Shadow (2016). 14  E.g., see Warlock (1989); AntiChrist (2009); The Witch (2015). 15  Albeit, supernatural themes in films are quite often unsettled; they usually stand to dissolve into psychological explanations at every step. In many cases, horror films exploit the tenuous nature of supernatural (or, inversely, psychological) themes so as to create puzzlement and increase suspense (e.g., see The Tenant (1976); The Shining (1977); In the Mouth of Madness (1995); The Lighthouse (2019)).—See Carroll (1990, 144–145) for a good accounting of this feature of horror. But note that I take issue with his assumption that “…horror requires that at some point attempts at ordinary scientific explanations be abandoned in favor of a supernatural (or a sci-fi) explanation.” (1990, 145) Such an assumption is overly restrictive. It rules-out vast swaths of the genre as illegitimate (e.g., what I have termed “pure slashers”).

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score on the metric of inability of personal avoidance. The supernatural introduces an element of unpredictability and tends to limit traditional methods of defense.16 Thus, it is more difficult for the viewer to construct plausible reasons why he would be immune to such hypothetical threats (assuming that he has already granted their possibility, which is to say, they have already passed his believability test). However, this is often a flawed strategy for producing overall increases in the scare-value of a horror film. The introduction of supernatural elements in a film tends to decrease its value on the axis of believability. Moreover, the involvement of supernatural elements can be a double-­ edged sword for the inability of personal avoidance, since once supernatural adversities are included it stands to reason that supernatural defenses are also fair play. In The Exorcist (1973), for instance, there is the supernatural defense of prayer, the cross, and, indeed, exorcism. In Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Freddy’s power over his victims depends on their believing in him.17 One chief way to combat this typical diminishment in believability the introduction of supernatural themes in a film implies is by exploiting religious, superstitious18, or scientific tropes. Religious pretexts for the supernatural, for instance, will tend to increase the film’s believability score, since religions are observed en masse, and religion is one area of discourse where the reality of the supernatural is already granted. Likewise, using scientific tropes in supernatural horror has the effect of coating the ostensibly supernatural with a veneer of modern plausibility.19  See It Follows (2015) for a recent example of a film employing this tactic rather well.  In this respect, I depart from Carroll (1990), who claims that horror always involves the theme of a breakdown in naturalistic explanation (145). Breakdowns in naturalistic explanation are not particularly believable, and typically reduce the scare-value of a film, all else being equal, as a result. A more persuasive horror film that turns on ostensibly “supernatural” tropes, in my view, would work to expand the horizon of natural possibility, or would aim to make plausible that what is normally considered a violation of natural law is actually the mark of a paradigm shift in our understanding of nature. 18  E.g., see Candyman (1992), which exploits the superstition of catoptromancy, of which the (perhaps familiar) childhood legend of “Bloody Mary” is an instance, according to which if one repeats “Bloody Mary” three times in a row while looking into a mirror, her apparition will appear. 19  E.g., see paranormal investigator horror films like 1408 (2007); Insidious (2010); The Conjuring (2013). See Event Horizon (1997) for a rather seamless blending of supernatural and scientific tropes. 16 17

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Another way believability is conserved when the threat being represented is based on outlandish premises (like the supernatural) is through the film’s incorporation of sceptical tropes. Does what we know of history and present experience definitively rule out the present or historical existence of witches or mythical creatures?20 How shall we ever really know that there are other human minds in the bodies with which we interact?21 Suppose after Matthew (Donald Sutherland) embraced Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) in the penultimate act of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), they managed to escape (instead of her body collapsing into a pile of slime and dead skin in his hands): Should he have been convinced that she was not an alien imposter, a pod person; should the audience have been so convinced? Even the most outlandish hypothesis may be given some veneer of plausibility if the film can raise doubt regarding human history, observation, and the set of propositions we take ourselves to know. On this point I converge with Carroll’s (1987) analysis of Thought Theory: Horror stories are predominantly concerned with knowledge as a theme. The two most frequent plot structures in horror narratives are the Discovery Plot and the Overreacher Plot. In the Discovery Plot, the monster is responsible for all those unexplained deaths. However, when the protagonists approach the authorities with this information, the authorities dismiss the very possibility of the monster. The energies of the narrative are then devoted to proving the monster’s existence. Such a plot celebrates the existence of things beyond the boundaries of common knowledge. The Overreacher Plot…proposes a central figure embarked on the pursuit of hidden, unholy, or forbidden knowledge…Whereas the protagonists in the Discovery Plot must go beyond the bounds of common knowledge, overreachers are warned not to exceed them. But both the major plots of the horror genre take the compass of common knowledge as their basic donnée and explore it…This, of course, fits very nicely with a theory that regards cognitive threat as a major factor in the generation of art-horror. (57)

20 21

 See The Witch (2015), Antichrist (2009), The Lighthouse (2019).  See The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).

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One way horror films maximize their scare-value on the axis of inability of personal avoidance without appealing to the supernatural (and therefore, without the corresponding diminishment of believability such appeals often entail) is to represent indiscriminate violence. Indiscriminate violence does not stipulate any particular special circumstantial or personal characteristics of the victim relevant to his or her victimization. The victim is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is a casualty of misfortune, pure and simple. In this way, depictions of indiscriminate violence have a sort of scattershot effect, since the percipient’s noting his own personal characteristics will have no impact on his perceived ability to personally avoid the sort of scenario depicted. The films The Devil’s Rejects (2005) and Three from Hell (2019) are good examples of the scare-value of indiscriminate violence (though to be sure, the motif is not new). The represented victims are often innocent bystanders in ordinary circumstances any of us may find ourselves in.— Note that in the first instalment of the franchise, House of 1000 Corpses (2003), the victims are actually horror movie enthusiasts (a cheap plot device designed to maximize the similitude of the victims to the audience). Because there are no supernatural elements in the scenarios represented, such films retain the believability of classic non-supernatural slasher films while maximizing their scare-value on the axis of inability of personal avoidance (though, to be sure, in the classic, non-supernatural slasher films, there is a preponderance of the motif of indiscriminate violence; in this respect, Rob Zombie’s films are a bit of a throwback). Rob Zombie’s films are also notably distinct from supernatural slashers insofar as they explicitly undermine magical thinking about possible modes of avoidance. In a scene in The Devil’s Rejects (2005)—virtually repeated in Three from Hell (2019)—Otis (Bill Mosely) commands his soon-to-be victim to pray for divine intervention. Otis then feigns a moment of divinely inspired moral clarity, but quickly betrays the charade in the next line: “I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil’s work”. Here, the world represented is far from one of divine intervention; evil is demythologized; methods of personal avoidance are narrowed to the physics of meat, bone, and velocity. Turning to another common type of trade-off in scare-value effectiveness, increases in severity of threat can constitute corresponding

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diminishments in believability. For instance, the threat level in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) can appear so over-the-top so as to be absurd, even comical. Indeed, this was one of the criticisms raised against the film. Janet Maslin of The New York Times insisted that “… [t]he creepiness [Philip Kaufman (the Director)]…generates [in the film] is so crazily ubiquitous it becomes funny. Accordingly, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ isn’t as frightening as it might be…” (Maslin 1978) There is a careful balancing act occurring in the systematic development of a good horror film. In accordance with (iv), horror is an exercise whereupon the percipient weighs the threat or harm communicated and its likelihood relative to her own characteristics and situation (or those of individuals within the scope of her concern). Horror is in this sense a game. The percipient wins if she finds sufficient reason to dismiss the scenarios communicated as corny, or as not possible, or as not relevant possibilities, given her character or circumstances (or those for whom she has concern). The percipient loses if she finds the scenario communicated sufficiently compelling such that it is an appropriate object of her fear.22 In accordance with the sport model, the satisfaction of horror derives not from some (perhaps paradoxical) enjoyment of fear, or from the exhilaration of spook, or from a fascination with monstrosity (see Carroll 1990, 188–191; 1995), or from a masochistic form of spectatorship (see Studlar 1988, 76), or even from a simulated sadistic pleasure through identifying with a slasher, but rather from the satisfaction the percipient receives from the intellectual challenge of rationalizing (brainstorming) a compelling denial of horror’s personal applicability.

4.2 Horror as Sport: Expansions The beauty of horror, on this model, is located in the moment when the viewer, to employ a boxing analogy (hence, “sport” model), “admires her own work”. Momentary defensive or offensive lapses in sports are often,  In this respect, horror obeys a logic loosely similar to that of what Martin Harries calls “destructive spectatorship”, something which’s twentieth century iteration, he thinks, “…had a particular investment in a formal logic that placed the spectator in a spot where that spectator had to contemplate her own destruction.” (2007, 9) 22

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at least superficially, attributed to the gravity of self-admiration. Athletes seem to become temporarily transfixed by the thoughts of personal excellence/superiority. It is as though the thought of their personal superiority or the excellence of their athletic activity pulls their focus away from the game. In boxing or other combat sports, for instance, sometimes the pugilist executes a good combination of punches on her opponent, but nevertheless her victory is premature. Immediately following the combination, the boxer experiences a costly breakdown in personal defence, failing to engage in the appropriate head or foot movement after delivering the perfect blows. In other words, she is caught “admiring her work”.23 This is distinguishable from a closely related sort of athletic mental lapse, namely, when the athlete prematurely celebrates, and in so doing, jeopardizes his victory (e.g., by coasting or dancing to the finish line). Both premature celebration and admiring one’s work involve a temporary suspension or reduction of mental or physical participation in the game. A premature celebration, however, is simply a natural relaxation of attentiveness or effort resulting from the misapprehension that at that point the victory is secured. On the other hand, why there should be any diminishment of mental or physical exertion at the thought or feeling of one’s athletic excellence when one is knowingly in the heat of things is explicable, I submit, by appeal to the cognitive weight of the aesthetic. In admiring her work, the athlete, quite aware of being in the middle of the game, rather unintentionally “freezes-up.” It is this peculiar state of paralysis that admiring one’s work has and premature celebration doesn’t, and it is the introduction of an aesthetic object that explains this distinctive paralysis. The cognitive gravity of admiring one’s work is sufficiently powerful such that it threatens to engross one’s attention in even the most dangerous of moments. To reiterate, the dangerous allure of beautiful things, I propose, includes the attraction of self-admiration in high-intensity moments of athletic excellence. In such cases, one is liable to transfix on one’s personal  The boxing phrase, strictly, need not be thought to have any aesthetic connotation. It is often simply used as a short-hand for the rule of not leaving your arm extended-out (as opposed to returning it to a guarding position) for too long after executing punches. Nevertheless, there is quite often a sort of narcissism that is explanatory and even manifest in some cases where this phrase tends to apply (I defer to the boxing reels). 23

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excellence. The experience of personal excellence is powerful because it delivers not only an appreciation of beauty, but also a feeling of pride that it is I who am in some sense beautiful; narcissism is a sort of gluttony of aesthetic appreciation for one’s self, a good metaphor for which is the male bird’s (often maladaptive) attraction to his image reflected in a mirror. Horror introduces opportunities for self-appreciation to the extent that it puts up an intellectual challenge for the viewer, but ultimately fails to induce (rational) objects of sustained fear or unmitigated horror. A viewer, on my model, attains satisfaction in her ability to absorb or entertain the objects of fear the film represents and rationalize her way out of being afraid of them. Integral to such satisfaction is the appreciation of a certain formal complexity in the game and the art of playing it well. However, since a game of risk or a test of courage is only really enjoyable if one prevails, or at most before one is defeated, a good horror film, i.e., one that executes its principal primary function well, is in that instance a negation of horror’s aesthetic in the sense being discussed (i.e., aesthetic self-appreciation). The sport model of the aesthetic value of horror thus contains a peculiarity: When horror successfully realizes its principal primary function, it simultaneously fails to deliver an aesthetic object in the relevant sense. Indeed, this peculiarity perhaps explains why the bulk of films in the popular genre of horror have happy endings. The mitigation of the film’s scare-value is instrumental to the aesthetic or pleasing effect of the film. By having a happy ending, the film does the viewer’s work for him; the viewer’s way out of the hypothetical aversive scenario is virtually guaranteed (provided he considers the happy ending plausible and personally applicable). Horror’s fulfilment of its principal primary function, as I define it, negativizes the relevant aesthetic object, since no self-admiration of one’s excellence in a competition can occur at the moment of loss.—Though, I do not want to deny that in a very uneven match, the loser may nevertheless be dignified in his loss, and may achieve some degree of excellence in putting up a noble fight against all odds. In such cases, we may say that the loser experienced a “moral victory”. Inversely, in cases where one wins a competition against a much weaker opponent, little feeling of personal

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excellence can be gleaned. This is why mature golfers playing against one another who are of drastically varying degrees of expertise play with a “handicap system”. When the official victor of the competition is not the moral victor, there has been a breakdown in the criteria used for scoring or arranging the competition. This, in part, explains why many prefer cheering for “the underdog” (a testament to people’s appreciation for moral, and not merely official, victors).—Moreover, when horror successfully carries-out its principal primary function in the percipient, it is reduced to an object of unmitigated horror for that percipient, and unmitigated horror is antithetical to beauty. Recall that the viewer, on this model, “wins” the game if she can find sufficient reason to dismiss the scenarios communicated as corny, or as not possible, or as irrelevant possibility in her own case. But then does it not follow that the cornier the horror film is, the more it tends to produce the aesthetic, since its being corny ensures that the viewer will overcome the objects of fear it communicates? If this is a consequence of the sport model, then the view is reduced to absurdity. But this objection fails to take into consideration the fact that the athlete who wins a game against a grossly inferior competitor will have little opportunity to bask in any appreciation of athletic self-excellence. Her victory is a hollow one. Similarly, a patently corny horror film will pose little challenge; it will put up little fight. And therefore, by the same token, it will provide little opportunity for the appreciation of self-­ excellence. This is why horror films must pose a perceived threat to the viewer; if they do not, they will be unsuitable for mediating the relevant aesthetic object. Another prima facie difficulty with the view being proposed is that it entails that the moment that horror achieves its principal primary function, namely, to induce fear in the viewer, the aesthetic object of horror becomes negativized. But quite often horror films do induce fear (indeed, this is their quintessential empirical characteristic). Thus, in accordance with the modified Santayanan account of beauty, it seems, the bulk of horror films do not produce the aesthetic object in question; in short, it appears that most are not art. This objection can be addressed by clarifying the temporal nature of the sport of horror. It is a consequence of my modified Santayanan

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account that any inducement of fear in the percipient of horror implies a corresponding negation of aesthetic value. However, just as one’s opponent can win a round of the boxing match without, in the end, being the victor, so too can horror films induce fear in the percipient without, in the end, failing to mediate the relevant aesthetic object. To put it in popular parlance, one may lose the battle but ultimately win the war. And, unlike a boxing match, there is no time limit to the match between the viewer and the horror film. The viewer doesn’t necessarily leave the ring when he walks out of the theatre, as it were. His overcoming the objects of fear the film communicates might occur well after the film has ended, and thus, the aesthetic object of horror, on this model, doesn’t need to be introduced concurrently, but can occur subsequent of the duration of the film.24 But then it follows that horror films can induce fears without, in  Note that I am not proposing that the sport-aesthetic value of a horror film can only be achieved subsequent of the viewing experience, but rather that nothing precludes it from being achieved in this way. For, one’s viewing experience may be punctuated by many moments of overcoming in the relevant sense, given that horror films often communicate aversive scenarios sequentially, and thus, may involve a number of “smaller battles”, some of which the viewer may win while viewing the film. This feature of my account might for some (e.g., Hanich 2010) be considered grounds for its rejection. To borrow Hanich’s phrasing, it “…begs the question of the temporal distribution of pleasure in frightening movies…” (2010, 10); that is, it might be considered implausible that we only enjoy horror films after their scary moments, and not during them. Hanich’s rollercoaster analogy is instructive here: “Do we enjoy the…speedy ride of the rollercoaster racing up and down the tracks? Or is it merely the joyful moment of relief after the frightening experience is over? I think both moments are pleasurable (albeit in different ways). These constant pleasurable ups and downs in emotions in a temporal form of art like film are precisely the reason why the rollercoaster is not only a convincing analogy but also recurs as a fitting metaphor in discourses about somatic types of movies…”(2010, 10)—recall the discussion of Sect. 3.1 on the use of comic relief. The plausibility of Hanich’s remarks here, I submit, depends on conflating the somatic profile of the emotion of fear with the emotion of fear proper, or, the bodily reverberations of fear with the fear itself. It is a truism that fear typically shares with a number of other emotions similar somatic expressions (e.g., increased heart rate). Emotions are not simply their somatic expressions, however—for one thing, because different types of emotions can involve similar somatic states—but also their characteristic cognitive profiles, which define what they are “about” (Roberts 2003, 151–157). In the moment when one enjoys the experience of a “rush” that was initially associated with the cognitive profile of fear during a film, one, in my view, instantaneously substitutes the emotion of fear with a distinct emotion (e.g., thrill), that “rides” what was initially the somatic expression of fear and, for lack of a better term, “interprets” it as enjoyable. I can remember experiencing a similar rush of bodily sensation as that of slight fear when I had my first kiss, but in that moment I was not experiencing fear, but some form of excitement, thrill, or jubilation (though I was perhaps experiencing fear in moments immediately prior). For, of course one may experience pleasure when one feels bodily sensations initialized by a bout of fear (spook, fright, terror, etc.). I am deeply sceptical, however, of the proposal that one can experience pleasure while simultaneously undergoing an episode of fear, and the notion that fear itself can be pleasurable strikes me as altogether incoherent, at least 24

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the ultimate sense, negativizing the relevant aesthetic object. And thus, the empirical fact that horror films induce fear can be reconciled with the reality of their sport-aesthetic value. What is really entailed by my account is that in the moments when the film induces fear, there is no appreciation of beauty. But this, I submit, is a rather modest claim. An object of unmitigated horror is one in which the anti-aesthetic value of the object overwhelms any aesthetic features it could possess. This a horror film does when it imbues the viewer with a sustained or indefeasible fear. The activity of viewing the film has at that point become on the whole aesthetically worthless. However, if the fear induced by the film is ultimately overcome, its anti-aesthetic value is mitigated. Thus, although I depart from Santayana’s notion of aesthetic objects qua objects of mitigated horror—which presupposes a co-existentialist and aggregative account of aesthetic objects containing representations of evil— insofar as I deny that an aesthetic object can contain any evil or repulsive value, I can still help myself to a sense of how aesthetic objects may be objects of mitigated horror: The unfolding of a horror film might involve the production of negative feelings, but they are often mitigated in duration or longevity and ultimately supplanted by an aesthetic object. Moreover, given the Santayanan doctrine of complex essencehood, aspects of a film that contain elements of evil or its representation, in a sense, can be beautiful, just as an extreme visual close-up of a gunshot wound—phenomenologically equivalent to a patch or organization of colour—may be appreciated as beautiful when no intuition of its significance or of the overarching visual scene occurs. But in these cases, the element has been abstracted from the complex whole. Strictly speaking, this means it is a distinct essence from the original.25 Such abstraction of element from the whole substitutes one essence for another, since complex essences, according to Santayana, are not composed of simple(r) essences, and elements are only identifiable with reference to the whole of which they are elements. There is, again, a mere virtual identity that holds between elements of wholes and the objects of intuition that are when one regards fear as not merely a somatic phenomenon, or even primarily a somatic phenomenon, but rather as cognitively loaded in the way described in Chap. 3. 25  Recall Sect. 2.2.

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c­onstituted by such processes of aberrant abstraction. And when Santayana says that “…imperfection has value only as an incipient perfection…” (SB 260), I take it that one appropriate interpretation of this is that a beautiful object may be arrived at through “zoning-in” on an element of an unbeautiful complex whole. Through this process of taking the element in abstraction from the whole, or considering it in itself, one reveals an entirely distinct separate essence. The incipience of perfection in the imperfect, then, is really only a causal affair, rather than a matter of analytical or metaphysical (real) containment. The perfect and the imperfect, the beautiful and the evil, are strictly metaphysically discrete. Another prima facie difficulty with the sport model is that it might be seen as an evasion of the relevant issue, namely, the aesthetics of horror per se or in itself. For, the sport model, it might be urged, does not address the more interesting and complex question of how horror itself may be beautiful or art, but only answers the distinct, less interesting question of how aesthetic objects may be derived from horror. First, I do not take the sport model to exhaust the ways in which horror may either mediate or virtually contain aesthetic objects. The more modest claim I defend is that the sport-aesthetic objects of horror are derived from the films in a way that is meaningfully connected to horror’s principal primary function/activity. But I do not claim that the sport-­ aesthetic is horror’s only possible aesthetic value. For one thing, the sport model of horror shows that there is a systematicity in horror qua construct or hypothesis designed to induce fear. Thus, I think the films can express some perfection or excellence in their efficiency as systems of fear, but only in a detached sense. That is to say, a good horror film, i.e., one that completes its principal primary function, is only beautiful in itself from afar, like a sophisticated predator behind glass. If there is a detached aesthetic appreciation of perfection in horror as an efficient system of fear inducement, then the sport model actually affirms the intrinsic beauty of horror per se, i.e., as a perfection in its principal primary function. As Santayana notes, There are few things more utterly discomforting to our minds than waste: it is a sort of pungent extract and quintessence of folly…The force of our

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approval of practical fitness and economy in things arises into an appreciation that is half-ӕsthetic… (SB 214)

But, again, this “half-aesthetic” value is only to be observed when horror is considered at a distance—i.e., when the complex strategy of a horror film’s scare-value effectiveness is observed from a disinterested or clinical point of view. It is thus a beauty that pertains to horror considered as a meta-object. The pathologist may, in a clinical setting, similarly admire the efficiency and deadliness of a pathogen, but no experience of the pathogen’s beauty is possible in being diseased by it. And indeed, to draw an analogy from film, the alien organism in Life (2017) was admired for its intelligence, strength, and adaptiveness by the scientific mind studying it. But such appreciation quickly diminishes once the organism begins to use its cunning, strength, and resilience to slaughter the crew.26 On the other hand, a horror film in operation, i.e., when entertained in the relevant way by the viewer (i.e., as a hypothetical scenario), threatens to override the intellectual defences of the viewer, and thereby implant in him an object of unmitigated horror, and therefore, in my view, a negation of aesthetic value. The contribution of horror in operation, according to the sport model, is primarily to mediate aesthetic objects rather than strictly be one in itself. To demand that horror films in themselves be beautiful is, in a sense, to make a category mistake: It is to apply the aesthetic standard of representative art to symbolic art. My solution conforms to neither the co-existentialist nor the integrationist solution of the paradox of horror. The sport model (contra co-­ existentialism) denies that any evil or representation of suffering, mortal threat, death, or injury recognized as such—or, any negative emotion— enters into aesthetic objects, properly speaking—given the modified Santayanan account of beauty. A fortiori, the sport model does not fit into the integrationist paradigm. Describing this paradigm, Hills writes: An integrationist explanation of horror would argue that audiences derive enjoyment directly from the genre’s representations of gore and monstrosity; positive and negative emotions would thus be directly integrated, and  See also Alien (1979), which follows a similar narrative arc.

26

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gore or monstrosity would itself contribute to the audience pleasure. (2005, 16)

In accordance with the sport model, under the relevant modified Santayanan account of beauty, the negative feelings involved in horror do not enter into the aesthetic object. The sport model is designed to cohere with Santayana’s understanding of aesthetic “expression”; the aesthetic object, on this understanding, recall (see Sect. 2.5), is a function of symbolic representation. But the sport model does not, at first glance, seem to fit into Santayana’s expression model either, since the aesthetic value suggested by an object’s expressiveness or symbolism, according to this model, ultimately becomes somehow integrated into the expressive symbol that initiates acquaintance with this aesthetic value. This is how the expressive and expressed become an expression: Expressiveness is…the power given by experience to any image to call up others in the mind; and this expressiveness becomes an ӕsthetic value, that is, becomes expression, when the value involved in the associations thus awakened are incorporated in the present object….[T]he value of the second term [i.e., significate, or the aesthetic value] must be incorporated in the first [i.e., the symbol]…[such that] the value involved in the associations thus awakened are [sic] incorporated in the present object…Not until I confound the impressions, and suffuse the symbols themselves with the emotions they arouse…will the expressiveness constitute a beauty… (SB 197–198)

It might be thought that the expression model does not square with the sport model, since in this case, the expressive or symbolically representational first term (the film in operation) has, up to this point, been construed as a mere ladder to the aesthetic object; the film serves its function by introducing the distinct aesthetic object (namely, a degree of perfection in one’s activity, or a self-excellence), and once it does that, the ladder may be kicked-away; the film, it seems, becomes a rind to be thrown away, and the relevant beauty is not an attribute of it at all.

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The sport model need not be so construed. The Santayanan expression thesis, in its reconstructed form developed in Sect. 2.5., regarding the merger of the aesthetic term with the symbol that mediates that aesthetic term is compatible with the sport model: On the sport model, the film mediates the aesthetic object, i.e., some degree of personal excellence; however, this aesthetic self-appreciation can “rub-off”, as it were, onto the horror film. It is as if the film has transformed into a carcass27 that represents one’s personal excellence. After the percipient overcomes any formidable practical challenge posed by the film, the film can take on the gleam of her personal triumph, not unlike a trophy for an athletic achievement does; the trophy reflects the shine of the athlete’s athletic excellence. And there is a considerable difference in the sentimental value of an Olympic medal that is viewed by the athlete who earned it as opposed to a person who buys it at a flea market, say. In overcoming the film, I propose, the viewer has built-up an immunity to its operation. It becomes a benign object that was once a formidable opponent but is now reduced to a trophy head. It becomes a souvenir or monument of what it once was that twinkles in the eye of the viewer. Its representations of violence, threat, harm, injury, suffering, and death are drained of vital significance; they become a mere fiction or play of inconsequential ideas in the imagination. To borrow Santayana’s words, the viewer is no longer consumed by a “…slavery to [the] fear…” (SB 25) of the film. The film, in short, has been defanged; it transforms into a relic of what it once was. To recall Santayana’s metaphor, it is “…as if through the gorges of death [one]…had passed into a paradise where all things are crystallised into the images of themselves, and have lost their urgency and their venom.” (SAF 76)28  Cf. CP (227) on the indispensability of the physical presence of the corpse for the feeling of triumph. Cf. Canetti (1979, 18): “The handy parts of the body, which the victor makes sure to keep, incorporate, and hang upon himself, always remind him of his increase in power.” 28  Note that the film may function as a trophy at any point where the viewer overcomes any formidable aversive scenario it communicates. However, such small victories are just that, and taking too much pride in winning a single round, quarter, or period in a sports event can often amount to premature celebration. Nevertheless, the notion of small victories speaks, again, to the issue of the temporal distribution of pleasure during a horror film, and moreover, is consistent with the rollercoaster-­like narrative arc that horror films often embody, the lulls in which may be used to engage in the relevant self-admiration and projection of aesthetic value. 27

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However, given Santayana’s doctrine of essence, a film (in the relevant sense, i.e., considered as a datum or object of intuition) that is liberated from negative feeling is not strictly the same film as the one that contained such feelings. Here we have an exchange of essences, and at most a virtual identification of the same film across a series of distinct essences, some of which have negative qualities of feeling as constituent elements. The virtual identity of the two films, however, makes it proper to consider them approximately and conventionally speaking the same. Perhaps it may be objected that I am guilty of an inconsistency here: For, on the one hand I have said that even fictional representations of suffering and evil perceived as such can negate the aesthetic value of the object in which they are contained. By my own admission, such representations are intrinsically vitally repulsive. But then if a film is perceived to contain these representations, but is nevertheless deemed an acquired aesthetic object on this, call it, “trophy” reading of the sport model, then I have, it seems, contravened the modified Santayanan account of beauty. This objection overlooks the distinction I advanced between entertaining the mere idea of suffering and entertaining the idea of factual suffering. By engaging with the film in accordance with the sport model of horror’s aesthetic enjoyment, one is forced to entertain the representations of evil in the film as real empirical possibilities, and thus, the thought of factual suffering or harm will enter into one’s mind. However, in successfully interpreting the aversive scenarios communicated by the film as personally inapplicable, which is to say, as neither a possibility in my own case nor in the case of those for whom I have concern, I will have effectively converted the representation of harm in the film into a mere play of ideas of suffering divested of all vital significance. Of course, by eliminating the scenario depicted as not a relevant possibility in my own case or in the case of those for whom I have a concern, I have not thereby rendered it an irrelevant possibility to others beyond the scope of my concern. And since it is a fair presumption that the evil represented in the film is a significant possibility for someone, since otherwise the film would lack the relevant sort of scare-value to begin with, this divestment of vital significance presupposes the absence of universal concern or a partial blindness to the possibility of evil. Universal concern does not seem to be a commonly possessed human characteristic, however. The validity of my

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analysis presupposes some egotism in the viewing public; the existence of such egotism, I submit, is not particularly controversial. Barring perhaps one exception (which will be considered below), this draining of vital significance is impossible if the film is perceived to contain real harm or suffering. For, in this case, the thought of factual evil is inescapable. Real footage or factual depictions, perceived as such, can never be divested of their vital significance, given the intrinsic repulsiveness of perceptions of suffering, on the relevant view. This is why the fictional nature of horror is absolutely irrevocable, and why, again, I affirm the strict separation of art-horror from true-horror. To get a sense of this, consider Lars von Trier’s 2018 film The House that Jack Built. In one highly controversial scene, Jack (the serial killer) reminisces about mutilating a duckling as a child. The memory scene is quite graphic, and it occurred to some that perhaps a duckling really was mutilated in creating that scene (Billson 2018). Until I was assured that no duckling was actually harmed, the film’s pleasing effect was negativized. On the other hand, since it was a sound assumption that no human being was actually hurt during the making of the film, Jack’s multiple, graphic murder scenes were not so problematic, at least in my own case.29 I experienced the inverse phenomenon when I was told that on the set of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), Shelley Duvall (allegedly) was

 In the final analysis, however, once I observed holocaust footage late in the film, the film became on the whole aesthetically worthless. I do not want to appear sanctimonious here. For, I will concede, for instance, that the aberrant abstraction of elements from the film may prove to deliver aesthetic objects, and that the fictional representations of evil may be divested of their vital significance, under certain conditions already specified. Nevertheless, it is inescapable that spliced between these manifestly fictional representations is one sequence of factual horror. The film moves progressively from purely fictional representations of evil to factual representations of evil with a borderline (or rather, initially ambiguous) case—i.e., the duckling mutilation sequence—playing the intermediary step. The lesson to be drawn, in my view, is not that art-horror and true horror are on a continuum, or that the division between them is merely nominal or arbitrary, but rather that while one can often defuse the anti-aesthetic effect of perceived fictional horror, a single frame of true horror is like a noxious odour in a picturesque garden, a pollutant that spoils the aesthetic appreciation of that in which it resides. Whether this qualifies as a moralistic proclamation, I know not. It is moralistic to the extent that every moment lost gazing upon a thing which cannot be beautiful is wasted if a beautiful thing could have (practically speaking) been gazed upon instead (see Sects. 2.1 and 2.3). 29

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subjected to rather abusive conditions (Duvall 2021); at that point, what was before an enjoyable film became rather distasteful. The one exception to this rule, I think, occurs within the case of religious art. Religion, recall, is one context in which the supernatural is often taken for granted. Consider, again, Christian art that deals with representations of the crucifixion. In this type of art, the thing expressed, namely, divine salvation, involves a radical reinterpretation of the expressive thing, i.e., the depiction of the suffering of Christ, such that the thought of suffering is no longer intrinsically repulsive, given that it is understood to be transformed into a supreme moral benefit by divine command. The divestment of evil from Christ’s suffering can be understood as a sort of supernatural phenomenon, a miracle; and if it takes the supposition of divine intervention in order for perceived factual suffering to be divested of its vital repulsiveness, then surely we may understand this as the exception that proves the rule. It is worth noting that the sport model is loosely analogous to what Santayana means by the “sublime”—at least one version of it—which he describes as “… [t]he glorious self-assertion in the face of an uncontrollable world” (SB 240) in which “[i]n the first place…evil [is]…felt; but at the same time [what is felt is]…that, great as it [i.e., the evil] may be in itself, it cannot touch us…” (SB 236) This sense of personal immunity or detachment from the world, according to Santayana, “…stimulates[s] extraordinarily the consciousness of our own wholeness…” (ibid.).30 The sport model is also similar to Santayana’s account of sublimity insofar as in both cases, it is a pleasurable act, not merely a pleasurable sensation, which is projected or objectified in the aesthetic object, namely, the act of transcendence or overcoming. The sublime is an aesthetic quality, since, as Santayana notes, it is a projected pleasure:

 Nevertheless, there are important distinctions between the sport model and Santayana’s account of the sublime. One such difference is that when the sense of sublimity is spurred by the perception of evil, according to Santayana— note: this is what he calls “the Stoic sublime” as opposed to “the Epicurean sublime”, which “consists in liberation by equipoise” (SB 241)—it is a perception of “irreparable” evil: “The impossibility of action is the great condition of the sublime.” (SB 236) In contrast, the sort of glorification of the self-involved in sport-viewing horror is one that inheres in the consideration of an evil found to be avoidable. 30

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What we objectify in beauty is a sensation. What we objectify in the sublime is an act. This act is necessarily pleasant… [It is] that transcendent element of worth… [It is a] final and victorious [pleasure]…of detachment… (SB 240)31

It is, he writes, “…that self-assertion of the soul which gives the emotion of the sublime… [and which] appear[s] as an aesthetic quality in things…” (SB 239)32 Finally, perhaps it may be objected that the sport model is overly intellectual, and as such, does not cohere with the phenomenology of viewing horror. A similar sort of objection has been raised by Malcom Turvey against Gregory Currie’s “simulation theory” of horror, for instance: … [A]n immediate disadvantage of Currie’s theory is its complexity. It requires that, when engaging with a fiction, we readers and viewers hypothesize what beliefs and desires a person taking the fiction for a factual account would have, run these beliefs and desires off-line, and observe how we respond to them, all while following a story, sympathizing or empathizing with characters, making aesthetic and moral evaluations, and undertaking all the other activities we typically undertake when engaging with a fiction. As Berys Gaut argues in relation to Kendall Walton’s make-believe theory, “if there is a simpler account available, which adequately explains the [paradox of caring], we ought on general heuristic grounds to adopt that.” (2006, 118)

It is a bit ironic that Gaut complains of Walton’s “make-believe” theory that it is overly complex. If Walton’s account is overly intellectual, then this means, in my view, that it is inaccurately characterized as a theory of “make-believe”, since the game of make-believe is first and foremost a child’s game, and as such, should be considered rather primitive and unsophisticated.

 I do not put much weight on the fact here Santayana differentiates beauty from sublimity. For, both are aesthetic qualities; besides, a few pages later, he declares that “… [the sublime] is the supremely, the intoxicatingly beautiful.” (SB 243) 32  See also ibid: “… [It is] that emotion of detachment and liberation in which the sublime really consists.” 31

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However, the sport model, far from being overly-intellectual, is characteristically a game of make-believe, in the ordinary sense of the term. For, the horror genre, in accordance with the sport model, bears a strong resemblance to children’s play fighting. Childhood play fighting is an example of “socio-dramatic play”33, and as such, is largely a game of taking turns proposing fictional aversive scenarios for one another and strategizing personal immunities to them. Sport-viewing horror films is perhaps a more compelling version of such games insofar as there is something at stake; in this feature it resembles something closer to sport than to a children’s game, and it is also perhaps more sophisticated than such games. Nevertheless, sport-viewing horror still expresses the basic structure of such childhood games. As will be shown, the sport model of horror lends itself to the explanation of non-aesthetic functions of the genre. According to the sport model, the films function as fear-constructs that pose as practical intellectual challenges wherein the viewer strategizes personal immunities to hypothetical aversive scenarios. One plausible, rather straightforward non-aesthetic function of sport-viewing horror is that it serves as a sort of practical exercise that can help viewers cultivate psychological preparedness for future threats and learn how to better manage their fears. Such a proposal is not without empirical corroboration. A new study (Scrivner et  al. 2021) establishes that horror fans have more psychological resilience and preparedness in the face of the pandemic (17). Interestingly, in this article the analogy between horror and childhood play is also drawn: In a simulated experience, such as an oral story, a novel or a film, one can explore possible futures or phenomena, gathering information about what the real version of such an experience would look like, and learn how to prepare for analogous situations in the real world…In this way, engaging with imagined worlds through fiction is functionally analogous to various kinds of play. (Scrivner et al. 2021, 3)

Again, there is a strong affinity between horror as sport and socio-­dramatic childhood play, and the fact that the authors of this paper draw much the 33

 See Logue and Detour (2011), see also Weisberg (2016) on Imagination in child development.

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same analogy as I have here constitutes a convergence of opinion on the matter. Moreover, it is easy to see how horror as sport can build a viewer’s confidence and psychological resilience—just as physical sport, plausibly, can make a player more physically resilient and cultivate inner will— since it promotes strategizing methods of combating adversity and serves as practice for overcoming fears (Scrivner et al. 2021, 5).

References Billson, Anne. 2018. Chicken Decapitation and Battered Cats: Hollywood’s History of Animal Cruelty. The Guardian (London). Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/24/chicken-­decapitation-­ battered-­cats-­hollywood-­animal-­cruelty. Bullough, Edward. 1912. ‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle. British Journal of Psychology 5 (2): 87–118. Canetti, Elias. 1962/1984. Crowds and Power. Translated by Carol Stewart. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ———. 1979/1986. Power and Survival. In The Conscience of Words, 14–28. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel, London: André Deutsch Limited. Carroll, Noël. 1987. The Nature of Horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1): 51–59. ———. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. ———. 1995. Enjoying Horror Fictions: A Reply to Gaut. British Journal of Aesthetics 35 (1): 67–72. Duvall, Shelley. 2021. Interviewed by Seth Abramovitch. Searching for Shelley Duvall: The Reclusive Icon on Fleeing Hollywood and the Scars of Making ‘The Shining’. The Hollywood Reporter. Accessed June 8, 2021. https://www. hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-­news/searching-­for-­shelley-­duvall-­the-­ reclusive-­i con-­o n-­f leeing-­h ollywood-­a nd-­t he-­s cars-­o f-­m aking-­t he-­ shining-­4130256/. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. New York: Routledge. Harries, Martin. 2007. Forgetting Lot’s Wife: On Destructive Spectatorship. New York: Fordham University Press. Hill, Annette. 1997. Shocking Entertainment. Viewer Response to Movie Violence. Luton: University of Luton Press. Hills, Matt. 2005. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum.

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Kelly, Heather. 2020. People Have Found a Way to Cope with Pandemic Fears: Watching Contagion. Washington Post. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://www. washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/06/contagion-­streaming/. Logue, Mary Ellin, and Ashlee Detour. 2011. ‘You Be the Bad Guy’: A New Role for Teachers in Supporting Children’s Dramatic Play. Early Childhood Research & Practice 13 (1): 1–16. Maslin, Janet. 1978. Screen: ‘Body Snatchers’ Return in All Their Creepy Glory. The New  York Times. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://www.nytimes. com/1978/12/22/archives/screen-­body-­snatchers-­return-­in-­all-­their-­creepy-­ glory.html. Merhige, E.  Elias. 2009. Interviewed by Scott Essman. The Making of the Controversial Non-Dialogue Feature Film ‘Begotten’. Student Filmmakers Magazine. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://www.studentfilmmakers.com/ the-­making-­of-­the-­controversial-­non-­dialogue-­feature-­film-­begotten/. Neill, Alex. 1993. Fiction and the Emotions. American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1): 1–13. Roberts, C. 2003. Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Santayana, George. 1896/1905. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.  ———. 1923/1955. Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications Inc. Scrivner, Coltan, John A.  Johnson, Jens Kjeldaard-Christiansen, and Mathias Clasen. 2021. Pandemic practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals are more Psychologically Resilient during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Personality and Individual Differences 168: 1–6. Sterritt, David. 1990. The Best of Independent Films are There if You Look for Them. The Christian Science Monitor. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://www. csmonitor.com/1990/1127/lprobe.html. Studlar, Gaylyn. 1988. In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic. New York: Columbia University Press. Tappolet, Christine. 2010. Emotion, Motivation, and Action: The Case of Fear. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. Peter Goldie, 325–334. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turvey, Malcom. 2006. Imagination, Simulation, and Fiction. Film Studies 8: 116–125. Weisberg, Deena Skoknick. 2016. Imagination and Child Development. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, ed. Amy Kind, 300–313. London: Routledge.

5 Horror and Its Dark Witnesses

Abstract  In this chapter, four auxiliary functions of horror are examined, each of which, plausibly, serves as a vehicle for the simulation of feelings that reinforce the status quo within exploitative systems of human organization. How elements of anti-tragedy often found in horror have the function of symbolizing idealized justice, not unlike ritualistic effigy punishment, is explored. Moreover, how the theme of indiscriminate violence or arbitrary harm often present in the films initializes simulated feelings of downward social comparison is considered. Finally, relying on Elias Canetti’s analysis of “The Survivor”, and borrowing from Nietzsche’s mature views on the nature of guilt and pity, two additional functions of horror, which I term, respectively, horror as survival and horror as submission, are developed. Keywords  Downward social comparison • Effigy Punishment • Equality • Grievance • Necropolitics • Survival

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5_5

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5.1 B  eing Mean to Dolls: Horror as Ritualistic Effigy Punishment The representation of bad things happening to good people is found in horror films for good reason. It is not simply that we are more likely to have concern for the welfare of innocent or virtuous characters. This is perhaps true, but such concern is within the domain of simulated emotion. Rather, if the only characters ever threatened, harmed, or killed in the films were buffoonish, unethical, or contemptible people, not only would the films be grossly predictable, but they would also likely score low on the key axis of inability of personal avoidance. The percipient will not likely self-identify with one-dimensional, cartoonish caricatures, and if the form of danger that such characters are in turns—as it often does—on their cartoonish buffoonery, then the percipient will have good grounds to deem the aversive scenarios communicated personally avoidable.1 But then why are horror films so often populated by loathsome victims? One answer is that in this respect horror is often serving functions beyond its principal primary function of inducing fear. One such auxiliary function, I propose, is to induce a form of pleasure in the percipient through presenting her with depictions of idealized justice. I offer the following common sense observation regarding the nature of our moral psychology: When fairness or justice is thought to be irrevocably violated, and the violation is thought to be of sufficient severity, this tends to induce negative feelings (e.g., anger, frustration, resentment). Conversely, when a justice is thought to be exacted or rightness restored, there is a contrary emotional charge or reprieve from these negative feelings. Moral sentiment, or the feeling of fairness and unfairness, right and wrong, is an emotional reaction derivative of our judgements of rightness and wrongness in the world. Perceptions of injustice produce negative feelings, while perceptions of justice served or fairness restored are accompanied by feelings of relief or satisfaction.  Albeit, exaggerations in the opposite direction can also result in reductions in relatability; relatable characters have flaws. 1

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Retributivism, a primitive formulation of which is “…an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…” (Exodus 21-24, New Living Translation), is a commonly held theory of how justice is restored after a moral offence is committed. The retributivist believes justice is exacted through punishment of the offender; the fundamental retributivist principle regarding this punishment is that the severity of punishment is to be proportional to the severity of the crime.2 The proportionality clause of retributivism accords with the common intuition that chopping off a hand as a punishment for stealing bread is wrong, for instance, and in restricting punishment to the offender, it also accords with our common intuition that collective punishment is wrong. A common trope in horror is people getting their comeuppance or what they deserve. In this sense, horror is anti-tragedy: It represents common objects of resentment (e.g., the bully3; the college sorority mean girl4; the dumb cop5; the callous, rich banker6; the back-stabbing careerist7; the womanizing, upper-class twit8; the incorrigible prankster or inveterate jokester9; etc.), and by acting out their corporal punishment, symbolizes a restoration of moral or social order. Anti-tragic victims are particularly prevalent in horror-comedies, which, recall (see section 3.1), are not properly governed by the principal primary function of inducing fear, and as such are freer to explore their development more fully.10 Santayana discusses the failure of a tragedy wherein the hero is too loathsome. In tragedy, he notes,

 On retributivism, see Murphy (2006, 142-152).  E.g., see Halloween (2007). 4  E.g., see Black Christmas (1974); The House on Sorority Row (1982); Sorority Row (2009). 5  E.g., see: Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996); House of 1000 Corpses (2002); Halloween (2007); Scream 4 (2011). 6  E.g., see Saw VI. Indeed, the Saw franchise as a whole is an expression of the motif of idealized justice par excellence. 7  E.g., see Aliens (1986). 8  E.g., see Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth (1992). 9  E.g., see Friday the 13th: Part III (1982). 10  E.g., see Killer Clowns from Outer Space (1988); Leprechaun (1993). 2 3

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…we have…rank, beauty, and virtue in our heroes, nobility in their passions and in their fate, and altogether a sort of glorification of life without which tragedy would lose… in depth of pathos — since things so precious are destroyed…” (SB 228)

His analysis of tragedy complies with my understanding of horror as idealized justice being a form of anti-tragedy. Whereas in tragedies, characters get precisely what they do not deserve, in horror as idealized justice, characters get precisely what they deserve. Though it belongs to a distinct genre, Joker (2019) is an excellent expression of the motif of idealized justice. God Bless America (2011) also follows much the same format, though with a comedic twist. In these films, no victims are morally arbitrary except those that are later to exact their revenge. The working assumption is that people ultimately get what they deserve. A recent film within the horror genre that is typified by the motif of idealized justice is Unfriended (2015), a supernatural horror film in which a series of revenge sequences through haunted social media unfolds. The theme is a perennial of the genre.11 Representations of violence in horror films often function as symbolic representations of righteous killing, not unlike a burning of an effigy. They are similar to effigy executions, which were “surprisingly common place” in seventeenth and eighteenth century France (Friedland 2003, 309), wherein “…the might of the sovereign came crashing down on a straw effigy painted with the face of a criminal who had fled…” (Friedland 2003, 298). In the absence of the power to carry-out perceived retribution against these public enemies, a mock execution serves as substitute. As Canetti tells us, it is really the public that is performing the public execution: All forms of public execution are connected with the old practice of collective killing. The real executioner is the crowd gathered round the scaffold. It approves the spectacle and, with passionate excitement, gathers from far and near to watch it from beginning to end. It wants it to happen and hates being cheated of its victim…It is actually for the sake of the crowd that justice is done and it is the crowd we have in mind when we speak of the importance of justice being public. (CP 50-51)  See also, e.g., Carrie (1976); Tormented (2009); The Final (2010); I Spit on Your Grave (2011).

11

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The more gruesome the represented killing the better, since, as Canetti insists, It is important for the crowd that the executioner should show it the severed head. This, and this alone, is the moment of discharge. Whoever the head has belonged to, it is degraded now… [in] this lightening process of public degradation. (CP 51)

In this sense, horror can function as a source of simulated satisfaction for moral sentiment. Insofar as simulations of justice help to satisfy feelings of moral sentiment without addressing real injustices, horror as idealized justice can serve to preserve the status quo, in which individuals in positions of power often evade just punishment for their crimes. In this respect, horror will appeal to those who have little recourse to the normal channels of pursuing justice, but who nevertheless need a reprieve from the negative feelings associated with perceptions of moral disorder. Horror as idealized justice, plausibly, works to diminish moral outrage and thus the aggressive, destructive, or revolutionary impulses that threaten to overthrow unjust systems of power. I expect four questions regarding horror as idealized justice: 1. How is satisfaction of moral sentiment derived from fictitious representations of righteous punishment? 2. How do horror movies represent righteous punishment when the punishments represented appear grossly disproportionate? 3. How can horror films represent righteous punishment when they typically represent that punishment being delivered by evil executioners? 4. How can such mock executions deliver pleasure, since they seem to be representations of evil, and thus, given the Santayanan framework, presumably cannot be objects of pleasure? I shall confine myself to offering a schematic outline of a possible solution to these challenges. Regarding (1), I refer the reader back to my previous discussion regarding simulated emotion, and suggest that much the same explanation that

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has been given regarding simulated fear may be given for simulated feelings of moral sentiment. Indeed, the same question arises in the satisfaction gained by mock executions generally.12 (2) and (3) concern how representations of violence in horror symbolize a correction of moral disorder rather than a multiplication of such disorder. As for (3), many of the executioners in horror are not proper moral agents; they are rather inhuman entities, fatalistic cogs, or natural evils (e.g., monstrosities). Moreover, when they are moral agents, they are often painted as themselves victims exacting revenge13 or as entities obeying a higher morality.14 In this last respect, the executioners of horror often bear a striking resemblance to executioner figures of early modern France, according to Paul Friedland’s account of them: [The executioner]…was…an individual with considerable mystical powers of his own. The executioner might almost be seen as a sovereign of his own world, a mirror image of the king…Both held the right of havage. Both exacted monetary tributes from their respective subjects. Both were reputed to cure disease with their mere touch…One might almost say, then, that when found guilty of a crime and transferred to the executioner, an individual was not so much subject to the king’s justice as delivered into an other realm. (2003, 303)15

What’s more, the executioners of horror often do, in the final analysis, get their comeuppance, as they are typically destroyed in a hail of bullets, or face other extreme forms of demise (e.g., set on fire)16—albeit, they are usually somehow resurrected in the next instalment of the franchise, but never mind that. In answer to (2), the anti-tragic “victims” in horror films are often idealized moral offenders, or one-dimensional embodiments of a certain form of moral wickedness—husks, caricatures, or living dummies  The nature of simulated emotional satisfaction directed at fictional representations of violence and harm will be considered in detail in the next sections. 13  E.g., see Halloween (2007). 14  E.g., see Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988). 15  Cf. CP 331. 16  E.g., see: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996). 12

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without any redeeming qualities. For this reason, the punishments, one could argue, are not really disproportionate, since an appropriate reaction to the existence of moral disorder is to annul its existence, and the “victims” are simply embodiments of such disorder. To put it another way, idealized justice requires idealized offenders; to the extent that they are idealized representations of moral disorder, they are dehumanized. They are not unlike the body snatchers in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), who do suffer when violently destroyed, but whose suffering is not morally considerable, since they are dehumanized, malevolent enemies. Relatedly, and in answer to (4), it, plausibly, is the offence that is embodied or represented in the effigy and not the actual offender—unlike actual executions, the pleasure of which, if it is a relishing of human suffering per se, is rather inscrutable.17 And since we are not here speaking about real execution, the normal negative emotion of pity and sympathetic response need not even arise (the detailed clarification on the mechanisms of this cognitive block on negative feelings within simulated emotion is reserved for the next section).

5.2 A  Bloody Symphony for the Dregs: Horror as Downward Social Comparison In the high school where I received my secondary education, I was thrown into a strange institutionalized ritual: “Random Act of Violence Day”. The rule of this ritual was that students were to indiscriminately enact forms of physical roughhousing or pranking, only on Thursdays. The typical normal bullying was temporarily suspended (as much as it could be); no acts of “payback” violence were allowed. Nonselective and uncoordinated outbursts of student violence were the name of the day. In one way  However, since executions are generally understood to be moral correctives (as well as forms of deterrence), there are two ways to interpret them. First, one may acquaint oneself with the execution as an instance human suffering, and in so doing derive the relevant negative sympathetic response. Or, one may interpret the execution as an instance of moral correction, and in so doing, experience satisfaction of moral sentiment. These two things are distinct objects of perception—in the conceptually loaded sense (recall section 2.1.)—contained in the same event, only one of which really qualifies as an instance of evil. One can therefore experience ambivalence in the perception of an execution, insofar as one alternates between these two possible interpretations of the event. 17

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it was egalitarian; the pranking transcended all social allegiances or hierarchies. In this environment, every eruption of random violence affirms to its external witnesses their own better fortune in that moment. And new victims helped neutralize the indignity of the old. Victims made their external witnesses’ own situations in that moment appear better by comparison. There is even an air of superiority in external witnesses, especially in those who, by chance, suffered no violence; they started to think of themselves as more than a little lucky. The cognitive framework, thus described, is captured by the following two axioms . If I am victimized, so should you be; A B. Because you were victimized, my own position is more favourable. Call this the logic of aggrievement. I am sensitive to the presence of this logic in common discourse. For instance, axiom (B) operates in the background when airings of grievance are met with the following response: Yes, you may have it bad, but look at this other person who has it far worse. The purpose of raising the point that it could be worse is an introduction to the logic of aggrievement. The point, I propose, is only effective insofar as it allows the aggrieved to take solace in the thought that someone else’s misery is more profound than their own. It is an invitation for the aggrieved to feel better about the wrongs that were done to them by bearing witness to wrongs done to others. I’m not the only one who sees axiom (B) at play in contemporary discourse. For instance, in a recent interview, Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, after having spent months in the hospital recovering from an untreated appendicitis and resulting sepsis, describes the state of American healthcare; his assessment tacitly appeals to axiom B.  He observes a sort of wickedness—amplified, he thinks, by racial prejudice— that is common in the American public that helps sustain the status quo regarding their current, as he says, “rotten” healthcare system: As long as a sufficient number of individuals are receiving worse healthcare than I

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am, so the idea goes, the inadequacy of my own care is somehow tolerable18: Part of it is race. You can’t tell Americans that we should all have something good, because immediately people start to think, ‘Well, we can’t let those immigrants have it, we can’t let the blacks have it…’ And once you have that thought, everybody ends up having something which is worse…We choose to have something that is worse for us, because we think it’s going to be still worse for other people…A big part of our country is pain…In various ways our political system is addicted to pain…We are in a situation where people don’t really expect to be healthy…anymore…People just kind of hope that it’s going to be worse for somebody else. (Snyder 2020)

In my view, this is an example of how the logic of aggrievement gets exploited for necropolitical19 purposes; in this case, it helps preserve a barbaric system of morally arbitrary decision-making as to whom receives adequate health care and who does not—with all of the unfair consequences regarding the health, vitality, and longevity of disadvantaged people that follow. The idea that aggrieved people can find satisfaction in the idea that someone else is worse-off than they are—the thrust of axiom (B)—is not new. The notion was articulated by Thomas Wills in his seminal (1981) paper wherein he described the principles of what he termed “downward social comparison”, of which the following is a general statement: … [The basic principle of downward comparison is that] [p]ersons can increase their subjective well-being through comparison with a less fortunate other. Downward comparison theory addresses situations in which frustration or misfortune has occurred that is difficult to remedy through instrumental action. In such a situation, a person’s subjective well-being has been decreased, and the problem is how it can be restored. A solution to this problem is to compare oneself with another person who is worse off:  To this it should be added that those with most reason for grievance in this regard have the least power to change it, and that therefore the system continues to operate even in the face of gross inadequacy without triggering revolutionary or aggressive impulses in a significant way; with worse treatment comes more grievance but proportionately less power to do anything about it. 19  Recall chapter 1. 18

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the favorable comparison between the self and the less fortunate other enables a person to feel better about his or her own situation. (Wills 1981, 245)20

As Wills notes, downward social comparison is particularly endemic to “…those persons who are most unhappy and least fortunate.” (1981, 264)21 Therefore, its propositional formulation is, I submit, properly called a “logic of aggrievement”. Sensationalized news or television shows like Intervention or Hoarders— or those which present factual accounts of undeserved wretchedness—are good contemporary examples of the phenomenon of downward social comparison at the level of media consumption, in my view. Take Intervention: The presentation of the addict’s current suffering is typically prefaced by an etiological account of his predicament that identifies his addiction as a by-product of his unfair circumstances (e.g., experiencing traumas as a child). But these etiological considerations are not effective narrative devices because they cast the addict under a sympathetic light—though certainly they do—such that the viewer may experience sympathy for the addict. On the contrary, the etiological pretext is effective insofar as it suggests to the audience that the addict is a victim of unfair circumstances or suffers arbitrarily. And this it suggests, I believe, so that the audience may apply the logic of aggrievement and derive satisfaction in the morally arbitrary suffering and misfortune of others.  See also Goethals and Darley (1977, 274-277). Cf. Festinger (1954).  See also Goethals and Darley (1977, 274-275): “In terms of ability validation, the individual’s need to think positively of his performances, and hence his abilities, should [given that social comparisons also serve to protect one’s self-esteem] push him toward making those comparison choices that will provide him with evidence that his performances are better than those of others. It would seem that the most straightforward way of doing this would be to compare with others who are relatively disadvantaged in terms of their standing on nonability attributes that affect performance. Although no study has demonstrated this kind of downward comparison, another kind has been demonstrated in several studies. The germinal study, done by Hakmiller (1966), showed that when individuals’ evaluations of their standing on a personality trait were threatened, they selected from a range of possible comparison choices persons whose scores were lower than their own. Presumably, they were seeking to find convincing evidence that they were indeed superior to those who were less well off on the trait. Their comparison choices represented an attempt to salvage a positive self-appraisal in a situation in which that view was threatened. They wanted to collect evidence that others were significantly worse. Wheeler (1970) has characterized the subjects’ presumed rationale as follows: ‘Even a hawk is an eagle among crows’ (p.72) [my emphasis].” 20 21

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At this point an appropriate question is: Why can downward social comparison help to restore subjective well-being, or why can my observing the misfortune of others make my own position appear more favourable? To this it may be responded that the subjective evaluation of the favourability, which is to say, fortunateness, of my own position will be based on social comparison. For, “fortune” and “misfortune” are not absolute conditions. As the saying goes, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”, which is to say, he is fortunate in comparison to other people in his world, but having only one eye is a misfortune in the context of a world in which most people have two. At least, it is unclear how to assess absolute fortune and misfortune, and in such cases where there is no clear or simple, objective metric of self-evaluation, as Leon Festinger notes, we rely on social comparison (1954, 119). The question that may be asked regarding any ascription of fortunateness, I take it, is: “fortunate in comparison to whom?” Thus, it is plausible that fortune and misfortune are relative notions: They are measures of one’s status relative to the status of other people. Accordingly, they could not apply in worlds wherein everyone had equal status of livelihood, ability, safety, and vitality. A world where all people—past, future, and present—are suffering or thriving equally is a world where the relative concepts of fortune and misfortune do not apply. But then there is a basis for why witnessing the misfortune of others will have the effect of making my own position appear more favourable: By misfortune perceived to be more equalized, my own perceived misfortunes are also more diminished. Thus, it is intelligible why a boost in subjective well-being may follow from the observation of others’ misfortunes, since such observations work to remediate feelings of personal misfortune, and may even, in sufficient quantity, produce feelings of personal fortune. This, I take it, is what undergirds (B). When grievances, as Wills notes, are “…difficult to remedy through instrumental action” (1981, 245), downward social comparison becomes a seductive coping strategy. The recognition that misfortunes in others mitigate my own misfortune leads, quite naturally, to an ethical notion: “If the world is unfair to me, then it ought to also be unfair to others” (i.e., (A)). For, the injustice and undue harm the aggrieved perceive themselves to suffer will appear to them in some sense rectified by the injustice and undue harm suffered

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by others. Since moral correction involves the remediation of moral disorders, and undue harm and injustice qualifies as such disorder, the ethical notion (A) is psychologically compelling. One might even be tempted to put it in universal form: (A1) If arbitrary harm occurs at all, it should occur to as many as possible, so as to better approximate fairness and equality.

Call this “the equalization of harm principle”.22 It should be noted that downward social comparison is not only motivated by the desire for feelings of superiority, but also by the desire for feelings of inferiority to be remediated. Observing harms in others makes one’s own position appear more favourable, by which I mean more similar to individuals perceived to be better-off than oneself. Thus, one sees that, while downward social comparison presupposes the perception of personal superiority, it is not merely the feeling of superiority that is being sought, but rather it is also the feeling of greater equality with individuals held to be in superior or more favourable positions that factors into the psychological equation.23 This is perhaps why the psychological effect of downward social comparison is best understood as a feeling of “self-enhancement” (see Wills 1981, 265), something that is neutral regarding whether that effect qualifies as a feeling of superiority (relative to perceived inferiors) or as one of equality (with perceived superiors).24  Cf. CP (15-18; 29) on the primitive desire for the feeling of equality. I will return to the equalization of harm principle in section 5.4. 23  As Festinger (1954) points out, it is equality with groups perceived to be “slightly better” than oneself—with respect to ability, but the point, plausibly, has a more general application—that is the relevant state of uniformity sought (125). Drastically superior or drastically inferior groups are perceived as incomparable, and as such, a competitive posture towards them is not assumed, since “…the existence of someone whose ability is very divergent from one’s own, while it does not help to evaluate one’s ability, does not make, in itself, for discomfort or unpleasantness.” (Festinger 1954, 128)—Cf. CP (248) on the special rivalry of people within one’s own age group, or what is largely the same, those with whom one is most comparable. 24  Just to note in passing, one may observe that in the present circumstances of social networking, it is difficult to sustain a healthy ignorance over one’s relative status; individuals are often inundated by the status reports of others. As Philippe Verdyun et  al. note, “SNS [social networking sites] provide fertile ground for social comparisons to take place, as information about similar comparison targets is available at an unprecedented scale. Moreover, especially upward social comparisons are likely to occur as users of SNSs are more often confronted with the successes than the failures 22

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However, the equalization of harm principle only has natural psychological force from a position of aggrievement. For, Each individual member of a group not at the bottom of the prestige scale has a vested interest in maintaining the belief that individuals in lower-­ ranking groups are intrinsically inferior. The strength of this vested interest is greatest for those individuals whose own status is most insecure (Harding et al. 1969, 32).25

All fortune depends on unequal distributions of harm and opportunity. Thus, the fortunate or those in superior positions will not desire a world of their online connections. This is partially due to SNSs making it easy to portray a rosy image of one’s life.” (2020, 33) Today is a world where disparities in health, wealth, and vitality are on full display. Since ignorance of the status of others, I take it, is a default form of making people perceived to be superior or more fortunate relative to oneself incomparable, the onslaught of materials for social comparison can be a source of feelings of sadness. Festinger (1954, 137) discusses the “consequences of preventing incomparability” when it comes to the evaluation of personal ability. In instances where the individual places importance on the ability with regard to which he deems others to be superior and where he cannot judge that superior group incomparable, “… [w]e have created a situation where a person’s values and strivings are quite out of line with his performance and we would expect, if he is below others, deep experiences of failure and feelings of inadequacy with respect to this ability.” (Ibid.) As Festinger goes on to note, “[T]his is certainly not an unusual condition to find.” (Ibid.) I propose that much the same can be said with respect to perceptions of personal fortune or misfortune, and that the ubiquity of displays of success and personal fortune on social media today contribute to a sort of hypertrophy of destructive forms of upward social comparison. This has become common knowledge in the psychological community—see Verduyn et al. (2020) for a recent survey of the literature on the negative effect of social media on subjective well-being. 25  There is admittedly some instability in the notion that perceptions of the misfortunes of others can deliver feelings of intrinsic superiority, since fortune and misfortune are understood to be matters of accidental circumstance and not functions of the intrinsic characteristics of fortunate and misfortunate persons. On this point, I must defer to the experimental findings and literature in social psychology regarding the principles of self-serving biases in attributions of causal responsibility, or in “…the linking of an event with its underlying conditions…” (Heider 1958, 89), specifically when it comes to evaluating the causes of one’s personal successes and failures. There is also a complementary bias regarding the evaluation of the failures of others. In short, persons are prone to giving themselves credit for their personal successes and blaming their personal failures on features of their accidental circumstance or environment (Hastorf et  al. 1970, 73; Bradley 1978; Darley and Goethals 1980; Taylor and Doria 1981; Wang et al. 2019). The reverse bias tends to occur in the evaluation of the failures of others, according to which we are inclined to attribute the failures (or victimization) of others to their intrinsic or personal characteristics (Jones and Nisbett (1972); Darley and Goethals 1980; Taylor and Doria 1981; Salminen 1992; Fox et al. 2010). The feeling of superiority upon the perception of misfortune in others, then, depends, to some extent, on inhibiting the latter bias while retaining the former one. Cf. CP (227-228)—given below—on the feeling of being favoured by the gods.

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in which all harm is equally distributed, since this would deprive them of their feeling of superiority. The natural psychological force of the equalization of harm principle, I propose, does not extend beyond the aggrieved. The proper function of representations of arbitrary violence in a horror film, I have argued, is to increase the scare-value of the film by making the possible aversive scenarios it communicates appear less personally avoidable. One effective way this is achieved is by representing a particular form of morally arbitrary violence, namely, indiscriminate violence. But this function does not exhaust the effects of horror’s representations of arbitrary violence. Since we are talking about representations of arbitrary violence, their function cannot be to communicate idealized justice. And if there is to be gained any satisfaction by perceiving them per se, it must be a satisfaction derived from the representations of unadulterated misfortune. The logic of aggrievement supports deriving satisfaction from the suffering of others even when that suffering is recognized to be utterly undeserved. Since horror films depict fictional scenarios, they differ from other more direct outlets of this form of pleasure, like reality television. But reality television shows are less perfect vehicles of this morose pleasure. For, unless the observer has no fellow feeling whatsoever, he will also experience pity or sympathy for the victims, and probably guilt about extracting such pleasure in their suffering. As Wills explains, People are ambivalent about downward comparison. For a complete understanding of downward comparison processes, it is essential to recognize that people do not regard comparison with less fortunate others as wholly admirable, and they approach such comparison with mixed feelings. It is not that people necessarily rejoice about misfortune to others. When there is an opportunity for self-enhancement through favorable comparison, however, the evidence indicates that people tend to avail themselves of the opportunity. (1981, 246)

Representations of indiscriminate or arbitrary violence and suffering in horror films in this respect can serve as more convenient outlets for inducing feelings of self-enhancement through downward social comparison, since here these feelings may take on a simulated form, and as

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such may occur without the typical corresponding feelings of guilt or pity. There is shame in enjoying the real suffering of others, but what is the harm in enjoying the fictional suffering of others? Since the emotions are simulated, the experience is sanitized of the guilt or pity that normally corresponds to such feelings. It may be objected that this account implies a contradictory state of affairs: On the one hand, this simulated satisfaction, to put it in Currie’s terms, runs “offline” (1995, 144), and this is the stated reason for why it does not imply an experience of guilt. But then how should such simulated satisfaction arise in the first place? For, the simulated satisfaction presupposes a suspension of disbelief in the reality of the depicted suffering, but, it seems, the requisite suspension of disbelief is contradicted by the fact that the viewer experiences no guilt (in virtue of understanding that the suffering is not real). This objection fails to recognize that the feeling of self-enhancement and the corresponding feeling of guilt are not concurrent, but successive. The pleasure, after all, must occur before one can feel guilty about experiencing the pleasure. Thus, the progression of guilt-free simulated feelings of self-enhancement through downward social comparison may proceed in the following stages: The viewer initiates the temporary suspension of disbelief and engages in the requisite imaginative process of simulated emotion. In so doing, he extracts the enjoyment of the simulated feeling of self-enhancement. And, before the corresponding guilt that naturally follows this feeling fully materializes or creeps into his mind, the viewer disengages his suspension of disbelief, reacquaints himself with the fact that the suffering is unreal, and in so doing, places a cognitive block on the guilt (or, at the very least, terminates it quickly). The viewer may repeat this mental refreshment at any point the simulated feelings of self-enhancement through downward social comparison give way to feelings of guilt; in so doing, he may avoid the guilt and revive anew the desired feeling. Much the same can be said of the corresponding feeling of pity that might creep into one’s mind while simulating such feelings in the way proposed: The feeling of pity and the feeling of self-enhancement gained through downward comparison are not concurrent, but successive, and thus, whenever the feeling of pity creeps in and threatens to ruin one’s

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fun, as it were, one can quickly disengage the relevant imaginative process and put a cognitive block on the negative feeling. The two mental states are discrete modules of mind. The logic of aggrievement is one that is promoted by systems of human organization insofar as such systems involve selecting winners and losers on an arbitrary basis, and as such imply the cultivation of aggrieved populations. While such systems may dull the impact of some of the natural harms or inequalities, they also overlay new harms on top of the old. To these natural harms they add contrivances of the state—e.g., war, bondage, austerity, nepotism, despotism, collective barbarism, and all unfair human-made systems of power. And when the state creates unfair advantages and disadvantages, or distributes its harms in a morally arbitrary way, it tends to produce an abundance of the aggrieved. It is in such abundance where the logic of aggrievement takes a firmer grip. Within such contexts, horror films, plausibly, have an auxiliary function of inducing feelings of self-enhancement in accordance with the logic of aggrievement. They serve as a way to address the need for aggrieved populations to experience the feeling of equalization without this requiring a substantive redress. In simulated emotion, the motive force of aggrievement terminates in imaginative acts rather than real targets or disruptions to the status quo. The representations of arbitrary violence in horror serve as a resource for aggrieved percipients to glean satisfaction in the thought that others suffer misfortunes greater than their own. And while factual accounts will serve as better reminders of this, horror films are a cleaner format, since they can effectuate simulated versions of this satisfaction, which as such stand to be more stable versions, since they are not followed by counteracting guilt or pity.

5.3 A  t Least Someone Dead Envies You: Horror as Survival In his seminal work Crowds and Power, Canetti describes a rather perverse feeling of satisfaction derived from the witnessing of death:

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The moment of survival is the moment of power. Horror at the sight of the death turns into satisfaction that it is someone else who is dead. The dead man lies on the ground while the survivor stands. It is as though there had been a fight and the one had struck down the other. In survival, each man is the enemy of every other, and all grief is insignificant measured against this elemental triumph. Whether the survivor is confronted by one dead man or by many, the essence of the situation is that he feels unique…[The] power which this moment gives him…derives from his sense of uniqueness and from nothing else…The lowest form of survival is killing…[The victim] must not disappear completely; his physical presence as a corpse is indispensable for the feeling of triumph…Fortunate and favoured, the survivor stands in the midst of the fallen…This feeling of superiority to the dead is known to everyone who has fought in a war…The feeling of strength, of standing alone against the dead, is in the end stronger than any grief. It is a feeling of being chosen from amongst the many who manifestly shared the same fate. Simply because he is still there, the survivor feels that he is better than they are…He is the favoured of the gods. (CP 227-228)26

Canetti later states that “… [t]he satisfaction in survival…is a kind of pleasure…” (CP 230)27 I propose that this feeling of satisfaction in the death of others that Canetti calls the feeling of survival can be understood as an extreme variant of the feeling of self-enhancement through downward social comparison. For, who is lower in health, ability, vitality, fortune, social status, etc. than the dead? What is a greater misfortune than death? As Canetti insists, “In the eyes of those who are still alive, everyone who is dead has suffered a defeat, which consists in having been survived.” (CP 263) It is this thought, Canetti thinks, that motivates the fear of the dead: There are peoples whose existence is almost wholly dominated by rites connected with [the dead]…The first thing that strikes one is the universal fear of the dead. They are discontented and full of envy for those they have left behind…It is the jealousy of the dead that the living fear most, and they try to propitiate them by flattery and by offerings of food…He is bound to hate them, for they still have what he has lost, which is life. Therefore they 26 27

 See also Canetti 1979.  See also Canetti 1979, 19: “… [T]he sense of concrete survival is an intense pleasure.”

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call on his soul to return in order to convince him that they did not want his death. They remind him how good they were to him…His last wishes are conscientiously carried out…[B]ehind all they do lies the unshakeable conviction that the dead man must hate them for having survived him. (CP 262-263)28

Since the feeling of self-enhancement through surviving the dead is open to anyone alive, no matter how inferior you feel, no matter how wretched your life circumstances are, you may always take comfort in the thought that there is someone worse-off, namely, those who are dead. The observation of the death of others, then, is a source of satisfaction and self-enhancement even to those in the lowest rungs of society. And, in this regard, though it is not a feeling that is unique to the aggrieved, the feeling of survival is certainly one especially fitted to them. In this respect, I propose, the feeling of survival in simulated form29 may serve the same necropolitical function that has been suggested regarding simulations of downward social comparison generally. It can remediate feelings of inequality in a way such that they do not threaten to materially challenge oppressive systems of human organization and unjust distributions of health, freedom, vitality, goods, and harms. As we may observe in the opening passage, Canetti characterizes the feeling of survival in terms of an ambivalence similar to that associated with downward social comparison. For, on the one hand, the sight of death delivers horror in the percipient, and it also can deliver grief, but horror quickly gives way to feelings of power and superiority, and grief, as Canetti insists, is inconsequential in comparison to this “elemental triumph”: The confrontation with the dead man is a confrontation with one’s own death…The terror at the dead man lying before one gives way to satisfaction: one is not dead oneself. One might have been. But it is the other who  Incidentally, this relates to the axis of severity (recall the discussion of section 4.1): For, ghosts are particularly threatening given that they are, as it were, supernaturally vengeful. 29  As we shall see in the next section, Canetti tacitly recognizes the potential for simulating emotions. I see no textual or theoretical reason for denying that feelings of survival may also be simulated. 28

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lies there. One stands upright oneself, unhurt, untouched. And whether he is an enemy whom one has killed, a friend who has died, it suddenly looks as though death, which one was threatened by, had been diverted from oneself to that person. (Canetti 1979, 15)

This ambivalence is strongest where it is someone whom one loves or cherishes that is lost: … [T]he same people who have cause to lament are also survivors. They lament their loss, but they feel a kind of satisfaction in their own survival. They will not normally admit this, even to themselves, for they regard it as improper… (CP 263)

Moreover, Canetti locates the feeling of survival in forms of media, and in particular, sensational news: Disgust at collective killing is of very recent date and should not be over-­ estimated. Today everyone takes part in public executions through the newspapers…We sit peacefully at home and, out of a hundred details, can choose those to linger over which offer a special thrill. We only applaud when everything is over and there is no feeling of guilty connivance to spoil our pleasure…One is tempted to say that it is the most despicable and, at the same time, most stable form of such a crowd [i.e., “the execution crowd”]. (CP 52)

The feeling of survival and feelings of self-enhancement through downward social comparison are cut from the same cloth, and both are nourished by factual depictions of misfortune that are found in the media. Horror’s representations of indiscriminate killing, I propose, are suitable objects for simulating feelings of survival. For reasons that have already been covered, simulated feelings of self-enhancement, of which simulated feelings of survival are a form, are more stable versions of such feelings, since they are not accompanied by the normal feelings of guilt and pity, in this case, guilt from deriving pleasure from the death of others, and pity for the others that have died. It will perhaps occur to the reader that Canetti’s notion of the feeling of survival and, for that matter, the satisfaction of downward social

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comparison generally, conflict with the Santayanan framework developed in preceding chapters, according to which the object of pleasure is never an evil (e.g., death, suffering, undeserved harm). For, Canetti, it seems, is committed to the existence and normality of sadistic pleasure, or to the view that the death of another can directly be the object of pleasure. How, then, can Canetti’s analysis of the feeling of survival be integrated into the more general account offered thus far? Much the same question may be posed regarding downward social comparison generally, which initially appears to involve taking delight in human misery and misfortune per se. The following clarification that addresses this worry is developed in connection with the feeling of survival specifically, but the clarification applies to downward social comparison generally. Hypothetically speaking, there are two possible readings of the feeling of survival, one in which the perception of suffering or misfortune is itself the object of pleasure—call this the sadism reading—and one in which the perception of suffering or misfortune triggers the proper object of this feeling, namely, some perceived quality of power or fortune in oneself— call this the comparative empowerment reading. On the sadism reading, the perception of suffering is in itself pleasurable, not unlike the way that the flavour of honey or the feeling of warmth is pleasurable. The taste of honey is not typically pleasurable because it triggers the perception of another object or state of affairs that induces the relevant pleasure. On the sadism reading, the feeling of survival or power and the perception of death are coextensive, just as the pleasure of honey’s flavour and the perception of honey’s flavour are coextensive; the perception is itself pleasurable. On the comparative empowerment reading, on the other hand, the perception of suffering directs the mind to another object, namely, some personal strength, triumph, fortunateness, or uniqueness, and it is this perceived quality in oneself that is the true source of the pleasure or feeling of survival. On the comparative empowerment reading, Canetti’s feeling of survival is analogous to the feeling of sublimity, as Santayana understands it (recall section 4.2). It is on the comparative empowerment reading that Canetti’s analysis of the survival drive coheres with the broader Santayanan framework set forth in the preceding chapters.

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The comparative empowerment reading of the feeling of survival is textually well supported. Indeed, simply reconsider the second line of the passage above: “Horror at the sight of death turns into satisfaction that it is someone else who is dead.” This strongly suggests that it is not the perception of death that is intrinsically pleasurable—in fact, the sight of death induces negative affect or grief (albeit, grief which is ultimately overwhelmed by the feeling of survival)—and that it is rather the perception of personal triumph triggered by the perception of death that is the locus of pleasure. Much the same may be said of downward social comparison in general. It is really the idea of self-enhancement triggered through the perception of others’ misfortunes that is the object of pleasure. The perception of misfortune merely plays a vehicular role.30

5.4 Playing Dead: Horror as Submission Horror can be an exercise in simulated feelings of self-enhancement through downward social comparison for the aggrieved, but it can also be an exercise of simulating ameliorations of guilt for undeserved fortune or ameliorations of pity for the misfortunate. On the nature of pity, Nietzsche remarks: Pity is the opposite of the tonic affects that heighten the energy of vital feelings; pity has a depressive effect. You lose strength when you pity…Pity makes suffering into something infectious… [P]ity negates life, it makes life worthy of negation, pity is the practice of nihilism. (A 6-7)

 It is worth noting that nothing in this analysis commits one to the view that representations of violence perform a cathartic role in the modern sense that psychologists have at least since Freud been proposing. I do not contend that, as Douglas Gentile puts it, “…by viewing others’ aggression, either in real life, sports, or though media depictions of violent action, the viewer will have his or her aggressive drive reduced vicariously and in a socially acceptable manner.” (2013, 494) Such catharsis is a separate matter. A catharsis of violent impulses through simulating violence would, presumably, proceed through an identification with fictional aggressors in the film. But this is not the satisfaction associated with being a non-violent witness of violence, or (to anticipate) of deriving a reprieve from guilt or pity through identifying with the victim of violence. Cf. Hanich (2010, 8-12) against the catharsis model of horror’s enjoyment. 30

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Nietzsche here could have just as easily said the same thing about guilt. Guilt, according to him, is a part of, to borrow his words,”…the diseased refinement and moralisation, thanks to which the ‘animal man’ has at last learned to be ashamed of all his instincts.” (GM 42) Guilt, for Nietzsche, derives from a sense of owing (GM 40-50). The equalization of harm principle (A1) is a source of this feeling of owing.31 Nietzsche, I propose, is here converging with Canetti on the feeling of survival. Pity and, for that matter guilt, are antithetical to a pure, unmitigated satisfaction of this feeling. A remediation of feelings of guilt or pity requires a renunciation of the (non-simulated) feeling of survival, a resolve of will not to entertain it. This, I think, is why Nietzsche was right to consider such negative emotions as involving a radical denial of nature: They work against the feeling of survival. An analysis of the points of contact that exist between Nietzsche and Canetti is beyond the scope of this book. But many such points of contact exist. For instance, Ritchie Robertson (2004) provides an interesting analysis of Canetti and Nietzsche linking the two thinkers on the nature of human cruelty and people qua herd animals. Moreover, there are passages in Nietzsche that bear a striking resemblance to Canetti’s analysis. For example, Canetti’s feeling of survival explains the appeal of retributivism, as Nietzsche sees it: … [W]hy can suffering be a compensation for ‘owing’?—Because the infliction of suffering produces the highest degree of happiness, because the injured party will get in exchange for his loss (including the vexation of his loss) an extraordinary counter-pleasure: the infliction of suffering—a real feast…The sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one more good… [I]n punishment too is there so much of the festive. (GM 41-42)

The (Kantian) project of universalizing ethical principles is no less an exercise in life denialism than the nurturing of guilt and pity is, according to Nietzsche:

 Cf. Canetti on the universal fear of the dead (recall CP 262-263).

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“‘Virtue’, ‘duty’, ‘goodness in itself ’, goodness that has been stamped with the character of the impersonal and universally valid—these are fantasies and manifestations of decline, of the final exhaustion of life…The most basic laws of preservation and growth require the opposite: that everyone should invent his own virtues, his own categorical imperative.” (A 9-10)

It is no surprise, then, that the universalization of (A) leads to a “negation of life” in the Nietzschean sense (see A 56). Through this universalization, we arrive at the equalization of harm principle (A1). From this principle one can extract the inversion of (A): If others suffer, then so should I (A2). And this proposition, when taken seriously from within the perspective of the fortunate, supplies the rational grounds for feeling guilt about one’s better position. The equalization of harm principle cuts both ways: It calls for the creation of misfortunes in others (if they exist in anyone) and the removal of fortunes. In short, it ultimately defines as guilt-­worthy all fortunes in a world where there is also misfortune—indeed, the two come together or not at all, given that they are relative notions.32 Another auxiliary function of horror, in my view, exploits an asceticism generated through this two-step, life-denying inversion of axiom (A) of the logic aggrievement, one that is the basis for the feeling of guilt over fortune (e.g., white guilt; survivor guilt). Whereas the aggrieved suspend disbelief as to the unreality of the representations of victimization in the film, and in so doing, extract simulated feelings of satisfaction in the external witnessing of suffering or death, those of personal fortune may, through identifying with the represented victims of suffering or death, extract simulated ameliorations of guilt. They may also extract simulated ameliorations of pity in this way, since pity is a reaction to the witnessing of suffering or misfortune, but misfortune again, is relative, and thus, the misfortune of another is reduced by my personally taking on new misfortunes. Horror as submission, plausibly, plays the role of addressing the feelings of guilt or pity in those who benefit from systems of power that distribute goods and harms in morally arbitrary ways. It thus helps to indulge any life-denying impulses that threaten to destabilize such 32

 Cf. WP (159): “… [T]o be an exception is experienced as guilt.”

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systems of power. Whereas horror as survival appeals to the poor and aggrieved, horror as submission addresses guilt over privilege; both functions remediate negative feelings, revolutionary, or ascetic impulses without correcting the social disorders on which they are based. Canetti recognizes the reality of simulated emotion; he discusses it under the label of “Transformation”.33 Robertson (2004), discussing transformation, notes: In modern culture we have many opportunities for empathy in reading literature about other people and other cultures. The imaginative response of the reader in recreating the novelist’s characters may be seen as an attenuated version of transformation. (213).

Here we observe a striking convergence between Canetti’s notion of transformation with the contemporary analysis of simulated emotion in fiction. Finally, consider the following passage, where Canetti describes one particularly salient, for present purposes, instance of transformation: All kinds of virtues were later attributed to [the famous conquerors of history]…Even after centuries, historians are still conscientiously balancing their character traits in order to reach what they believe is a fair judgment of them. The fundamental naiveté of this activity is virtually palpable. These historians are in fact giving in to the fascination of a power that is long past. By thinking themselves into an age, they become contemporaries, and they absorb something of the fear that the real contemporaries had for the ruthlessness of the power-wielders.” (Canetti 1979, 21)

What Canetti is describing falls within the neighborhood of horror as submission, since he is proposing in effect that historians simulate feelings of victimization. My proposals cast further negative light on our potential for transformation, which Robertson characterizes as “a source of hope” (2004, 208)—a source of hope, perhaps, but not exclusively.

 See CP (337-342).

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5.5 Conclusion The central thesis of the modified Santayanan framework from which I approach horror is that representations of evil that are perceived to suggest or involve actual evil absolutely negate the aesthetic value of the object in which they are contained. This view might have initially struck the reader as peculiar for an author who promises, with a straight face, to present an aesthetics of horror. However, reconciling the aesthetic value of horror with the uncompromising aesthetic optimism of this modified Santayanan view was part of what made the theoretical project that has now unfolded interesting. This book paints a rather balanced picture of horror, one that affirms the positivity of art per se and the self-empowering nature of horror as sport, but that also recognizes the undignified, non-aesthetic potential of the genre, thus conceived. There is a need to distinguish between the aesthetic and non-aesthetic enjoyment of horror in a unified way, which is to say, in a way that meaningfully connects both forms of enjoyment to horror’s fundamental themes and principal primary function—mortal harm, injury, death, threat and the inducement of fear, respectively. This book does precisely this. I have articulated how horror can induce rational fear responses, and thus fulfill its primary function. Two basic forms of rational fear in the cinema have been proposed, namely, that which is directed at perceived threats through the ordinary cognitive channels of fear, and that which takes a more circuitous cognitive route to its objects—passing first through an act of imagination or suspension of disbelief. The scare-value effectiveness of a horror film in the sense of its communicating (perceived to be) real aversive possibilities (i.e., (iv)) can be plotted, I have argued, along three axes: 1) the axis of severity, 2) the axis of believability, and 3) the axis of inability of personal avoidance. Horror’s fear inducement potential in terms of (iv) involves a balancing of (often competing) plot, cinematographic, and visual devices. One of the most effective plot devices is the motif of indiscriminate violence, since this is a motif that maximizes the film’s value on the axis of the inability of personal avoidance without disturbing its values on the other two axes.

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The sport model of horror is rich in explanatory power. By appealing to this model, I have clarified the effectiveness of a number of horror’s quintessential plot, cinematic, and visual devices and have traced an observable trajectory of advances in horror’s scare-value. The sport model supplies a way to straightforwardly calculate the scare-value of a film on the basis of plotting it in accordance with three interrelated metrics. The scare-value of horror, thus understood, is largely a measure of the viewer’s perception of her physical and mental strengths, vulnerabilities, and personal circumstances, as well as the scope of her concern for others. The trajectory of horror towards representations of morally arbitrary violence generally, and indiscriminate violence in the particular—a trajectory set by horror’s principal primary function—creates the conditions for the genre to be a source of certain morose pleasures. Those satisfactions horror provides that centre around fear inducement (e.g., the experience of thrilling moments; the intellectual challenge of excluding oneself from the aversive possibilities the film presents) are themselves rather innocuous. However, horror is also, plausibly, a source of simulated feelings of self-enhancement derived from perceptions of fictional suffering and death. Horror is also, plausibly, a source for simulating the feeling of ameliorated guilt or pity, given the percipient’s universalization, and subsequent inversion, of axiom (A) of the logic of aggrievement. Both forms of simulated feeling (and, for that matter, horror as idealized justice), plausibly, work to preserve the status quo within social organizations predicated on systematic aggrievement (and unaddressed injustice). It is worth stressing that the treatment of the genre that has been provided here is rather salient to today’s day and age. For, as has been noted, the pandemic has only made more pronounced the educational or therapeutic use of horror, and the sport model provides a direct link between the aesthetic enjoyment of horror and this non-aesthetic function of the genre. The pandemic has also accelerated the systematic aggrievement of populations, and thus, prepares the ground for further use of horror as downward social comparison—a variation of which is horror as survival—and horror as submission (and likewise horror as idealized justice). If there ever was a time for a discussion about the necropolitical exploitation of forms of media, that time is now.

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I think that I enjoyed horror as a child not because I found satisfaction in the representations of death and suffering as such; I had not a firm understanding of such things. And children are perhaps too naive to discover a logic of aggrievement. Rather, I think I was narcissistically attracted to the practical intellectual challenge the films posed, and this was perhaps an extension of the healthy developmental/educational phenomenon of childhood socio-dramatic play. Besides, even if there is a logic of aggrievement at play in disillusioned children, perhaps their fellow feeling would prevail if the two inclinations were to meet face-to-­ face. However, if horror films are an outlet for morose pleasures to occur without the disturbances of guilt or pity, then perhaps these conflicting inclinations shall never need to fully be reconciled. This eating and having of cake is troubling, since it may forestall a moral maturity that turns on renouncing such pleasures.

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Index1

A

Abstraction aberrant abstraction, 31, 39, 85, 90n29 veridical abstraction, 31n52 (see also Virtual identification) Additive compositionality, 22, 31, 36 See also Aggregative complexity Aesthetic optimism definition of, 10, 27, 44, 45 demonstration of, 34–36 Aggregative complexity, 31, 36, 37, 46 See also Complex essencehood; Essences Aggrieved, see Grievance Animal faith, 13n15, 32 See also Santayana, George

Anti-tragedy, 99–100 See also Tragedy Art-horror, 52, 77, 90 See also Carroll, Noël; True horror Aspectual identification, 60–62 See also Gaut, Berys; Imagination Autonomous fantasies, 23n31 See also Imagination; Surrogate fantasies B

Beauty in contrast to ugliness, 23–24 definition of, 1–2, 10–14 mind independence of, 42–44 in opposition to evil, 2–3, 10, 16–18, 24–27

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5

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128 Index

Beauty (cont.) proper object of, 12–13, 25, 35–41, 46 rationalistic conception of, 11, 43 sentimentalist conception of, 10–12, 41–44, 88–89 subjectivist conception of, 10–11, 43 Believability, 2, 68–79, 121 C

Canetti, Elias affinity to Nietzsche, 118 on humour, 54n6 on public execution, 100 on survival, 113–115 on transformation, 120 Carroll, Noël, 2n1, 2n2, 4n5, 6–7, 52, 55n8, 59–60, 68n2, 77, 79 See also Art-horror; Thought theory Catharsis, 117n30 Characterizing property, 28 Co-existentialism, 2, 21, 21n28, 36, 86 See also Integrationism Comedy comedic relief, 55 gross-out, 54 horror-comedy, 54–55, 73n6 slapstick, 54, 54n7 Complex essencehood, 27, 29–34, 39, 84 See also Essences Conceptualism, 26 See also Visual differentiation

D

Direct horror, 72n5, 74 See also Gore Downward social comparison, 5, 105–117, 122 See also Upward social comparison E

Emotions classical judgementalism, 57–58 meta-emotions, 72 neo-judgementalism, 3, 12n10, 56–58 (see also Roberts, Roberts C.) simulated, 3, 5, 6, 58–62, 69, 79, 93, 101–103, 110–117, 119–120, 122 (see also Fear) Equality equalization of harm principle, 108, 117–119 feeling of, 108, 114 (see also Feeling of equalization) Essences distinguished from existence, 28–32 incorruptibility of, 29, 39 as objects of intuition, 32–34, 36, 36n63, 38 primitiveness of, 31n51, 34–35 as the proper objects of beauty, 27, 35 realm of, 28, 29, 32, 37–40 simple vs. complex, 29 in themselves inert, 26–27, 43 Evil aesthetic bankruptcy of, 10–11, 15–27, 34–36, 44–46, 90–92 definition of, 10, 21n29

 Index 

perception of, 15, 16, 24–27, 91n30 as a positive quality, 23 privative conception of, 24 problem of, 24n36 representation of, 2, 3, 15, 22, 27, 35–36, 84, 89–91, 101, 121 (see also Suffering) Expression in crucifixion art, 44–45, 91 definition of, 4, 44–47, 87–88 reconstruction of, 46–47 in trophies, 4, 88–90

129

H

Hanich, Julian, 3n4, 4n5, 56n10, 59n17, 71–73, 83n24, 117n30 I

Imagination innocuous forms of, 22–23 reprobate forms of, 22–23 (see also Aspectual identification) Integrationism, 2, 86 See also Co-existentialism J

F

Fear anti-aesthetic value of, 17, 81–84 cognitive profile of, 56–58 when rational, 57–58, 72, 81, 121 when recalcitrant, 57–58 when simulated, 58–62, 100–103, 110–117, 119–120 (see also Emotions) Feeling of equalization, 112 Festinger, Leon, 107, 108n23, 109n24 G

Gaut, Berys, 3, 60–62, 92 See also Aspectual identification Gore, 1–3, 5, 15, 52–56, 68, 72–74, 72n5, 86, 87 See also Direct horror; Verisimilitude Grievance, 5–6, 104–110, 112–114 See also Logic of aggrievement Guilt, 5, 6, 115, 120, 122 See also Pity; Submission

Jump scare, 60, 60n21 See also Spook; Startle-response L

Logic of aggrievement, 5, 6, 104–107, 110, 112, 122–123 See also Grievance M

Make-believe, 62, 92, 93 Material compositionality, 31 See also Aggregative complexity Mbembe, Achille, 4 N

Necropolitics, 4–7, 105, 114, 119–120 See also Mbembe, Achille; Necropower Necropower, 4 See also Mbembe, Achille

130 Index

Neo-Judgementalism, 3, 12n10, 56, 58n14 See also Roberts, Roberts C. Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 117–120 Non-mereological composition, 31n51 See also Complex essencehood O

Overcoming, 2, 83, 88, 91, 94

R

Reality television, 18n24, 110–111 See also Downward Social Comparison Relations contrastive vs. holistic, 30 internal vs. external, 29–33 Representative art, 45, 86 See also Verisimilitude Roberts, Roberts C., 3, 53, 56–58, 60, 60n20 See also Emotions

P

Pain anti-aesthetic value of, 16–17, 23–27, 43 inertness of, 26 projection of, 18n23, 43n71 Pandemic, 70, 93, 122 Personal avoidance, 68–70, 75–76, 78–79, 98, 121–122 See also Psychical distance Pity, 5, 6, 103, 110–112, 115, 117–119, 123 See also Guilt; Submission Pleasure aesthetic, 2, 12–14 qualities of vs. feelings of, 36, 39–41 (see also Projection) Projection imagistic, 13–15, 18n23, 36–39 perceptual, 13–15, 39 Psychical distance, 68 See also Personal avoidance Psychopathy, 16n22, 17 Punishment effigy punishment, 5, 98–103 public executions, 18, 101–103, 115 retributivism, 5, 99, 118

S

Sadism, 75, 116 See also Psychopathy Santayana, George on beauty, 10–17, 37–43 on essence, 27–32 on evil, 10–12, 16, 18, 21n29 on expression, 21, 45–46, 87–88 on sublimity, 91–92 on tragedy, 99 on ugliness, 23, 24 Scare-value, 3–5, 7, 56, 56n9, 70–72, 75–79, 81, 86, 89, 110, 121–122 Schadenfreude, 17 See also Sadism Science-fiction, 54–56 Self-enhancement, 5, 6, 108, 110–115, 117, 122 See also Downward social comparison Self-serving bias, 109n25 Sentimentalism, see Beauty Simulation theory, 62n23, 92 See also Emotion Social media, 100, 109n24

 Index 

See also Upward social comparison Socio-dramatic play, 4, 93–94, 123 Spook, 60, 60n20, 79, 83n24 See also Jump scare; Startle-response Sprigge, Timothy, 30, 32, 33, 41n66 Startle-response, 58–60 See also Jump scare; Spook Structural Universals, 31n51 See also Complex essencehood; Non-mereological composition Subjectivism, see Beauty Sublime, 4, 91–92, 116–117 See also Santayana, George Submission, 6, 119–120, 122 See also Transformation Suffering, 1–3, 5, 7, 15–19, 22–25, 44–45, 68, 70, 73, 73n6, 86, 88–91, 103, 106–107, 110–112, 115–119, 122–123 See also Evil Supernatural, 74–79, 100 Surrogate fantasies, 23n31 See also Imagination Survival, see Canetti, Elias Suspense, 52, 55–56, 60n21, 75n15 Symbolic art, 45–47 See also Expression T

Thought theory, 4n5, 59, 77 See also Carroll, Noël Thriller, 54–56 Tragedy, see Santayana, George Transformation, see Canetti, Elias True crime drama, 10n5, 18, 20 See also True horror

131

True horror, 10n5, 90n29 See also Art-horror U

Ugliness, see Beauty; Santayana, George Universalization, 6, 119, 122 See also Equality Universals, see Essences Unmitigated horror, 20–21, 81–82, 84, 86 Upward social comparison, 108n24, 109n24 See also Downward social comparison V

Verisimilitude, 44, 72–74 Violence comedic value of, 54 indiscriminate, 3, 5–7, 78–79, 103, 110–111, 115, 121, 122 representation of, 5–7, 19, 54, 68, 72–73, 88, 100–102, 110–112, 115, 122 scare-value of, 3, 5, 56, 69–71, 78–79, 110, 122 Virtual identification, see Abstraction Visual differentiation, 26 See also Conceptualism W

Wills, Thomas Ashby, 5n7, 54n6, 105–110