Barbarous Spectacle and General Massacre: A Defence of Gory Fictions

Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (4):511-527 (2020)
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Abstract

Many people suspect it is morally wrong to watch the graphically violent horror films colloquially known as gorefests. A prominent argument vindicating this suspicion is the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA). The ARA holds that we have a duty to maintain a well-functioning moral psychology, and watching gorefests violates that duty by threatening damage to our appropriate reactive attitudes. But I argue that the ARA is probably unsound. Depictions of suffering and death in other genres typically do no damage to our appropriate reactive attitudes, and until we locate a relevant difference between these depictions in gorefests and in other genres, we should assume that the depictions in gorefests do no damage. I consider and reject three candidate differences: in artistic merit, meaningfulness, and audience orientation. Until genre skeptics identify a relevant difference, we should accept the taste for gory fictions as we would any other morally innocuous variation in taste.

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Ian Stoner
Saint Paul College

Citations of this work

Dealbreakers and the Work of Immoral Artists.Ian Stoner - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3):389-407.
It’s a Fine Line between Sadism and Horror.Scott Woodcock - 2023 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 25 (1).
Fear within the Frames: Horror Comics and Moral Danger.Scott Woodcock - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

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