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 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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Keywords | argument from reactive attitudes disgust horror films spectatorship ethics |
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DOI | 10.1111/japp.12405 |
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The Distancing-Embracing Model of the Enjoyment of Negative Emotions in Art Reception.Winfried Menninghaus, Valentin Wagner, Julian Hanich, Eugen Wassiliwizky, Thomas Jacobsen & Stefan Koelsch - 2017 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40:1-58.
Biotechnology and Monstrosity: Why We Should Pay Attention to the "Yuk Factor".Mary Midgley - 2000 - Hastings Center Report 30 (5):7-15.
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