ANEXOS

‘I don't think morality underlies all rooting or suspense’, continues DeScioli. ‘…I would say that most suspense is non-moral’ (Personal communication, 3rd July 2014). For instance, what exactly is the moral issue at work in There’s Something About Mary (1998) when Ted (Ben Stiller) opens the front door after a hasty self-stimulation session to greet Mary (Cameron Diaz) with ejaculate hanging from his earlobe?

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When his high school crush squints and stares closer in disbelief, asking ‘Is that…? Is that…?’, I feel undeniable suspense and pray Ted can avoid impending social humiliation. But this would not typically considered a moment that requires moral deliberation. Nor would many other common story moments that induce suspense and make viewers root for one outcome over another, such as whether one person or another wins a race, dance contest, student election, or date to the prom.

Carroll’s ready answer to this issue lies in his claim that one of the main carriers of moral virtue which viewers weigh up during suspense is character (1984/1996, p. 105). Although a movie race, dance contest, student election, or date to the prom are amoral events, the characters involved offer a way to lend such events a moral charge (1984/1996, p. 102). Rather than a toss up between two or more competitors, these moments are often a contest between a morally virtuous David and a morality vacuous

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Goliath. If the Goliath were to win, ‘evil’ could be said to triumph. Thus the suspense over Ted’s ability to explain away the high sperm-count hanging from his ear is, on Carroll’s account, ‘moral’ in the sense that Ted is a ‘good’ person, and ‘bad’ things such as sexual embarrassment should not – in principle – happen to good people. Although this answer is perfectly understandable in lay terms, it nevertheless raises a further question. If these amoral conflicts are essentially granted a moral charge based on the moral virtue of the characters involved, what happens when the conflict/event already has its own moral charge? If a morally virtuous person commits a moral transgression such as murder, a split between moral judgment based upon the action itself and moral judgment based upon the character appears to arise. Which would Carroll claim holds greater weight in our moral deliberation that he contends steers our suspense and side-taking: the immoral act or the morally virtuous character who committed it? Either answer – action or character – would appear to contradict claims that the other factor is responsible for our moment-by-moment hopes and fears for narrative outcomes.

The continuing haziness around Carroll’s model of morality makes it harder to contest his claims, easier for him to ignore critique, and arguably ‘loses the distinctive characteristics of morality’ as DeScioli warned above. Moreover, if DeScioli’s claim that most suspense is non-moral in nature is somehow true, or if character virtue is not the influence upon moral judgment that Carroll and others presume it to be (see also Zillmann 1995, 2006, 2012 and Murray Smith 1995, 1999, 2011), a moral account of suspense would be severely undermined. Ignoring this challenge is not a solution. The adoption of what we might call an exception-to-the-rule approach to isolated instances of apparent immoral suspense is clearly inadequate unless the rule under which they are exempt can be outlined. Not fitting the theory’s predicted response is insufficient grounds for exemption and instead serves only to falsify Carroll’s current claim that onlookers root for moral outcomes during moments of suspense. We cannot pick and choose which examples our theory applies to after the fact. In order to exempt these scenes, we must come up with a new prediction as to which kinds of scenes are exempt and why. And this would seem to require a specific proposal about the nature of moral judgment.

Although moral philosophers and psychologists are still arguing over exactly what the ‘distinctive characteristics of morality’ might be, the convenience of leaving the specifics of moral judgment undefined has ultimately come at the cost of increased understanding of suspense and side-taking that Carroll originally set out to achieve. The great strides made in moral psychology since Carroll’s original 1984 article and his 1990 and 1996 follow-ups on the matter surely warrant, if not outright demand, consideration. I grant that there is inevitable danger in attempting to make claims about the intricate workings of

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psychological mechanisms as complex as moral cognition, and that to do so may make things worse by leading to unfounded speculation, basing a theory of suspense on unexplained assumptions about these things as Carroll has done seems equally problematic. I therefore propose that moving forward in our understanding of rooting for narrative outcomes and the enigmatic scenes Carroll’s moral theory of suspense struggles to account for requires a willingness to peek into the black box he has left closed and ask ourselves, ‘What does “moral” mean?’.

Conclusion$

‘How is it that he can so easily make us root for even a vicious rapist-murderer, as we do in the famous potato truck scene in "Frenzy"?’, asked Richard Schickel of The Master of Suspense (1972, p. 42). Over thirty years since Noël Carroll first proposed the leading theory of cinematic suspense and flagged this exact same ‘ambiguous and troublesome counterexample’ to his otherwise compelling moral solution (1984/1996, p. 111), his best answer to Schickel’s question is to deny that we actually do. But Hitchcock’s own comments regarding the eleventh commandment and his claim that the audience’s ‘apprehension of the bomb is more powerful than the feelings of sympathy or dislike for the characters involved’ (cited in Truffaut & Scott 1967/1984, p. 73) –– combined with my reported responses drawn from two decades of participant-observer viewing –– suggest that rooting for immoral outcomes and/or characters during suspense is not only a very real possibility, but also relatively common. This is not a minor quarrel over a handful of enigmatic scenes. To fail to address this issue threatens Carroll’s entire theory, for if suspense and side-taking is not driven by morality in scenes highlighted throughout this episode, a question mark is raised over every other scene supposedly explained by his theory. Though our hopes and fears in the cinema appear to be driven by morality much of the time, this too may turn out to have no causal influence. François Truffaut has noted, ‘The viewer’s emotions are not exactly wholesome’ (Truffaut & Scott 1967/1984, p. 272). Thriller writer, Andrew Klavan, has stated, ‘[S]uspense is amoral’ (1994, p. 13). These comments exist in direct contradiction to the entire basis of Carroll’s moral solution. Hence it is no longer enough for those who have an interest in the mechanics of suspense and in Carroll’s invaluable theory to toss troublesome scenes into an exception-to-the-rule basket. Schickel, Hitchcock, Truffaut and Klavan’s comments must be adequately addressed if morality is to retain its place at the centre of suspense theory. But I am afraid I shall have to leave you hanging, because time has well and truly run out. Before I leave, I will say one last thing: I am willing to drop the Culkin Complex for good if you are willing to consider that morality may not be the source of all narrative suspense. Agreed?

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