Bueno mijita con mucho gusto cuando necesite.

In Playwriting For Dummies (2011), Angelo Parra adopts Froug’s distinction between empty entertainment and aesthetic education, cautioning new writers against the creation of clear-cut rooting patterns:

Easy-to-boo-and-hiss-at characters are the kind of antagonists you find in cartoons, comic books, silent movie melodramas, superhero movies, and passé and inferior plays. Fun, maybe, but far from the lifelike characters you should be striving for (2011, p. 124).

The view is familiar and likely to be heard in any writing course around the world, but what is typically omitted is exactly why we should be striving for lifelike characters, especially if easy-to-boo-and-hiss-at characters are acknowledged as fun. Even Parra does not bother to explain, so readers are left to assume that where ‘realism’ is valued for its supposed insight, fun is considered frivolous at best. By this logic, viewers such as the two middle- aged sisters in the tiny Australian Aboriginal settlement of Gapuwiyak in north-eastern Arnhem Land who ‘hoot with laughter as they berate heroes and bad guys alike for violent behavior or swearing’ according to anthropologist, Jennifer Deger (2011, p. 463), are either participating in an inferior manner, participating with an inferior movie, or both. What Hitchcock celebrated in his bomb-under-the-table anecdote has continually been derided by many as artistically and ethically vacuous.

In a recent paper, Frank Krutnik reveals how a lowly view of suspense as ‘a “mechanical” enterprise’ (2013, p. 23) forced Hitchcock to publicly promote the phenomenon as a worthy pursuit in opposition to this widespread attitude. Though the director could doubtless be described as succeeding in this task ‘to create an image of him[self] as worthy of highbrow critical regard as well as low- and middle-brow mass consumption’ (Gottlieb 1997, p. xvi; see also Kapsis 1992), a critic like Charles Higham (1962) is still able to attack him on these grounds. ‘The mechanics of creating terror and amusement in an audience are all Hitchcock properly understands’, decries Higham of a director he feels treats the audience as ‘the collective victim of a Pavlovian experiment’ (pp. 3-4). Hitchcock’s expertise in ‘what can move the masses without fail’, and his open encouragement of rooting, is morally bothersome to Higham.

We know, for instance, the response that the sight of a child or dog in danger can evoke even in the most brutally sophisticated people. No one save Hitchcock would dare to turn this natural responsiveness to his own advantage (p. 4).

And thus, atop of Kawin’s study, which framed rooting as mechanical and manipulative, two more conclusions have been commonly drawn to describe this participatory practice:

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1) It is artless: the films that adopt such ‘formulas’ are of lesser value

2) It is immoral: ill effects threaten society where viewers carry this ‘value judgment’ from the cinema.

When watching a scene where a man is badly beaten by a bunch of boys in Kids (1995), Allan Hazlett remembers that his viewing companion ‘found this sequence hilarious, and was ‘rooting for’ the attackers’, an act the philosopher felt ‘was, intuitively, an immoral response’ (2009, p. 242). Hazlett invests his considerable energy arguing for the importance of ‘response moralism' and the need to avoid reactions to fictional personages that would be widely held to be unethical in the real world. He is by no means the first to follow this path. ‘[W]here vicious manners are described, without being marked with the proper characters of blame and disapprobation’, wrote moral philosopher David Hume (1758), ‘I cannot, nor is it proper I should, enter into such sentiments’ (p. 145). More recently, Berys Gaut’s ethical notion of ‘merited response’ (see Gaut 2007b), Noël Carroll’s ‘morally sensitive viewers’ (1996a, pp. 233-234), and Ronald de Sousa’s ‘phthonic [malicious] laughter’ (1987) have pursued this path with little apparent gain in the eyes of some, including Hazlett himself (see also Carr & Davis 2007; Hamilton, C 2003; Jacobson 1997; Smuts 2010). Matthew Kieran, for instance, asks,

[W]hy assume how we ought to respond in real life should govern our responses to art works? In real life there are all sorts of considerations that apply which may not with respect to reading or seeing particular works…In real life many of us wouldn’t root for Michael Corleone in The Godfather [1972], Tony in The Sopranos [1999-2007] or delight in N.W.A’s attitude toward the police [i.e. Niggaz Wit Attitudes, a provocative 80s gangsta rap band best known for their protest song ‘Fuck Tha Police’]. But then this isn’t real life. So we can allow the force of our internalised moral prohibitions to slacken and go with the responses sought from us (2006, pp. 134-135).

Gaut also makes it clear that we can have responses whilst simultaneously dismissing their worth on ethical grounds when he writes that ‘responses must be merited, not simply the ones we actually have’ (2007a, pp. 227-228, emphasis in original). For example, we may feel awe at Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935)even though we ultimately dismiss the validity of both artwork and our response because the film is a celebration of Nazism (Gaut 1998, p. 190). And this dismissal does not undo the initial experience. Our awe still existed. The same knee-jerk nature of many rooting responses, and our ability to intellectually assess this response after the fact, finds a useful parallel in laughter.

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No#Laughing#Matter#

What do you call the useless piece of skin on the end of a penis? A man.

The serious problem with offensive jokes such as this, according to philosopher Ted Cohen, is ‘the fact that they are funny’ (1999, p. 84). Cohen argues that ‘denial is a pretense that will help nothing’ (p. 77) and so offers humanity a simple piece of advice: ‘Face the fact’ (p. 84). Only by doing this can we hope to move on and seek clarity as to how these mysterious (and often offensive) stories in miniature work. I contend that this advice applies equally well to rooting for immoral outcomes and characters. Rather than mount another destructive moral crusade against the ‘inappropriateness’ of various moment-by-moment responses in popular cinema reception, and hence vilify the artists and artworks encouraging these responses along with the audience members who enjoy them, we should instead ‘face the fact’ and come to accept rooting for any narrative outcome as a potential part and parcel of our makeup. As Cohen claims of laughing unexpectedly at offensive jokes, human beings have these experiences, whether we agree with them or not. Dreams of short-circuiting immoral response may therefore be unachievable. Nor are they necessarily desirable. There is practical danger in thinking that the ‘right’ reaction is clear-cut, and that viewers who fail to tow the line are automatically engaging in an inappropriate participatory response. To suppose that we know what the correct response should be ignores religious, cultural, and personal differences in what people regard as morally acceptable.

Carr and Davis (2007) counter that this objection is overstated because it is ‘a basic tenet of most liberal moral theorising that certain forms of harm–racial intolerance, sexual violence, torture, and drug trafficking–are individually and socially unacceptable’ (p. 98). Even so, as rooting in the face of fiction tends to lack a definitive real-world result, which Kieran (2006) implied above, it is difficult to judge between harmful and harmless participation. When Indian moviegoers in Massachusetts shout ‘"Kood ja! Jood Ja!” [Jump! Jump!]’ as a leading character in Hameshaa (1997) stands on a precipice ready to throw himself off in despair due to ongoing romantic estrangement (cited in Srinivas 1998, p. 336, brackets in original), should we chastise their morality or chuckle at their wit? And if we choose to condemn them for finding humour in others’ harm, should we not also condemn the millions who laugh at the antics in Tom and Jerry (1940-1967), Looney

Tunes (1930-1969), and ‘The Itchy & Scratchy Show’ (a fictitious, ultra-violent parody of

such animated shorts in The Simpsons, 1989-present)? For those of us who do not, knowing where to draw the line would seem less than clear. Of course, this is the task that these philosophers take on in their search for ‘warranted’ versus ‘unwarranted’ responses.

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But even if they could rule out typically difficult instances of humour such as satire, parody, and black comedy to focus on more ‘realistic’ and ‘explicit’ instances of rooting for harm, there is reason to be wary.

In highlighting our ability to root for bad guys and immoral outcomes, academics such as Bruce Kerievsky (2010) imply that such a response is somehow abnormal, an enigmatic response best avoided or prevented. But Justin D'arms and Daniel Jacobson (2000) argue that although human beings ‘tend to be uncomfortable with any endorsement of feelings that are morally objectionable’ (p. 86), whether an emotion is fitting to a situation is a separate issue to whether the response is moral. ‘An emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel’, write the philosophers –– in line with Ted Cohen’s argument against wholesale condemnation and dismissal of immoral laughter –– and they suggest that moralists frequently conflate these two issues (p. 65). Even if we were to dismiss this argument and hold that morally appropriate and inappropriate rooting responses existed, there is another significant problem in seeing things this way.

Many of those we may be forced to accuse of immorality under a rubric of ‘response moralism’ include oppressed minorities purposefully rooting against a mainstream moral framework they regard as immoral. Cuban viewers watching Miami Vice (1984-1989) who root for their bad guy ‘brothers’ (see Fiske 1989b); homeless men who erupt into ‘loud and enthusiastic cheers’ when the terrorists in Die Hard (1988) needlessly kill the CEO of the Nakatomi Corporation (see Fiske & Dawson 1996, pp. 300-301); and women who indulge in what Richard Schickel saw as ‘“sisterly pleasures of prosecution”’ when watching Fatal Attraction (1987), taking both ‘a certain grim comfort in Dan’s discomfiture, and a certain uncomfortable pleasure in Alex’s maniacal revenge’ (cited in Holmlund 1991, p. 33). Thus the very notion of a correct way to root for narrative outcomes could be accused of political conservatism, favouring dominant ideologies, and any attempt to paint these responses as immoral might quash the ethical and political complexity in such situations.

This becomes even more apparent in screenings of films such as Ganga Zumba (1963) where, according to Shohat and Stam, ‘it is not uncommon for Black spectators to applaud’ when a rebel slave kills a slavedriver ‘while Whites (even radical Whites) hold back’ (1994, p. 349, brackets in original ). Which is the morally apt response? The very notion seems to present morality as purely normative – a system with definitive answers for our every dilemma. When a Bollywood viewer chides those behind her, asking ‘“Have you no pity?”’ because they laugh during a scene in which a nurse holds a candle steadfast, her fingers blistering so that a handsome doctor can complete lifesaving surgery by candlelight (cited in Srinivas 1998, p. 338), is she responding any more

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appropriately to the fiction than those she accuses of moral failure? Where some may contend that it is immoral to laugh at the nurse’s noble suffering, others could argue the woman has been “’taken” or “done”’ by a film that promotes traditional gender roles which continue to support real-world suffering and oppression. How are we to tell the so-called culturally duped from the ideologically resistant; the morally contaminated from the morally clean? For these reasons, any attempt to deride the diverse range of rooting responses across audiences is itself ethically problematic to the emancipatory spirit, and should be viewed with a certain level of suspicion.

'What happens between people and film?’, ponders dissident director, Dušan Makavejev. ‘A lot of "illegal" things happen--illegal things, psychologically speaking, things people would never confess' (cited in Oumano & Oumano 1985, p. 253). The freedom of audiences to engage in these ‘illegal operations’21 _{could be considered a place of} opposition as much as manipulation, but this virtual space for sexual, racial, and ideological imaginings remains the same territory that all moralising parties, whether Left or Right, hope to police. Although we may feel that any ongoing effort to morally enlighten and improve both viewer and wider world an admirable effort, not only is it potentially unrealistic to believe emotional response at the height of suspense can be controlled, but also the lived consequences of this mission frequently push outcomes in the exact opposite direction. Select filmmakers and their audiences suffer at the hands of these claims, which deride certain forms of popular cinema and those who partake in it under the inadequately investigated assumption that rooting for narrative outcomes is mechanical and manipulative, artless and immoral.