59 FILM AND AFFECT
A nasty, largish beast rushes at the camera, backed by a pounding score and crushing sound effects, and the audience flinches. The villain abuses the innocent heroine and our jaws clench in anger; our longing for revenge keeps us pinned to the screen, awaiting the moment when the loutish brute is dealt his due. The young lovers are separated by the callous vagaries of fate, or the child dies long before his time, and we weep. Or perhaps the camera pans over a vernal landscape of rolling gentle greenery and a feeling of serenity wells up in us. These are very common movie events. They bear testimony to the hardly controver-sial observation that, in large measure, affect is the glue that holds the audience’s attention to the screen on a moment-to-moment basis.
I have said “affect” here rather than “emotion,” even though it might be acceptable in ordinary language to label all the preceding ex-amples as instances of emotional response. My reason for this way of speaking is that the ordinary notion of emotion can be exceedingly broad and elastic, sometimes ranging so widely as to encompass hard-wired reflex reactions (like the startle response), kinesthetic
turbu-lence, moods, sexual arousal, pleasures and desires, as well as occurrent mental states like anger, fear and sorrow.
The everyday usage of emotion can be rather catch-all, referring to quite a lot of heterogeneous phenomena. It is not clear—indeed, it is very unlikely—
that this conception of emotion, which can be found in everyday speech, cap-tures a natural kind, like gold; therefore, using it in a discussion of film and something called “the emotions” is likely to be a barrier to the construction of precise, theoretical generalizations. As a result, in what follows I will use the no-tion of affect where everyday speech might talk of the emono-tions, reserving the term emotion to name a narrower subclass of affect, namely, what might be even more accurately called cognitive emotions (i.e., affects that include cognitive el-ements).
By subdividing the affective life—what might be called the “life of feeling”—
in this way and putting to one side many of the phenomena that comprise it, I do not mean to privilege one sort of affect over others. I would not deny that many of the affects that I am ignoring are integral to the experience of film.
Through the manipulation of sound and image, filmmakers often address audiences at a subcognitive, or cognitively impenetrable, level of response.
Loud noises—either recorded effects or musical sounds—can elicit instinctual responses from spectators as can the appearance of sudden movement. The movie screen is a rich phenomenal field in terms of variables like size, altitude, and speed, which have the capacity to excite automatic reactions from viewers, while the display of certain phobic and sexual material may also call forth re-sponses barely mediated by thought. Such transactions certainly need to be studied and analyzed.1By hiving these affects off from the category of the emo-tions, I do not mean that we can neglect the cognitively impenetrable affects. I only intend, for methodological purposes, to bracket consideration of them for the time being in order to focus upon the subclass of affect that I am calling the emotions.
Though I may be departing somewhat from certain ordinary usage in this matter, since I am not leaving everyday speech altogether behind me, I hesitate to say that I am stipulating what shall count as an emotion. For ordinary lan-guage has broader and narrower ideas of the emotions. I am certainly eschew-ing the broader usages in favor of the term affect. However, there are narrower senses of emotion in everyday speech and my account stays fairly close to those.
Certain phenomena, such as fear, anger, patriotism, horror, admiration, sor-row, indignation, pity, envy, jealousy, reverence, awe, hatred, love, anxiety, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, comic amusement, and so on, are
para-digms of what counts as emotion in ordinary language, even if sometimes ordi-nary language also stretches farther afield.2These garden-variety emotions are the sorts of phenomena that I will regard as emotions proper in this essay. In this, I do not think that I am doing great violence to ordinary language.
Moreover, inasmuch as these garden-variety emotions are not only paradig-matic but also exhibit common structural features, I think that I am merely pushing ordinary language in a direction toward which it already inclines, rather than stipulating a brand-new concept of the emotions. That is, by treat-ing certain states as paradigmatically emotional, ordinary usage perhaps already regards them as composing a core class of like phenomena. In this respect, my analysis may be regarded as a rational reconstruction of some already existing intuitions rather than as the invention of a new concept that, in fact, tracks a somewhat unified field of phenomena.
In this article, I attempt to develop some generalizations about film and what might be called “emotions proper” or “core emotions” or “garden-variety emotions.” This requires that I provide a characterization of the emotions that I have in mind as well as suggesting their relevance to film analysis. In the con-cluding section, I discuss the applicability of my approach to film and the emo-tions to certain genres, including melodrama, horror, and suspense.
FILM AND THE EMOTIONS
Though I do not consider film in relation to every kind of affective state, it should be clear that the affective states I intend to look at—garden-variety emotions, like anger, fear, hatred, sorrow, and so on—are central constituents of the film experience as we know it. Often it is our hatred of certain characters, like the redneck boyfriend in Sling Blade (), that keeps us riveted to the screen. Our mounting anger at his treatment of his lover and her son, along with the way he continually insults and torments the gay store manager and the retarded giant, stoke our indignation and encourage us to anticipate hope-fully and vindictively his downfall and even his death. A primitive feeling for retributive justice shapes the way that we attend to Sling Blade, along with so many other films. That is probably why most of the time astute filmmakers wait until near the end of the film to kill their villains off. If the characters that we love to hate die too soon, there may be little left onscreen to hold our in-terest.
It is surprising to what extent darker emotions like anger, hatred, and re-venge provide the cement that holds our attention on the popular movies we
consume. But more socially acceptable emotions can do the job as well. A cer-tain tristesse pervades our experience of Letter from an Unknown Woman ().
And, of course, most movies elicit a gamut of garden-variety emotions over the duration of the narrative. God Is My Witness () engenders, among other emotions, both feelings of revenge toward figures like the bandit chief, and sad-ness for those other central characters who have been separated from their loved ones. The pleasure that attends the conclusion of the film is a function of the desires that subtend these different emotions being finally satisfied.
The garden-variety emotions underwrite our experience of most films, espe-cially popular movies. Undoubtedly, the degree to which our experience of movies is emotional is so extensive that we may lose sight of it. Emotion sup-plies such a pervasive coloration to our movie experience that it may, so to speak, fly in under the radar screen. But a little apperceptive introspection quickly reveals that throughout our viewing of a film we are generally in some emotional state or other, typically one prompted and modulated by what is on screen.
Nor is it only the case that a great deal of our experience of films is saturated with emotion; it is also that our emotional engagement constitutes, in many in-stances, the most intense, vivid, and sought-after qualities available in the film experience. Perhaps that is why the Dutch film psychologist Ed S. Tan subtitles his recent important book Film as an Emotion Machine.3
Clearly, then, it is crucial for a theoretical understanding of film that we at-tempt to analyze its relation to the emotions. But in order to do that we first need a clearer sense of what constitutes an emotion proper.
If one reflects on the states that we paradigmatically think of as emotional, one is first struck by the fact that they involve feelings—sensations of bodily changes, like muscle contractions, often attended by phenomenological quali-ties, such as being “uptight.” Such states are very apparent with respect to vio-lent emotional states like fear, but they can also be detected in what Hume called the calm emotions. Thus, a first, albeit reductivist conception of the emotions is that they are nothing more than bodily feelings. Moreover, this po-sition might be bolstered by noting that in English the term emotion is inter-changeable with the term feeling.
In fact, a theory very close to this was quite popular in psychology for some time. William James claimed that an emotional state was just a perception of a bodily state.4For James, I notice myself crying and then label the state sadness.
Since C. G. Lange proposed a similar theory at roughly the same time, the view is often called the James-Lange theory of the emotions.5
But neither of these views—the emotion-as-bodily-feeling view nor the emotion-as-bodily-feeling-plus-perception view (the James-Lange theory)—is adequate. The problem with the first view is that it excludes cognition from the emotional complex and the problem with the James-Lange view is that, in a manner of speaking, it puts the relevant cognitive states in the wrong place. In order to explain these objections, let’s indulge in a little science fiction.6
First, if an emotion were simply a bodily feeling, marked by certain sensa-tions, then if a person were presently in a bodily state that resembled exactly the bodily state she was in the last time she was angry, then we should be prepared to say that she is angry now. But that doesn’t sound quite right. For imagine that we have enough pharmacology at our disposal that we can induce any bod-ily state along with any phenomenological quality in anyone we wish. The last time our subject was angry was when she discovered that her lover was cheating on her. We can provoke the same bodily state and the same phenomenological qualia in her now that she felt back then. Suppose we do it? Shall we say that she is angry?
I suspect not. Why not? Well, the last time that she experienced this bodily state and its attendant qualia, she was angry at her lover. But that was a while ago. She no longer has a lover, and if the truth be told, she’s forgotten the old one. Thus, ex hypothesi, there is no one for her to be angry with now. But if there is no one for her to be angry with—if there is no object to her emotional state—can she really be said to be in an emotional state?
She is in a bodily state, probably an uncomfortable and even confusing bod-ily state. But is she angry? No—because there is no one or no thing with whom or with which she is angry. You can’t be angry, unless there is someone or some-thing that serves as the object of your anger. Emotional states are directed. You hate Marvin or you are afraid of the smog. This is what it means to say that emotions take objects.7
But sheer bodily states do not take objects; they are not directed. They are in-ternal events with no exin-ternal reference. Thus, the subject of our science-fiction experiment is not in an emotional state. For her disturbed visceral state is not directed, nor does it have an object. Therefore, the view that emotions are sim-ply bodily states cum some phenomenological qualia is wrong. Emotions may always involve bodily states and phenomenological qualia. However, some-thing must be added to the mix if the state is to count as a full-fledged emotion.
What has to be added? Something that functions to connect the relevant bodily states and phenomenological qualia to some object. When I am angry at my lover for betraying me, I am racked by inner bodily turmoil. What is the
bridge between that inner turmoil and my lover? Presumably, it is some cogni-tion that I have about my lover. That is, I either believe or imagine that my lover has betrayed me. Of course, I can be mistaken in this. But in order to be angry with my lover in this case, I must believe or imagine that my lover has done me wrong and that cognitive state must be the cause of the inner consternation that buffets me. Together the cognitive state in causal conjunction with the bodily state and its phenomenological qualia comprise the emotional state of anger. This state can take objects and be directed—can have intentionality—
because the cognitive states that are necessary constituents of the overall emo-tional states possess intenemo-tionality.
Emotions cannot simply be bodily feelings, since sheer bodily feelings lack intentionality. But if cognitions are necessary constituents of emotional states, this lacuna disappears. Thus, if adding cognition to bodily feeling is the right way to solve the preceding problem, then the reductivist theory that emotions are just bodily feelings is false, since emotions also require cognitive compo-nents (either beliefs or belief-like states such as thoughts and imaginings). This gets rid of the emotion-as-bodily-feeling view. But what about the James-Lange theory?
According to the James-Lange theory, emotions have a cognitive compo-nent. My brother is hit by a car; I choke up and I weep; I perceive these bodily changes and I interpret or cognize them as sadness. Here, the bodily state causes the relevant cognitive state. But the causal order seems backwards. The cogni-tive state appears epiphenomenal.
Undeniably, there are some occasions where a loud noise, say a firecracker, makes us frightened and where upon reflection we say, “I guess that really frightened me.” But this is not paradigmatic of garden-variety emotional states.
When I am jealous of a rival, that is because I believe that he is stealing affection that belongs to me; it is not because I observe myself overwhelmed by the phe-nomenology of the green-eyed monster and surmise that I must be jealous. To return to our science-fiction example once again, one can imagine pharmaco-logically counterfeiting the sensations of my last episode of jealous rage where it makes no sense to say that I am jealous now—perhaps because I have become a spiritual adept who has successfully renounced all earthly attachments.
Thus, our thought-experiment suggests that what we are calling emotions proper at least involve both cognitions and feeling states where the two are linked inasmuch as the former cause the latter.8 In this account, certain affects—like the churning stomach sensations that viewers reported resulted from watching the car chases in Bullitt—are not examples of emotions proper.
Emotions proper require a cognitive component. Admittedly, not all of the af-fects that are important to the analysis of cinema fall into this category. What might be called cognitively impenetrable affects—like the startle response—
don’t. Nevertheless, a great many of the affects experienced in response to film are of the nature of emotions proper. To get a handle on them, we must now say a little more about the way in which the cognitive component in these emo-tions operates.
I am angry at Leslie because he is telling everyone that I failed my first driv-ing test. I told this to Leslie in strictest confidence, but Leslie has broadcast this all around the neighborhood. When I learn and come to believe that Leslie has divulged my secret, my blood pressure skyrockets and I feel hot under the col-lar. My cognitive state, in other words, causes a spate of bodily disruption. How does this come about?
Notice that though in this case my anger is caused by Leslie’s indiscretion, in-discretion is not the only thing that can function to elicit a comparable emo-tional response. If someone smashed my car or ruined my print of The General, I might also find myself in an angry state, if I believed that these things were done to me wantonly or inexcusably. That is, I will be angry where I subsume the events in question under the rubric of wrongs done to me or mine and where that formation of that belief functions in provoking some bodily distur-bance in me. Cognitions, in other words, play not only a causal role in emo-tions in that they figure in the etiology of bodily alteraemo-tions; they also play a role in identifying what emotional state we are in when we are in one. My response to Leslie is anger because I have subsumed or assessed Leslie’s indiscretion un-der the category of a wrong done to me or mine, and forming that belief has caused the pertinent bodily upset.
What this example suggests is that emotional states, like anger, are governed cognitively by criteria of appropriateness. Where the cognitions in a given emo-tional state come about through the subsumption of a person or event under the category of wrongs done to me or mine, the emotional response is apt to be anger. Moreover, other emotional states are also like this. The harmful or the dangerous is the criterion (or the category appropriate to) fear; thus when I subsume the object of my state under the category of the harmful, I am, other things being equal, apt to undergo fear. That is to say, for example: I cognize the scorpion next to my hand under the harmful, that cognition causes my blood to freeze, and the overall state is fear.
Similarly, in order for me to feel pity for x, I must believe that x has suffered some misfortune; the criterion for pity, in other words, is misfortune, just as in
order to envy y I must believe that y has something that I have not. If y cannot move and I know this, then I cannot envy y’s athletic prowess. For in order to envy y I must be able to form the belief that y possesses some advantage that I lack, or some degree of advantage over and above what I take myself to com-mand. Envying y signals that I have subsumed y under the category of someone who possesses more than I do.
Emotions require cognitions as causes and bodily states as effects. Moreover,
Emotions require cognitions as causes and bodily states as effects. Moreover,