The Fear Of Fictional Beings

According to Kendall Walton, it is on the face of it puzzling that we would find it “natural” to say of the viewer of a horror film that she is afraid of what is on the screen; nevertheless, we do find it easy to fall into that way of speaking. So what is going on here? Walton first of all denies that the fear we experience in such cases is “ordinary fear.” Why not? Because the viewer of a horror film “is fully aware” that the events and/or beings on display in a horror film are fictional. Jacques Tourneur, the director of Cat People, takes a different approach to accounting for the fear of the audience viewing a horror film. For Tourneur, the fear is already present in the audience in a latent way. The well-made horror film simply evokes those fears which the audience members bring with them to the cinema.

“It seems a principle of common sense, one which ought not to be abandoned if there is any reasonable alternative, that fear must be accompanied by, or must involve, a belief that one is in danger. Charles does not believe that he is in danger; so he is not afraid.” (Walton,235)

"The real horror is to show that we all live unconsciously in fear. Many people suffer today from a fear that they don't begin to analyze and which is constant. When the audience is in the dark and recognizes its own insecurity in that of the characters of the film, then you can show unbelievable situations and be sure that the audience will follow. For another thing, people love to be afraid. It's strange, when we're children, we say to our nurse or to our parents: "Frighten us," and we love that. These fears stay in us all our life: we're afraid of thunder, we're afraid of darkness, of the unknown, of death. The horror film, if it's well done, awakens in the mind of the audience this fear that it didn't know it had in it, and this discovery makes it shiver."Jacques Tourneur

Some questions for Walton:1. Is it not possible that the emotion of fear is a signal of danger rather than the result of a belief that one is in danger? It seems to me that this is closer to what our experience is like. We sense (emotionally) that something is wrong, or respond to a sudden and unexpected change in our environment, and then look around to see what might give our fear a ‘rational’ basis. If we find something, then we might speak of our fear that x is happening, or that y is out to get us, and so on. Often, as in the case of the wind blowing the door open at night, there will be no reason for us to continue being in fear, and in such cases we usually cease to be afraid relatively quickly. In the case of horror films ( and literature) we actively indulge our fear of the unknown, the uncanny, etc. In any case, I think that Walton’s characterization of what happens to ‘Charles’ when he watches the film about the slime is problematic. Here are a few reasons for caution.1. Although he gestures towards a ‘common sense’ account of fear, he doesn’t give us enough details about how beliefs and emotions are interrelated.2. In most cases, it is simply wrong to say that the viewer of the horror film fears the object depicted in the film (e.g. the slime). Instead, the viewer experiences fear as the result of a carefully sustained atmosphere of suspense/anxiety punctuated by sudden shocks. (the bus scene in Cat People) If the right atmosphere is lacking, the green slime will be about as scary as it sounds.3. Walton fails to examine the role of empathy in our fear reactions. That is, cases in which we are afraid ‘for’ the characters in the film rather than for ourselves. In fact, Charles’ reactions seem odd as described and not typical at all (even of children!).4. Walton ignores the ‘unconscious’ in his account of the horror film. He also chooses an extraordinarily silly scenario to illustrate his account.5. The role of make-believe in the appreciation of film is an interesting topic, but Walton’s account of it is strange. Is it really true that we typically play games of make-believe in the movie theater? Isn’t it rather the case that we become emotionally engaged with fictions even when we have no inclination to the elaborate fantasy-play that Walton is describing?