What is particularly interesting in the second chapter of Carroll's book is his take on the "paradox of fiction." Indeed, it's something that has troubled me long in my thinking about fiction and how we enjoy it. How is it that I can relate to something emotionally that I know is fake?
I think Carroll's knockdown of illusion and pretend theory is pretty strong. Illusion is just ridiculous - if it were the case, then I would definitely try to flee from the horrifying monsters I believed I was encountering. Pretend theory is just too demanding - and we can't control the art-horror response, I absolutely agree with Carroll here.
His idea of thought theory is very clean and worked out; the separation of belief from emotion is particularly strong. I think this is kind of common sense. There are plenty of thoughts that can cause an emotional response, many of which I could attest to personally. I remember a math test in college that I was about to receive my score on. I had no belief content whatsoever for it - I didn't know whether it was true or false that I had performed well. Yet I can remember sweating and fearing for the result. Carroll's example of the thought experiment where we are told stories without any truth component is key here because it demonstrates that we can be affected by something even though it's fictional. As he says, upon learning of the stories, we might inquire whether they were true or false, yet still admit being emotionally affected by them. Fabrication does not entail a dissipation of emotion, but perhaps a switch - in the case of learning that we've been lied to, from genuine emotional to anger.
Carroll's stuff on linguistics is also interesting. Horrific monsters (or objects) come to represent a certain sense, rather than an explicit referent with truth content. The name Dracula conjures up all the propositions, details, descriptions and attributes that Stoker intended. And we can entertain these thoughts because, according to Carroll's notion of character identification, we share similar culture and appraisal of the monster. That seems to be pretty powerful. In his eyes, character identification involves an assimilation of the totality of the situation in which the characters are present. As I see it, it's a matter of the audience being omniscient while the protagonist is clearly embedded within the context of the story. Emotions, as Carroll argues, won't parallel because we're dealing with two different methods of viewing. It seems that he's asserting that what will overlap and display symmetry is our evaluation of the monster in question. When a promiscuous camp counselor is beset by Jason Voorhees, it's not that I share that character's emotion. Rather, I identify with the appraisal of Jason; he's a threatening dude with a machete that's quite capable of killing someone. The character realizes this as well but responds to the object in question, while Carroll seems to think that my response would involve sympathy towards the character and a general understanding of the situation overall. He sneaks a sort of altruism in there in that we can concerned with other characters, but naturally so to deflate any objections where true fear must consist in a concern for our own wellbeing. I think he's right to do this because we can clearly be concerned for characters who have no impact on our own egoistic intentions.
Carroll's methods work across film, literature and other mediums. I think he's crafted a fairly powerful cognitive-affective theory. But is he right to disregard belief? Aaaron Smutts argues that our beliefs play a large role in our emotions towards horror. Basically, it's harder to prove that things don't exist than to say that they do. We have no way of proving that vampires exist - but that's precisely what makes the belief hard to disregard. Smutts thinks these beliefs get trapped and etched into us from childhood, and it's the job of the skeptical characters in horror films to enact a "belief-revival process" that obliterates the audience's doubt towards the monster. Perhaps belief does play a role here, but I think that we can give Carroll the benefit of the doubt because he's merely asserting that belief is not always tied together to emotion. It could be, but it need not be, especially in the case of horror.
I'm thinking that an interesting first paper would be a sort of "inventory" of an art-horrific monster using Carroll's terms and methods........more coming on this....
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