What is Distinctive of Film Emotions?

Contemporary discussions on the nature of film viewers’ emotions—an issue as old as Gorgias (483–375 BCE) (Neill, 2006, p. 258, n. 1)—have primarily taken place around the debates originated by Radford (1975/2004) on the so-called fiction emotions in general; and, in particular, on the problem known as the paradox of fiction (Radford, 1975/2004, pp. 170, 172, 175). This context has favored overlooking both the similarities between film emotions and ordinary emotions on one hand, and the differences between film emotions and other fiction emotions—especially literature and theater emotions—on the other. My purpose here is to explore what, if anything, is unique of film emotions, how their uniqueness can be accounted for within current views of emotions (Scherer, 2005), and how this understanding can explain aspects of the film viewer's emotional experience so far neglected. ¹

The debates on the paradox of fiction have paid particular attention to the anomalies that supposedly characterized fiction emotions in general, without making a distinction between film emotions and other fiction emotions. Among these anomalies were that these emotions: (1) occur even if we simultaneously hold the belief that their intentional objects do not exist (Carroll, 1990, pp. 59–79); (2) are not apparently followed by an immediate disposition to act (Walton, 1990, p. 198); and (3) cannot be about (directed toward) what they seem to be about (because their intentional objects do not exist) (Walton, 1990, p. 197; Walton, 1997, pp. 38, 47). It has not always been noticed, though, that none of these anomalies, taken individually, are distinctive of the emotions we experience qua film viewers; or that, if we take them as a set, they do not distinguish film emotions from other emotions; or that we do not usually take any of these anomalies to be particularly problematic when we find them in other ordinary emotions (Moran, 1994, pp. 81, 79; Currie, 1997, p. 71).

Most of the attempts to find solutions to those supposed anomalies assumed that the focus of attention should be on the fictionality of the objects of our film emotions since this seems to be the key difference that explains our perception of these objects—and thus the arousal of the corresponding fictional emotions (Radford 1975/2004, p. 171; Walton, 1997, pp. 43–46; Currie, 1990, p. 184; Stecker, 2011, p. 297). Instead of starting from this “assumption of fictionality” (Plantinga, 2009/2011, p. 88), I propose to observe how these emotions are formed and how they develop; and to incorporate into their explanation two aspects of the film viewer's experience which have usually been disregarded: that film emotions seem to be about what we see on the screen; and that, if we are the ones experiencing these emotions, they must be somehow significant for us, that is, there must be something about us at stake. This proposal helps explain two important issues usually neglected in discussions on fictional emotions: (a) the differences between our empathy toward a real person and toward a film character and (b) why our emotional response to film objects does not come to an end once we finish watching the film.

If we attend to their arousal and development (including their postcinema life), what seems to be distinctive of film emotions is the unique and somehow conflictive confluence of five features: (1) they are triggered mainly by sensory perceptions (a feature not shared with literature emotions) in a fashion that is not very different from how observable real-life objects, people and events cause ordinary emotions (Moran, 1994, pp. 85–86); (2) they are originally caused by a greater number of simultaneous stimuli than ordinary-life emotions (a feature not possessed to the same degree by literature emotions); (3) their formation is uniquely guided and enhanced by the cinematographic medium (a featured not shared in the same degree with ordinary emotions, and not shared, in degree or kind, with literature emotions); (4) their disposition is interrupted, which is due to the fact that they have (intentional) objects that are (a) physically inaccessible to us and for which we are physically inaccessible (not shared with real-life emotions about observable objects but shared with literature emotions), but to which (b) we must attribute (to make sense of the film narrative) a human or animal subjective life (shared with literature emotions); and (5) they create in the viewer lasting emotional attachments to their objects (shared in different degrees with literature and, with more substantial differences, with real-life emotions).

The Anomalous Nature of Film Emotions: Ordinary Perception, Screen, and Story

If film emotions are the film viewer's emotions qua film viewer, we should consider film emotions primarily those which we experience as we watch a film, and which are about or caused by the content of that film. These are mainly emotions we have qua direct observers (about anything that is presented to us on the screen); or empathetic emotions insofar as we adopt the film characters’ point of view—even if we might not share their emotions (Carroll, 1990, p. 92; Gaut, 2006, p. 265). ² These two types are the emotions most scholars seem to refer to, implicitly or explicitly, when they talk about fictional emotions in the case of film. ³

Although there has been some discussion in debates on the paradox of fiction on the distinction between basic (e.g., fear) and complex (e.g., pity) emotions (Tullman, 2012; Stecker, 2011), such a distinction does not seem necessary for the present argument. Emotions about the viewer's own emotional responses (metaemotions) or about the use of the cinematographic medium would not meet the condition of being “about the content of the film.” However, emotions caused or partially caused by our uniquely personal response to something we see or hear in the film—“those [emotions] in which the spectator responds to the scenes on the film from the standpoint of his independent affective life” (Münsterberg, 1970, p. 53)—cannot be fully discarded. Among these are the “troubling cases” (Brock, 2007, pp. 218f) of emotions about the actors. These emotions may be fused into emotions about the film's content (understanding content as the film's narrative); but even if they are not (i.e., they remain about something else) they still can be said to be caused by the content of the film. ⁴ Similarly, emotions “for oneself” (Radford, 1975/2004, p. 174; Stecker, 2011, p. 306) or “self-directed” (Gaut, 2006, p. 265) which do not seem, in principle, to be about the story per se can also be said to be, in some sense, about the content of the movie (as I discuss below). Finally, emotions about the whole movie (i.e., the full content of the movie) which we may experience after watching it, emotions about our “affective trajectories” (Plantinga, 2009, ch. 5), cannot be either fully discarded insofar as, it can be argued, they seem to be a direct result of the series of proper film emotions we go through as we watch the film—what I have called somewhere else our “this-film emotional life” (Franco, 2023).

As mentioned, although we are dealing with fiction, assuming a priori a fictional/nonfictional, or fictional/real, distinction as the appropriate framework to think about film emotions might be problematic. If anything, how the fictional enters, if it does, our experience is rather the question. In the case of film, it has been a common assumption that, as we watch a movie, as Moran (1994) puts it, a “sense of fictionality” (p. 82) dominates over a “sense of realism” (p. 83); or that we find ourselves in a “fictional situation” (Plantinga, 2009, p. 67). Fictionality as a qualification of our perception would (supposedly) be caused by the fact that the object of our emotions is a fictional object. The assumption seems to be that either a belief or a certain (more or less conscious) attitude of affirmation that the object is fictional play a role in our perception and, consequently, in the resulting emotion as well. ⁵ Thinking in terms of different types of perception that cause different types of emotions, however, may impede seeing other possibilities opened by the very nature of human emotions, in particular, by the facts that (a) they are complex physiologicomental events, which (b) take a particular course (development) through a period of time. This means that we could, for example, encounter an original ordinary perception that triggers an ordinary emotion which, at some point in its development, might be altered in a certain manner (or manners) and, thus, would be followed by an altered (if compared with ordinary or more common types) course or development. And we could still think of experiences of this kind as “genuine emotional experiences” (Robinson, 2005, p. 228), rather than “quasi-emotions” (Walton, 1990, p. 196). ⁶ Something like this is what we see in film emotions.

As others have noted, an insufficient analysis of our “emotional repertoire” (Currie, 1997, p. 71) or an “inadequate survey of examples” (Moran, 1994, p. 79), may have contributed to see an unjustified uniqueness and significance in the feature of fictionality (see also Robinson, 2005, p. 144). But, as Prentice and Gerrig (1999) have suggested, it could be that “there is nothing unique about the experience of fiction, and no need to invoke special mental processes to account for it” (p. 530). As we watch a movie, and especially and more precisely as we respond emotionally to its content, do we fiction-perceive objects or do we just perceive objects? And would the former be defined by the type of perception (a fictional perception) or by the type of object (a fictional object)? And how would a supposed fictional perception relate to its corresponding fictional emotion? Could we respond fiction-emotionally when we have a nonfictional perception? And respond nonfiction-emotionally to a fictional perception? ⁷

Let us examine our experience. We are watching a movie and we see (on a screen) a shark coming out of the water. We experience fear—either for us or for others. From the strict point of view of what we see (and hear) we must say we see a shark—as we also see a shark when we are swimming in the Pacific and we encounter one. Both our experience of seeing a shark on a screen and of seeing a shark in real life seem to be of the same kind. Whether we see the shark on a screen or not is certainly relevant to explain our possible emotional response, but this does not amount by itself to justifying talking about fictional seeing or about seeing a fictional object. And agreeing with Matravers (1997, p. 82) that “our total experience” in the movie theater is different from real life does not either amount to talking about fictional watching.

Seeing a shark as we swim in the ocean almost always produces an emotional response; seeing a shark on a screen might not produce such a response. A certain evaluation—even if preconscious or unconscious—seems necessary for an emotion to be aroused. In this case, seeing the shark as dangerous could explain our fear. Seeing something as dangerous means seeing the perceived object's behavior (or, if inert, it’s possible use) as the potential cause of a loss regarding something of importance for us. But different conditions must be given for this evaluative perception to occur in real life and in the movie theater. Unlike simply seeing a shark on a screen, simply seeing a shark nearby as we swim in the ocean seems to be, if not enough, almost enough to perceive danger. Real-life observable events acquire almost immediately their significance from the context of our own life. Simply seeing a shark in real (adult) life is usually accompanied by (a) certain knowledge on our part of the type of animal a shark is, (b) certain awareness that in that situation the shark can hurt us, and, of course, (c) certain simultaneous perception of our own life as being important to us. On-screen presence means, on the other hand, that (b) above is missing, that is, that the shark is neither nearby nor can it attack us. In other words, whereas in real life, simply seeing a shark nearby usually implies seeing the shark as significant for us in an important way, this is not the case if we are simply seeing a shark on a screen.

As our intuition and the point of departure of the standard understanding of the paradox of fiction seem to accept, an inexistent shark cannot appear as dangerous to us. However, we do experience fear in the movie theater, and that fear seems to be caused by, and seems to be about, the on-screen shark. According to the original form of the paradox, for this to occur the object's existence must have entered our experience in the form of a belief which would be in conflict with the fictional attitude. But it has by now been convincingly defended that, rather than the need of a belief in the existence of the shark—a view that today “virtually no one accepts” according to Stecker (2011, p. 295), and which is “empirically false” according to Robinson (2005, p. 151)—a (conscious or unconscious) evaluative perception of dangerousness is sufficient to trigger the viewer's emotional response. ⁸ Furthermore, whether we hold such a belief or not—either in the existence or in the inexistence of the film object—and whether we hold it consciously or not, does not either seem to affect the formation or development of our emotional response to that object. The evaluative perception that is required for the arousal of the emotion seems to make it—at least the arousal, not its later development or maintenance—immune to the possible inhibiting effects of any belief (positive or negative) regarding the existence of the object. ⁹

It is not insignificant that the fact that our emotions (at least, those about observable events) do not discriminate between real and nonreal objects may be an evolutionary advantage. ¹⁰ Better to be prepared to run away immediately from all potential dangers, real or not, than to run away only from those we have confirmed to be real. ¹¹ That our emotions do not check or question the reality of the content of the perception that triggers them highlights both their independence from any existence belief and their immediate dependence on the perception itself. ¹²

But let us stop for a second on the more difficult version of the paradox: not the one that arises from the lack of a belief in the existence of the object but the one that emerges when we hold the belief in its inexistence (Radford, 1975/2004, p. 171). In these terms, the paradox results from the conflict between (a) the experience of an emotion about an object which appears to us as having a certain (emotion-inducing) quality and (b) our conscious belief that the object does not exist or does not possess that quality. We cannot be scared about an object if we know that object does not exist or is not dangerous. And if such an emotional experience occurred, we should conclude the viewer was not simultaneously holding this conscious negative belief. But let us assume the viewer holds such a belief. Under these conditions, why is it that our conscious negative belief does not impede the arousal of the emotion? Don’t we normally try to defuse negative emotions by consciously enhancing our awareness of precisely such beliefs? ¹³ Don’t we try to counter our fear of certain noises at night by reminding ourselves that they are produced by the wind?

Things that do not exist should certainly not scare us. But their inexistence—or the belief in their inexistence–might not be sufficient reason why this should not happen. Things that do not exist usually have, at least, three other features: (a) we cannot perceive them (they are imperceptible), (b) we cannot physically interact with them (they are remote), and (c) we do not think of them as having the capability to have human (esp. sentient) experiences. Film objects do not share with nonexistent things (a) and (c). This explains why we do not respond to them as we should to nonexistent things tout court. Film objects’ perceptibility makes of them potential objects of the first type of film emotions mentioned above—our emotions as observers— and the similarity of many film objects to certain real-life ordinary objects (i.e., to humans and animals) makes us think of them as being capable of a subjective life, which means they are potential objects of our empathetic emotions (the second type of film emotions). Film objects, thus, share only with nonexistent objects, at most, the second feature mentioned above, namely, their (physical) remoteness: they cannot physically affect us and they cannot be directly affected by us (in any way, physical or not).

The fact that film objects are both perceptible and remote is the first aspect of their anomalous nature. Being perceptible and remote—that is, not being part of our immediate physical world—is an anomaly from the point of view of our “natural perceptual responses” (Plantinga, 2009/2011, p. 94) to the surrounding world. As Plantinga (2009/2011, pp. 93–94) reminds, “[t]he human brain did not evolve to interact with the visual media, or indeed, with representations of any sort.” We see the real shark as a danger not just because of its perceptible features but because, in real life (i.e., in a world unmediated by screens), simply being able to see the shark means the shark is nearby (insofar as our field of vision demarcates nearbyness) and, barring the presence of obstacles, this means physical accessibility to us. The nearby shark can hurt us. Perception unmediated by screens usually indicates reality and urgency (the object exists in the proximity). The mediation of a screen usually removes this significance. Passing near a screen showing a shark does not normally cause fear. But when we are immersed in a film, our emotional response seems to be as if the shark were nearby, as if its presence required immediate attention.

Film objects are not just simultaneously perceivable and remote. Their perceptibility is also of a particular kind. Unlike real-life perceptibility, film objects are presented “from the best possible angle” (Oatley & Gholamain, 1997, p. 269) to serve the “narration” which, according to Tan (1996) is “the systematic evocation of emotion in an audience” (p. 250). Films are for Tan (1996)—“more than anything else”—“a genuine emotion machine” (p. 251). The resources of the cinematographic medium guide our attention toward—“attention is very often the first step in emotional arousal” (Robinson, 2005, p. 77)—and makes more prominent, the object's emotion-inducing features. This, together with our previous emotional experience (Levinson, 1990, p. 79), strengthens our emotional response which, in turn, further deepens—makes still more anomalous—the conflict perceptibility/remoteness, that is, the abovementioned first anomaly.

The second feature of the anomalous nature of film objects is that, despite being nonexistent, we must attribute to some of them a subjective life if we want to make sense of the artificial (created) story of which they are part. “[O]nce immersed in this [imaginary] world the reader treats fictional characters as persons, allowing them their rights, fearing for them, laughing at them, pitying them” (Novitz, 1980, p. 282). Whereas we may perceive emotion-inducing features in any film objects (as observers), we perceive emotion-experiencing (or, more generally, sentient) objects when it comes to human-like or animal-like objects in a story. Thus, perceptibility plus being-part-of-a-story creates a second conflict: nonexisting and yet emotion-experiencing beings.

Summing up, the full genetic deformation of film emotions results from (i) sensorially perceiving things (including people and animals) and events, (ii) on screens, that (iii) are part of a created story. Such doubly anomalous nature (perceptibility and remoteness, inexistence and sentient life) results in a doubly anomalous perception of these objects which explains our also anomalous emotional responses to them. The general pattern of this anomalous emotional response is this. A normal (i.e., ordinary-like) arousal of our (film) emotions finds its otherwise normal development interrupted, first, by our awareness of the remoteness (indicated by the presence of the screen) of their intentional objects and, second, by our awareness of their artificiality—that is, of their inexistence at least within the physical and human (and animal) world we inhabit. ¹⁴ Remoteness also sets other limits on the film viewer's emotional life: we cannot have emotions that depend on physical interactions—emotions such as shame, regret, remorse, or embarrassment (see Brock, 2007, pp. 217–218).

Through habit, rather than via a sort of fictionality attitude, we learn to perceive objects and events that appear on screens, not as nonreal, but as remote, that is, physically inaccessible to us. Notice, however, that on-screen presence is not an all-or-nothing causal factor in our emotional response. We modulate our awareness of this presence depending on whether our emotional response is negative or positive, and on whether this response is for us or for others. The greatest increase in our awareness of that presence usually accompanies negative emotional experiences about apparent direct dangers for us. And the greatest decrease seems to correspond to positive emotional responses about goods for others. In other words, our screen awareness has a protective nature: it diminishes from negative-for-us emotions (highest) to positive-for-others (lowest) emotions. We reduce our fear or our sadness (negative emotions) by maximizing the separation of the fictional and the real; we increase our joy by minimizing that separation. In real life, we often adopt a similar protective attitude when it comes to perceivable events: we turn away or cover our face when it might be too painful to watch certain events. But whereas in real-life our main defense is to block our senses, in the movie theater we have two options: blocking our senses or increasing our awareness of the existence of the screen.

Besides the screen, we are usually aware from the beginning of the movie, or realize it sooner or later, that we are watching a created story. This means that, since that moment, the intentional objects of our film emotions are not part of the real world, and, thus, they lack one of the basic causal factors that give duration to ordinary emotions: awareness of their continuous real-world existence. This is why my sadness about a character's misfortunes will quite likely not have the same life my (ordinary) sadness about a relative's long-term disease may have. The latter is maintained by my recurrent awareness of the continuous existence of its intentional object. My film sadness can linger after I leave the movie theater, but as a sort of passive effect in me. It is not kept active by my awareness that the film character is still suffering.

Summing up, whereas an evaluative perception plus awareness of the presence of the screen means a potential emotion accompanied by the awareness of inaccessibility of its object, an evaluative perception plus awareness that its object is part of a created story means a potential emotion accompanied by the awareness that its objects cannot be sentient (they exist in a world where no subjective experience occurs). The former means we cannot physically affect or be affected by film objects the latter that, since they cannot have subjective experiences, neither can we alter them nor should we be affected by them. These two moments of awareness interrupt what otherwise would be the normal course of an emotional response to observable events (or to mental states we infer from them). The arousal and the interruptions correspond to two distinctive moments in a viewer's mental engagement: immersion (reality) and double awareness (inaccessibility and inexistence in a sentient world like ours). The former favors the generation of the emotion; the latter deprives its disposition to act of its immediate object. Film emotions' dispositions cannot be action tendencies towards their intentional objects. This does not mean, however, they are not dispositions. ¹⁵ I return to this issue in The (Interrupted) Disposition of Film Emotions section below.

Thus, if compared with ordinary (observer and empathetic) emotions triggered by perceptible objects and events, film emotions are, paradoxically, both strengthened (in their arousal) and interrupted (in their development). Whereas a strengthened perception of the cinematographically enhanced shark demands a more urgent emotional response than most real-life objects do, our awareness of the remoteness of the object cancels any demand for immediate action that could be part of the emotion's disposition. Furthermore, our awareness that the story is created both cuts off the source that can keep the emotion active once we leave the cinema and removes from us any possible remaining obligation to act (either now or in the future). Thus, film objects acquire—either in successive or simultaneous moments—two guises that are in apparent conflict. They are urgent-attention demanding objects that turn out to be both not-in-our-physically-accessible-world objects (first conflict), and not-in-a-sentient-world objects (second conflict). And this causes and explains the anomalous nature of film emotions: an enormously strengthened arousal is followed by a weakened and shortened development and by an interrupted disposition.

Film Emotions Versus Other Emotions About Nonexistent Objects

A careful observation of the similarities between film emotions and other ordinary emotions about nonexistent objects seems to have played a relatively marginal role in debates on the nature of fictional emotions, and especially of film emotions. ¹⁶ Not all emotions about nonexistent objects are the same. Think about the emotions you experience when either you read, or an anonymous person (someone you do not know or with whom you do not have and cannot have any personal relation whatsoever) tells you about something that could have occurred to someone you do not know or about whose reality you do not know anything (not even whether they exist). A fiction film is a story of this sort. But whereas oral or written stories require a special effort of our imagination, filmed stories do not require of the viewer a greater imaginative effort than the one required by the events (or people or animals) we may observe in our ordinary life. ¹⁷ To achieve a greater immersion, the film viewer can even remove—or experience the removal of—the screen from her perception (lesser needs for the effort to avoid thinking about the screen); the reader cannot eliminate (from sensory perception) the mediation of the book. If anything, considering movies’ ability to focus and guide our attention, we can say viewing a movie might require even less imagination than real-life events. This is where the first and main difference between film and other (oral or written) fictional stories resides: in how they produce emotions in us. The latter, through imagination; the former, through actual sensory perceptions. ¹⁸ None of this means that another form of imagination, what is usually called simulation, may not be central, not only to film and literature emotions but also to real-life emotions. It is via simulation (understood as the “process whereby someone, so to speak, internally mimics perceptual processes bearing on particular causal sequences that he or she does not actually perceive” [Hogan, 2022, p. 136]) how we understand and empathize with others’ emotions.

Thus, the common causal denominator to film and literary emotions is not the imagination (as creation of sensory perceptions of events and behaviors, not simulation) but rather (a) the inaccessibility of the world in which the intentional object of our emotion appears to exist and (b) the existence of that object in a story within which it becomes emotionally significant. ¹⁹ The sensory perceptions that cause film emotions, however, are different from those that cause real-life emotions in at least two important ways. The camera and sounds can guide viewers more precisely and, thus, to a more uniform response (or to more “homogeneous experiences” [Tan, 1996, p. 154]); and, as already mentioned, they can also generate more and stronger (emotional) stimuli (an “unusually high concentration of emotional stimuli” [Tan, 1996, p. 50]) resulting in more complex emotional responses (at least, in comparable periods of time). Thus, as film viewers we are more passive with respect to the causes of our emotional responses than as real-life observers or as literature readers. ²⁰ This, together with the very reasons why (we can say) we usually go to the movies, make us also more cooperative than resistant. As Tan has put it, not only because of the “great difficulty” to resist the “temptations of the illusions offered by the feature film” (Tan, 1996, p. 249) but also because “the natural audience” might be more interested in “maximizing rather than, say, tempering or transforming an emotion” (p. 249).

Both literary fiction and films can be said to distinctively guide the reader or viewer through a particular emotional life. In this sense, we are both more passive than in ordinary life and under more unusual and intense experiences (van Peer, 1997, p. 223; Oatley & Gholamian, 1997, p. 270). But whereas film emotions can be said to be also an accelerated, compressed (greater number of simultaneous stimuli), and reinforced (if we pay attention to their arousal) version of ordinary emotions, literature emotions are rather a slowed-down (temporally speaking), prolonged (in time), and more controlled variation. We read at our own pace; we watch and hear at the movie's fixed pace. The fiction reader is exposed to a longer and slower formation and development of her emotions—which does not mean this cannot result in a distinctive literary emotional complexity. The lack of the cinematographic medium and the reliance on imagination mean also that the fiction reader is exposed to less external guidance and less urgent stimuli per unit of time. All these mean that the literature reader may be able to exert more control over the arousal of her emotions.

Summing up, the formation of (fiction) film and (fiction) literature emotions differs mainly in two important ways: (1) unlike a fiction reader's emotions, which require the imagination, a film viewers’ emotions are caused by sensory perceptions which are almost indistinguishable from those that usually cause ordinary-life emotions about perceivable objects (including humans and animals) and (2) the cinematographic medium can alter our perceptions in such a way that they may trigger emotional responses that are more carefully guided, and phenomenologically stronger than those generated by literary objects (and most real-life objects). These two general features—that is, a sensory but altered perception—imply and explain (3) the film viewer's less active participation in the formation of her emotions than the literature reader ²¹ ; and (4) the film viewer's experience, insofar as she is exposed to a greater range of stimuli, of emotions of greater complexity in less time.

Intentionality: Yes, Our Fear Is About the Shark

One of the benefits of the view, rejected above, that the viewer must be holding the belief in the nonexistence of the shark while she watches the movie, is that this explains the long-standing agreement among viewers and scholars alike that the film viewer's emotion cannot be about the on-screen shark. According to this view, our negative belief about the existence of the (fictional) object would, at least, not be in conflict with an emotion that, we are to assume, cannot be about that object. Even those who do not think that a belief about the existence of the object is necessary, usually accept that, in Stecker's words, “this [fiction] feeling is not directly related to or directed toward the events narrated in the story” (Stecker, 2011, p. 307). Against this received view, I propose to take seriously what our emotional experience seems to indicate, namely, that our fear is about the (on-screen) shark, and that it may be so, as it is also the case with ordinary emotions, because the shark appears to be dangerous to us (as I explain below, either directly or indirectly: because it can hurt us or other fictional characters that are important for us). ²²

Carroll's view that our film emotions are about our “thought content,” not about the fictional object, is one of the intermediary positions which rejects both the need of a belief in the existence of the object and the idea that our emotions are about what we perceive on the screen. ²³ It is not clear, though, if this solution were acceptable, why we should not say the same thing of real-life emotions. If the latter's arousal is of a similar nature, should such a feature not be shared by both film and ordinary-life emotions? This would imply that none of our ordinary emotions are about their apparent intentional objects, which seems difficult to accept.

So, is it true that we cannot accept that our film emotions are about the objects and events that we see on the screen? Insofar as an evaluative perception is necessary for an emotion to be aroused, its object, whether fictional or real, must also somehow have become significant for us (Robinson, 2005, p. 144). In other words, the nature of our emotions seems to require both an appraisal of the object and its relevance for us. Instead of denying the latter—as our first intuition, and a common assumption, might indicate—I propose to examine whether and how this can be possible.

The temptation to talk about significance in the story and significance in our world may create a false dichotomy. Significance occurs only in the viewer, who exists only in the nonfictional world. The story (fictional world) or our world (reality) can be references of meaning but they are not loci of our experience. The film viewer, as an emotional subject, is the locus of all her emotions. As emotions, film emotions are part of our one and only emotional life (the set of all our emotional experiences). Regardless of whether we could talk about a parallel fictional emotional life, (a) I am the one crying both the death of a friend and the death of Anne in Amour (dir. M. Haneke, 2012) and (b) if my past emotions (film or otherwise) affect my life, they do so in the real world (not in a fictional one).

So, what significance may the film characters, objects or events have for us and how can they have acquired it? In which sense can our (film) fear be fear of the shark? Let us take first the case in which we are responding to the perception that the shark is about to attack one of our favored characters. I suggest that our fear is aroused by the perception that the target of the shark's fury is an object that belongs to our emotional world, understanding the latter as the set of all the objects to which an individual is somehow (in different degrees) emotionally attached, that is, which have become emotionally significant for her. Our favored character has become part of our emotional world as we have been watching the movie (cf. being part of “our group” in Robinson [2005, p. 151]). Similar to real-life objects, film objects are incorporated into our emotional world as we form an emotional relation to them, even if it is only for the duration of the film. And insofar as the objects of our emotional world (fictional and nonfictional) are related to each other, the film can also reconfigure previous emotional relations. Our emotional response to a film city, for example, may create an emotional attachment to that film city but also alter our emotional relation to other real cities we know.

This means that an attack on a favored character is an attack on our emotional world. And this is an attack on us insofar as our wellbeing is directly affected (potentially damaged in this case). The attack will be felt with different degrees of intensity depending on the strength of our emotional attachment to that character. And this strength will, in turn, reveal the degree of significance that character has acquired for us. That significance, as in the case of real-life emotional objects, depends in part on relations to other significant objects. “The stronger my concern for Clarice Starling's well-being, the greater my suspense as she confronts Buffalo Bill in his dark basement” (Plantinga, 2009, p. 75). These relations, once again, are not limited to the film-world objects: a film object's significance affects and is affected by our attachment to other film and nonfilm objects, real and fictional objects, that constitute our emotional world.

The case of fear for ourselves could be similarly explained, but as a sort of limit case: we are fearful, in this case, for what is probably most significant in our own emotional world: ourselves. Another question is how this is possible when we watch a movie. We can understand these cases in at least two ways: fear because we perceive a direct danger to ourselves or a danger to an imaginary fictional character whose place we occupy. The former would result from the disappearance from our awareness of both the presence of the screen and the artificiality of the story. Under these conditions, the shark appears to us as if we are encountering it nearby in real life. The second option—imagining ourselves as a character—could explain our experience but might not reflect the standard attitude of the film viewer. Actively imagining ourselves as a missing character within the reach of a shark seems to be, rather than the direct result of any degree of immersion in the film narrative, one of the many possibilities of our imagination.

We can say then that our fear as film viewers is about the shark. And it is so insofar as it represents a potential danger for our emotional world. We perceive a greater or lesser danger depending on the strength of our emotional attachment to the objects or people affected by the prospect of the shark's attack. A fictional object (e.g., a shark) that can cause the loss of objects or characters that are significant for us produces fear because it would represent a loss in our emotional world. In our ordinary life we similarly feel fear when, for example, a city where we used to live might be under some form of danger. This fear can still be said to be fear for us. On the other hand, a shark that causes fear in a fictional character that has become significant for us will cause fear in us because, as it occurs in real-life, those that are significant for us are also those toward which we feel greater sympathy. This would be, in common parlance, fear for others. But we can also rephrase it according to the emotional-world view I am presenting here. We could call it shared fear, or fear for us. Your fear is mine because the danger for you is danger for me insofar as you are a significant member of my emotional world.

Our emotional world is made of both real and nonreal objects. They belong to this world just because they are emotional. Relations in this world depend on this emotional nature. As emotional objects, their significance for us (for our wellbeing) is of a comparable nature regardless of their reality. Both real and fictional objects can affect our wellbeing by altering the current state of our emotional world. We should not think about that alteration as being necessarily mitigated in the case of film objects. In fact, they may become more significant for us, especially while we are watching the film (but in occasions also afterwards), than real-life objects to which we may have been emotionally attached for a good part of our life.

But there are at least two noticeable differences regarding the significance of real and film emotional objects, one regarding the reference of this significance and one regarding its formation. Unlike our emotions about real objects, our emotions toward film objects may not reveal to us a deficiency (in the case of negative emotions) or a gain (positive emotions) resulting from the possession of those (intentional) objects or qualities. We do not gain or lose anything in the real world. They rather reveal benefits or damage to our emotional world—which also implies to our wellbeing. If (emotionally) joining goods, we can say, makes us more perfect (Descartes 1649/1985, art. 139), adding to our emotional world fictional goods also should increase our perfection. And regarding the formation of this significance, we should notice that our emotional attachments to real and to film objects are affected by different causal factors. Temporal length, personal interaction, and physical proximity (or accessibility) play to the advantage of the formation, strength, and duration of our real-life emotional attachments. The cinematographic medium favors the formation of film-object emotional attachments in a different fashion: a faster formation of significance regarding more objects and more qualities in those objects (in less time). This means that the film can potentially alter, even if often only (but not always) provisionally, our emotional world in a more substantial manner.

This emotional-world view of film emotions could explain why our emotional response—and our subsequent emotional attachment—to the content of documentaries seems to be of a mixed sort if compared to our response to both (observable) real-life and film objects and events. Knowing that we exist in the same world we see on the screen may indicate partial accessibility and, thus, may strengthen our response (and even move us to action). ²⁴ But, although the documentary viewer perceives, as we do in real life, real objects, documentary objects lack physical proximity. Furthermore, the very on-screen presence and the lack of temporal proximity jeopardizes the possibility of perceiving real-life (i.e., physical) accessibility to the very intentional object. This could explain in part why the documentary might cause comparatively weaker emotional responses than real-life events. Accordingly, if any, the responsibility for action would be, at least, delayed rather than immediate. The (usual) lack both of a story and of the full use of the cinematographic medium (at least for emotion-inducing purposes) could also help explain our comparatively weaker emotional attachment to documentary than to film objects.

Theater emotions also show a mixed nature. Unlike documentary emotions, theater emotions are produced via sensory perceptions that appear to be as unmediated (no screen) as our ordinary perceptions of real-life events. But this occurs within an environment (the theater) that clearly indicates inaccessibility. And, although events are occurring in front of us and the actors are present in the theater, the theater itself may be more present in our perception than the screen for the film viewer. Unlike documentaries, and similarly to other fictional representations (e.g., film and literature), as theater viewers our dispositions do not even have the same (i.e., the existing) world as their possible field of action. On the other hand, theater emotions benefit from the context of significance provided by the story as well as by the impact on the viewer of the acting and the staging. Thus, we should expect, in general, theater emotions to be experienced with lesser intensity than both real-life and film emotions but maybe not than documentary emotions. This, however, may apply mainly to documentaries about ordinary life and people. Documentary viewers’ emotions can certainly surpass in intensity any fictionally acted (film or theater) emotions in cases in which extraordinary events are presented or, as we commonly say, when reality may surpass fiction (e.g., a documentary on the events of September 11, 2021).

Finally, the above emotional-world view of the intentionality of film emotions can explain two phenomena usually forgotten or not fully addressed by students of fictional emotions: (1) the perdurance and quality of the viewer's emotional agitation once the movie is over and (2) the differences in our empathy toward film characters and real people.

(1) Why are we still affected by the emotions aroused by a film once it is over? Since, regardless of its cause and significance, any emotion may have its own physiological course, there is, in principle nothing strange in this experience (see, e.g., Robinson, 2005, pp. 78–79). But quite often this lasting effect seems to go well beyond the emotion's physiological course: something seems to have changed more permanently in the way we see or experience the world. Watching an (emotionally) powerful film often leaves us with the impression that the world seems to look and feel different.

The explanation for this could be that our emotional world has been affected beyond the limits of the subset of film objects incorporated into it as we watched the film. Other objects that make up our emotional world may have been affected: new emotional attachments may have been created, and old ones may have been reconfigured. And since this is a question of degrees, we can accordingly expect the emotional impact of a film to last for a few seconds, for a few days, or for months after the movie is over. In any case, we can say that, yes, the world has changed: our world, our emotional world (of real and nonreal objects), has been altered—by (fictional) events which have occurred (in the film).

This means that we should also revisit the assumption made by Radford (1975/2004) in his famous mental experiment regarding the effects of realizing that a story we had taken to be real is actually “false.” According to him our emotional response would be extinguished at that moment: “this would make tears impossible, unless they were tears of rage” (Radford, 1975/2004, p. 170). ²⁵ But our experience indicates the opposite: our emotional response often persists even after finding ourselves responding to non-real objects. We can now explain why: we are still responding to the alteration of our emotional world caused by the original (fictional, “false”) story.

We should certainly expect the newly discovered truth to have some impact on our original emotional response, but of a different kind. Anything in that original response which may have to do with a concern about the wellbeing of someone who we took to be real (and who is significant for us) will certainly be alleviated. But this is not enough to defend that our emotional response disappears. And there is another obvious alteration after the discovery of the truth that becomes explicit if we compare the lingering emotional effects of events that we used to consider real (and we have now discovered to be false) with the common ongoing emotional effects of events we never stopped taking to be real. Unlike the former, the latter—which still actively color our world—continue imposing responsibilities on us (demands for action). This is precisely what would be gained if we had the experience opposite to Radford's experiment, namely, if after watching a film believing it was a created story, we later found out that it was based on real events.

(2) The above emotional-world view can also help explain the main differences between our empathy toward real and film objects. Although we can agree with Neill that “empathizing with a fictional character is not […] radically different from empathizing with an actual person” (Neill, 2006, p. 257; see also Boruah, 1988, p. 126), our emotional attachment to film objects is affected by unique factors. If we accept, as it seems, that the objects to which we are usually more strongly attached happen also to be real objects, we should expect that a film that alters primarily our emotional attachments to real objects would have a greater impact on us than a film that only alters our emotional attachments to fictional objects. This may explain why science fiction films seem to have, in general, less power to alter our emotional world. It could also explain why the strong effects of some film emotions may still last less than the effects of comparable (or even weaker) real-life emotional experiences. This this may not be so much, as we may believe, because the former may create emotional attachments to nonexistent objects, but rather because they are attachments to objects actively significant for us for a shorter period of our lives (usually the period the film lasts). The sadness caused by a film character's actions would be comparable to a real-life sadness caused by events of a similar kind that have been emotionally significant for an equivalent short period of time; and in the case of sympathetic sadness, to events that have occurred to people with whom we have not had any direct relation whatsoever before that brief period of significance and with whom we will not have any relation afterwards. (An “equivalent short period of time” should be understood here, rather than as “equivalent” in time units, “equivalent” regarding the type of events that occur in the film.) In sum, unlike our ongoing relation to emotionally significant real persons, our relation to emotionally significant film characters is deprived of its active causes once the movie is over: it loses the potential life it could still have through the continuous personal interaction with the object or, at least, through our periodic awareness that the characters still exist in our world.

The (Interrupted) Disposition of Film Emotions

The keys to explain the distinctive features of our emotions about film objects or events are, then, (a) from the point of view of the causes of their arousal, the strong similarities with emotions about observable real-life objects, people, and events; (b) from the point of view of their intentional object, whether it may be seen as cause of relevant alterations of our emotional world (i.e., the network of objects to which we are emotionally attached); and (c) regarding their disposition, whether the film viewer perceives accessibility to their intentional object, and artificiality in the events and subjective experiences that occur in the film (which means inexistence for the purposes of feeding our sympathetic or empathetic responses and of imposing on us any future obligation). (c) Explains what I have called above interrupted disposition—and, thus, why film emotions can be considered interrupted emotions. ²⁶ Let us see this.

Notice, first, that saying that our emotions incline us (i.e., dispose us) to act does not mean that they necessarily make us act. Lack of action does not mean lack of disposition. And this is so not only in cases in which something (including our own will) might stop us from acting. It is also the case when the disposition cannot lead to action because there is no world where that action can occur, such as our film pity, which might dispose us to help a film character even if there is no world where we can help her. And second, since the action itself—excluding expressions, automatic reactions or reflexes which, as their names indicate, we do not consider proper actions—is not part of the emotion per se, its absence should not imply questioning whether we are dealing with proper emotions. ²⁷

A disposition not followed by action is not a feature distinctive of film emotions. It might occur in real-life emotional responses for different reasons, for example, the events occur far away, it might not be safe for us to act, or we might not have the means to take action. In some of these cases we may transfer our original disposition toward other related objects or situations, something which could also occur in the case of film emotions. “[O]ur emotions toward social phenomena or situation types or categories of persons may quite intelligibly be engaged by the course and particulars of the fiction” (Levinson, 1990, p. 79). And if, as it has been argued by others regarding art in general (Feagin, 1997, p. 60), and literature in particular (van Peer, 1997, p. 223), film emotions somehow shape our character, they can be said to also dispose us to act in an indirect sense (i.e., via our character). But we can additionally argue, which is more problematic, that film emotions’ dispositions can, not only lead to actions (in general), but to actions in the real world about (not toward) their original intentional (film) objects, that is, actions after we have watched the movie (not while we are watching it). ²⁸ I return to this below.

To say that a film emotion's disposition to act is interrupted means that, although it occurs, at some point it is affected by the awareness that any action is impossible. The interruption occurs as the film emotion's disposition encounters—or enters in conflict with—our awareness that the intentional object is not only inaccessible to us but also inexistent in a (past or present) sentient world. At this moment the disposition becomes (at least, partially) unrealizable, not because we may not find the appropriate means for action, but because it guides our attention (and action) toward an object to which—or about which—nothing can be done (because nothing is occurring anywhere to that object or to any other object we are seeing on the screen). We can say that a proper object for our disposition (to act) is missing. ²⁹ And this affects, not only the possibility of action, but also the disposition itself, which is not fully developed. As a result, the perdurability of the emotion is also altered. Emotions can be about fictional objects; dispositions to act cannot (in a proper sense). Such dispositions remain incomplete qua dispositions, not as actions. When we feel disposed to help the film character, we want to help her in her world. Our (film) disposition is not about changing the story in which the film character exists; it is not about changing the film qua object in the real world. It is about doing something in the fictional world. Film emotions’ interrupted dispositions are, thus, not cases of misdirected intentionality, or of lack of intentional object, or of unidentifiable object. Film emotions have proper intentional objects that happen to be improper objects of a disposition to act toward them.

Our experience as film viewers shows that the very elimination of the causes of the interruption results in proper (uninterrupted) dispositions. This usually occurs when we are fully immersed in the film, something which may occur without “the viewer experiencing any appreciable involvement with the events taking place on the screen” (Tan, 1996, p. 153). In this state of mind, we often become unaware that we exist in a world inaccessible to the fictional characters (and vice versa). We experience film events either as if we existed in the film's world or as if only the film's world existed (and we were part of it). Notice that a similar immersion is often produced if our awareness of the presence of the screen is weakened by, for example, watching a movie on a screen that surrounds us completely or whose physical limits we cannot see. A second type of situation in which we experience a (proper) disposition to act is the one in which we take the content of the film to be about the real world, that is, about existing people, places, or events. Both in-one-world experiences—that is, in-the-film-world or in-the-real-world experience—resemble real-life experiences. And both may lead us to actions aimed at changing our lives or the world.

Robinson (2005) has explained the lack of action in the film viewer's emotional responses as “the result of cognitive monitoring that succeeds the initial affective appraisal and results in the suppression of the relevant action tendencies” (p. 153). This “cognitive monitoring” is “the process…that modifies our responses, changes our focus, moderates our behavior,” a process which is “constant” “once an emotional process has been initiated” (p. 75). We may now be able to complete Robinson's view by indicating what exactly, which new information in this case, is brought back into the emotion process: our perception of the inaccessibility and of the not-in-a-sentient-world presence of the intentional object of our film emotions.

The “suppression of the relevant action tendencies,” however, may not be so obvious. As to “action tendencies” toward real objects, as mentioned above, it can be argued that movies may cause them indirectly by shaping our dispositions via the formation of our character; or, alternatively, by transference to similar objects or events in the real world. But we cannot either discard “action tendencies” about the intentional objects of our film emotions. Our newly formed affection toward a fictional character may lead to specific behaviors (words and actions) about that character once the movie is over. After watching Batman (dir. Tim Burton, 1989) we may not spend much time wondering whether Batman will have a restful night given all he went through in the film. But we may have become disposed, for example, to become irritated and defend him if we encounter negative representations of him in the real world.

Notice that when the transfer of dispositions occurs in the opposite direction, from real life to film objects, we simply think of it as a form of recognition of the real object in the film. Our affection toward our (real) city should dispose us to be affectionate toward (at least) certain representations of it in films. It should be so, we might think, because these cases are, in fact, reality-to-reality transfers. However, this is not always the case: once our real city appears in a film, we may not perceive it as the same city. Unlike the city we see in the local news, we do not always perceive our-city-as-part-of-a-story or our-city-represented-at-a-different-time as the city we live in. This means that redirecting our disposition from reality to the same object in fiction requires on the part of the viewer, at least, the additional task of overcoming—or neutralizing—the effect of knowing that the object is part of a created story (i.e., a film object).

Conclusion

The disproportionate disparity (and apparent conflict) between, on one hand, their strengthened arousal and, on the other, the weakened development and interrupted disposition, are the most distinctive features of the anomalous nature of film emotions. Whether this is enough, under current views of emotions, to consider them or not real emotions might require a longer discussion involving not only so-called “fictional emotions” but also the enormous diversity of real emotions. On my part, I hope I have at least shown two things: (1) what “fictionality” amounts to in terms of viewer's experience in the case of film emotions and (2) that there are sufficient reasons to consider these emotions as real if we agree that (a) all the relevant components of an emotion (on which there is consensus) are present (see, e.g., Scherer 2005) and (b) the unique variations identified here (regarding arousal, development, disposition, and intentional object) do not seem to be enough to talk about a difference in kind. ³⁰ All this means that the relevant contrast in this sense might not be “real”/“non-real” (including here “fictional”) but rather a softer “ordinary”/“non-ordinary” or “prototypical”/ “non-prototypical.”

More precisely, and if compared with other ordinary and fiction emotions, film emotions exhibit a unique and somehow paradoxical combination of features. They are: (1) about remote and inaccessible objects; (2) caused in a fashion similar to how real-life emotions about nearby perceivable objects are caused, that is, by (evaluatively) perceiving (not imagining) objects and events; (3) strengthened by the cinematographic medium's guidance, amplification and multiplication of stimuli (and, thus, resulting in strong emotional responses, attachments and dispositions); (4) interrupted in their dispositions by our awareness of the inaccessibility of their intentional objects); and (5) weakened in their postcinema development (by our awareness that film objects do not have a sentient nature that continues existing after the film is over). ³¹

If compared with literary emotions, the latter would not have (2), and they would not have (3) and (5) in the same degree of strength. If compared with theater emotions, (3) is their main difference and, consequently, they differ considerably in the contrast of this feature with (4) and (5). Emotions caused by static images of nonexistent objects share features with film emotions, but these images would not either have (2), that is, the quality of causing emotions as objects in real life do (since they do not exist, move, or live through continuous time); or (3) in a comparable degree (pictures not only lack the power of moving images but, most importantly, the power added by the cinematographic medium).

Film emotions, thus, share features with, but also differ from, both real-object (esp. in documentaries, theater and real life) and imagined-object emotions (esp. in literature). (a) Like real-object emotions (but unlike imagined-object emotions), film emotions are produced by evaluative sensory perceptions; (b) like real-object emotions (and imagined-object emotions), they dispose us to act in relation to their object; (c) unlike real-object emotions (and unlike other imagined-object emotions), they are considerably strengthened by the cinematographic medium through which we perceive the objects; (d) unlike real-object emotions (but not unlike imagined-object emotions), their disposition cannot be realized (because their objects are inaccessible to us); and (e) unlike real-object emotions (but not unlike imagined-object emotions), they usually loose, once the movie is over, the support of the causal factors that could keep them active.

We can now say that, in a sense, both those who have argued in favor and those who have argued against the causal role played by the belief in the reality of the intentional object of our film emotions might have been right. They both might have been right if (1) we separate the moment of arousal from the development and disposition of film emotions; (2) we place the relevant causal role of this belief in the development and disposition (not in the arousal); and (3) instead of seeing the content of that belief in terms of the reality status of the film object, we weaken and substitute it for a belief regarding its accessibility and presence-in-a-sentient-world status.