has some of the features of fear but is not fully experienced the way we would feel fear if we were watching a woman in real life hanging out a hotel window. After all, while a movie can provoke some reactions in its audience, we don’t do everything we would do if we were really afraid for Mal. Certainly, no one is calling 911 to report a suicide attempt. That’s just one of the most obvious examples of the difference between genuine fear and quasi-fear. If you reflect on your own experiences, you can probably detect other differences as well. While Walton’s view has persuaded a number of philosophers, it also has its staunch opponents. According to Walton’s critics, the biggest problem is that he is not very clear about what makes something an example of quasi-fear as opposed to genuine fear. The philosopher Noël Carroll offered a different take on our reaction to movies in his book The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (the paradox of fiction was one of two paradoxes he dwells upon in the book). Carroll does not deny that people are experiencing real emotions when watching a horror movie. Instead, he rejects the Threat Claim. We don’t need to believe that some real object poses an actual threat in order to provoke a reaction in the audience. Carroll argues that we can react to ideas as well as things. According to Carroll’s “thought theory” (so as to distinguish it from Walton’s “make-believe theory”), when we are watching Fischer experience a happy resolution in his relationship with his father, we react to the idea of joy that the scene presents. The idea of joy presented by the scene produces an emotion in us that is a genuine feeling. Carroll is very careful, however, to classify our reaction to the film as an example of an “art emotion.” Art emotions are still emotions, but they are emotional reactions to ideas, not to things. Imagine that Fischer is a friend of yours and you witness him finally coming to terms with all the expectations his stern father placed on him. As you see him pull the revised will and the homemade pinwheel out of the safe, you feel joy at his epiphany. Your joy would be a physical sensation directed at your friend Fischer, and it would undoubtedly have a visceral feel. Contrast that with how you feel when I tell you the story of someone who lived a long time ago and stopped living under his father’s shadow. Your joy would have a more detached, abstract quality. It would be an example of art joy.
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