Barbarous Spectacle and General Massacre: A Defence of Gory Fictions
Abstrak
AbstractMany people suspect it is morally wrong to watch the graphically violent horror films colloquially known as gorefests. A prominent argument vindicating this suspicion is the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA). The ARA holds that we have a duty to maintain a well‐functioning moral psychology, and watching gorefests violates that duty by threatening damage to our appropriate reactive attitudes. But I argue that the ARA is probably unsound. Depictions of suffering and death in other genres typically do no damage to our appropriate reactive attitudes, and until we locate a relevant difference between these depictions in gorefests and in other genres, we should assume that the depictions in gorefests do no damage. I consider and reject three candidate differences: in artistic merit, meaningfulness, and audience orientation. Until genre sceptics identify a relevant difference, we should accept the taste for gory fictions as we would any other morally innocuous variation in taste.
Penulis (1)
Ian Stoner
Akses Cepat
- Tahun Terbit
- 2019
- Bahasa
- en
- Total Sitasi
- 4×
- Sumber Database
- CrossRef
- DOI
- 10.1111/japp.12405
- Akses
- Open Access ✓