Power, Horror and Ambivalence

Shaw, Daniel J

doi:10.5840/filmphil2001423

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…(On a qualifying note, this hypothesis may not apply to horror film viewers who appear to directly draw positive enjoyment from endorsing, if not identifying with, the aggressive and often sadistic behavior of the perpetrators [cf. Oliver & Sanders 2004; Shaw 2001]. )…”

Section: How the Arts Of Selecting Combining And Formally Elaboratimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception

Menninghaus¹,

Wagner²,

Hanich³

et al. 2017

Behav Brain Sci

234

205

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Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positive and negative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our DistancingEmbracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories.

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Section: How the Arts Of Selecting Combining And Formally Elaboratimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception

Menninghaus¹,

Wagner²,

Hanich³

et al. 2017

Behav Brain Sci

234

205

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Horror always starts with a boogeyman, or so we're told. Every canonical theory of horror in film, television, video games, and visual art suggests that the genre works on its consumers through the threat or depiction of terrible violence, typically at the hands of some kind of physical or psychological monster (see Carroll, 1990;Freeland, 2002;Perron, 2009;Shaw, 2001;Tudor 1997;Williams, 1991;Wood, 2003). Certainly that is what most horror stories and images are about.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dreadful Architecture: Zones of Horror inAlienand Lee Bontecou’s Wall Sculptures

Benson-Allott¹

2015

Journal of Visual Culture

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Architects have long held that visual encounters with designed spaces bring viewers into new worlds and generate new sensations and attitudes. As Peter Kraftl and Peter Adey write, ‘spaces are made in an ongoing, contingent sense, in styles that are not only symbolic, but more than representational – haptic, performative, material, and affective.’ Designed spaces interact with and affect the bodies they come in contact with; in short, they generate affect, including horror. By examining two very different types of built worlds – namely Lee Bontecou’s mixed-media wall-mounted sculptures (1959–1966) and the Nostromo set of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) – the author explores how visual encounters with the horror of the void unveil horror’s operation as a non-narrative zone of intensity. These examples reveal the differences between horror and fear, dread, and disgust (affects typically evoked by horror narratives) and horror’s independence from narrative and even figuration.

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Immersive and Pervasive Performance

Hoedt

2020

The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic

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Power, Horror and Ambivalence

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception

The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception

Dreadful Architecture: Zones of Horror inAlienand Lee Bontecou’s Wall Sculptures

Immersive and Pervasive Performance

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