Neil Van Leeuwen is a professor of philosophy at Florida State University who likes spicy food with beer, pizza with wine, and then a movie.
A post by Neil Van Leeuwen
One of the most enduring sources of resistance to Kendall Walton’s now classic (1990) Mimesis as Make-Believe is his notion of “quasi-emotion.”
Case in point: just last week I received an email from a graduate student who had presented on Walton on quasi-emotions at a conference and had found the audience “quite unsympathetic.”
Walton tells us, to give the background, that quasi-fear is not the same thing as real fear. Giving us the example of Charles “fearing” the blob that seems to come towards him in the movie theater, Walton claims that the emotional state (let that be a neutral term) that Charles is in is not actual fear (like what you might feel when an aggressive Rottweiler growls at you) but quasi-fear. What’s that? Well, it’s a sort of make-believe fear that makes it fictionally but not actually the case that you are afraid of whatever (in the fiction) is causing it.
And this idea is meant to generalize to the many emotional states people have in response to fiction: the “sadness” I feel in response to Anna Karenina’s (fictional) death is quasi-sadness; the “anger” I feel at Uriah Heep’s manipulative schemes is quasi-anger; and so on.
Philosophical arguments aside, I think much resistance toward Walton’s notion of quasi-emotion stems from indignation. We cherish the emotional experiences we have in response to fiction so much that it feels almost like a dismissive insult to hear that they’re not “real” emotions. I wept and wept when Little Nell died! How dare Walton tell me my sadness wasn’t real!
The point of this blog is to revisit that reaction and to say that, in assessing the value of Walton’s view of emotional states people have in response to fiction, it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater (if it is bathwater, that is).
To see this, let’s return to Charles and the blob, and to have another neutral term let’s call the agitated state Charles is in when the blob appears to come toward him FR-fear (for fictional response fear). Walton’s key aim is to explain how Charles’s state of FR-fear integrates with his (Walton’s) wider theory of fictionality, according to which fictional representation is subsumed under the broader class of make-believe representation—which emerges in early childhood pretend play—where props prescribe certain imaginings in the contexts of certain games. Just as my waving a stick might prescribe imagining that I am casting a spell in a game of make-believe, a fictional film where a character on screen waves a stick (‘wand’) might also prescribe imagining that the character is casting a spell. The flickering film image is fundamentally the same sort of thing as the stick: a prop that prescribes imagining certain things in the context of a game. Hoes does FR-fear fit into this account? Well, just as a stick’s movement is an external prop that prescribes that we imagine a spell’s being cast, an emotional state of FR-fear is an internal prop that prescribes that we imagine being in a fear state. The appreciator of fiction is, effectively, make-believing that they are witnesses (or people who learn of events in some other way), and it is one of the principles of generation of this game of make-believe that FR-fear, as a spontaneously arising internal prop, generates a prescription to imagine being in a state of fear as witnesses.
And here the indignation rears its head again: So Walton is saying my intense and important feelings as a lover of fiction are just pretend emotions!
What I think is wrong with that reaction is the word “just” (re-read the sentence if you missed it), as if Walton thought that the status of the FR-fear in the game made it any less important as a psychological state. The other thing that’s wrong with that reaction, however, is that it blinds people to the wider theoretical value of Walton’s position.
Here it will be useful to distinguish three claims (the points I make here generalize to other emotional states besides FR-fear):
1. FR-fear is not real fear.
2. FR-fear is phenomenologically unlike real fear (or fear in believed-to-be-real situations).
3. Instances of FR-fear serve as a props in games of make-believe that constitute consuming fiction; i.e., they function as props that prescribe imagining that one experiences fear in response to learning about or witnessing certain events (those that are portrayed in the fiction by other props).
The indignation response, I think, comes from seeing that Walton makes claim 1. And 2 seems like the chief (purported) datum that is meant to support 1, such that if 2 falls 1 falls with it. Thus, the indignant consumers of Walton’s theory direct their energies at refuting 2 (it really does feel like fear!).
Yet this dialectic, as enticing as it is, is misguided for three reasons. First, it is an argumentative black hole—people arguing for or against 1 can (seemingly plausibly) appeal to any phenomenological similarities or differences with respect to 2 that suit their aims. Where do we go from there? Second—and more importantly—Walton’s real insight that is worth embracing is 3! (More on that in a moment.) Third, claim 3 is logically independent of 1 and 2, meaning that we can still accept 3 even if we reject the first two (and this is so even if Walton took 3 to motivate 1 and 2).
Let me expand on that third point. If I pick up a teacup in a game of make-believe and hold it to my lips, this collection of actions and props prescribes imagining that my make-believe character is drinking tea. So the teacup is itself a prop that, according to the principles of generation of this particular game, prescribes imagining a teacup (or a proposition about a teacup, etc.). Importantly, the relevant principle of generation here is an identity mapping: teacup = (fictional) teacup.
Well, if we grant that real teacups can serve as props that help make propositions about teacups fictional, then we can grant that real emotions can serve as props that help make propositions about those very same emotions fictional in a game of psychological participation in fiction. In other words, we can have 3 without 1 and 2. For what it’s worth, I think 2 is plausible on the basis of my own experience, and 1 ends up being a merely terminological choice once you see that the real point of the view, which after all arises in a chapter called “Psychological Participation,” is 3. But my point is we can agree on 3 even if you want to fight me on 1 and 2.
But why, you might ask, is 3 so cool? Here I think there is some heavy irony in the indignant reaction to Walton’s view. The indignant reaction portrays Walton as being dismissive of emotional states that arise in response to fiction (he’s saying they’re not real!). But actually, if 3 is Walton’s main point, what he is doing with his theory of quasi-emotion is elevating the consumer of fiction from being a passive receiver of information to being a co-author of the wider story that the make-believe game portrays: just as the text of a novel is a prop produced by the official author that makes certain propositions fictional, so too are the readers’ quasi-emotions internal props that make other propositions fictional (namely, those that concern the witnesses’ emotional reactions). Your internal states, those you have upon consuming the fictional text (or film, etc.), effectively co-create a version of the fictional world in which witnesses (including fictionalized you) have strong emotional reactions. Furthermore, your quasi-emotions are a key part of what make you a character in that wider story. In short, a quasi-emotion is an incredibly powerful thing: it makes you a co-author in a story in which you play a role.
So, whatever we think of 1 and 2, let’s not throw the baby out along with them: 3 deserves to stay. And let me mention what I think will be a downstream added bonus: on top of its inherent plausibility and the insights it generates (just mentioned), I think 3 can also help us understand much about the “emotions” (like outrage or phony outrage) people have in response to symbolic political and religious actions and events, which we might call political or ideological theatre. That, however, would be a blog for another time. In any case, I hope that on reading this some people’s views of quasi-emotion have switched over from “quite unsympathetic” to at least a little more sympathetic.
Reference:
Walton, K. L. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard University Press.