80 results
“The Nature of Horror,” from The Philosophy of Horror
-
- By Noël Carroll
- Edited by Asa Simon Mittman, Marcus Hensel
-
- Book:
- Classic Readings on Monster Theory
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 23 January 2021
- Print publication:
- 31 July 2018, pp 41-52
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
WHAT APPEARS TO demarcate the horror story from mere stories with monsters, such as myths, is the attitude of characters in the story to the monsters they encounter. In works of horror, the humans regard the monsters they meet as abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order. In fairy tales, on the other hand, monsters are part of the everyday furniture of the universe. For example, in “The Three Princesses of Whiteland,” in the Andrew Lang collection, a lad is beset by a three-headed troll; however, the writing does not signal that he finds this particular creature any more unusual than the lions he had passed earlier. A creature like Chewbacca in the space opera Star Wars is just one of the guys, though a creature gotten up in the same wolf outfit, in a film like The Howling, would be regarded with utter revulsion by the human characters in that fiction.
Boreads, griffins, chimeras, baselisks [sic], dragons, satyrs, and such are bothersome and fearsome creatures in the world of myths, but they are not unnatural; they can be accommodated by the metaphysics of the cosmology that produced them. The monsters of horror, however, breach the norms of ontological propriety presumed by the positive human characters in the story. That is, in examples of horror, it would appear that the monster is an extraordinary character in our ordinary world, whereas in fairy tales and the like the monster is an ordinary creature in an extraordinary world. And the extraordinariness of that world—its distance from our own—is often signaled by formulas such as “once upon a time.” […]
As I have suggested, one indicator of that which differentiates works of horror proper from monster stories in general is the affective responses of the positive human characters in the stories to the monsters that beleaguer them. Moreover, though we have only spoken about the emotions of characters in horror stories, nevertheless, the preceding hypothesis is useful for getting at the emotional responses that works of horror are designed to elicit from audiences. For horror appears to be one of those genres in which the emotive responses of the audience, ideally, run parallel to the emotions of characters. Indeed, in works of horror the responses of characters often seem to cue the emotional responses of the audiences.
Contrasts in the response of adjacent fjords and glaciers to ice-sheet surface melt in West Greenland
- Timothy C. Bartholomaus, Leigh A. Stearns, David A. Sutherland, Emily L. Shroyer, Jonathan D. Nash, Ryan T. Walker, Ginny Catania, Denis Felikson, Dustin Carroll, Mason J. Fried, Brice P. Y. Noël, Michiel R. Van Den Broeke
-
- Journal:
- Annals of Glaciology / Volume 57 / Issue 73 / September 2016
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 20 May 2016, pp. 25-38
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- HTML
- Export citation
-
Neighboring tidewater glaciers often exhibit asynchronous dynamic behavior, despite relatively uniform regional atmospheric and oceanic forcings. This variability may be controlled by a combination of local factors, including glacier and fjord geometry, fjord heat content and circulation, and glacier surface melt. In order to characterize and understand contrasts in adjacent tidewater glacier and fjord dynamics, we made coincident ice-ocean-atmosphere observations at high temporal resolution (minutes to weeks) within a 10 000 km2 area near Uummannaq, Greenland. Water column velocity, temperature and salinity measurements reveal systematic differences in neighboring fjords that imply contrasting circulation patterns. The observed ocean velocity and hydrography, combined with numerical modeling, suggest that subglacial discharge plays a major role in setting fjord conditions. In addition, satellite remote sensing of seasonal ice flow speed and terminus position reveal both speedup and slow-down in response to melt, as well as differences in calving style among the neighboring glaciers. Glacier force budgets and modeling also point toward subglacial discharge as a key factor in glacier behavior. For the studied region, individual glacier and fjord geometry modulate subglacial discharge, which leads to contrasts in both fjord and glacier dynamics.
Contributors
-
- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Afterword: Psychoanalysis and the Horror Film
-
- By Noël Carroll, Professor of the Philosophy of Art University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Edited by Steven Jay Schneider, New York University and Harvard University, Massachusetts
-
- Book:
- Horror Film and Psychoanalysis
- Published online:
- 14 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 28 June 2004, pp 257-270
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Because I have expressed reservations about the application of psychoanalysis to film studies in general (Carroll 1988) and to the horror film in particular (Carroll 1990), I have been invited to contribute a comment to this volume on the relevance of psychoanalysis to the horror film. The editor's intention to include dissenting voices in this anthology is as laudable as it is generous and frankly unexpected. But I don't know for whom this opportunity is scarier: me or the psychoanalysts. For I must enter the lair of the Other, while they must suffer the presence of a wolf in philosopher's clothing. I guess it all depends on who you think the monster really is.
Is psychoanalysis relevant to the analysis of the horror film? I think that the simple answer to this question is “Of course.” It is certainly relevant, even apposite, to the analysis of many horror films, because many horror films presuppose, implicitly or explicitly, psychoanalytic concepts and imagery. Forbidden Planet (1956), for example, is frankly Freudian. Its monster is called the Id, a phenomenon explained in explicitly psychoanalytic terms within the world of the fiction. Anyone interpreting Forbidden Planet is thereby licensed to explicate the film psychoanalytically for the same reason that an exegete of Eisenstein's The General Line (1929) would be correct in adverting to Marxist ideology. In both cases, the hermeneutical warrant is historicist.
Eisenstein’s Philosophy of Film
-
- By Noël Carroll
- Edited by Richard Allen, Malcolm Turvey
-
- Book:
- Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 25 January 2021
- Print publication:
- 03 February 2003, pp 127-146
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction: The Problem
In an early essay, co-authored with Sergei Yutkevich, Sergei Eisenstein celebrates film as the eighth art. Eisenstein and Yutkevich imagine a gathering of the seven classical muses at a sort of board meeting, when suddenly Charlie Chaplin, representing cinema, bursts in and confidently takes a seat on the ‘Council of Muses.’ This, of course, is an allegory signaling the advent of a powerful new medium, and it expresses a common wish of silent filmmakers and theorists alike: that cinema be accorded the status of art. For it would only be through its recognition as an artform, they thought, that film could command the respect its advocates believed it deserved. Like so many of his contemporaries, Eisenstein was committed to demonstrating that film, or at least certain types of film, could be art. That conviction not only marks his earliest essays, but also preoccupies – even haunts – him throughout his career.
Though this early essay sounds a recurring theme in Eisenstein's writings – the theme of film as art – it is uncharacteristic in at least one respect. It simply asserts that film is art. Chaplin, as cinema, muscles his way into the circle of muses and insolently defies anyone to try to oust him. It is easy to interpret this allegory as saying that in virtue of self-evident masterpieces like Chaplin's there can be no question that film is an art form. It is an established fact, so to speak; it requires no further argumentation, once palpably artistic achievements like Chaplin's are available for all to see.
And this, of course, is probably how film really did become an acknowledged artform. The proof of the pudding was in the tasting. Nevertheless, throughout the first part of the twentieth century, the lovers of film thought more was necessary. It had to be proven that film was an art. And this became a major burden of film theory in general and of Eisenstein's theory of film in particular. Thus, from the brash assertion that film was an art, Eisenstein's subsequent career was obsessed with showing this to be the case.
As I have indicated, this was a frequent theme of early film theory.
Toward a Definition of Moving-Picture Dance
- Noël Carroll
-
- Journal:
- Dance Research Journal / Volume 33 / Issue 1 / Summer 2001
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 22 July 2014, pp. 46-61
- Print publication:
- Summer 2001
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Almost since the inception of moving pictures, those pictures have often featured dance. The obvious reason for this is that the natural subject of moving pictures is movement. And dances—along with hurtling locomotives, car chases, cattle stampedes, tennis matches, intergalactic dog-fights, and the like—move. Thus, a significant portion of the history of moving pictures involves dance movement. Many moving-picture makers have devoted admirable amounts of effort and imagination to portraying dance in or through media as diverse as film, video, and computer animation. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to offer a philosophical characterization of this field of activity; that is, I will try to define moving-picture dance.
Many readers, learning of my intention, are apt to groan “labeling again, how boring.” To a certain extent I can sympathize with that sentiment. It is far more interesting to talk about work than it is to set about classifying it. The concrete achievements of the field are more important than abstractions about it. Nevertheless, despite my ready acknowledgment of this, I will persist for several reasons.
First, whenever festivals of this sort of work are held, it is very likely that at one time or another almost everyone present will be tempted to say of some work that it doesn't really belong on the program. Everyone complains about labeling, but sooner or later most people feel compelled to invoke some favorite definition of their own. For human beings, categorizations are unavoidable, even if we like to pretend indifference to them. And most of us can feign indifference only for so long; most of us have a breaking point. Thus, it seems to me a good idea to get this issue out in the open and to discuss it abstractly—to compare and contrast the various categorizations in play and to develop dialectically from them a comprehensive framework that makes sense of our practices and that resonates with our intuitions about its compass.
Introduction
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 1-4
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
This volume is a selection of my essays on the philosophy of art and aesthetics written between 1985 and 1999. The earliest essays in the volume coincide with the beginning of my career as a professional philosopher while working at Wesleyan University; the more recent articles, composed at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, seem as though they were written yesterday – undoubtedly a flaw of memory attributable to advancing age. When I look back at these essays, however diverse they may appear to the reader, they strike me as being united by several recurring threads.
The most pronounced thread is a reactive one: an opposition to aesthetic theories of art broadly and to its more distinctive variant, formalism, most particularly. Tutored in its discipline as an undergraduate, I have spent much of my career as a philosopher attempting to combat the limitations that aesthetic theories and formalism impose on the philosophy of art. It is from this reaction formation that the present volume derives its title – Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. For, in a nutshell, the dominant recurring theme in this book is that we much reach beyond aesthetic theories of art and their various prohibitions.
That is, we must not identify the essence of art with the intended capacity of artworks to afford aesthetic experiences. Nor must we agree with aesthetic theorists of art and formalists that art history, authorial intentions, garden-variety emotions, and morality are alien to proper commerce with artworks. My campaign against aesthetic theories of art, in a manner of speaking, organizes the first four parts of this book.
Visual Metaphor
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 347-368
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
INTRODUCING VISUAL METAPHOR
It is the contention of this essay that there are visual metaphors. That is, there are some visual images that function in the same way that verbal metaphors do and whose point is identified by a viewer in roughly the same way that the point of a verbal metaphor is identified by a reader or a listener.
The term “image” here is intended to refer only to human artifacts. It is not, for instance, meant to apply to the outlines of animals or the suggestions of faces discernible in clouds. The visual images that I have in mind in this essay are the products of intentional human activity.
By calling the images in question “visual,” I wish to signal that these images are of the sort whose reference is recognized simply by looking, rather than by some process such as decoding or reading. One looks at a motion picture screen and recognizes that a woman is represented; one looks at her hand and recognizes that she is holding a gardenia.
Such images, of course, are symbols. But comprehending such image-symbols does not rely upon codes nor could there be a dictionary according to which one might decipher or read such images. Rather one looks at the screen and recognizes that which the images represent, that is, wherever one is capable of recognizing the referents of the images in what we might call normal perception (perception not mediated by codes).
Art and Interaction
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 5-20
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Ideas of the aesthetic figure largely in two crucial areas of debate in the philosophy of art. On the one hand, the aesthetic often plays a definitive role in characterizations of our responses to or interactions with artworks. That is, what is thought to be distinctive about our commerce with artworks is that these encounters are marked by aesthetic experiences, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic perceptions, and so forth. Furthermore, the use of aesthetic terminology in such accounts of our interactions with artworks is, most essentially, “experiential” or “perceptual” where those terms are generally understood by contrast to responses mediated by the application of concepts or reasoning.
Second, notions of the aesthetic are also mobilized in theories of the nature of art objects; the artwork, it is claimed, is an artifact designed to bring about aesthetic experiences and aesthetic perceptions, or to engender aesthetic attitudes, or to engage aesthetic faculties, et cetera. Thus, these two claims – that aesthetic responses distinguish our responses to art, and that art objects can be defined in terms of the aesthetic – though ostensibly independent, can, nevertheless, be connected by means of a neat, commonsensical approach that holds that what an object is can be captured through an account of its function. The art object is something designed to provoke a certain form of response, a certain type of interaction. The canonical interaction with art involves the aesthetic (however that is to be characterized). So the artwork is an object designed with the function of engendering aesthetic experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and so forth.
PART V - ALTERNATIVE TOPICS
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp -
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
PART III - INTERPRETATION AND INTENTION
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp -
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Simulation, Emotions, and Morality
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 306-316
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Recently, a new theory of the way in which narrative fictions engage the emotions and the moral understanding has come to the fore in Anglo-American philosophy. Advanced by Gregory Currie and others, it attempts to exploit a theory developed in the context of the philosophy of mind in order to characterize our emotional and moral encounters with fictions. This view may be called simulation theory. Stated roughly, simulation theory in the philosophy of mind is the hypothesis that we predict, understand, and interpret others by putting ourselves in their place, that is to say, by adopting their point of view. Philosophers of art like Currie suggest that the apparatus of simulation is also what we use when we read, view, or listen to narratives. The grain of truth in what is informally called “identification” is, ex hypothesi, the process of simulation. Currie writes: “What is so often called audience identification with a character is best described as mental simulation of the character's situation by the audience who are then better able to imagine the character's experience.”
By simulating the mental states of fictional characters, we come to experience what it would be like – that is, for example, what it would feel like – to be in situations such as those in which the characters find themselves. This is relevant to morality, inasmuch as we learn, by acquaintance, what it would feel like to undertake certain courses of action – what it would be like to murder someone, for instance.
Art, Practice, and Narrative
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 63-75
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The purpose of this essay is to attempt to reorient one of the central questions of philosophical aesthetics, namely, “What is art?” The direction that this reorientation proposes relies upon taking advantage of the practice, or, more aptly, the practices of art as the primary means of identifying those objects (and performances) that are to count as art. Roughly put, the question of whether or not an object (or a performance) is to be regarded as a work of art depends on whether or not it can be placed in the evolving tradition of art in the right way. That is, whether an object (or performance) is identified as art is a question internal to the practice or practices of art. In this respect, the question “What is art?” changes its thrust. “Art” in our query no longer refers primarily to the art object; rather what we wish to know about when we ask “What is art?” predominantly concerns the nature and structures of the practices of art – things, I shall argue, that are generally best approached by means of historical narration.
This essay is written within the context of the philosophy of art as that has evolved in the Anglo-American tradition. The positive proposals I advance, as a result, need to be seen against that background of debate; indeed, part of the confidence that I have in the view developed in ensuing sections rests on my belief that my view manages to avoid the most decisive objections made against earlier, rival positions in the ongoing debate concerning the nature of art. Space does not permit a detailed review of the evolution of that debate.
Horror and Humor
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 235-254
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
During the last decade or so, the subgenre of the horror-comedy has gained increasing prominence. Movies such as Beetlejuice, a triumph of this tendency, are predicated on either getting us to laugh where we might ordinarily scream, or to scream where we might typically laugh, or to alternate between laughing and screaming throughout the duration of the film. One aim of this genre it would appear, is to shift moods rapidly – to turn from horror to humor, or vice versa, on a dime. Gremlins (both versions), Ghostbusters (both versions), Arachnophobia, The Addams Family (both versions), possibly Death Becomes Her, and certainly Mars Attacks and Men in Black are highly visible, “blockbuster” examples of what I have in mind, but the fusion of horror and comedy also flourishes in the domain of low-budget production, in films like Dead/Alive as well as in the outré work of Frank Henenlotter, Stuart Gordon, and Sam Rami.
Nor is the taste for blending horror and humor restricted to film. The recently discontinued daily comic strip by Gary Larson, The Far Side, consistently recycled horror for laughs, as do the television programs Tales from the Crypt and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And even the usually dour, intentionally deadpan television series The X-Files makes room for comedy in episodes like “Humbug.”
Likewise, Tom Disch's recent novel The Businessman generates humor by sardonically inverting one of the fundamental conventions of the horror genre – representing a ghost who is stricken with disgust by the human she is supposed to haunt, rather than the other way around.
Art, Intention, and Conversation
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 157-180
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In the normal course of affairs, when confronted with an utterance, our standard cognitive goal is to figure out what the speaker intends to say. And, on one very plausible theory of language, the meaning of an utterance is explicated in terms of the speaker's intention to reveal to an auditor that the speaker intends the auditor to respond in a certain way. That is, the meaning of a particular language token is explained by means of certain of a speaker's intentions.
Likewise, in interpreting or explaining nonverbal behavior, we typically advert to the agent's intentions. This is not to say that we may not be concerned with the unintended consequences of an action; but even in order to explain unintended consequences, one will need a conception of the agent's intentions. Nor is this reliance on intention something that is relevant only to living people; historians spend a great deal of their professional activity attempting to establish what historical agents intended by their words and their deeds, with the aim of rendering the past intelligible. Furthermore, we generally presume that they can succeed in their attempts even with respect to authors and agents who lived long ago and about whom the documentary record is scant.
Nevertheless, though it seems natural to interpret words and actions in terms of authorial intention, arguments of many sorts have been advanced for nearly fifty years to deny the relevance of authorial intention to the interpretation of works of art in general and to works of literature in particular. Call this anti-intentionalism.
Anglo-American Aesthetics and Contemporary Criticism: Intention and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 180-190
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
INTRODUCTION
The fiftieth anniversary of the American Society for Aesthetics comes at a time of ostensible turmoil in academia. Many fields of inquiry – so many, in fact, that it would be cumbersome to enumerate them – claim to be undergoing fundamental identity crises; old paradigms are declared outmoded on every side, and new approaches heralded. In such a context, contemplating the health of Anglo-American-style aesthetics is natural. Indeed, since our colleagues in adjacent fields – including literary theory, film studies, art history, and so on – seem convinced that if aesthetics is not dead, then it should be killed, we might spend some of this anniversary not only celebrating the past, but also worrying about the future.
The charges arrayed against Anglo-American aesthetics at present are legion. One could not hope to identify, let alone to address, them all in such a brief note. Thus, I will focus on just one issue in order to demonstrate that not only is Anglo- American aesthetics not always at loggerheads with contemporary art criticism, but that contemporary criticism may even profit from the insights of aesthetics.
Like the art of the past decade or so, contemporary criticism has become increasingly political in its orientation. One aspect of this is the familiar interpretation of artworks – often indiscriminately called “texts” – for their symptomatic political content, including especially: latent or repressed sexism, racism, classism, imperialism, and so forth.
Moreover, at the same time that contemporary critics have opted for this variety of the hermeneutics of suspicion, a movement reinstating the relevance of the artist's intentions for interpretation has begun to take hold among philosophers of art.
Identifying Art
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 75-100
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
As a student of George Dickie's, I have been profoundly influenced by his contributions to the philosophy of art. I believe that his criticisms of the notions of aesthetic perception, aesthetic attitudes, aesthetic experience, and so on remain fundamentally sound. And, as well, they place important constraints on theories of art. Notably, they preclude the possibility of sustaining what are currently called aesthetic theories of art: that is, theories of art that propose to define art in terms of the engendering of aesthetic experience. George Dickie's rejection of aesthetic experience, of course, set the stage for the proposal of his own variations on the institutional theory of art by effectively removing one sort of rival – aesthetic theories of art – from the playing field. And I am convinced that this move is still decisive.
George Dickie also successfully undermined the open concept/family resemblance approach to identifying art as a way of dialectically arguing in favor of institutional-type theories of art. In this matter, too, I believe Dickie's arguments are still powerful.
In challenging the viability of aesthetic theories of art and the open concept/family resemblance approach, George Dickie showed the importance of social context for the prospects of identifying art. His own variations on the institutional theory of art are contested, but his emphasis upon the relevance of social context represents a major contribution to the philosophy of art. In my own work, I have become suspicious of the plausibility of institutional theories of art, including its most recent reincarnation. I have argued that art is not identified by definitions, institutional or otherwise, but by narratives.
Art, Narrative, and Emotion
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 215-235
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Despite the great interest in the reception of art and media in recent years, little attention has been paid to the way in which narrative fictions, whether high or low, address the emotions of readers, listeners, and viewers. Instead, emphasis is generally placed on hermeneutics. Interpretation of what is loosely called the meaning of the work has preoccupied attention in the humanities. New interpretations, often called symptomatic readings, of what are generically identified as “texts” are still the order of the day in liberal arts journals. And even what some in cultural studies call “recodings,” and what some feminists call “readings against the grain,” focus on the putative interpretive activities of certain groups of readers, listeners, and viewers. What is not studied in any fine-grained way is how works engage the emotions of the audience. What I wish to deal with in this essay is how we might go about doing just that.
It is not my contention that, in principle, hermeneutics is illegitimate. Rather, I think that our research into the arts should be supplemented by considering their relation to the emotions, especially if we are interested in audience reception. Moreover, the present moment is particularly propitious in this respect, since recent research into the emotions over the last two decades in fields like psychology and philosophy have made the possibility of interrogating the relation of art to the emotions feasible with a heretofore unimagined level of precision.
Perhaps it will be felt that I have already misdescribed the situation. One might argue that I have overstated the degree to which scholars in the humanities have ignored the emotions.
Index
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 443-450
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Notes
- Noël Carroll, University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
- Book:
- Beyond Aesthetics
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2001, pp 395-442
-
- Chapter
- Export citation