about Kendall Walton’s theory of make-believe in the context of the
discussion ofmimesis. For Walton, once we view plays (and others works
of art) as games of make-believe, it turns out that apparent emotions in
response to artworks are not real emotions, but make-believe emotions.
Walton holds that genuine emotions are connected to existential beliefs
(as stipulated in 3, above). Thus, to fear X is to believe that X exists.^9 If I
do not believe that X exists, then by definition I cannot fear X. But Walton
does not deny that we have certain psychological and physiological responses
tofictions. In such cases, it’s not that we believe that X exists (and then
have certain psychological and physiological responses to X) it’s that we
make-believethat X exists (and then have certain psychological and phy-
siological responses to X). Whatever the response to our make-believing,
it cannot be a genuine emotion; instead, it is a make-believe emotion.
There are examples (notably, it must be said, examples of uncontroversial
make-believe^10 ) in which this seems plausible. When children play a
game in which they are being chased by the‘vampire’(someone wearing
fake vampire teeth), and they scream as the vampire chases after them, it
might make sense to say that they are not really afraid, they are make-
believing that they are afraid of a make-believe vampire.^11 Walton
extends this to all (supposed) emotional responses to artworks. Fictions
license us to respond to them in a certain way; thus, just as it isfictional
that Willy Loman is a failed salesman or that Iago tricks Othello, so‘it is
onlyfictional, not true, that we feel for Willy Loman or detest Iago’.
Hence, there is no‘loss of touch with reality’ and we should reject the
first claim–namely, the claim that we are moved by theatre.^12 Indeed,
Walton goes further, claiming that reports of emotional responses tofictions
are themselves a kind of make-believe in accordance with the rules of the
game; so when I say‘I pity Vanya’, it would be somewhat equivalent to
the child who says‘I see a vampire’.
In one sense, then, Walton places all my feelings about Vanya on the
same level as the child’s‘fear’of the vampire-teacher: a kind of playful
playing-along to a game, rather than a genuine, emotional experience.
Given the strength and depth of emotion that theatre can produce, it is
certainly tempting for any theatre-lover to throw Walton’s book out of the
window at just this point. But we need to be careful here. It’s not that my
subjective state –the one that I intuitively call my ‘pity’ for Vanya
(although Walton would not call it‘pity’)–is weaker, or less troubling
than my pity for a real person with a similar biography. It is merely a
claim about the cause of the two instances of so-called‘pity’(make-belief
versus belief). It has nothing to do with their strength, or depth, or
about how they seem to me subjectively. Thus one and the same sub-
jective experience (my heart beating faster, myfists clenched, a feeling of
heightened agitation and so on) would be one of genuine fear or one of
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