aestheticizing manipulativeness of Adam Verver inThe Golden Bowlshould be
exposed, but I do not imagine myself doing this, nor do I imagine myself to
have his experiences and attitudes. I was rooting against him. No problem
about either my having mere quasi-emotions or about my matching my
feelings to his is raised. It is my rooting that makes his exposure satisfying
to me. Likewise, in watchingThe GraduateI root for Benjamin Braddock
(Dustin Hoffman) to win Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross) but without
imagining that I am Benjamin or that I have his experiences–or so, at least,
Feagin’s distinction suggests. Or even more weakly, perhaps we simply
“mentally represent”^36 or“entertain in thought”^37 something bad happening
either to Anna Karenina in the story or metaphorically to ourselves, all the
while knowing that it is false. The mere thought or representation of some-
thing bad happening may be sufficient to provoke a genuine emotional
response without any commitment to the actual existence of a sufferer.
But again a fundamental question seems sidestepped. Adam Verver and
Benjamin Braddock do not exist as real people. They are fictional characters.
How can I come either to root against and for such beings or to be troubled or
exhilarated by the mere thought of something happening to them?
Whether empathetically or sympathetically, we do seem to have some sorts
of full-blooded emotional responses to some characters in works of fiction as
well as to such things as musical contours and developments and arrangements
of abstract objects in pictorial space. As Richard Moran notes in criticizing
Walton, were we centrally imagining, pretending, or making believe when
reading a fiction or otherwise attending to a work, then features that attract
attention to the surface of the work–things such as distinctive diction, allu-
sions to other authors or works, marked imagery, sudden changes in orchestra-
tion and volume, heavy impasto, and so forth–would likely distract us from
immersion in the game of make-believe and so compromise our involvement.
Yet this is not the case; rather, our imaginativeand emotional involvementwith
how the material is presented typically enhances our involvement with the
presented material itself, at least when things are going well.^38 Moreover, as(^36) Peter Lamarque,“How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?,”British Journal of Aesthetics21, 4
(April 1981), pp. 291–304 at p. 292.
(^37) Noël Carroll,The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart(London: Routledge, 1990),
pp. 29, 89.
(^38) Moran,“The Expression of Feeling in Imagination,”pp. 82–83.
212 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art