Volume 20, No. 2, 2024 Special Issue on Aesthetic Education and Screen Stories

This article is an introduction to the special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy dedicated to aesthetic education and philosophy of screen stories.

The fewer the constraints we encounter in an artistic endeavour, the greater our artistic freedom; as technology advances and presents us with more numerous options and ever-greater creative flexibility, so our artistic freedom burgeons. Such is the folk wisdom on the phenomenon. Is the wisdom wise? Many artists and art theorists think not; for Stravinsky, “[t]he more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit”. I consider the orthodox view and this alternative view through an exploration of the constraints arising from physical, psychological, and technological factors, as well as the heterogeneous array of routine practices we label “conventions”. To deepen the analysis, I turn to the “problem-solving” perspective on artistic creativity, examining the interplay between invention and convention in art, drawing on a variety of examples from film and rock music. On the theory advanced by Jon Elster, the problems with which artists engage arise from a mix of chosen, imposed, and invented constraints; on the theory of David Bordwell, those problems can be solved through the replication, revision, synthesis, or rejection of existing solutions. I conclude that neither the folk theory, nor the alternative theory, are correct; rather, there is a “sweet zone” of artistic creativity poised between a disabling surfeit of options, and a stifling sparsity of them. I argue that Stravinsky’s counter-theory of artistic creativity, though not literally true, acts as a “felicitous falsehood”—an epistemically valuable overcorrection.

Here is a puzzle about aesthetic education. In a variety of contexts, we commit significant time, energy, and resources to aesthetic education. We teach (and in many cases publicly subsidize) university courses and degrees that have aesthetic education as their primary aim; we also invest public resources into museums, including enrichment programs that are also designed to afford aesthetic education. It would seem that if our commitment to aesthetic education is rational, then aesthetic appreciation is something that can be done better or worse. However, we also, in a variety of contexts (oddly enough, some of them being the same sorts of contexts that are designed to abet aesthetic education), act as if it is true that there is no disputing taste. We may try to persuade students to come around to particular judgments, but we do not penalize students for judging one way or another. The aim of this paper is to dissolve the apparent puzzle of aesthetic education by clarifying its aims and advancing a conception of it that deemphasizes the role of taste. I claim that, pace “the default view of aesthetic education” (as I shall call it), the primary purpose of aesthetic education is not to educate taste. It is, rather, to facilitate the development of certain perceptual-cognitive capacities so as to enhance aesthetic experience and improve aesthetic appreciation. Thus, I call the view of aesthetic education advanced here “a perceptual-cognitive model”.

In this paper I argue that tragic films can have significant potential for ethics education when they prompt audiences to sympathise with suffering on screen. I first summarise two accounts of the relationship between tragic art, moral education and aesthetic value (those provided by Rorty and Lamarque). I then discuss problems with these accounts and explain how a new criterion of aesthetic value might help to resolve them. I thereafter argue that tragic films have potential to ethically educate audiences in a way that enhances the aesthetic value of the films in at least three directions: by deepening moral understanding, by deepening understanding of the nature of human being and ethical purpose and by deepening understanding of ethical theory. I conclude by showing how Denis Villeneuve’s film, Arrival, screens a tragic story with ethics education potential in each of the aforementioned senses.

Many people regularly watch horror films. While it seems clear that sporadically watching horror films will not make us bad people, if it is the main type of media that we consume, then are we still safe? I will defend most horror films from Di Muzio (2006), who worries that we are harming our moral character by watching them. Most horror films (e.g., Candyman, Get Out, and Scream) fall into what I call the summit of safe horror (SoSH), the inverse of the uncanny valley effect, wherein almost-but-not-quite-human robots elicit discomfort from viewers rather than empathy. In the SoSH, violence elicits excitement rather than pity for the victims because the violence is mitigated by, among other things, comic relief and foolish choices by the characters. These narrative features allow most horror films to be intense enough to cause excitement and terror yet not so intense as to cause a negative moral attitude to form in our soul, because we feel what Aristotle would consider the appropriate amount of fear. Torture porn, a subset of horror films lacking plot and focusing solely on gore (e.g., the Saw sequels), falls outside of the SoSH because it lacks these narrative features, making the violence depicted too intense to be entertaining. These films outside the SoSH will not necessarily cause an inappropriate amount of fear but are simply the only ones that could possibly do so. Caution: spoilers ahead!

Cringe comedy can make people so uncomfortable, the cringe continues even after the comedy has stopped. This paper explains this effect, which I call “cringe overhang”. If audiences weakly connect to the characters, they laugh. If audiences strongly connect, they have a negative emotional response—say, struggling to watch, or wanting to leave the room. Firstly, I argue cringe comedy jokes are illocutionary acts designed to provoke laughter through second-hand embarrassment (Austin 1975). Secondly, I acknowledge that these jokes don’t always produce the desired perlocutionary effect of laughter—sometimes the joke is unable to cut through the embarrassment, merely leaving the viewer in a state of discomfort. Thirdly, drawing on the benign violation theory of McGraw and Warren (2010), I explain that the surplus of embarrassment is due to maximising the violation in the comedy while adding comparatively little benign. Finally, I argue that cringe comedy’s funniness is reliant on its lack of social psychological distancing. By leaving no room between the viewer and the character, embarrassment is maximised, the comedy is less benign (i.e. a stronger violation) and more polarising as a result. This explains i) why cringe comedy produces a comedic “overhang” in some viewers, where they continue to cringe even after the comedy has stopped, and ii) why cringe comedy produces a laughter response in some audiences, and stress responses in others.

In this paper I argue that the existing arguments for narrow aesthetic cognitivism are not valid. The reason is that the proponents of the view have mostly focused on theoretical debates rather than on empirical studies of the matter. I make my argument in five steps. First, I distinguish narrow from broad aesthetic cognitivism. Second, I specify the scope of the narrow claim and suggest that narrow aesthetic cognitivism is not about art in general but about narrative fictional works. Third, I point out that arguments in favor of the possibility of such works expressing truth do not discuss how truth is justified. Fourth, I concede that justification of truths in fictional and nonfictional works in the end rests on the experiences outside of the work but argue that it is an empirical matter whether belief has been acquired or not. Fifth, I demonstrate that the most recent analysis on belief-acquisition evinces that fiction is a not an effective vehicle for imparting beliefs. I conclude with a discussion of what would count as evidence in favor of aesthetic cognitivism.