Summary Of Kendall Walton's Exploring Fictionality

In “Fearing Fictionality”, Kendall Walton examines our emotional ties to works of fiction through an example of someone watching a horror movie. He creates the hypothetical example of a man named Charles who is watching a horror movie about a green slime oozing over the whole earth and destroying everything (Walton 258). At one point in the movie, the slime looks towards the camera, picks up speed, and starts oozing towards the viewers (Walton 258). Charles shrieks and grips his chair and says after the movie that he was “terrified” of the slime (Walton 258). The question that Walton explores in this essay is whether or not Charles is actually terrified of the slime. He comes to the conclusion that since Charles does not think he is endangered

Instead, he proposes an alternative view to what is really going on when Charles claims that he is “terrified” of the slime. He says that Charles is psychologically participating in a game of make-believe as both an actor and a prop (Walton 264). He is an actor playing himself in this game and a prop because he is generating truths about himself through what he thinks and feels (Walton 264). In this game, Charles fictionally believes he is threatened, and therefore is fictionally afraid (Walton 264). The reason that we know Charles experiences quasi-fear, and not some other quasi-emotion, comes from the fact that when Charles enters this make-believe game, he fictionally believes that the slime poses a danger to him (Walton 266). This fictional belief, as well as others, combined with the manner in which Charles imagines the fiction is what makes his role in the game seem so real (Walton 267). In other words, this is why Charles’s quasi-fear feels and appears as genuine fear. As Charles’s fictional fear of the slime grows or subsides, his feelings of quasi-fear will follow suit ( Walton 267). It is important to note that it is not as though by playing this game Charles encounters another person who is a fictional version of himself, but it is as though

He characterizes fear by saying that it includes a belief that one is endangered by what they fear and one will be motivated to act as a result of this belief (Walton 263). Since the person watching the horror movie cannot be said to exhibit either of these qualities, they cannot be said to be genuinely afraid. Walton explains the phenomenon of “fear” when one watches a horror movie by saying that when the person watches the movie, they enter a game of make-believe in which they have a fictional belief that they are threatened, and therefore possess fictional fear (Walton 264). The problem with this view is that the person watching the movie is not aware that they are playing this game. Since games require awareness of the structure of the game and objectives in order to play, it cannot be said that the person watching a horror movie is really playing a game, since they have no such awareness. As a result, the person cannot be said to be experiencing fictional fear, since fictional fear arises from the fact that they are playing this game of make-believe. Thus, Walton’s account is not accurate in describing what happens to us when we engage with fictional