Introduction: Affect and Emotion

This book strives to locate pleasurable affects stemming from abject content, with a particular focus on the cinematic strategies that—even despite the content—wields the capacity to elicit strong pleasurable feelings. In short, how does the cinema make us feel good even when that content is resolutely crass, politically problematic, or deeply unethical? The affective experience is frequently disavowed or figured as a distraction from the “true value” of the cinematic—its meaning. Our disciplinary DNA compels us to analyze the cinematic to locate meanings, and thus, to reveal the “message” that it harbors. That is to say its cultural significance, its ideological message, or disentangling plot complexities to reveal what the narrative “really means.” And this is not to suggest that (narrative) meaning and affect are in opposition to one another necessarily—often an affective experience is intended to enhance narrative meanings—nevertheless, they are different forms of stimulus, processed in their own way, and thus require different paradigms of assessment.

And there most certainly are political ramifications for overlooking the affecting experience, as the human experience is not governed by rationality alone, rather we are perhaps just as likely to make determinations based on a feeling. As we might say in colloquial terms, “It was a gut decision.” While there is a knee-jerk progressive proclivity within our discipline, affect pledges no allegiance to any particular political inclination. Neither progressives nor progressive content hold a monopoly on affect. The beautiful— which is different from the agreeable, or the pleasant—has no inherent bond to the good (that is, the morally good, or that with cultural merit), rather it is an affective experience, and it might come to us in the most unlikely and unsavory places. While porn studies often champions “alternative” pornographic productions, what Tristan Taormino dubs “organic, [or] fair-trade porn,” porn with the most regressive content nevertheless wields the possibility to be sexually arousing even despite our own ethical objections. While well-intended academics routinely claim that watching people get hurt is not funny, and we might appreciate the gesture to cultivate our better angels, such assertions do not always align with reality. Moreover, we laugh for many reasons, including as a defensive gesture to ward off disgust, or the abject.