The Role of Disgust in Films: Disgust as an Aesthetically Appreciable Emotion that Enhances the Film’s Other Emotional Effects

The goal of this paper is to address the questions: what is the role of disgust in films, or what makes people appreciate a film’s disgusting contents, given that disgust is unpleasant to experience? The films to which I am referring are audiovisual artworks, including both TV shows and movies, that arouse the emotion of disgust and typically have contents that are gory or gross, yet despite their disgusting contents, these films have as a primary goal to present a narrative or an experience rather than merely to disgust or disturb their audiences. This includes various genres of films, from horror films to comedies and from action films to dramas. In this paper, I analyze some of the most representative accounts philosophers have proposed to address these two questions above. Then, by combining Noël Carroll’s compensation theory and Carolyn Korsmeyer’s integrationist account, I propose the Mixed Account, according to which the unpleasantness of experiencing disgust is part of people’s apprehension and appreciation of a film with disgusting contents, and a film’s disgusting contents and the emotion of disgust elicited by them are able to enhance the film’s other intended emotional effects. I called this the mixed account because it proposes that disgust, as an unpleasant emotion, is appreciable itself and also recognizes the positive effects of the emotion of disgust to a film. Advisor: John Brunero