ABSTRACT
Movies—meaning mass-market motion pictures (including television and other popular visual media)—are primarily aimed at arousing the emotions. Indeed, many movie genres are named after the predominant emotion that it is their function to engender. For example, horror, suspense, mystery, thrillers, and weepies or tear jerkers are labeled in terms of the affect they are predicated upon raising in viewers. Comedy does not name an emotion, but the emotion comedies are designed to provoke can be readily identified as comic amusement. Of course, no movie, in the typical run of things, is intended to evoke one and only one emotion. Rather, movies are structured to evoke an ensemble of emotions. You approve of the hero, you hate the villain, you feel suspense as the two lock in battle, and you feel relief and then joy when the protagonist prevails.
