ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the question of how moving images might evoke such a sense of implicit meaning that can stimulate processes of deeper reflection and insight. The puzzling metaphorical images of valence transformation that can be found in popular entertainment media could be functional in stimulating such integrative thinking. Theories of social-cognitive development and conceptual metaphors are integrated to suggest that embodied emotion metaphors can serve an important function in social-moral reasoning. The mapping of emotions on a continuous physical source domain is probably the most unobtrusive metaphorical device, because the integration of emotion metaphors with background images or requisites does usually not interfere with plot plausibility. Metaphorical agents are used more parsimoniously, perhaps because they are often difficult to reconcile with realism. The zombie body visualizes the metaphorical mapping of the decay of the moral self on the decay of the bodily self as implied in metaphors such as decadence and degeneracy.
