ABSTRACT
Tears and laughter are, aesthetically, frauds', says Ortega y Gasset in The Dehumanisation of Art. Of course, our natural reactions can be exploited and often are by the authors of sentimental romances, the makers of pornographic films, the producers of doubtful sitcoms which make us laugh despite ourselves. The problem of emotional exploitation is not solved by proposing a division between, say, entertainment and art, such that entertainment is designed to elicit emotional responses, whereas art is not so designed, and is abused by us if people seek emotional gratification. There is one further point about emotional reactions to art: the emotion is most commonly elicited through the construction of a narrative or temporal context in which it finds an appropriate place. Likewise, it is not a musical passage in isolation which arouses us, but its presence at a particular point for which we have been prepared.
