ABSTRACT
Empathy is often seen as a virtue: being empathic is equated with being a morally good person, and empathy is seen as a route to morally praiseworthy insights and actions. Recently, this view has come under attack from Jesse Prinz and Paul Bloom, among others, and it is argued that empathy is biased – and as such is not a trustworthy route to morality. In this chapter, the author concurs with critics that empathy is not reliable morally. She argues that the ease with which the spectator is made to empathize with morally bad antiheroes in television series demonstrates that empathy is amoral – neither morally good nor morally bad. In cognitive film theory, a moral evaluation of the characters is typically seen as foundational to the spectator’s engagement in fiction film: a positive moral evaluation of a character leads to a sympathetic allegiance, and the opposite is the antipathy felt towards villains.
