From "Designing Pacifist Films" by Paul Goodman
Especially in cinema, the conditions of fantasy and the habits of the audience are so discontinuous with behavior in the waking public world that the shock of strong images is sentimentalized: the rationalizing sorrow and regret is used to insulate the experience from any possible action. The energy of revulsion turns into pity, a pornographic emotion, rather than active compassion or political indignation — not otherwise than with Christians who exhaust their neighbor-love in the sentimentality of the Cross. The next step is for the sentimentalized horror to be taken as matter-of-course in the public world, just as for those Christians the poor must always be with us, so Christians can be charitable...
Again by definition, in a work of genuine art the images of horror, etc., do not have a pornographic effect and do not incite to repetitions, for the experience is finished and cathartic: the fearful images are purged, transcended, interpreted, or otherwise integrated with the rest of life...
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