Abstract
Despite our better angels, violence visited upon other bodies can be a source of laughter. Our affective experience, laughter for instance, has the potential to circumvent ethical regimes. While our discipline obliges us to condemn such laughter as well-intended progressives, such condemnations fail to speak to our lived experience. We experience the world through our bodies, not just our heads. In the face of a body writhing in pain, vomiting, bleeding, a body split open, that leaks or oozes, where there is a breach in social mores, an encounter with the abject invites the spectator to laugh.
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Kerner, A. (2022). Sadistic Laughter: A Case for “Non-ethical” Viewing. In: Choe, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05390-0_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05390-0_24
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