Noël Carroll 
Minerva’s Night Out [PDF ebook] 
Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Pictures

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Philosophy and the Popular Arts 1
Section I The Philosophy of Mass Art 7
1 The Ontology of Mass Art 9
2 Modernity and the Plasticity of Perception 29
3 The Ties that Bind: Characters, the Emotions, and Popular Fictions 40
4 Character, Social Information, and the Challenge of Psychology 64
Section II The Philosophy of Motion Pictures 83
5 Movies, the Moral Emotions, and Sympathy 85
6 The Problem with Movie Stars 106
7 Cinematic Narrative 122
8 Cinematic Narration 133
9 Psychoanalysis and the Horror Film 145
Section III Philosophy and Popular Film 159
10 Philosophical Insight, Emotion, and Popular Fiction: The Case of Sunset Boulevard 161
11 Vertigo and the Pathologies of Romantic Love 183
12 What Mr Creosote Knows about Laughter 194
13 Memento and the Phenomenology of Comprehending Motion Picture Narration 203
Section IV Philosophy and Popular TV 221
14 Tales of Dread in The Twilight Zone: A Contribution to Narratology 223
15 Sympathy for Soprano 234
16 Consuming Passion: Sex and the City 247
Section V Philosophy on Broadway 267
17 Art and Friendship 269
18 Martin Mc Donagh’s The Pillowman, or The Justification of Literature 276
Section VI Philosophy across Popular Culture 289
19 The Fear of Fear Itself: The Philosophy of Halloween 291
20 The Grotesque Today: Preliminary Notes toward a Taxonomy 302
21 Andy Kaufman and the Philosophy of Interpretation 324
Index 348

Noël Carroll is a Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. A former journalist,
screenwriter, and President of the American Society for Aesthetics,
Carroll is the author of 16 books, including Art in Three
Dimensions (2010), On Criticism (2009), The
Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Blackwell, 2008), Beyond
Aesthetics (2001), A Philosophy of Mass Art (1999), and
Interpreting the Moving Image (1998).