Research UNE

This chapter argues that film and media scholarship, including teaching, conferences, and mentoring, remove barriers to moral reflection on screen stories, facilitating both socially situated and individual reflection over long periods of time. After a discussion of moral intuitionism (or moral foundations theory), the chapter argues that scholarly work can expand reflection by eliciting a questioning, elaboration, and/or revision of our initial intuitions. Its longitudinally transformative capacities distinguish this manner of close attention to screen stories from the evaluative work of movie reviews and the discourses of fandom. The chapter further argues that screen media scholarship acts as a transactive memory system that updates and reorients moral understandings of our world as it changes, and that its ability to extend "reflection upon reflections" is key to its radical potential" this makes it a system worth defending.