Emotions display a kind of inertia. When people are fearful or angry or joyous, they tend to remain in that state because the emotion system sets up a processing loop. Our mood encourages us to revisit the emotional stimulus repeatedly, each time gaining a fresh dose of mood-sustaining emotion. This looping tends to continue until it becomes “worn out” (overly familiarized) or until the stimulus is fundamentally reevaluated or removed. Even when we have worked to eliminate the stimulus (running away from a fearful object or violently removing an object that makes us angry), the emotional state still remains for a while because of bodily arousal. The emotions usually involve the body, and the body cannot change arousal states as quickly as the mind can change thoughts. To change from one emotional state to a radically different one requires time for the body to alter its orientation.

Film narration relies on this inertia to sustain its emotional appeal. The mood-cue approach is continuity-based because of the systematic tendency of emotions to maintain a consistent orientation. Does this mean that only films that maintain a unitary tone can successfully appeal to the emotions? Our desiderata specify that an approach to filmic emotion should be able to explain how such emotions change over time. What about films that make an abrupt shift in their emotional appeals? Can the mood-cue approach explain how a film might make such a switch?