"Bingo and the Zombie Dogs" would be an excellent band name.

Manipulative storytaking always strikes me as very cynical. All fiction is attempting emotional manipulation; you're tricked into caring about stuff that isn't true. But when I feel like unnecessary elements have been imposed on the story solely to provoke an emotional reaction, it seems to signal that someone involved either doesn't trust the story or doesn't trust the audience.

I wouldn't even phrase it this way. John Gardner's book on writing fiction makes the distinction between "sentiment" (which writing should evoke) and "sentimental" (which is cheap).

Having an emotional response is (generally - Brecht aside) desirable, and I don't think it's manipulative as long as the writer/filmmaker treats the audience with some respect.

It's just a matter of earning the big moment instead of falsely inflating it. The emotion should happen because you're invested in the characters and the drama, not because you have an outside-the-movie soft spot for puppies or babies or swelling string sections.

"Bingo and the Zombie Dogs"

See, my thought was that there could be a sequel to Old Yeller.

Lilo & Stitch had me crying like a baby

Wrod. We had to sit in the theater for a few minutes after the credits as I was still too misty to be seen in public.

It's just a matter of earning the big moment instead of falsely inflating it. The emotion should happen because you're invested in the characters and the drama, not because you have an outside-the-movie soft spot for puppies or babies or swelling string sections

Righty-ro, and also what's Jessica's been saying. The fiction has to be "true" or authentic, even when it's clearly not. Then I love having my emotions given a shiatsu massage. When it's just somebody hitting the pressure points because they can, I don't enjoy it...or think it's art, really. Craft, maybe.

And "stylized" is almost the opposite reason to make a piece of art. The stylized parts of Suspiria are not the emotionally resonant or horror parts, for me, and the parts that either had me jumping backwards in my seat or feeling sympathy for the alone-ness of the protagonist were not the stylized parts.

I'm probably not explaining this well. So I'll just point at Hec and Jessica and others in that corner.

In real life, there's a difference between someone who wants your empathy and someone who is trying to con you. In one case, the feelings are reciprocal, in the other, the feelings aren't.

We had to sit in the theater for a few minutes after the credits as I was still too misty to be seen in public

Me too. I like a tearjerker and all, but that one really had me worked up to the point where I thought I might have to leave or make a spectacle of myself.

I generally use the term "emotional manipulation" to refer to a moment in a movie/book/whatever where I feel tricked into feeling a certain way.

Stories--books, movies, comics, anything--should make you feel. I'm totally on board with that, and will happily watch movies at which I cry like a wee babe, IF I feel that the emotion is earned. It's when I don't feel that the emotion is earned that I call it manipulation. It's when I don't give a damn about the characters, but suddenly the strings swell in the background and Character X's hand falls limply to the ground as tears run down Character Y's face and then I start crying too, that I get mad; it's when neither the script, nor the acting, nor the story has earned those tears that I call it "emotional manipulation". If the emotion has been earned, then--to me--it's an emotional connection, NOT manipulation.

edit: hugely x-posty, of course.

Having an emotional response is (generally - Brecht aside) desirable

Oh, absolutely. I don't mean to suggest that if the audience feels any emotional response, it's a bad thing. I do see how my post read that way; I was focusing on the "unnecessary" part. When someone thinks the story isn't going to get the audience involved on its own merits, and so they throw in a child-in-peril or a dying pet or whatever.

And the Zombie Dogs battle the Atomic Dogs. Obviously.

The Atomic Dogs win, right?

The Space Dogs beat them both! Goooo, Laika!