For example: While it did cause certain severe reactions in the audience - namely, anger - emotions are not the true purpose of...
Terrible example off the top of my head but I hope this exemplifies well enough what I am trying to ask.
The reason why I want to use em dashes is because I feel like there would just be too many commas if I used commas instead: While it did cause certain severe reactions in the audience , namely, anger, emotions are not the true purpose of...
^ (Especially if I were to use more commas near the end of the sentence).