Possessor (2020)

Wow, what a film. A little gory for my taste but the concept was insanely interesting. A seemingly average woman’s job is to be an assassin by taking over the mind and body of another person by having her mind transplanted into theirs. The hosts mind is subdued to lead out these murders. While watching the film, I thought a lot about the lecture on empathy, specifically embodied cognition. Tas seems to struggle with primodality when she is in the mind of the host, but also appears to be affected by Colin’s own feelings as well. Embodied cognition can be looked at from two different perspectives in regards to this film, Tas’s struggles with her own primodality, she seems to be suffering from PTSD from all the murders she’s committing but also thoughts about her family. While her body isn’t physically present, her mind is and when her mind is put back into her own body, she appears to visualize herself committing these acts versus the body of the person she took over. But we do later learn that she may resent her husband which makes you wonder who was the killer in the final scene where he is killed. 

The second way to look at the idea of embodied empathy within this film is when she is in Colin’s body and seems to be battling his own consciousness, that she is empathizing with his experiences and his own feelings in his life. When it comes to taking the persons life in all scenes where that moment comes, we don’t get to see if the internal battle to take their life is because she has a connection to the host’s mind that’s preventing her from committing suicide. Is she feeling badly over the crimes committed? Or does the host’s mind become more powerful in that moment that she can’t pull the trigger? Is the true emotions of Tas rubbing off on Colin, making him the killer in the end? The film left some of this up to interpretation but a lot of the concepts of empathy could be applied. 

This movie made me feel a lot of empathy for the character’s having their minds taken over without consent. I felt for Colin when he was fighting for his body back and the anger, sadness, and fear he felt. I found this movie really hard to watch.

“I Second That Emotion” Futurama

In the Futurama episode we watched this week, the concept of empathy was much more literally portrayed. Professor Farnsworth puts a chip into Benders head when it’s revealed he can’t feel “humanoid” emotions when he flushes Gibbler down the toilet at his own birthday party. Leela is devastated over losing Gibbler and just wants Bender to feel like she does. The use of the chip helps him to feel her emotions versus simply understanding, which is a basic definition of empathy. They also took the concept of “mirror neurons” in a literal sense. When Professor Farnsworth was trying to dial into Leela’s emotions, he dialed into other characters as well repeated exactly how they felt and thought. In the sewer system, when Leela would scream, Bender would see and then have the same reaction because of the chip. This episode is a great example of empathy in a really literal sense.