Day: July 20, 2022

Hello everybody, I am

How in the world did this get in-

You know what, never mind. Hello everyone.

I’ve always enjoyed thinking about how empathy works. Jokes aside, the picture above is from BBC’s Sherlock, a show that also brings empathy and the human mind into discussion. It’s interesting seeing a highly functioning sociopath like Sherlock interact with people close to him.

But of course, this isn’t about Sherlock, whose gore and insults might as well be considered PG 13 compared to the nightmare that is Possessor. It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure.

Before we get into it, I have to say that I was not the biggest fan of the movie. It’s definitely a slow-burn, and the assassin part of the movie takes its time building up. However, it does a good job expressing empathy and the lack thereof.

Tasya Vos (cool name btw) is an assassin that possesses (title drop—kinda) people to kill people. After she possesses someone and finishes the job, she always has to go through a set of questions that concern her past. It acts as a way to see if there’s any brain damage done to her. And let me just tell you, the damage has been done. Nay, it had been done before the main plot began.

Some folks have mentioned the butterfly scenes, so I want to focus on something different. In order to properly fool other people, Vos has to know a lot about the person she is to possess. She has to know how they talk, the way their bodies move when they talk, their overall mannerisms when approaching someone else, etc.

There’s a scene where she is spying on Colin Tate. Unfortunately, I cannot take screenshots because the website blacks them out, so imagine Tasya Vos is peering through a camera, imitating what Tate is saying. She directly perceives Tate’s body and places herself in his skin (figuratively, for now). However, we can see that empathy does not equate to total understanding. When Vos is in Tate’s body (literally), his girlfriend notices that he is acting off. Though Vos can try her best to act like Tate, emulate his feelings, actually being him is not possible because Tate naturally interacts with the environment and other people differently due to his past. Something is off about him, and Ava notices.

This fits the Embodied Theory about empathy. Ava doesn’t need to analyze every bit of Tate that is off. Just from being with him long enough, she can tell, he is acting slightly differently.

I am firm in believing that empathizing and understanding are two different things. I can feel bad for a person losing someone, but can I understand the exact feeling unless I go through it myself? Not really.

The Futurama episode shows this well. Bender is a largely psychopathic character that cannot empathize with other people. That doesn’t mean he can’t feel emotions. The reason he flushes Nibbler in the toilet is because he is annoyed at how much attention the pet is getting compared to him. In other words, he’s a bit jealous. It didn’t help that Nibbler ate the cake Bender was making and going to present.

Eventually, he gets an empathy chip that makes him feel exactly how Leela is feeling. What’s interesting is that he can still complain about the emotions he’s experiencing as they are happening, which implies that simply feeling someone else’s emotions does not equate to understanding them. Bender, by the end of the episode, is back to his old self. In fact, the empathy chip was working “at triple capacity”. Bender wasn’t “feeling” Leela’s emotions. He was “emulating/simulating” them.

Possessor has a more complex view on empathy, but don’t sleep on Futurama. Both of them reinforce my opinion that while we are capable of somewhat feeling other people’s emotions by drawing on our own experiences, it is the lack of that same experience that doesn’t allow us to have a perfect recreation of how the they feel.

Thanks for reading my TED Tal—

Wait, that’s not right.

Warmly,

Guga Khidasheli

There we go.

This week we watched the movie Possessor and the episode “I Second that Emotion” from Futurama. From watching these two we are able to see how they deal with the topic of empathy in their own ways 

In the episode “I Second that Emotion” from Futurama,  we were able to see directly how empathy was addressed. When Bender shows a lack of emotion towards his action of flushing Gibbler down the toilet Leela is upset and wants Bender to understand how she feels. Because of this they choose to implant a chip into Bender’s head to make him feel Leelas emotions. When Leela would feel angry Bender would feel angry; when Leela felt scared Bender would feel scared etc. It helped him to dial into her emotions so that he would develop an empathy for her. And while in the end it seems as though he didn’t fully develop an understanding even after the experience Leela mentions that she understands him better so in the end it worked out for both of them.

The movie Possessor was very different and not as direct in its approach on the topic. The feel starts off with a woman (very graphically) injecting something into her head. And soon after she is out and about and kills a man before getting killed by the police. We quickly learn that this was the main character of this movie; Tasya Vos, whose job is to learn about a person so that she is able to mimic that person when she takes control of their body. Vos seems to be unable to feel emotion very well based on how she holds herself after she comes back from that first mission as well as how she interacts with her family. When she is going home she has to say the same sentences over and over again to be able to say them in a certain way so that her son doesn’t notice something off. When her mind is in Colins body we can see his mind fight for dominance but in the end after feeling disconnected from reality, her family was dead and she seemed to feel nothing over it.

In this week’s module, we watch one film, “Possessor,” and an episode of Futurama, “I Second That Emotion, and connect them to the lesson about empathy and how one processes empathy as it correlates not only to themselves but how they observe, interact and process the empathy of others.

In the movie Possessor, we are introduced to the main character Tasya Vos, who is not her physical self, but she has possessed the body of another woman. In this first scene, the young African American woman Vos has inhabited turns a dial linked to a device in her head. The device allows Vos to feel emotions daily to keep her consciousness grounded. The young woman then goes from laughing to crying and then almost instantly emotionless on her face. I do not know what causes the range of emotions or why Vos displays them in that order, but it caused me to feel cognitive empathy. The 13th anniversary of my grandfather’s passing last month, a few days after his birthday, is still fresh in my mind. I remember smiling and laughing at stories my dad told me mixed with my memories of fishing and bowling with my grandfather and then the pang of sadness that brought on tears because my children will never know the joys of being around their great-grandfather and then holding back the pain because I know my gramps would not want me to be sad.

This movie is not something I would watch myself because I am not a psychological thriller fan (well depends on the movie), and I do not like horror. Still, I found it exciting and realized a few types of empathies learned in this module in the movie. The movie “Possessor” displays a type of embodied cognition because specific individuals’ consciousness is uploaded into the body of an unwilling host. Therefore the possessor is linked or sensing the host body and living through it. Tasya Vos is very disconnected from her emotions which I would assume is why she was chosen to be an assassin. However, she could not do it when it was time to kill herself or, more accurately, the host body. Being directly linked to the host’s emotions, the reluctance to take the host’s life was a display of mirror neurons because before the police take out the assassin, the host cries out, and Vos second guesses her decision; one could assume that was the host’s consciousness unwilling to  “take her own life.”

The episode from Futurama, “I Second That Emotion,” had me singing Smokey Robinson and The Miracles’ song, I Second That Emotion, around my house! Lol.

This episode is centered around Bender, his disdain, and his jealousy of Nibbler because everyone treats Nibbler with the type of love and respect Bender wants. Bender lacks basic empathy, so he causes Nibbler to go to the hospital, and the crew discovers he is 5, so they give him a birthday party. Bender’s need for attention causes him to flush Nibbler down the toilet, Leela becomes extremely emotional, and those around her directly perceive how she is feeling, except Bender. The professor then links Bender to Leela’s emotions which causes Bender to be influx with sad emotions.

In this episode, Bender’s lack of basic empathy creates a hostile environment between him and Leela. The empathy chip created by the professor is an example of an ecological perspective on perception in Bender, who is now connected to Leela’s consciousness; he can sense the environment indirectly through her and how she relates to situations that may not affect him similarly. This link is also embedded cognition because he is connected to a host consciousness and can cognitively think as another being. However, he is not exactly in her body but sharing her consciousness.

These episodes also remind me of the link between Jake Sully and his brothers Avatar in the James Cameron movie Avatar. Jake and the other humans linked to their Na Vi avatar experience the cultural and religious love and respect the Na Vi have not only for each other and their land but also empathize with them when their existence and the home tree are threatened by earth’s capitalism and military bullies. The link between the host and the possessor creates a different kind of embodied cognition because the perception of another person and how they live through things are more closely related than individual sensing from the outside. After all, the cognitions are linked.

In this weeks movie and TV show, we explored empathy, embodied theory, and the theory of mind. As human beings, we experience all three of these states without even realizing we are. When creating films that deal with them, it’s much easier to be creative with how actors show these types of behavior.

Possessor was a very different film, one that I wouldn’t have watched on a normal day.  The film uses the theory of mind highly as the whole idea of what is happening in the film is that Vos uses other people’s bodies and while in them kills people who haven’t been the best to others. After the “host” kills, they are left to deal with the consequences of a murder or they get killed themselves by suicide that was not actually them.

Vos embodied different bodies in the film and the last one, Colin Tate, really showed how nonempathetic Vos became after killing in other bodies. After she gets out of their bodies, she has to complete a test that shows others above her that she is still herself and not affected by the murders. After she completes the first kill in the first body the film shows, one of her test questions are seeing if she remember a butterfly. She says that she remembers killing the butterfly when she was young, but feels bad about it. By saying she feels bad for killing something living, it shows she’s empathetic and aware that she took a life.

While Vos is in Colin Tate’s body, she ends up killing way more people than she was supposed to kill because she wasn’t in full control of the body. She ends up killing both her child and her husband too. When she finally gets out of the body and does her test, she mentions killing the butterfly, but not feeling guilty. She no longer feels empathy like a normal human would. This was a subtle hint in the movie that symbolized the change Vos had gone through.

Before all the killing and the crazy non-empathetic Vos returned, the film showed the embodied theory. Ava, Colin’s girlfriend read body language and felt something was off. Colin said that he was fine, but Ava was right. Colin’s body was being embodied by Vos.

I Second That Emotion explores the idea of empathy. Bender is a robot that has no empathy. He does and says things without repercussions because he simply can’t care. He gets jealous of Nibbler because he’s getting all the attention so he flushes him down the toilet. Leela is horrified and extremely sad because that was her pet–she loved him. Leela states, ” I wish just once Bender would feel exactly what I feel” because while she’s crying over her flushed pet, Bender is laughing. The Professor end up putting a chip on Bender that allows his emotions to be in sync with Leela’s.

With the chip in place, Bender finally knows how Leela is feeling and he doesn’t exactly like it. The chip allows for Bender to feel Leela’s emotions and his own ones as well. He is aware of the emotions others feel now and will be more respectful of them.

Our visual media of the week, Possessor and Futurama‘s “I Second that Emotion”, explore the topic of empathy. However, it shows empathy in a way that the average person may find unsettling. Empathy is expressed in a manner that is forced or curated, not natural. How far does the mask of empathy go?

Possessor

In Possessor, empathy is a rather disturbing topic. Our main character, Tasya Vos, is arguably unable to feel the emotion or characteristics of others without observation. She is the opposite of our module’s discussion of direct perception: when you can feel how another is feeling without interpretation. Vos plays people (including herself) like characters in order to get into their mindset. Early on in the film, Vos talks to Girder about the assassination of Elio Mazza. Girder asks, “Why stab Elio Mazza. You were provided with a pistol.” Vos answers, “Well maybe it just seemed more in character.” Girder replies, “Whose character?” Vos doesn’t provide an answer to this question. The way Vos views herself as being “in character” implies that she cannot directly feel emotion.

There is another account in the film that exhibits the idea of playing a character. Vos observes Colin Tate with his fiancée Ava through a camera with a large lens. Colin says things such as, “I don’t think there’s any left” and “You wanna get dinner?” In this scene, we can see Vos copy his mannerisms to emulate his character before she must take over his cognition. She repeats the lines multiple times to perfect them. We come to a close-up shot of her face as she copies the words, “Let’s just go walk and find somewhere.” She closes her eyes and repeats it to herself as if she is trying to memorize it. She is like an actress practicing her lines. She cannot naturally feel what Colin is feeling.

Part of what makes us human is our emotion affected by the experiences of others’ and our own. Vos doesn’t quite have this. If anything, she is robotic. She can be compared to the concept of cybernetics. Kind of like how AI uses the information around it to learn, she does the same in order to play her characters. She stores the information in her mind for later use.

Futurama

The way empathy is showcased in Futurama‘s episode
“I Second that Emotion” is not disturbing, but we are dealing with another character that has a lack of natural empathy. Without the empathy chip that is attached to Bender by Professor Farnsworth, he cannot feel any of the emotion that radiates from others.

Before the empathy chip, there is a scene in which Bender watches the television. A robot is visiting the doctor, and the doctor tells him, “Your entire family died when a plane piloted by your fiancée crashed into your uninsured home, and you have inoperable cancer.” A normal, empathetic individual would feel terrible for the robot, but in the next seen we get a medium shot of Bender laughing at the television. He doesn’t feel the pain of the character on screen.

After the empathy chip, Bender can feel Leela’s emotions. Leela and Fry find Bender in the sewer. Leela says, “Bender, you didn’t have to come down here.” Bender responds, “I know, but I just miss Nibbler so much.” Leela says, “He was so cute.” Bender adds, “He was so sweet.” The two end up hugging while Bender cries. Bender has emotion in this scene because he can directly feel how Leela is feeling- the love and longing for Nibbler. This scene encapsulates emotional empathy, which is defined as feeling similar emotions to someone else in the VoiceThread. Bender can feel the same emotions as Leela, but only with the chip.

Conclusion

Both Possessor and Futurama share a mask of empathy. Vos’ is curated, and Bender’s is forced. Neither can feel the natural empathy that we do.

“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world”- Plato. This quote in my opinion really is what empathy is all about in a few words.  I believe it really explains Possessor and the episode, “I Second That Emotion” in Futurama.

In an ultra- violent sci-fi- horror freak- out, Possessor has different scenes where empathy plays a huge role. The main character Tasya Vos is an agent whose job is to learn about one person at a time, enough to be able to mimic that person when she is in control of their body. This time Colin is her next victim. Tasya’s one task is to kill John who is the owner of a big company and Ava who is his daughter. By using Colin’s body (Ava’s fiancé), Tasya’s mission is possible. Tasya has shown throughout the movie that she has a conscious, unlike the people she works for. Her conscious can be seen as embodied empathy because many times during the movie, she has a hard time about killing the person’s body she was in. She starts feeling their emotions and she has internal battle of killing them off. Having her small family can be seen as dangerous in her line of work because she cannot have empathy when in someone’s body. Tasya goes through exercises in the beginning and end of the movie to check her consciousness is back in her own mind and there are no gaps in memories. One example was a framed butterfly, in the beginning of the movie she states, “I killed and mounted it one summer when I was a girl, and then I felt guilty about it. I still feel guilty about it”.  This is an example of who she is and the empathy she has. In the end, after killing her family, when Tasya returns to her own body, she picks up the same butterfly. She says, “I killed and mounted it one summer when I was a little girl”. This now shows a different Tasya and that she no longer feels empathy or guilt for her kills, be it the butterfly, her ex-husband, or her own child. Vos no longer feels any emotions of her own because of how many times she had to train to be someone else in another person’s body.

 

After watching possessor, Futurama was a breath of fresh air (literally). The entire episode had perfect examples how Bender the robot does not feel empathy. It also seems like Bender does not mind NOT feeling this emotion. Of course, the professor puts an empathy chip, as if it was so easy to give someone the feeling of empathy. After feeling all Leela emotions, he fights it every time. He does not want to feel this way, maybe because he feels weak. Of course, when Leela feels something now he feels it as well. What I thought was interesting is how he knows that is Leela’s feelings and not his own. So, the chip gave him the feeling, but it wasn’t true empathy it was Leela’s feelings. Showing that what we learned in this week’s lesson of theory of mind. The professor even states at the end of the episode that the chip was turned off, viewers believe that bender can feel empathy without the chip. Quickly after the professor states that the chip was working in triple capacity. Which than we see the normal Bender that did not change because of this adventure. Bender really had no empathy for Leela’s feelings when she lost Nibbler. At the end, when Leela is crying and tied up and needs Bender to save her, Bender can’t because of Leela’s emotions. How ironic, that now he feels so much of Leela’s feelings and can’t help her. This is a true example of Embodied Cognition, how the body influences the mind. Bender can’t save her until she figured out how to not feel her sad emotions, she needed to be selfish and only care about her own emotions.

Not everyone can feel empathy, it takes a human form to have the capability of feeling ones feeling. But the feeling empathy does not make you weak- like I stated above, it is the highest form of knowledge.