It was very enjoyable to focus on and consider empathy during this module. I’ve always kind of felt like empathy either happens or doesn’t happen in any given moment, and people may not even realize if they are showing empathy or not. At the same time, I feel like I’ve heard people say that they cannot relate to how other people feel a million times before. After considering the information and ideas throughout this module, I believe a lot of people who claim they are not empathetic actually are, and they just don’t realize they are.
Futurama
In the episode, “I Second that Emotion,” we observe Bender showing a lack of empathy toward pretty much everything around him. He definitely does not show any empathy toward the loss of Nibbler. After flushing Nibbler down the toilet, Bender does not show any signs of regret, sadness, or grief for the circumstances. When Leela says to Bender, “You have no sympathy for anyone else’s feelings,” Bender claims that he does. Not for Leela’s sadness and grief at the loss of Nibble, though. He feels sorry that Leela has, “one cantaloupe sized bloodshot eye.” Not only that, as they are all grieving Nibbler’s death, Bender is watching T.V. and laughing at a show where a character is experiencing great tragedies. Through these examples, it is clear that Bender lacks what is explained in Simulation Theory because we know that Bender has experienced loss previously when he says that the can opener had killed his father, but he does not simulate and empathize with Leela when she is grieving the loss of Nibbler. Another thing to mention is that Bender most likely doesn’t demonstrate the idea of Theory Theory because he is a robot and the other characters are human. Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe his experiences are different because he is a robot, so his experiences have been different to others. When they install the “empathy chip” into Bender’s head, they basically just downloaded Embodied Cognition into him like installing a software into a computer. Not only does he understand other characters’ feelings, he experiences them as well.
Possessor
This movie was a lot more aggressive and gory than the episode of Futurama we watched. We went from a cartoon of one character flushing a pet down a toilet to brutal, intense murders. Going back to what I mentioned earlier about people saying they can’t relate to others’ emotions, Possessor may just depict this idea through the protagonist, Tasya Vos. Bascially, Tasya possess other peoples’ bodies and takes control over them in order to kill someone that they (The Agency) would like killed. After they have killed someone while in the other person’s body, they are to kill themselves (the host) in order to return to their own body. Tasya demonstrates Embodied Cognition here, as she struggles to kill the host body in order to return to her own. In the first scenes, she waits for the police officers to kill her host body instead. She feels empathy for the feelings of the host body as she tries to kill it. After completing a task, Tasya goes through a series of questions to ensure her mind is still intact. One of the things she analyzes is a butterfly. At the beginning of the film, 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 scene shows that Tasya, although being in a host body and ruthlessly killing someone, still has empathy for having killed a butterfly as a girl. However, at the end of the film, after experiencing such traumatic events, such as killing her own family while battling with Colin’s mind while in Colin’s body, loses her empathetic feelings. This is depicted through the scene when she is holding the butterfly again, but this time, she does not say she feels guilty for having killed the butterfly. At the conclusion of the film, Tasya is totally psychotic and has lost her ability to emphasize.
After watching and analyzing these episodes/films, empathy and Embodied Theory are incredibly intriguing emotions/ideas to consider. I definitely think people don’t realize when they are being empathetic, but what happens when people truly are incapable of being empathetic? It is a crazy thing to consider.
One thought on “Analysis #2 – Mutual Feelings”
Hi Anthony,
I think that you make a really important point at the top of this blog post. A lot of what we are talking about in this class occurs on a pre-conscious level. We aren’t necessarily aware that we are sensing in a living through the bodies of others. That’s because what our body is doing is transparent—we don’t see the thinking that the body is doing to understand the emotion. Rather, we directly perceive it. This, of course, is not exactly what we, classically at least, mean by empathy, but it is an empathetic response to the bodies we encounter.
I really love your observation that although Bender has experienced loss, he doesn’t seem to be able to understand how loss affects those around him, like Leela. He is incapable of empathy, so he can’t seem to put himself into her shoes and understand what she is feeling. Your point about the chip as “downloading’ embodied cognition is also raises some questions about how emotion is being represented in this episode. Bender’s experience is not really embodied, because he doesn’t need to see Leela and sense into her body to know how she is feeling, even though he is “living through” her emotion. This is an interesting contrast to Vos, who represents a kind of radical embodiment, even as she loses her ability to empathize.
Jessica Hautsch