Marjorie Prime

The film’s focus is on the character Marjorie who suffers from memory loss. The image of her young husband retells stories to her, using episodic memories. She doesn’t remember the day previous, like when he told her about getting a dog before they have children. She adds in little things, additions to how she felt, and he responds “I’ll remember that.” 

We find out that this image is a technology like an AI called a Prime. Walter Prime is like a vessel then for memory. 

The script itself talks about memory a lot on a scientific basis. Tess reiterates that you remember the last time you remembered a memory and not the memory at its source. 

Music is predominant in this film, what Marjorie chooses to listen to and she talks about her desire to play the violin, she remembers how to read music and the names of the strings, the first song she learned. In a scene before this, Tess plays the piano after a discussion about memory. This feels like a subliminal message about how music sticks with you over other things, could it be that this is an example of affect as information, information as memory retrieval? 

Earlier in the film, the story of how Marjorie was proposed to is much different from the memory that comes when she looks at her wedding ring, which is a real example of affect of information since looking at the ring prompted her to remember. I think she was also influenced to remember by the story, a part of her might have realized it wasn’t the real thing that happened, affect of priming? 

The different primes are made up of the autobiographical self but it’s composed of the perception of memories of the family members making the Primes more biographical. A question asked at one point is to a prime was, do you have emotions?

What I like about this film is that it’s a real depiction of what it’s like to take care of someone with memory problems, aside from the science fiction of the AI technology. 

There are a lot of layers to this film, I liked the subtle revelation that Marjorie had passed away. This was one of the sadder movies I have watched in my life, so intentional from every shot, what they choose to include in every scene (the mess, the whisky, etc.); really excellent filmmaking. 

Star Trek “The Measure of a Man”

Firstly, I have been watching the Star Trek episodes on my computer and I watched this one on my TV, I can’t believe the amount of makeup they put on the person who plays Data! 

The scene that stood out the most to me was when Data was gathering the items that have meaning to him, looking at them nostalgically and Commander Maddox comes in to try to convince him to undergo the procedure of taking him apart, saying he will keep his memories. Datas main concern is those memories loosing their essence, the emotions that come with them. 

The common theme of the two works is: are computers able to conceptualize memories and feel? 

Also, I think the films for this week and last were kind of interchangeable due to that theme. These last two modules were my favorite to learn about and had me thinking about the lectures in my day to day life, too. 

I have to say, I’m glad I don’t have to watch any more films or television episodes! This class has reinforced that I’m a book person and not a television or movie person. However, the films were great reinforcers of the concepts we learned throughout the course, and I enjoyed making connections between the two. 

Inside Out

I love the movie Inside Out, I’m glad it was featured this week as a good excuse to watch it again. 

The movie starts out with the base emotion of Joy for baby Riley when sadness intrudes on them. This movie vaguely incorporates the seven basic emotions but excludes contempt and surprise and they use the term “Joy” or rather, character, in place of happiness. A big focus of this film is also memory and how “core memories” make up Riley’s personality. Back to emotions though, Joy and Sadness are removed from headquarters when they’re sucked out of the tube that collects the days memories, along with all of her core memories. 

Sadness can’t help but touch memories and turn them from happy to sad. This shows that Riley has a little bit of control over the influence of the emotions versus the emotions controlling her entirely. 

Another connection to the lecture is to the quote by Lisa Feldman Barrett, she said emotions are socially constructed. When you look into the mind of Riley’s father, his primary emotion is Anger which is tied to the social construct of men being more angry, aggressive, quick tempered. When viewing the Riley’s mothers emotions, her primary emotion is Sadness, which if you have taken a sociology course on relationships, you’ll learn that those two types of families lack communication (which we even see) and Riley’s mom is probably continuously let down. I think becoming an adult in general often leads to happiness taking a back seat and an emotion like sadness or anger taking the forefront. You could also say that the leader emotion is the general mood. 

While watching the film, I also tried to analyze which theory one could say Riley falls into in terms of arousal and appraisal and I’d have to say she falls into Arnold’s Appraisal Theory, event to appraisal to emotion to action. During the scene where Riley is video chatting with her friend, the emotions were observing what was happening and then choosing how to react which was by saying “I have to go” and slamming the laptop closed.

“Man of The People” Star Trek

In the Star Trek episode this week, the concept of an empath was brought up again. Deanna is an empath, when talking to Alkar who also appears to be an empath, he says he can only sense the emotions of his own species. When Alkar’s mother suddenly dies, he requests that Deanna do a ceremony with him since she’s the only other empath there but something seems to happen when the crystals they’re chanting with click together. She appears to lose her empathy, which is clearly seen when she’s talking with one of the crew members. It’s like the ceremony took away her ability to feel, or was his mother’s feelings transplanted to her? We finally find out that Alkar transplanted his dark thoughts  into his “mother” and then did it to Deanna. Fast forward, when reviving Deanna, all of the dark thoughts, the emotions he can’t handle and doesn’t want to deal with, were transplanted back to Alkar, killing him. He completely lacked the empathy he claimed to have, even the title of the episodes shows how he contradicts himself. 

Arrival

In the movie Arrival, Dr. Banks gets the idea to use a white board for visual communication, in order to find some understanding of the alien’s language. The aliens responded to this by providing their own visual aid, using their own system of symbols. 

Dr.  Banks explains the breakdown of language and finding out if the aliens are capable of understanding a question but how it’s important to learn what they understand before they can ask questions and understand their answers. 

My particular favorite interaction is when they’re learning the names of the different aliens based on what they showed them. They assigned them the names Abbott and Costello. During this scene, Dr. Louise Banks also takes off her hazmat gear stating the importance of showing her face when communicating. 

They’re called heptapods, and learn they are able to communicate many meanings through symbols with certain curves to them. 

A miscommunication in the words they chose to use, leads to the militaries across the globe to want to attack. This is also in part to the lens they’re using in the situation, to take everything as a threat.The heptapods said weapon when they meant tool, which connects back to the lecture where different cultures and languages use different words to communicate the same idea. 

I love and hate the moment (just because it’s so sad) where she gives her daughter a new meaning the word unstoppable, knowing she’d be getting this unstoppable disease and calling her daughter unstoppable and making it positive. 

I was shocked when I learned all the flashbacks were actually her seeing into the future and despite it all, despite knowing her daughter will one day die, her husband and her will separate, after adopting and teaching this language, she was able to operate the same way as the heptapods, who don’t see time as linear. 

“Darmok”

In the Star Trek Episode, “Darmok” they are going to encounter the Children of Tama. They continuously try to communicate with each other but neither is taking the time to see what the other’s language means. Similar to the film, there is the assumption that their words are meant to be aggressive but their body language doesn’t read as that at all. Troi points out that one misunderstanding could be detrimental. 

I was questioning the smarts of the captain for not figuring out the offer of the knife was not him trying to start a fight but he redeemed himself when he figured out the Tamarians speak in metaphors, but metaphors different from the metaphors referenced in the lecture. Dathon exclaims “…his eyes uncovered!” Which can be understood as meaning, he finally understands! 

We also learn that they use imagery from their experiences to speak about certain instances but with that, their ability to communicate using their language seems impossible since they don’t know the imagery being used since they haven’t experienced the thing itself which connects back to the lecture when discussing meaning. 

I enjoyed watching both Arrival and “Darmok.” Both demonstrated clear displays of the lecture material from concept of meaning, to conceptual metaphors, and frame shifting but were also entertaining. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Arrival as much as I did!

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. 

All three episodes featured this week were different from one another but a great introduction to how the concepts of cognitive science can applied in a science fiction show, from a cartoon to action and drama. 

In Altered Carbon, the main character’s “stack”, which is essentially their brain is put into a “sleeve,” or another body when a person is dies. We learn that this is a process that some can’t afford when someone’s stack is put into an old, subjectively unattractive sleeve. In this show, cognition is embedded. The person, Kovacs, was a lethal weapon before being resleeved, and he began an aggressive fight once they opened up the package the sleeves are kept in. It could also be said that while all of the characters in this show have a disk, Kovacs has something more in that his mind is like a computer, like cybernetics. 

The next episode I watched was Futurama’s, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”. In this episode, “the brain spawn” are attacking, turning everyone stupid except Fry (comedically because he may already be too stupid). When Fry and Leela confront the Big Brain, he transports them into different classic books, Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, and Pride and Prejudice. Fry is able to defeat the Big Brain when he gets out of his grasp and writes his story that the brain and Leela are in. This scene is an example of enacted cognition, since they were outwardly affected by the control the brains had over their own minds but also how they were affected within the books. Even the brain was painting with Tom Sawyer. 

I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t looking forward to watching Star Trek, I’ve never been into anything to do with space (because space terrifies me) but after viewing the episode, I can understand why it’s a cult classic. Kirk is taken over by Sargon, a mind without a body, places in a sphere. Sargon takes over for only a short time, but he is elated to be in a body again when it happens first. Fast forward to when they all decide to let the minds within the spheres take over their bodies, Sargon and Thalassa are able to embrace for the first time in years. This shows the importance of body to the mind for maximum experience. 

I love the creativity applied to the cognitive science theories portrayed in these different shows. I didn’t realize the depth of real science that contributes to science fiction, since my exposure thus far has been so limited. I will definitely continue to watch Altered Carbon, which I found the most fascinating of all three television shows. I have to wonder if Altered Carbon was inspired by this Star Trek episode with the concept of “sleeve” bodies and the body that is waiting for Thalassa. Hmmm….

Hello everyone! My name is Meghan Krulder, my pronouns are she/her/hers. I am a senior studying English here at Stony Brook. I went to a few different colleges previously, so I’ll be finishing up my degree in the summer or fall of 2023, since I’m playing “catch-up” now.

You might have guessed that one of my hobbies is reading, but I also run a (mediocre) bookstagram! I also enjoy listening to music, spending time outside, and playing Pokemon Go with my boyfriend. Some of my favorite artists are Harry Styles, Turnover, Taylor Swift, Movements, and Florence + The Machine, to name a few.

I live with my boyfriend Tyler near Patchogue. We have two cats, one named Dewey, the orange one, whose named after a library cat that I read about when I was younger (original Dewey’s name is inspired by the Dewey Decimal System); and Freya, named after the Norse goddess. Tyler chose her name because he’s into all things Norse Mythology. We are crazy obsessed with them and treat them like actual babies (lol).

I decided to take this course to expand my horizons. I am actually not a film or television person! I thought this class would challenge me and educate me on a topic I never had a lot of interest in, mostly because it’s hard for films to hold my attention. When watching movies, I always gravitate towards comedies and romance, sometimes horror, but never scifi! The only film I’ve watched on the list is Inside Out! I plan to make Tyler watch all of the films with me, so it’s a win win.