Author: tpenske

This week we watched Marjorie Prime and the Star Trek: TNG episode “Measure of a Man”. What I thought was interesting about both of these texts was how similar yet different they are. They both deal with the creation of memories through the experiences has with different people. At the same time, they are both different because one deals with how a memory, no matter how fond or intimate, can be easily rewritten or even convoluted as you grow older and the other deals with our certain certain objects both define a memory and how that memory is associated to things.

As a Star Trek fan, this is one of my favorite episodes. I have a real soft spot for Data and how his sole purpose is to be human or to be as human as possible. The one scene I would like to focus on is the court room scene. Although this scene has alot to do with Data’s rights as both a sentient android and his rights as a Starfleet officer on board the Enterprise, Picard uses Data’s memories as a way to argue that Data is able to feel and self-aware of the deep feelings he and other people have. Picard brings a tote of various objects that Data has a very intimate connection to. During his cross-examination of Data, Picard pulls out two things that have a deep and intimate impact on Data. The first is a book that was gifted to him by PIcard. Data says that the book “is a reminder of friendship and service”. Picard then pulls out a hologram of the late Tasha Yar. Data is hesitant to talk about it as the hologram has a deep, emotional meaning to him. Data says: “She was special to me, sir. We were… intimate.” This object, if not both, is the reason why Picard and Data win the court case. In relation to the voice thread, the scene has a lot to do with extended cognition–part of the reason why we keep certain things with us in our life is because of what they make us remember. They help us remember people, places, and events and how they’ve shaped who we are.

I loved the concept of Marjorie Prime. It reminded me a bit of Blade Runner 2049  and topic of human v. hologram in that. Unlike Blade Runner however, Marjorie Prime is easier to follow and explain in relation to the topic at hand. I think this movie is a good representation of how our memories change. I feel as if our memories change to bring us more comfort as we age especially when we start to lose our memories; we change certain things to make ourselves feel more safe and secure whether we realize it or not. Another reason is that we’re not just remembering the original event but our memory of the event as well–this is a good example of why eye-witness accounts are, most time, very unreliable.

This week we watched Disney’s Inside Out and Star Trek Season 6, Episode 3 “Man of the People”. Both texts cover how emotions are inseparable from out cognitive systems and how emotions aren’t something that merely happens to us but are something that we create within ourselves.

In general, I don’t watch a lot of PIXAR movies which is really weird because I always end up crying over each movie during and after I’ve watched them. Recently, it was Inside Out and Soul that have made me cry like that. And they’re not even sad tears, they’re tears of resonance followed by neck and body chills.

Anyways, Inside Out follows a group of sentient emotions that live within the brain of Riley, who is experiencing a lot of new and varying feelings throughout the course of the film. The one thing I took notice of was how the character of Sadness was represented through out the film. I feel like PIXAR movies always try and touch on different important aspects of life that aren’t spotlighted on enough in this day in age. In this case, Sadness is represented as being suppressed by the other emotions. Joy, being Sadness’s contrasting counterpart, is seen trying to put down  Sadness and thinks there is no room or even necessity for Sadness within Riley’s “emotional headquarters”. I feel in today’s society, Sadness is almost an emotion used when you’ve reached a breaking point. In other words, you can be joyful or angry or even fearful with a snap of a finger but everyone’s sadness is so repressed and hidden. For instance, when was the last you cried in public? We see from the classroom scene, Fear is afraid of people casting judgement onto Riley as she stands up infront of the class and introduces herself. She begins to cry while looking back at memories from Minnesota and the Fear emotion kicks in as its embarrassing almost to cry in front of people, which is an unfortunate stigma in today’s world.

One other scene I would like to look at, briefly, is the scene pertaining to the creation of core memories. This is an example of the Theory of Social Construction. Each memory within Riley’s core memory bank are joyful memories but towards the end of the film, we see that even the most joyful memories are created through the other emotions. The particular memory in this case is Riley’s memory of the aftermath of losing the big hockey game. She’s sitting on a tree limb with her parents comforting her. All this time, Joy though the ending of this memory, which involves Riley being paraded and cheered at by her teammates under the trees was a core memory of joy but in reality it was a core memory of sadness turning into joy, not one or the other.  

In the Star Trek episode, “Man of the People”, the crew of the Enterprise recieve a distress call from a transporter ship called “The Dorian” which is carrying a Lemurians Ambassador named Ves Alkar and his supposed “grandmother”. We later learn that his “grandmother” is actually a 30 year old victim of Alkar’s negative emotions. One thing I would like to take notice of was the fact that Lieutenant Worf is seen teaching a mok’bara exercise class (which is essentially Klingon Tai Chi) with Deanna Troi and Ves Alkar attending. Mok’bara, in the Klingon Culture (not to nerd out or anything) is a technique similar to meditiation–it is used to both clear the mind and phsyical protection (Mok’bara is the basis of Klingon hand-to-hand combat). Aside from the fact that watching Worf teach a meditation class is seemingly hilarious and contrasts to his more serious Klingon maneurisms, Mok’bara works as a contrast to Alkar’s funeral meditation. Alkar’s funeral meditation highlights the fact that Alkar is an “energy vampire” of sorts. Where Worf meditation works to clear the mind and protect yourself, Alkar’s meditation is works to lower your defenses and allow him to inflict his negative emotions onto you. Being that Troi is an empath, this means that she is more vulnerble to attacks of this nature as well as being more effected by them.

Throughout the episode, we see Deanna Troi changing and acting different due to being inflicted by Alkar’s emotions. She’s more seductive and abrasive where she usually is very calm and empathic. I feel it is important to notice that Alkar’s victims growing old represent their core emotional feelings being sucked out of the body, very much how, in Inside Out, with absence of the Joy and Sadness, Riley is left feeling more frustrated and “not her self”.

This week, we were tasked to watch Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Season 5, Episode 2 entitled “Darmok”. As a quick side note, I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s texts; Arrival falls right below Interstellar on my “Top 5 Favorite Sci-Fi Movies” list (Interstellar being first and Arrival being a close second) and Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favorite Star Trek show, although Strange New Worlds might knock TNG out of that spot. Anyways both texts show how language is communicated between a human mind and an alien mind. They also shows that our linguistic and conceptual systems are part of the same system.

At the beginning of Arrival, Ian reads a line from the preface of Louise’s novel: “Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people to together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.” I feel as if the quote holds true to the “foundation” of the film. Louise, along with Ian, is tasked to learn the Heptapods’ language and to teach them how to speak to us. As the film goes along, Louise and the Heptapods form a temporal telepathic connection (along with the Chinese military commander Shang who is of no importance to this analysis but this was just the first viewing where I realized he was telepathically linked with the Heptopods). This connection between Louise and the Heptopods reinforce the meaning of the scene, which starts at 01:01:50, where Ian discusses that “if you immerse yourself into a foreign language […] you can actually rewire your brain.” This is an example of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is, Louise explains: “[…] is the theory that the language you speak determines how you think [and everything you see].” In other words, if we change our lamguage, we essentially alter the frames through which we conceptualize things. After this scene and throughout the rest of the movie, we learn that the visions she has been seeing of her with her daughter aren’t memories but are premonitions, so to speak. Through their telepathic link, the Heptapods use their conception of time (which to them is non-linear but simultaneous) to help Louise (who conceptualizes time as linear) understand and learn their langauge. In terms of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Louise learns their language and has her brain essentially rewired to conceive time how the Heptapods conceive it.

The Star Trek: TNG episode “Darmok” follows the same path as Arrival. The Tamarians speak in metaphors, which at first glance catches the crew of the Enterprise off guard, even Data. It isn’t until Picard and the Tamarian captain are beemed down to the surface of planet where they force themselve to try to understand each other. After the Tamarian captain’s fight against the Beast, him and Picard sit beside a campfire. In this moment, I feel that Picard’s brain has been rewired to understand the Tamarian captains language of metaphors. The Tamarians use stories from mythos to express what they are trying to say and so Picard uses a story to convey that he understands the Tamarian captain. In addition to this, the Tamarian langauge shows that the Tamarians are a unified species in a way. This is due to the fact that they speak collectively rather than just individually. The captains goal was to unite, not just himself with Picard, but the Tamarian species with the Federation.

This week we watched Brandon Cronenberg’s film Possessor and the Futurama episode “I Second that Emotion”. Both pieces of media express their own ideas of empathy (as well as some of the various theories that are in involved in the topic) as it pertains to this week’s voice thread.

Possessor

First I watched Possessor. I would like to start off my saying that I was not a fan of Possessor. At times I felt the gore and the graphic violence was a bit too much for me. When I saw the possessed Holly Bergman bloodily pierce her skull with an aux cord of sorts to program her emotional frequency and then minutes later proceed to graphically stab a lawyer “Death of Julius Caesar” style, I knew I was in for a long ride. Anyways, Possessor follows woman named Vos who is tasked to “possess” the mind of random people, play a certain role, and carry out various murders with the possessed person dying in the end as well. At around minute 10:25, Girder tells Vos of her next possession, Colin Tate. Vos saying “what’s the narrative?” made me feel as if this scene was an example of the Embodied Cognition. Girder goes on to give Vos character description of how she wants her to possess Colin Tate. As the voice thread says, “When we see the body of another person, we ‘sense’ into their body and ‘live through’ it.” This quote pertains to this scene in that Girder and Vos are essentially creating a story based off his past and body character to try and make him murder his family and leverage a deal between Girder’s company and Colin’s data mining company, Zoothroo.

Futurama

After Possessor, I watched the Futurama episode “I Second that Emotion” which follows Bender and how he reacts to human emotion and empathy.

After flushing Nibbler down the toilet due to his sheer jealousy and frustration towards him, Bender proceeds to make fun of Leela because she is sad that Nibbler is gone. Because of Bender’s lack of empathy for Leela, Professor Farnsworth installs an “empathy chip” on Bender’s head and tunes it to Leela’s emotional frequency. Bender now feels Leela’s emotional pain and can empathize with her. As a result, Bender misses Nibbler and regrets flushing him. I thought this scene compared very well with the beginning scene of Possessor where a possessed Holly Bergman, as I stated before, sticks an aux cord into her skull and programs her emotional frequency to match the emotional frequency of Vos’s. She is seen laughing and smiling — as she turns the knob on the device the cord is connected to, her face turns to a sudden frown followed by a sob. This is juxtaposed to Bender “copying” Leela’s emotions as they both become angry at each other and then cry afterwards. I feel as if these scenes are an example of “Simulation Theory”. As the voice thread states: “Understanding others involves simulating their mental states based on your own experiences.”

The first show I watched was Star Trek. In the episode, “Return to Tomorrow”, the crew of the Enterprise encounter a planet that was decimated by a cataclysmic event. Eminating from the planet’s center (an example of extended-cognition) is a voice called Sargon who asks Captain Kirk, accompanied by Spock, McCoy, and Dr. Mulhall, to beam down to the planet. When they beam down, the crew finds Sargon speaking through an orb asking Kirk to allow him to take control of his body. Through Emboddied Cognition, Kirk touches Sargon’s orb and Sargon transfers his consciousness into Kirk’s body.

Through Kirk’s voice, it seems that Sargon feels immense freedom after being “trapped” in his orb for half a million years. He goes on to explain that Kirk’s mind has an insuffcient amount of energy for him to speak freely while Sargon is in control and his energy is too powerful for Kirk’s body to handle which, according to McCoy and Dr. Mulhall, will result in Kirk’s death. In this episode, I feel as if Sargon has an appreciation for Kirk’s well-being in that he factors in the emboddied relationship between mind and body–this being the health and safety of Kirks body as it effected by Sargon’s mind.

The next show I watched was Altered Carbon with the episode titled “Out of the Past”. 250 years after being shot and killed, Takeshi Kovacs wakes up in an entirely new body called “a sleeve”. While doctors prep Kovacs’ new body, a voice over states: “Your body is not who you are. You shed it like a snake sheds its skin. Leave it, forgotten, behind you.” This quote is a direct contrast to the basis of Embodied Cognition which says “a body is not something you have, but something you are.”

Compared to “Return to Tomorrow”, the relationship between the mind and the body “Out of the Past” is vastly contrasted. In this episode, the body is seen as disposable whereas the mind is seen as something that can essentialy transcend permanent death by being placed into new bodies. It seems the mind is the only constant in this relationship.

The last show I watched was Futurama with the episode titled “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”. This episode, unlike Star Trek and Altered Carbon, is an example of the concept of the “Brain in a Vat”.

In one particular scene from the episode, the Big Brain, who is a member of a collective brain conciousness trying to wipe out all thoughts in the universe, transports Fry and Leela to “a mental realm” which lies in each book. In this scenario, the Big Brain would be the mad scientist and the act of him transporting Fry and Leela to different mental realms is an example of the creation of virutal stimuli that is being fed directly to their brains. As the Brain in a Vat concept states, the brain would register all these stimuli in exactly the same manner as normal human experiences. We see this as Fry and Leela can interact different objects and environments within each realm.

Hello everyone! My name is Theodore Penske (he/him). I am an English major with a Creative Writing minor at Stony Brook University. I will be graduating next spring with a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Creative Writing and Literature. I’m looking to go for my Master’s in Creative Writing and Literature at Stony Brook’s Southampton campus. After that, I’m hoping to pursue a career in both poetry and literary publishing. My dream is to write and publish a poetry collection as well as own and run a publishing house.

Over the spring semester, I took a Sci-Fi class with Professor Simone Brioni where we analyzed the meanings and different symbolisms behind various Sci-Fi films. I wanted to dive deeper into the more technical side of the Science Fiction film genre, and I saw a summer class was being given by Professor Hautsch, who is also a professor I am going to have this fall semester with EGL 301.

Aside from schooling, I am an avid stargazer, collage artist, and photographer (I specifically love astrophotography). In terms of summer plans, I don’t usually have any as I like to spend the break relaxing at local beaches or going on hikes in some of the nature preserves in the area. Although during this first week, I will be going out to Southampton to attend the prestigious 2022 Southampton Writers Conference under the guidance of former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Out there, I will be perfecting my craft as a writer while also learning how to better enhance my voice as a poet.