EGL309: Scifi and Cogsci on the Screen

The Futurama episode “I second that emotion” and Possessor(2020) both highlighted a debilitating component of empathy.  In the Futurama episode, Bender initially (and ultimately) lacks empathy, he still experiences emotions however he seems to reflect a child that hasn’t reached the Theory of mind stage. His actions come off very much like a toddler because his actions are selfish. At the birthday party, he gets jealous because all of the focus isn’t on him. He gets angry that having nibbler affects his life. The issues isn’t emotions for him its understanding other people’s perspectives are different from his. He truly can’t see why Leela is so upset when nibbler is flushed down the toilet – The episode goes against the Embodied theory, because even though he is able to pick up on all the clues that she is upset and hurt by his actions, he sees that she is crying and know that means she is sad, but he has no emotional empathy for her because he is unable to simulate how that would make him feel.  When he has the chip on his actions are guided by the emotions he is experiencing (Leela’s emotions)

Ultimately, Leela’s emotions end up almost costing them their lives, because feeling that fear for everyone’s life (as a robot, I don’t feel like Bender’s life was ever in any jeopardy) paralyzes Bender. It’s only when Leela is able to shut off her emotions and therefore Benders forced “empathy” is he able to attack and overcome the monster.

Possessor also demonstrates how emotions and the desire to really FEEL something get in the way for Taysa to do her job. Girder mentions to Taysa that it takes a certain type of person to do what they do. In order for her to be able to do it, she needs to be detached from any emotions. In the beginning with the butterfly, while she is desensitized, she is not completely devoid of empathy- she describes feeling guilty at taking the butterfly’s life. However, once she gets rid of her own emotional ties and she becomes completely detached physically and emotionally from her family she can state plainly as a fact without guilt that she killed the butterfly. This demonstrates how having emotions can and did hold her back at her job.  Her emotions and her ties to her family weakened her mentally. Sharing a consciousness would affect anyone’s psychological state. There is such a conflation of primordial and non-primordial emotions that it would be difficult to resume your own life after being pulled out of someone else’s. The tangible personal artifacts seem to be needed to reset and remind her who she is.

The scenes where he is wearing her skin shows that its difficult to separate in the mind who is whom. She essentially is wearing his skin, however he also has access to her thoughts and her emotions – so when he wears her skin, it just shows that the consciousness are merged, he is using her memories and emotions the way she is using his, therefore like with bender, having those emotions weakens her and she needs to shut them off in order to best perform at her job.  I think in these cases it’s stating any empathy is debilitating, but  more as a commentary that in  the real world  too much empathy cripples people.

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.”

Wow, I found the movie, Possessor quite jarring, the imagery was initially very shocking. When we look at the concepts in class in regard to the film, I definitely see some elements at play. Throughout you can see that in a way Vas has a very concrete understanding of the Theory of mind. When we see her standing outside the house, she is practicing how she will act. “Hi, darling. HI darling. What have you got there? What have you got there?” Varying her tone and intonation slightly, clearly attempting to find, what lends to making her sound so natural. The fact that she does this informs me she understands the average person’s perspectives are different than her own. Her identity, body, and empathy are very much at odds during the course of the movie. You can see her identity, which she ushered into the forefront was that of mother and wife. But by the end, we see clearly this is not the core part of herself that she felt day to day. We see her kill that part of herself when she kills her son and husband. At that point, Vas has decided to end that part of her life where she deluded herself. The technology in the film certainly blurs the lines between bodies. As far as empathy is concerned, Vas doesn’t concern herself with this issue. In her interaction with other characters, she does not seem to consider their perspective. In fact, she seems entirely detached from empathy. Her motivations appear entirely motivated within the self.

In the episode of Futurama, “I Second that Emotion” is much more focused on empathy, rather than ideas in regard to the body. The episode takes us from Bender not having any empathy to gaining the mimicked feeling of empathy. This take was very interesting being that the empathy displayed is not internally inspired but rather projected from the other character, Leela’s head. It is empathy at its most scientific, broken down to triggers in the brain that lead to emotions as a result. This idea brings me back to the idea of the brain in a vat, that emotions can be falsified and replicated by electronic pulses. Another interesting moment in the episode was when Bender tells Leela to stop caring and, “Start thinking about the things you want, the things you deserve…” It’s an interesting suggestion that when you put yourself first you no longer care about others. One moment that is overlooked is the moment that bender has right after. When he regains control of himself he continues to attempt to save Leela’s pet nibbler. This emotion was not present at the beginning of the episode. Though he went on this quest to retrieve him from the sewers, he most likely would not have put himself in any kind of harm’s way. Yet we see all kinds of growth when he does this without hesitancy, even after his arms are ripped clear off his body he completes the mission and saves the day.

Emotion researchers define empathy as “the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.” The film and episode we watched demonstrates what researchers define empathy as with a psychological example and a humorous example.

In the film Possessor, an assassin, Tasya Vos takes control of others’ bodies to commit murders. There’s a special machine that inserts her consciousness into their minds. To return back to her own body, she has to force the host(the other body) to commit suicide. The beginning of the film shows Vos in the first host body and is seen looking in a mirror and crying. It then switches to the host killing the intended target. Vos struggles to pull the trigger when it’s time to commit suicide so she waits for the police arrive to kill her instead. She feels empathy for this host body that she is in because she knows that she has ruined this person’s life and now has to kill them while being in their body. It’s as if she can feel that person suffering and their sadness as she takes their life. Vos also seems to show empathy when she is back in her own body and her boss asks her to explain a personal object she has. It’s a framed butterfly and Vos expresses her guilt for killing it.

In the episode “I second that emotion” of Futurama, Bender flushes Nibbler down the toilet in an act of annoyance towards Nibbler. Leela gets so anger that Bender isn’t feeling any emotion and wants him to feel the way she feels: sadness. The professor puts an empathy chip on him so he can feel every single one of her emotions. Throughout the episode we see him feel all different types of emotions such as anger, sadness, and jealousy. I think in this episode we were able to see Cognitive and Emotional empathy because Bender was able to understand Leela’s emotions being controlled by the chip and emotional empathy because every time she would cry, for example, he would cry as well and express why he is crying.

The film/episode really portrays of feeling empathy because it really helps us understand how others are feeling and how those feelings can help us respond to certain situations.

In our previous lecture we learned about the many forms of empathy and how one can come to understand the emotions of others around them. The movie Possessor and the episode I Second That Emotion from Futurama both display what happens when one is disconnected from all forms of empathy. This can be described as apathy and there are many examples throughout Possessor and I Second That Emotion.

Our main character in Possessor, Tasya, is being used as an assassin that can infiltrate and take over the minds of others in order to frame them for her murders. While she was in possession of the person’s body, Tasya viciously stabbed her target as though she absorbed the memories of the possessed and was fulfilling what that person always wanted. After the murder, Tasya attempted to commit suicide with the other body using a single gun shot instead of the knife used for the murder. Tasya’s crying while trying to kill the body shows that she was not completely emotionless by thinking about the host’s life. The Theory of Mind teaches us that we understand ones emotions by differentiating them from our own and realizing why and how they feel about whatever the case may be. When someone is constantly changing from person to person and all of their emotions and beliefs are scrambled, how would they be able to distinguish how to truly feel about anything or anyone?

In the episode of Futurama, Bender does Bender things and ends up flushing Leela’s pet Nibbler down the toilet. Leela realizes that he can not understand feelings in general let alone understand how the rest of them feel. After hearing this, the professor remembers that he can implant an empathy chip into Bender’s head that will force him to have emotions. These emotions become linked to Leela’s brain, making Bender feel whatever emotion Leela was experiencing. Watching this episode after watching the lecture made me realize that this made Bender an empath, completely connecting him to Leela’s emotions which can also be seen as a form of embodied cognition. He may not have felt the exact same way about whatever Leela was sad about but Bender still cried with her because he felt her pain.    

 

Literally my face at the ending of the film, Possessor, like what!!! Possessor really was a very intriguing film that really explored empathy. I mean Tasya Vos really has such a transformative journey throughout the film.

The butterfly really represents this journey she takes. I mean usually when I think of a butterfly, I think of it escaping its cocoon finally being able to shed its skin and live freely, beautifully. I feel like this is what Vos did however she shedded her emotions, her empathy and everything else that kept her trapped in her “cocoon”, like her family. I mean she literally killed her family and lost all empathy she had. First of all I did not see that coming and I know Colin didn’t either. I mean Colin wanted her to cave and her thought he understood her weakness, I mean hey didn’t we all. Theory Theory really explains why Colin thought Vos would cave when it came to her family because I mean she was trying so hard to hide those feelings. I think at some point Colin’s theory about Vos was right but also I feel for Vos it was a perfect opportunity to destroy all attachments that cause her to feel empathy. It was a choice she had to make, and oh did she choose…

Honestly it was just so sad to see Vos murder her own family. Then when she revisited the butterfly again at the end she didn’t feel any guilt for killing it which is how I knew she lacked any empathy anymore. It really does show that once you get rid of your attachments, things or people you value most, you can really lose all feeling and understanding for everything else.

OKAY TIME FOR SOMETHING LESS SAD….

and a little funny.

 

I feel like anything written by Matt Groening can always change a mood. Now in Futurama I feel like Bender has always lacked empathy but in the episode, “I Second That Emotion”, we see that change.. or at least an attempt at it. Bender gets this empathy chip placed in him and he is actual able to feel Leela’s emotions. When he gets the chip placed in him he is ale to feel how sad Leela that Nibbler got flushed down the toilet. However at the end of the episode when the chip is removed Bender is back to being well Bender. I feel like Bender is really unable to empathize without the chip because he’s a robot. There is no really connection with mind and body because he’s a machine and they don’t really feel with sensation. I mean it really touches back to this idea of embodied cognition because Bender doesn’t have all these sensorimotor capabilities therefore he doesn’t really feel anything. Without being capable of making an actually connection with his body he can’t really even begin to understand feelings. So really how could he possibly empathize with anyone at all? It really just shows how the mind and body coexist to understand not only our self but others. Without that there really is no feelings.

I hope I never get to that point where I say , “I’m at a loss for feelings.”

 

In “Possessor” and Futurama‘s, “I Second That Emotion“, the seeming antagonists of both the pieces show apathy and even exhibit behaviors similar to sociopaths. Tasya Vos and Bender have a hard time socializing with others and being aware of the human experience. They seem to go about the world simply observing and reacting, without feeling any emotions.

With Vos’s line of profession, we see that she often has to become her victims in order to occupy their mind and body, living as them until she completes her mission. With countless times spent away from her personal life imitating actions of strangers, soon it shows the psychological effects weighing on her. Slowly she becomes detached from her identity reliving herself in her last victim until bits of her reality pulls her back out. Through our lecture we learned the term “theory of mind“, which is the ability to perceive and interpret others thoughts and actions separate from our own. Connecting it to the film, I personally see Vos having a hard time with this, possibly due to her immersiveness and inability to separate her own emotions from her victims. With the first victim, her tactic for murder is quite personal, stabbing instead of using the gun provided for her. With countless Criminal Minds episodes I’ve watched, stabbing someone, especially as many times as she did, shows a personal vendetta. Possibly, she might have inhibited her victim’s emotions and was not able to differentiate it from her own or it is a means to signify something greater in herself that she wants to kill. Nonetheless, going back into her own body, she has a hard time adjusting back to her identity and seems lifeless, practicing over and over again how to say hello to her son and husband. This shows great apathy and her inability to connect with human emotions, but due to her profession she is able to act as if she feels the way she should feel.

There are many moments of embodied cognition throughout the film as well. Due to Vos’s inability to feel her emotions, she uses embodied cognition with the body language of people around her to adjust accordingly and react normally. She acts as a parasite in her own body as it seems easier for her than taking time to get back in her own identity. As she inhabits Colin, she does this with the people around him as well. The turnover of the film shows Colin trying to take control of his body again. Now that Vos and his own identity are living together in his body, they seem to fight over dominance. Both have access to each other’s memories making it difficult to differentiate reality and illusion. With two minds in one body, they fight for control. However, Colin’s consciousness is full of empathy and normal human emotions, while Vos is without, so ultimately it seems to be a fight of empathy vs. apathy. In the end, Colin loses the fight with Vos in complete control of the body as she kills her son. Does this mean that apathy is stronger than empathy? Does having emotions signify a weakness in humans?

In turn, we see that Bender has no human emotions because he is a robot. However, we see this gets out of hand when he flushes Nibbler down the toilet. To reflect on his actions, the professor inserts an empathy chip into him that radiates on Leela’s frequency, allowing him to feel everything that she feels. Bender’s emotions after insertion shows empathy; he literally feels every single emotion that Leela does. He cries when she cries, gets angry with her, and even misses Nibbler. It is a great example of embedded cognition and theory of mind as well because of the connection to her. He is able to feel what she feels, but is able state that this is not his own emotions. In the end, it shows he was able to imitate his own feelings in response to Leela’s, but is still unable to actually feel emotions. Leela states she learned more from Bender than he did her, showing her preference to apathy. Does this make apathy better than empathy? Does empathy just get in the way of the human experience?

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.

After watching these two films, I immediately feel empathy is a way of “understanding” and”perception,” sympathy is a “relationship.” In empathy, we substitute ourselves for another person. And in compassion, we replace others for us. Empathy is like a brain parasite, parasitic in the host’s body, perceiving everything about him. How does a person feel when he is empathizing with others? Just said: “Hello~! Friend, I am no longer who I am. Are you still my friend?”

Possessor

Empathy? Parasites?
In this film, Vos has to control the target host through “spiritual parasitism” to complete the company’s requirements and tasks. The copyright belongs to the author. When Vos’s “object consciousness” is “withdrawn” from other people’s bodies and consciousness, Girder will have to evaluate her “mental health” to ensure that her consciousness is not contaminated, carry playing the “pretend mentality” generated by others, it gradually gets out of control. Also, this process is realized through two of Vos’ items—a pipe and a stuffed butterfly. In the framework of “consciousness manipulation,” the possessor takes the “competition” of “two consciousnesses” for a body as a breakthrough point, trying to interpret the relationship between embodied cognition and theory of mind in an existential way. As mentioned in Voicethread Theory of Mind refers to a developmental moment in our cognitive process where we begin to understand that other people do not necessarily have the same thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, feelings, desires, and knowledge that we do. Butterfly specimens are a concrete manifestation of empathy. Vos said, “I killed and mounted it one summer when I was a girl, and then I felt guilty about it.” “Guilty” shows Vos has empathy because it was the first person she killed when she was a little girl; In the final answer, Vos also recounted the origin of the butterfly specimen but did not say that she was very guilty. And this subtle difference reflects the change in Vos’ psychological situation; that is to say, she used the fact that “Tate & Vos” killed Michael and her son, wholly abandoned her concern and identity questioning, let her subconscious mind peel off, get rid of the shackles of self, and bring closer to a more pure self. “I am absolutely starving.” Before going home, Tate and Voss talked, indicating that they controlled each other and eventually became one. Both became parasites to each other.

As Giovanna Cohen Betty theorizes, she argues that we see another person’s body; we feed into their body and live through it. The idea that we feel or feel is our acknowledgment of the place of another person’s body as subjectivity. For example, when she uses Tate’s body is inevitably brought into the host consciousness, she begins to question her identity and, trapped in Tate’s body, begins to rethink who she is. Vos becomes Tate; at this moment, she can understand and perceive that Tate/male is different from what she sees. And Tate’s girlfriend uttered words similar to Michael’s and continued passion. So it made Vos and Tate’s bodies highly integrated, and the previous indifference was no longer there. The excessive immersion allowed Vos to enjoy this body, and at the same time, it was also counterattacked by this body. Through the parasitic method, Vos does not need to read the mind. Although the body belongs to other people, the body she perceives directly gives her the information she needs. Just as in simulation theory, when we interact with another person, we simulate what the other person is feeling in our minds.

“Just think one day your wife is cleaning the cat litter and that worm ends up her brain. Whether you really married to her or married to the worm” (1:28:47). This passage shows that Vos is the parasite and Tate is the wife. Meanwhile, Vos is that wife, and Holly’s killing memories are the parasites fueling her killing genes. What is interesting is that in the scene of the implantation of consciousness, the appearance of the reconstruction of consciousness is expressed in a way that imitates the melting of wax people: that is, the consciousness is the electric wave, the soul is the body, and the body is the soul. Voicethread also mentions embodied cognition, we live through the body, which is other people, and the body is the brain. Our bodies constantly adjust to stabilize our perceptions; we often don’t even know about that.

Futurama

What does it mean if humans lose empathy? Leela complained, “You have no sympathy for anyone else’s feeling” (7:10) after seeing Bender throw Nibbler down and flush it down the toilet. But after he was forced to implant an empathy chip, in the scene at Futurama‘s bar, Bender could sense Leela’s emotions at the bar, including jealousy and loneliness, from the couch at home. And these two things happened simultaneously as if an invisible thread was pulling Bender to feel the same emotions as Leela. This thread is the empathy chip through which Leela’s mood changes are transplanted to Bender. Because of the chip’s empathy, Bender can synchronize with Leela’s emotions. He could realize he was crying because he felt Leela’s grief.

Can emotional empathy be forced? When the professor implanted an emotion chip in Bender’s head, he said, “I’m installing an empathy chip. Yes…If by “allow” you mean “Force” (8:51). The professor’s move of implanting the chip into Bender’s head can be understood as empathy can be placed in our brain, just like the intervention method used by psychotherapists when treating autistic patients, but this also requires the patient’s thinking. To understand, not force. As explained in Empathy in Voicethread, I can understand a friend’s happiness. But it’s empathy. I know that’s not my happiness. While we’re emotionally disconnected to some extent, we can sympathize with what’s going on with others, but we can’t necessarily have natural empathy. On the other hand, how we perceive and empathize things is part of our cognitive process. Cognition exists in the brain, the brain in the body, and the body in the environment. The three interact to perceive things, form concepts, and solve problems.

     According to Voicethread, the Theory of Mind is the understanding that other people’s perspectives and ideas differ from one’s own, including thoughts, experiences, feelings, desires, and beliefs. This point is demonstrated when Bender admits that the emotions he feels are not his own and that he can distinguish between the two. Bender said, “Now, I’ll simply turn it to Leela’s emotional frequency. I’m overcome with …Feeling” (9:16). Bender experienced Leela’s emotional change from being happy to angry to sobbing. We can think of this empathy chip as the neurons in Leela’s brain. When Bender was forced to implant the chip, he could directly feel Leela’s love and desire for Nibbler through the chip. It is also the mention of empathy and neurons in Voicethread; we see someone unhappy, and our neurons fire, so we see someone laughing, and our neurons fire in response. What does it feel like to be forced into empathy? If an empathy chip could be implanted, would there be no autism and AHDH?

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.