Donna Holmes

November, 2024

 

PHI 3880 Philosophy of Film

Essay Exam III

 

Alex Neill, Empathy and (Film) Fiction.
Neill Argues that the imaginative activity which lies at the heart of our fictional
empathetic response both presupposes and is constrained by one’s knowledge of and
beliefs about the other’s psychological states... Do you agree?

 

 

               In Alex Neill’s argument that the imaginative activity that lies at the heart of our fictional empathetic response both presupposes and is constrained by one’s knowledge of and beliefs about the other’s psychological states, he is asserting that in the case of film’s fictional characters, we have limited knowledge into the nature of the various feelings, desires, and beliefs of the characters. We therefore must imagine these and the responses to them – both for the characters and our empathetic responses.

                    Susan Feagin argues that empathic responses require the connection between two mental states be made by belief, that is a cognitive state in “a belief that something may happen to him affects me emotionally as if I were him.” Of course, the problem with this is that a fictional character doesn’t have beliefs. Feagin’s response to this is that we simply imagine what their beliefs might be. We look for “cues” as to what their response might be.

                    But here again, we have a problem. Cues may not elicit an empathetic response. We may only feel sympathy. Our response to these clues need not necessarily reflect what the other is feeling. As Neill puts it, “Your happiness may make me happy with you, but it may also irritate me, and I may feel pity for you irrespective of how you happen to be feeling.”

                    In literary fiction, we are usually given so much detail about the characters, we feel as though we know them inside and out. Maybe that is why we don’t feel the need to empathize with them so much just to understand them. Everything is laid out for us right there in black and white.

                    Neill proposes that film fiction empathy is much closer to empathy with a real person precisely because we have such limited information about their psychological states and situations. Our motive to empathize (possibly unconsciously) is to understand them better and possibly even respond in ways emotionally not “in us”.

                    I would go even further to say that quite often the film uses empathy as a tool to make a point – sometimes possibly to even attempt to change someone’s view. One example that comes to mind is the movie Just Cause (1995) with Sean Connery. A retired Harvard professor and lawyer is brought down to defend a man on death row for the death of a girl – a man he believed to be innocent. But either way, he did not believe in the death penalty. Due to his excellent skills, he is able to have the conviction overturned and the man is released. The released man is psychotic and now has kidnapped the lawyer’s wife and plans to kill her just for fun. All of Connery’s beliefs about the death penalty fly out the window as he hunts this man down. Of course, the audience is meant to empathize with his point of view now, regardless of what you thought when you came into the theater.

                    Practicing, questioning, and learning is possibly the point of empathy, I think, or at least the value of it as Neill believes. When we practice empathy, we can use it as a learning tool. I have witnessed children on the Autism spectrum watch emotional clips from movies over and over again and they seem to follow a certain pattern. First, they watch for expressions. Then they watch for vocal reactions, such as crying, yelling, etc. Finally, they will watch until they react, until they make an emotional connection, until they have empathy with the character. The children I have witnessed using this technique are using empathy as a learning tool. I think this is something that we all do especially with film fiction, just not consciously and not as purposefully. Film fiction allows us to practice empathetic engagement before we engage empathetically with real humans. Kundera says “In film fiction, we get to practice the mode of engagement used in real life – clues of facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.” It doesn’t happen with every character or every time, but it can play an important role in the education of our emotions.

                    So how do we take all of this and bring it back around to support Neill’s argument? If we first accept that imaginative activity is at the heart of our fictional empathetic response, then we have to agree we are constrained by a lack of knowledge. To further engage, our imagination presupposes the emotional states, desires, and psychology of the character. We then must want to share the character’s response (even subconsciously and possibly for the reasons stated above), not just observe it. In turn, we become a part of the story.

 

 

 

 

Citations/bibliography

 

Carroll, Noël, and Finhee Choi. Philosophy of Film & Motion Pictures: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing, 2006

 

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, tran. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper and Row, 1984)

 

Susan I. Feagin, “Imagining Emotions and Appreciating Fiction,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1988): 485-500.