User:Ruben/RWRM/Preliminary text on practice
Emotion & Media
Emotion generator, it seems to be a fitting name for the medium of film. Unsurprisingly, many scholars have attempted, and are still attempting, to theorise spectatorial emotions. They try to tackle the paradox of fiction. Why does the audience laugh, cry, or have a chill down their spine while they know what happens on screen is not 'real'? What is their relation to the characters on screen? And how do they relate to the story presented to them? Why do they experience emotions, or at least say they experience emotions?
These questions are most often approached from a psychological and philosophical angle, building up their theories quite matter-of-factual[1].Most often neglecting cultural differences -- both in films and in the spectators -- or staying overly vague. Either way, they are very goal oriented. They are attempts to categorise emotional responses, all praising the medium for its emotive quality, without questioning the existence of these emotions. Without asking why it is so great that we experience these emotions in cinema. [QUE?!]
A question that seems getting more and more relevant, considering the impact of these generated emotions on human behaviour. That emotions have impact on behaviour is not only acknowledged by HUMANE/VRIENDELIJKE/SOCIALE causes, but primarily by commercial parties. For example, it is claimed that 50% of our consumer behaviour is influenced by our emotions (Name, Year, YT video). It allows for a form of nudging in that it can help to targets one of our primary instincts. That leaves one wondering: are we indeed machines that, when you press the right button, express similar behaviour, or even experience similar emotions?
Ad Etkins seems to ask us that question in his exhibition Recent Ouija (2015, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). His video works seem like roller coasters for our emotions. Triggering one emotion after the other, without requiring us to distinguish any plot, or develop any sympathy for the character(s).
It leaves you wondering, how 'sincere' are the emotions we experience when we see (commercial) television? On what ground do we experience those emotions? Do we experience emotions because we have sympathy for the characters, or do we develop sympathy for the characters because the filmic structure pushes our buttons in the right way? Either way, it seems these commercials are oriented at maximizing our emotional response. Either by showing a spectacle, or turning the ordinary into a spectacle. It seems that emotional yield should be maximized; our emotions are the crops that need harvesting -- they create our engagement, and in there lies our loyalty (with a brand). In the process of maximization of yield, hard facts on emotions are preferred over 'soft' qualitative studies.
What started out as a social study for the benefit of people with syndromes in the autistic spectrum -- the indexation of 412 emotions, grouped in 12 categories (Baron-Cohen) -- recently turned another way, and now provides the basis for engagement studies for commercials, running under the name Affectiva. Using data of facial movements they try to determine which version of an the ad provides the 'optimal' emotional response. This is just the beginning. Later, so they tell us, they believe their computer technology can be used by autists not only to recognise emotions, but also to learn how to mimic the right emotion in a certain situation. To learn to smile, without knowing how to empathise with happiness, to learn to put a grievous face, without knowing how to grieve.
As Alfred Korzybski in the beginning of the 20th century stated: "the map is not the territory" -- meaning that models can give us some insight into what we might discover around the corner, but they lack detail and do not explain how things have gotten there. The same counts for models of emotions: they can give some insight in what response we could likely expect of somebody, but they are too shallow to account for the rich source of the experienced emotions. The associations that form the foundation of emotions are not taken into account. [2]
Their system is looking for hard facts: it tries to monitor the emotions that those who experience them don't even notice (see YT video). It tries to come up with a single answer to the seemingly simple question: "what do you feel right now?". Seemingly neglecting the ambiguous nature of human emotions. When exploring the nature of human emotions in cinema, theatre and other forms of art, Kendall Walton compares our emotional responses to those of a child playing the game of make-believe. [Naming This theory here seems not to match with first paragraphs]
Compare [a spectator] with a child playing an ordinary game of make-believe with his father. The father, pretending to be a ferocious monster, cunningly stalks the child and at a crucial moment, lunges viciously at him. The child flees, screaming, to the next room. The scream is more or less involuntary, and so is the flight. But the child has a delighted grin on is face even while he runs, and he unhesitatingly comes back for more. He is perfectly aware that his father is only "playing," that the whole thing is "just a game," and that only make-believedly is there a vicious monster after him. He is not really afraid.
It is like the child is acting, but not for a spectator. He is mainly playing for himself. Experiencing and expressing two emotions, both of which are sincere. He puts it more polished/ornate when he says:
Rather than somehow fooling ourselves into thinking fictions are real, we become fictional.
He argues that we, not unlike in dreams and fantasies, transcendent into a fictional realm -- caught up in a (therapeutic) desire (for aura or otherness?).
Adding to that, I would like to argue that most of our human interactions have a form play in them. Are we not theatrical beings? Do we not take on different 'roles' in different interactions -- whether it's concious or not? Does 'being yourself' not lead to different behaviour in distinct social contexts?
What is intriguing then, is what happens when one would use videos of (b-)actors acting out over 400 emotions, to train others how to express emotions properly. A feedback loop is created. In a way, this is similar to what George Didi-Huberman describes in Invention de l’hysterie (1982, translated into English in 2003), on a prison for four thousand incurable or mad woman. In this "feminine inferno" Charcot studies hysteria by making pictures of women in certain poses. But due to his methods, he encourages the woman to pose more and more in strange ways. Keep in mind that hysteria was beforehand seen almost as an art form, like theatre. But as these woman where pushing themselves further, the illness worsened. Maybe we can compare this to children copying behaviour they see on television. It often starts as a joke, but then becomes embedded in their behaviour and gets its own connotations.
[As Friedrich Kitler states, each new technology influences our self-image. Similarly, training of facial emotions with data-analysis, will only lead to a higher awareness of ones self-performance. A high self-awareness, contrast with 'being oneself', thus contrasts with expressing sincere emotions. -> this seems to conflict with my statement that human interaction is always theatrical!]
It seems to me that the double promise of facial emotion analysis -- on the one hand they claim to be able to find 'the real' emotion behind the face, on the other hand they want to train people to exhibit facial expressions fitting to a certain situation, so not with an emotional ground per se -- is both grounded in a form of normalisation. [UITBOUWEN/AANSCHERPEN!]
The fact that film is a, or maybe even the, medium of emotions it seems only fitting to research this topic using this medium. Even more so because actors are trained on expressing emotions using various techniques, which might add interesting insights into the subject. On the other hand, the questions raised in this text only exist because of computer technologies used to analyse and quantify facial expressions. I therefore believe it would be good to investigate these technologies. For example on their (cultural) bias.
This is the start of a research/response using both the filmic and digital media to look into the analysis of facial/emotional expressions and its assumptions of, and implications for human interaction.
[POSSIBLE QUESTIONS]