Compassion, Affect and Imitation

Empathy is an important way that humans process emotions triggered by our experiences in connection to the experience of others.  However, empathy is different from sympathy.  Empathy requires parallel experiences and emotional nuances that result in a connection through identification.  Sympathy requires parallel feelings.  Experiences, being more objective then feeling, can make empathy a challenging state.  I find affect can be easily mistaken for empathy.  Movies tend to create this kind of affect in many people.  A friend of mine recently made the following comment about seeing 12 Years a Slave:

“Just watched Twelve Years A Slave. I've never cried so much in my life. I'm still crying now. The agony we went through as a people. My soul hurts.”

  

It is necessary to note that she is a Black woman, born in Canada, of Jamaican parentage.  She is very socially conscious and maintains friendships with a wide variety of people.  Her black friends proceed to respond with similar feelings about the movie and the effects of slavery on Black African peoples that continue to this day.  However early in the conversation, one of her friends wrote this:

“Many groups of people have gone through this agony. Your history is unfortunately the most recent.”

She then proceeded to give a personal anecdote without particular details about a tragic event within her own family. 

I responded with:

“Really? How many "groups" of people were de-categorized as humans and sold as commodities because of the colour of their skin? For Black Africans I can't count the "groups" because they would number in the millions over 4 centuries.”

My question and comment spawned a drawn out conversation/debate about why I felt her comment was irrelevant and inappropriate.  My problem with her remark stems from what I think can be the danger in catharsis as Aristotle explained it.  His ideas assumes that the audience shares the same or similar points of reference and that the reactionary emotional response will be the same from individual to individual.  What mimesis does is give glimpse into a possible reality that must be considered in the context of possible outcomes.  Film is an art form that can be a great catalyst for affect because it even less objective than, say theatre. Where theatre relies on concepts like meta-theatre, “world of the stage” and the physical nature of live performance, film tells the story through the lens of the video camera, what is finally presented is at the discretion of the director, according to his or her visual interpretation. 

Normally, I would not have engaged the discussion as far as it went, but I felt compelled by the fact that many times we devalue each other by gratifying the egotistical desire to identify with another person’s experience, when compassion is what is needed. While not mutually exclusive, the two behaviours often seen as the same they in fact are not. Many times this assumption leads into affect.

 This conversation is not about race as much it’s about authenticity of our interactions with one another.  Black people experience this attitude out of racial biases, but the behaviour can be seen throughout our social dialogues.  How many times have we confided in friends about a sensitive topics who seem to always say, “oh yeah, that happened to me too!” when an “I’m sorry you feel that way” would’ve sufficed? Relationship doesn’t happen through observation or when we insert our own narrative in place of another person’s.  Relationship happens through actively engaging others that affirms their individuality within the framework of the “human experience.”  When we turn things the other around, the framework will always overpower the individual.  I think therein lay the source of true humanity.  Then we are individuals united through the impacts of our experiences, not experiences themselves.  First we must be open to understanding the impact of our experiences.

Painting, Photography and Descriptive Narrative

In The Picture of Dorian Gray the writing is very descriptive like a painter.  Oscar Wilde’s lavish writing style is like elaborate brush strokes, full of colour, and texture.  It is as if he imitating portrait painting through prose.  The writing itself then becomes a commentary on portraiture.  As a kind of portrait of the characters develops out of the language Wilde uses.  Perhaps the era in which Wilde lived informed this florid writing style.  The camera was a new technology and photography by extension a new art, but this technology made creating a portrait more efficient than the previous method of painting.  In order to paint a portrait with any Realism, the artist had to possess the skill to take what nuances the eye could perceive and translate them from imagination to brush stroke.  It is a unique exercise in both perception and coordination. Wilde’s writing verbalizes these nuances.  He wraps the action within highly descriptive settings.  Two examples follow:

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings.[1]

They rose up, and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing.[2]

An example from The Rings of Saturn show Sebald’s descriptive style.

My way from Dunwich took me at first by the ruins of the Grey Friars’ monastery, through a number of fields, and then to an overgrown scrubland where stunted pines, birches and rampant gorse grew so densely that the going was very hard. I was beginning to think of turning back when all of a sudden the heath opened out in front of me. Shading from pale lilac to deepest purple, it stretched away westward, with a white track curving gently through its midst….[3]

The functional relationship of the setting to the character development is very different in both stories.  I would argue that Wilde’s descriptions are more gratuitous, where Sebald uses descriptive language to guide the reader to a more specific image.  Oscar Wilde’s describes what the characters do not engage, with displaying the natural world carrying on in spite of them.  In the examples from The Rings of Saturn, the description of the scenery is related to what the narrator is directly encountering.  This is where I would describe Sebald’s writing as photographic.  Photography has the ability to isolate a narrative and create a new one simultaneously.  In practice, it is subject to the photographer’s inclinations, but without context, interpretation remains open. When contrasted with Dorian Gray, the writing in The Rings of Saturn is more towards the literal, and concise. The height of description happens within the mini-narratives within the main plot.  The narratives themselves are usually historical in nature, which alludes to the journalistic and documentary elements of photography.  There is enough to visualize what he is describing, but the connections between all the stories with main narrative give a new meaning to the individual stories.

Perhaps Sebald chose to write in this fashion because photographs follow some of the descriptions. The photo itself could have been taken under contexts unrelated to the actual event of the narrative, and yet become relevant because of its connection to the narrator.

Descriptive narrative is visual imitation is conveyed through words.  The like in language, techniques of imitation are different in painting and photography.  Painting realizes on how external elements such as light and shadow can be re-created through the colours used on the canvas.  Photography, must surrender to external elements like light or recreate them using artificial sources.  Although, in painting, an artist might choose to light artificially, the choice is not tied to the mechanics of painting in the same way it is to the mechanics of a camera.

The parallels between the two narrative styles, the art of portraiture and the art of photography, are that all work to establish a framework of character and for action to live within.  

Bibliography

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Digital. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., 1916.

Sebald, Winfried Georg. The Rings of Saturn. Translated by Michael Hulse. London: The Harvill Press, 1999.

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[1] Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd.,, 1916) Digital, chap. I.

[2]  Wilde, chap. II.

[3] W.G. Sebald, The rings of Saturn, (London: Harvill Press, 1999), chap. VII.

Simulacra of the Housewife

According to Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), simulation is dedicated to total experiential identification through immersion.  It conceals the absence of the real which to my mind, is exactly what Plato was worried about happening with imitation. The identity of the viewer becomes wrapped within the simulacra a to such an extent that all aspects of the psyche become conformed to that experience (Baudrillard .  

So it seems to me that simulation always has a definitive intention that is ever conscious of the simulacra.  Simulation is about creating an objective experience.  It is more scientific, calculated and concrete.  Because there is no referent, it becomes a reference.  Simulation is what happens when the sense of a “profound reality,” as Baudrillard calls it is lost.  Where it lacks meaning to the actual, it reinforces meaning if the “other” because is imposes an entirely new reality on the mind.  This makes simulacra an invaluable tool in method of control, suppression and oppression.

As a method of control, simulations can be used as a tool for anticipating outcomes through scientific method.  In this context, simulation goes beyond potential into the realm of probability.

As a method of suppression, it refers to the concealing the absence of the real that Baudrillard describes as a “system of death.”  The actual has already been dismantled and usurped by the simulacra, which continues to dismantle and usurp that which was related to the original.  All of this can only begin with the oppression of the original.  As a tool of oppression, simulacrum undermines the existence of the actual by occupying their space and or function, until they are destroyed and suppression must step in.

I believe celebrity culture is the latest pervasive simulacrum that challenges the actual on multiple levels.  It is to the point now that people are made celebrated simply for living.  This is the premise behind reality television, specifically “The Real Housewives” franchise.  They perfectly illustrate the “system of death” Baudrillard observes as a threat to the real.  It begins with the idea of a “housewife” which itself is a simulacrum.  Its connotation is a woman whose position in society is related to her home and the maintenance of it.  It emphasizes that the value of a woman exists on material things outside herself.  In actuality, there is no such thing as a housewife since, what is most obvious and counter to what the name suggests, a woman cannot be married to a house.  A woman is married to another person.  Replacing the role of a spouse with that of an object destroys the idea of a partner and replaces a person with an object.  In this light, it makes sense that in many of the “wives” of the The Real Housewives series are not even married.  They are attached to external things, like career, money, and material possessions.  These are sought after as sources of the personal fulfillment.  Now I have no problem with a woman who enjoys her career and works hard to advance it, but these shows both portray and are manifestations that these women are willing to possess at the expense of meaningful interpersonal relationships.

The shows producers seek to re-present the housewife as a “woman of the new millennium” smart, strong and progressive.  However the very assumption that a woman is less of those things because she chooses her home life as her primary occupation undermines the actual, and erodes its substance. 

Every so often a housewife will express the desire to pursue a career outside of her home, but this too is a simulation. It hides the fact that her participation in the series is proof that she has already done so. 

This is only one example of how reality television is the simulation Baudrillard describes.  Essentially, actual social paradigms such as the idea of family, are first undermined, then dismantled, and finally reconfigured into oppressive social paradigms. They are oppressive because they are presented as a true standard with out being rooted in anything tangible or practical.

On the other hand, The Real Husbands of Hollywood is satire on the Real Housewives series.  It simulates the overall concept of the “original” Real Housewives franchise as a video chronicle of everyday lives of Hollywood celebrity husbands.  The actors simulate their own lives as they play caricatures of their public personas.   

It also simulates the entire concept of reality television.  Juxtaposing the fully fictional antics portrayed on The Real Husbands of Hollywood with the supposed realities of The Real Housewives, the viewer cannot help but question the veracity of what the latter is trying convince us  In this example, simulation is used to reverse itself.  Because of the objectivity created through simulation, the viewer can ultimately be lead back to the beginning concepts that original formally occupied.

The Real Husbands of Hollywood points exactly to the reality that Baudrillard says is lost, that everything you see and hear is completely fabricated. 

References

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann    Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994.