(INTER)FACING EMPATHY:
INTERROGATING OUR TRAGIC LOVE AFFAIR WITH SCREENS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/psj2024vol9no2art1915Keywords:
Screen-sphere, Empathy, Interface, Cinematic Screen, Face, CelebrityAbstract
Screen technologies, ranging from the cinema to the smartphone, are taken for granted in the contemporary screen landscape. This landscape has been referred to as the “screen-sphere” (Sobchack 2014) owing to the fundamental ways screens affect how people understand and relate to the world around them. It is particularly their structural and operative functioning as interfaces that influence not so much how we use screens, but, more importantly, how they affect our communication with and feelings towards others. In so doing, the screen as an interface profoundly transforms people’s capacity for empathy. This article exposes the intersection of the screen and the face of the celebrity persona in an artwork by Candice Breitz titled Love Story (2016). Since the installation focuses attention on the faces of its subjects, it utilises the enormous power of the face in generating empathic responses. More specifically, the face of the celebrity persona cultivates both fascination and empathy in this work. Through a close analysis of this installation, I aim to show how empathy can be controlled and manipulated just as much as it can be compromised due to our screen-based day-to-day practices and our interactions with the faces of others. This article also demonstrates the crucial role that an artwork can play in raising awareness about the consequences of screens on our empathic resonance with others.
Downloads
References
Alderman, L 2017, ‘The phones we love too much’, New York Times, 2 May 1017, retrieved 19 March 2024, <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/well/mind/the-phones-we-love-too-much.html>
Alec Baldwin asks judge to dismiss manslaughter charges over Rust shooting. Sky News. 15 March 2024, retrieved 15 March 2024, <https://news.sky.com/story/alec-baldwin-asks-judge-to-dismiss-manslaughter-charges-over-rust-shooting-13095024>
Avenanti, A, Sirigu, A & Aglioti, SM 2010, ‘Racial bias reduces empathic sensorimotor resonance with other-race pain’, Current Biology, vol. 20, pp. 1018-1022.
Balázs, B 1952, Theory of the film: Character and growth of a new art, Dennis Dobson, London.
Benjamin, W 1969, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, in H Arendt (ed), Illuminations, translated by H Zohn, Schocken Books, New York, (Originally published in 1935).
Black, D 2011, ‘What is a face’, Body & Society, vol. 17 no. 4, pp. 1-26.
Branco, PSC 2012, ‘Cinema, the body and embodiment’, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, vol. 3, pp. 1-9.
Bucchioni, G, Lelard, T, Ahmadi, S, Godefroy, O, Krystkowiak, P & Mouras, H 2015. ‘Do we feel the same empathy for loved and hated peers?’, PLoS ONE. vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 1-11.
Casetti, F 2011, ‘Back to the motherland: The film theatre in the postmedia age’, Screen, vol. 52, no. 1,
Casetti, F 2020, Close-up-ness: Masks, screens, cells, IMGJOURNAL, vol. 3, pp. 105-117.
Dyer, R 1991, ‘A star is born and the construction of authenticity’, in C Gledhill, Stardom. Industry of desire. Routledge, London, pp. 136-144.
Elkins, J 1996, The object stares back. On the nature of seeing, A Harvest Book, San Diego.
Epstein, J 1988, ‘Magnification’, in R Abel, French film theory and criticism: A history/anthology 1907-1939. Princeton University Press, Princeton. (Originally published in 1921).
Esrock, E 2010, ‘Embodying art: The spectator and the inner body’, Poetics Today, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 217-250.
Freedberg, D & Gallese, V 2007, ‘Motion, emotion and empathy in aesthetic experience’, TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 197-203.
Frosch, P 2018, ‘The mouse, the screen and the Holocaust witness: Interface aesthetics and moral response’, New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 351-368.
Gledhill, C 1991, ‘Introduction’ in C Gledhill (ed.), Stardom. Industry of desire, Routledge, London, pp. xi-xix.
Greenberg, K 2017, Candice Breitz. Love Story. 2016, Tate, retrieved 13 July 2023, <https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/breitz-love-story-t15721>.
Hanich, J 2010, Cinematic emotion in horror films and thrillers, Routledge, New York.
Hansen, M 1987, ‘Benjamin, cinema and experience: “The blue flower in the land of technology”’, New German Critique, no. 40, pp. 179-224.
Hollan, D 2019, ‘Empathy across cultures’, in HL Maibom (ed.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of empathy, Routledge, London, pp. 341-352.
Jardine, J & Szanto, T 2019, ‘Empathy in the phenomenological tradition’, in HL Maibom (ed.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of empathy, Routledge, London, pp. 86-97.
Jeong, S 2013, Cinematic interfaces. Film theory after new media, Routledge, New York.
Kingwell, M 2019, Wish I were here: Boredom and the interface, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal.
Kinnick, KN, Krugman, DM, & Cameron, GT 1996, ‘Compassion fatigue: Communication and burnout toward social problems’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 73, pp. 687–707.
Koss, J 2006, ‘On the limits of empathy’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 137-57.
Lecheler, S, Bos, L & Vliegenthart, R 2015, ‘The mediating role of emotions: News framing effects on opinions about immigration’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 812-838.
Levinas, E 1979, Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority, translated by A Lingis, The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Madianou, M 2016, ‘Ambient co-presence: Transnational family practices in polymedia environments’, Global Networks, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 183-201.
Mania, A 2016, ‘Talking heads: Interview with Candice Breitz’, Andy Warhol’s Interview. Berlin, Summer, pp. 50-51.
Manovich, L 1997, ‘Cinema as a cultural interface’. <http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/020-cinema-as-a-cultural-interface/17_article_1997.pdf>
Marshall, PD, Moore C, & Barbour, K 2015, ‘Persona as method: Exploring celebrity and the public self through persona studies’, Celebrity Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 288-305.
Matravers, D 2019, ‘Empathy in the aesthetic tradition’, in HL Maibom (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy, Routledge, London, pp. 77-85.
Pallardy, R 2023, Julianne Moore, Encyclopaedia Britannica, retrieved 20 November 2023, <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julianne-Moore>.
Plantinga, C 1999, ‘The scene of empathy and the human face on film’, in GM Smith & C Plantinga (eds), Passionate views: Film, cognition, and emotion, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 239-56.
Smith, M 2011, ‘Empathy, expansionism and the extended mind’, in A Coplan & P Goldie (eds), Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 99-117.
Sobchack, V 1992, The address of the eye. A phenomenology of film experience, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
Sobchack, V 2014, ‘Comprehending screens: A meditation in medias res’, Rivista di Estetica, vol. 55, pp. 87–101. .
Sontag, S 2001, On photography. 1St Picadore USA edn. Picador USA, New York.
Sontag, S 2003, Regarding the pain of others. Penguin, London.
Stadler, J 2019, ‘Empathy in film’, in HL Maibom (ed.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of empathy, Routledge, London, pp. 317-326.
Tikkanen, A 2023, Alec Baldwin, Encyclopaedia Britannica, retrieved 20 November 2023,
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alec-Baldwin>
Turkle, S 2015, Reclaiming conversation. The power of talk in the digital age, Penguin Press, New York.
Van de Vall, R 2008, At the edges of vision: A phenomenological aesthetics of contemporary spectatorship, Ashgate, Aldershot.
Voss, C 2011, ‘Film experience and the formation of illusion: The spectator as `surrogate body' for the cinema’, Cinema Journal, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 136-150.
Weiss, H 2017, ‘Six stories, twice retold’. Interview Magazine, May 25, retrieved 20 November 2023, <https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/candice-breitz>
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Jenni Lauwrens
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
