Marshall Duke and Daniel Reynolds, From Rambo to Rushdie via Linklater and Lavant: Our Peanut Butter Cup Runneth Over
In the first
CMBC lunch talk of the 2014 academic school year, Dr. Marshall Duke
(Psychology, Emory University) and Dr. Daniel Reynolds (Film and Media Studies,
Emory University) discussed their recent collaboration, the joint teaching of
last spring’s interdisciplinary class, “Film and the Mind.”
Bringing
together psychology and film studies in an interdisciplinary approach can lead
us to a richer understanding of what films—and our responses to them—disclose
about the human mind. Dr. Duke began the discussion with an impassioned
endorsement of consilience—a term
popularized by E.O. Wilson’s 1998 book of the same name. Consilience refers to
“a ‘jumping together’ of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based
theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation” (Wilson,
p. 7). For example, researchers from a range of scientific
disciplines—genetics, paleontology, biology—have arrived at similar conclusions
about evolution using independent lines of research, providing converging
support for evolutionary theory.
Drs. Duke and
Reynolds created the interdisciplinary course, “Film and the Mind,” in the
tradition of consilience, creating a space for inquiry at the nexus of film
studies and psychology. As a metaphor for the goal of consilience, the two
professors brought in a jar of peanut butter, chocolate bars, and Reese’s p-b
cups, encouraging the students to begin thinking from a “Reese’s p-b cup
place”—in other words, from the juncture where these two disciplines overlap. There
is a historical precedent for this: two early prominent film theorists—Hugo
Munsterberg and Rudolf Arnheim—studied human behavior from an interdisciplinary
perspective by drawing from both psychology and film studies. Both Munsterberg
and Arnheim were psychologists by trade who became interested in the novel ways
film contributes to the study of human behavior. As Dr. Duke explained,
Munsterberg is a well-known figure in the film studies discipline, but has been
all but forgotten within the field of psychology. This underscores how far
apart these two disciplines have drifted—and Drs. Duke and Reynolds believe
that it is time to bring them back together.
An interdisciplinary
approach that draws from psychology and films studies can be used in the
viewing and analysis of films to reach a deeper understanding of strengths and
weaknesses in psychological theories and concepts. For example, psychoanalysis
plays a large role in the narrative of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and analyzing the
film enables a greater understanding of the ways psychoanalysis has proven
itself simultaneously to be both useful and limited in comprehending the inner
workings of the human mind. The protagonist
of “Vertigo” is crippled by a fear of heights and attempts to overcome this
fear in order to save a woman from the top of a tower. He misinterprets the
actions and events around him and is unable to understand whom the woman in the
tower really is, mirroring the types of misinterpretation and identity
confusion that frequently arise in psychoanalysis. With this film, Hitchcock
succeeds in making these core psychoanalytic constructs accessible to the
viewer and illustrating their utility for understanding how the human mind
works. “Vertigo” has a very tight narrative with the characters’ behavior all
neatly accounted for by conscious or unconscious intentions, reflecting the
psychoanalytic position that all behavior has an identifiable cause. It is Dr.
Duke’s belief that this constitutes a simplistic account of human behavior.
In contrast to “Vertigo,”
in which psychoanalytic theory was used to directly construct the film’s
narrative, other films loosely embody speculations about psychological processes
and may allow greater traction on questions about the human mind by virtue of
being less rigidly constructed. “The Tree of Life” exemplifies this type of
film and was viewed in the class because of its portrayal of features of human
consciousness. The film follows the story of a family living in Texas in the
1950s and is framed by meditations on the experience of being alive, family
relationships, and humanity’s place in space and time within the expansiveness
of our cosmos. The film has a daring style, performing experiments in
perception and incorporating stylistic elements that are novel and unique. For
example, the film features an unexpected interlude chronicling the creation of
the universe and development of biological life. Films like “The Tree of Life”
make it clear that we are not simply learning about the mind by passively
digesting the view of human experience that the film projects. Rather, the
viewer has a range of reactions to a film, and it is in the interplay between
what a film is communicating and how the viewer responds to a film where we
gain insights about our own mind and the minds of others.
Because of the
complexity associated with unraveling these interactions, studying film and the
mind from an interdisciplinary perspective is a particularly useful approach to
thinking about such topics as how absorbing watching films is. When the lights
are dimmed and a film is projected on a large screen, most viewers have the
experience of becoming absorbed in the film to the point that they forget there
are other people around them. The literary critic Zunshine argues that in this
state we allow ourselves to fully experience the moment because we are
minimally self-conscious and maximally absorbed in the film. This quality
allows us to strongly empathize with a film’s characters, crying when they are
in despair and applauding when they are joyous or victorious. There are factors
about the film-watching experience and the film itself that can modulate the
degree to which we become absorbed in a film, or empathize with its characters.
For example, if the lights aren’t dimmed or the film is being viewed on a small
portable device, the degree to which the viewer becomes absorbed is likely
diminished. Furthermore, factors like the tone of the film or how sympathetic
the characters are can enhance or reduce the degree to which the viewer
empathizes with the films’ characters.
Although we are
capable of deeply empathizing with others, we are also embodied physical beings
and retain some level of distance from others, enabling us to judge them. Dr.
Reynolds contends that we likely exist at the confluence of these two states,
shifting dynamically between them as circumstances change. “The Act of
Killing”—another film viewed in Drs. Reynolds’ and Duke’s class—reveals the
dynamic shift between states of greater and lesser empathy and judgment as we
relate to the characters on screen. “The Act of Killing” is a documentary that
portrays re-enactments of genocide and includes one particularly profound moment
in which one of the perpetrators of the genocide realizes the horror of his
acts and begins crying. The perpetrator is a very unsympathetic character that
most viewers would judge as a monster, but in this singular moment of the film,
the viewer is forced to reconcile this judgment with a feeling of sudden
empathy for the man. By provoking this pronounced shift from a judging stance
to one of empathy, the film compels the viewer to experience a moment of
intense self-awareness of the dynamic nature in which we relate to others.
Cognitive
psychology and neuroscience research provides insight into how the experience
of empathy and judgment may be instantiated at a neural level. Mirror neurons
are so-named because they fire both when an individual initiates an action and
when an individual observes another initiating the same action. In effect,
activity in mirror neurons does not meaningfully discriminate between the
action of self and the action of others, leading researchers to hypothesize
that these neurons play a role in empathy. The mirror neuron system may
function in parallel with neural systems that support our sense of self. For
example, research suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex,
and temporoparietal junction may promote self-reflection and a sense of
physical embodiment. The brain may be capable of toggling between these neural
systems, allowing fluid transitions between judgmental and empathetic states.
An
interdisciplinary approach is, however, not without its challenges. At the
culmination of the talk, Dr. Reynolds discussed one of the challenges of
attempting an interdisciplinary inquiry—namely, the differences in what defines
‘rigor’ between different disciplines. Different disciplines have different
standards and interdisciplinary inquiries inevitably require the examination of
those differences. But Dr. Reynolds maintains that as you start thinking from a
place of consilience between disciplines, you can converge on a ‘hybrid rigor’
by bringing rigor from both disciplines to bear on new inquiries. He champions
a consilience approach because it can be a transformative experience. Drs. Duke
and Reynolds ultimately felt the “Film and the Mind” class was a success and
the students were able to transcend their traditional disciplinary boundaries,
developing a more informed and broader perspective in the process. Dr. Duke’s
concluding thoughts returned to E.O. Wilson’s book on consilience, arguing
Wilson’s point that as we continue to explore interdisciplinary approaches, we
will ultimately find that there is a unified body of knowledge in the world.
References
Wilson, E. O. (1999). Consilience: The unity of
knowledge (Vol. 31). Random House LLC.