MA Research Thesis Film Studies

DYSRECOGNITION

Emotional Engagement and Estrangement at The Congress (2013)

Name: Lucia ten Berge University of Amsterdam Student number: 10221557 MA Film Studies

Supervisor: dr. G.W. van der Pol Date: 23 June 2015 Second reader: dr. A.M. Geil Word count: 22,998

ABSTRACT

This thesis focuses on the problem of recognition in Murray Smith’s model of the structure of sympathy; a system that is said to be applicable to any feature film. To investigate this problem, Ari Folman’s 2013 film The Congress; that consists of both live action and animation, will be explored. The fact that this film was poorly attended leads to questions about the emotional engagement experienced by the spectator. The specific narrative structure of this film, combined with the mix of live action and animation, results in a structure of sympathy that deviates from Murray Smith’s version. In The Congress, the live action world is transformed completely into animation at some point. This particular combination of live action and animation could result in an alternative mode of spectatorial engagement that eventually causes the spectator to experience alienation from the characters. The central question then, is why this would happen specifically in this case, and what this means for theorizing spectatorial engagement. To investigate this, different theoretical approaches are applied to the film. The research will start off with an introduction to the concept of spectatorial engagement by exploring different approaches to the term. In chapter two, the position and context of the spectator will be studied. The third chapter is centred on the influence of expectations raised by the film on the engagement of the spectator. Subsequently, the levels of realism and artificiality are discussed to explore how the balance between the two can influence the emotional connection of the spectator with the characters. After focusing specifically on the narrative of The Congress, the former approaches will come together in a concluding chapter about engagement, which problematizes Smith’s structure, introducing an alternative to this structure. The conclusion will put the analysis in a broader perspective concerning spectatorial engagement and the revised structure of sympathy.

Key words: cinema, spectatorship, emotional engagement, animation, realism, estrangement, recognition

DYSRECOGNITION 2 Contents

List of illustrations 6

Introduction 8

1. Spectatorial Engagement: Theories 12 1.1. Sympathy: Cognitivism and the Problem of Identification 1.2. Empathy: Mimicry, Affect, and Embodiment 1.3. (Mis)recognition in the Structure of Sympathy

2. Theories About The Spectator 23 2.1. Animation in The Congress: Who’s Watching and Does it Truly Matter? 2.2. The Implied Spectator: Address and Reception, Spectators and Viewers

3. Expectations: Animation and Realism 32 3.1. Genre and Visual (Re)presentation 3.2. Animated Recognition 3.3. Realism, Remediation and Simulation

4. Experiencing The Congress: Recognition/Dystopia 44 4.1. Recognition and the Voice 4.2. Recognition: Avatars and Appearances 4.3. Individuality and Freedom, Time and Space 4.4. The Congress as a Dystopian Narrative

5. The Congress: Estrangement and/or Engagement? 60 5.1. The Distance between the Spectator and the Film: Immersive Estrangement? 5.2. Problematizing Recognition 5.3. A Revised Structure of Sympathy

Conclusion 73

Appendix 76

Bibliography 77

DYSRECOGNITION 3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Smith, Murray. “Character Engagement.” Engaging 17 Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 105.

Figure 2. Gilliam, Terry. The Man Who Took Leave of His Senses. 2015. 19 24 February 2015. < http://bit.ly/1bCxnCM>.

Figure 3. “Reviews & Ratings.” The Congress. IMDb.com. 20 29 March 2015. .

Figure 4. “Reviews & Ratings.” The Congress. IMDb.com. 20 30 March 2015. .

Figure 5. The Congress (2013). Poster. 2013. The Congress. The Internet 33 Movie Database. Web. 2 February 2015. .

Figure 6. The Congress. Poster. 2013. The Congress (2013) Movie 34 Poster #3. SciFi-Movies. Web. 15 February 2015. .

Figure 7. The Congress. Poster. 2013. The Congress (Film). Wikipedia. 35 Web. 15 February 2015. .

DYSRECOGNITION 4 Figure 8. “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.” Episode 3.19. Fringe. Fox. 36 15 April 2011.

Figure 9. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 37

Figure 10. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 38

Figure 11. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 39

Figure 12. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 48

Figure 13. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 49

Figure 14. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 52

Figure 15. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 53

Figure 16. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 55

Figure 17. Congress, The. Dir. Ari Folman. Drafthouse Films, 2013. 58

Figure 18. A revised version of Smith’s structure of sympathy. 67

Figure 19a. Selection of the revised version of Smith’s structure of 69 sympathy, emphasizing the role of recognition.

Figure 19b. Selection of the revised version of Smith’s structure of 70 sympathy, emphasizing the role of dysrecognition.

DYSRECOGNITION 5 INTRODUCTION

Can these computerized characters create in us the same excitement and enthusiasm, and does it truly matter? – Ari Folman (“Press”)

When Mary Poppins jumps into a chalk drawing on the street in 1964, something remarkable happens: no longer do the rules of the real world apply, and anything becomes possible (“Plot Summary”). When Cinderella leaves the animated fairy tale world and enters live action New York City in 2007, she undertakes a sudden transformation into a ‘real’ person. This too allows for new possibilities: a new world with different rules. There are many forms of this combination of animation and live action (Bruckner 23). For example, a film can (permanently or temporarily) shift from one to the other, there can be live action within an animated setting, or animation within a live action setting. But how does the spectator experience these changes emotionally? This paper argues that these transformations can affect both the way the spectator connects to the characters and the level of this emotional engagement. The question however, is how emotional engagement works in a film with both live action and animation. The combination of live action and animation is by no means something new. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century there were experiments of live action interacting with animation. One of the earliest examples is The Enchanted Drawing, directed by J. Stuart Blackton in 1900 for Thomas Edison and Vitagraph Studios. A man is seen with an easel, drawing a cartoon face with several objects. The man takes the objects out of the drawing, uses them in real life, and puts them back in the drawing again. This seemingly simple example already hints at the potential of this hybrid type of film. Many experiments and developments have led up to an idiosyncratic, relatively small group of films that are not live action or animation, but both. As was said above, these films can be either hybrid (where live action interacts with animation) or shifting between the two modes. Another prominent example of a hybrid animation/live action film is Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988), in which the animated parts are seamlessly interwoven with the live action world, creating a completely new world. This unique combination can be of great influence for the emotional engagement of the spectator. Especially when live

DYSRECOGNITION 6 action characters become cartoons, or cartoons become real actors, something changes for the emotional experience of the spectator. The Congress (Folman, 2013) is a remarkable film within this group. The film breaks boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, and between live action and animation. The narrative revolves around actress Robin Wright, who plays herself in a fictional story where she literally sells her image to be digitalized when her career is nearing its end. This means she does not have to act anymore, and her whole image would be owned by a distribution company called Miramount. She agrees, signs the contract, and her digital self takes over her acting career. Twenty years later, when this contract has ended, she is invited at a congress which takes place in an “animated zone”, meaning that everyone present will take certain chemical drugs to see the whole world as a cartoon. Boundaries between what is real and what is inside your head are constantly questioned, sometimes literally by the protagonist. The idea is that everyone creates the world around themselves depending on their cognitive and emotional state, so this world is different every time one enters it. Eventually, Robin must look for her son and daughter, one being in the animated world, the other in the “real” world. Because it is impossible to find her son, she goes back into the animated zone and becomes him instead to trace his steps, living their life all over again, this time in animation. Although the narrative about a mother in search of her children and striving for the preservation of identity and freedom comes across as quite engaging, Robin’s transition to the animated zone and the way she eventually embraces this alternate reality communicates an extraordinarily depressing feeling to the spectator. The central question for this research is why, and more importantly how, The Congress succeeds or fails to emotionally engage its spectator1. In a broader perspective, this leads up to questions about the way spectator engagement is investigated in film theory, and why different approaches show similarities and differences with respect to emotional engagement. To answer the main question, the following subjects will be discussed. First, a number of theories about emotional engagement will be discussed to show developments, differences and similarities in the ways this topic is studied. The second chapter will focus

1 In this research, “the spectator” generally means an average Western European spectator. Regardless of gender or age, the spectator will be referred to as “he”. In chapter two, the focus will be specifically on the differences and similarities among spectators and their emotional attachment to fictional characters.

DYSRECOGNITION 7 on the role of the spectator. In addition to discussing the relevance of differences between spectators’ cinematic experiences, this chapter also emphasizes the distinction between the implied spectator and the real spectator. The main question this chapter investigates is in what way The Congress is a success or a failure for certain spectators and why. The third chapter will be about expectations and the genre of animation in particular. The question here is how much influence these expectations have on the way the spectator engages with the characters and the narrative world. How and by what factors are these expectations raised? The last section discusses notions of realism and artificiality as aspects of animation. In The Congress, these concepts are present in both the narrative and the cinematographic techniques that are used for the film. The balance between immersion and artificiality is essential for the level of engagement of the spectator. The ratio of live action and animation and the level of realism of the animation are crucial here. Different forms of a combination of the two will be discussed to investigate what this means for the emotional connection experienced by the spectator. The fourth chapter consists of a closer analysis of the film, specifically centered on the dystopian narrative in relation to Smith’s structure of sympathy and the importance of the level of recognition. The fifth chapter will bring the former three together to form an overarching meta- research about approaching spectator engagement in The Congress as a hybrid live action- animated film2. The main hypothesis of this research is that a complete conversion from live action to animation within a film might alienate the audience. However, this does not mean that this thesis argues that emotional engagement is impossible with animation films. Two aspects from this hypothesis are essential. Firstly, it is a shift from live action to animation. This means that real actors will change into drawn characters with only their voice and maybe some visual recognition left for the spectator to figuratively hold on to. Secondly, the conversion between the two is practically permanent. This means that the characters the spectator has got used to during the film disappear and do not come back in their live action form. Both are problematic when for example considering Murray Smith's structure

2 In every chapter the three-layer structure of film, intertextuality and spectator is crucial. Every concept from this thesis is present in the diegetic world of The Congress, as well as on an intertextual level (for it is a film about film), and on the side of the spectator. While it is essential to be aware of their separateness; they are by no means interchangeable, The Congress shows how the three can be intertwined at the same time.

DYSRECOGNITION 8 of sympathy. The seemingly basic or superficial level of recognition, which means that the spectator knows who the characters are and recognizes them from scene to scene, can trouble the other levels of engagement. Alignment or allegiance are then obstructed by the most basic form of emotional engagement. When the audience does not really recognize the characters anymore, the opposite of emotional engagement occurs and the spectator will experience alienation from the characters. Of course, recognition is considered here as something both cognitive and emotional3. If this cognitive emotional connection is obstructed, sympathetic engagement could become impossible.

3 There seems to be a clear difference between knowing who someone is and feeling it emotionally, although there is also something to be said for theories that overturn the presumed division between cognition and emotion (Badt 67).

DYSRECOGNITION 9 1. SPECTATORIAL ENGAGEMENT: THEORIES

I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it. – Federico Fellini (Kemp 22)

To start investigating the spectator’s emotional attachment to the characters of The Congress, it should first be clear what this notion exactly means and how it has been theorized within film studies. In which ways can the spectator connect emotionally to the character? What does this “connection” really mean? These questions are essential for analysing The Congress, because to investigate whether a spectator connects to a character and why (not), one has to clarify the different possible forms and levels of engagement. It might be the case that someone can relate to a character on one level, but is completely disconnected on another level. Important distinctions considering the possible connections between spectator, film and characters are the ones between sympathy and empathy and between the mind and the body. Whereas cognitivism focuses on processes of thought in relation to bodily experiences, phenomenology focuses more on the complete bodily experience. This makes the two theories related, despite their different research methods. For this thesis, the aim is to combine the best of both theories by focusing on empirical research methods, as well as on the experience of the spectator4. A spectator can understand and support a character’s motives and therefore sympathize with him or her (Bruun Vaage 158). At the same time, the connection between spectator and character does not necessarily have to be based on a cognitive process of negotiation by balancing positive aspects against negative ones. A more direct connection is also possible; one that can be an almost completely physical experience. This chapter addresses the question in what ways the spectator can connect to the characters in a film, what types of emotional engagement are possible and if this connection is necessarily focused on the characters.

4 Part of this combined method is a group discussion about The Congress with different spectators, focusing on their experiences. The results of this discussion are described in the last chapter of this thesis.

DYSRECOGNITION 10 1.1 SYMPATHY: COGNITIVISM AND THE PROBLEM OF IDENTIFICATION Its roots lying in psychoanalysis, the notion of identification is still often being used to describe the relationship between spectator and the characters in a film. Initially in film studies, psychoanalysis became the most important discipline to explain this relationship as well as the function of the apparatus (Creed 77). There were different directions taken within the psychoanalytical approach to film studies. Whereas early methodologies, inspired by the ideas of Freud and Jung, were mainly centred on hidden meanings and repressed emotions, in the 1970s the influences of Lacan and Althusser were more significant for what is often referred to as screen theory (Bordwell 16). Theorists like Jean- Louis Baudry focused significantly on cinema as an ideological apparatus (Creed 80). As to identification in particular, the influence of Lacan is crucial. When understanding cinema as a mirror, the spectator, like a child, identifies with himself as an object (Metz 45). This causes misrecognition, for the screen, functioning as the mirror in this sense, does not reflect the physical body of the spectator, and the body on the screen has no physical equivalent on the side of the spectator (Metz 45, 48). Identification does not always have to take place with a character or any human form for two reasons. Firstly, not all films continually show a human form that can be “identified” with. Metz names the example of geographical documentaries, which work just as well as films with human characters (47). Secondly, and this is the main reason for Metz, “identification with the human form appearing on the screen […] still tells us nothing about the place of the spectator’s ego in the inauguration of the signifier” (47). In other words, it is known where the ego is formed (by primary identification of the mirror), but where is the spectator situated in the process of identification? As an all-perceiving subject, the spectator is likely to identify with the camera instead (Metz 49). Interestingly, according to Metz the spectator has to identify with something or someone to comprehend a film (46). So he argues that identification and comprehension are necessary for ‘social life’. Initially this seems reasonable considering how in film semiotics cinema is understood as a language. Then again, as director Fellini aptly argues in the quote above this chapter, why would it be necessary for a spectator to understand a film? Alternative theories of spectatorship go straight past the stage of evaluation and understanding to show how engagement is possible regardless of any level of comprehension. These theories will be discussed in the second part of this chapter.

DYSRECOGNITION 11 Cognitivist approaches discard the term identification as well, though the focus on understanding a film is still a dominant aspect. As was said earlier, the distinction between empathy and sympathy is of importance here. Both Noël Carroll and Murray Smith for example, explicitly lay emphasis on this distinction. Carroll dismissed the term identification for its vagueness and inaccuracy (1990, 89). He discusses several options for what character-identification may mean:

..that we like the protagonist; that we recognize the circumstances of the protagonist to be significantly like those we have found or find ourselves in; that we sympathize with the protagonist; that we are one in interest, or feeling, or principle, or all of these with the protagonist; that we see the action unfolding in the fiction from the protagonist’s point of view; that we share the protagonist’s values; that, for the duration of our intercourse with the fiction, we are entranced (or otherwise manipulated and/or deceived) so that we fall under the illusion that each of us somehow regards herself to be the protagonist. (Carroll 1990, 89)

The problem according to Carroll, lies in the last sentence, a situation in which “the audience comes to think of itself as identical to or one with the character” (1990, 90). This is problematic because a spectator is very well aware of the fact that he is not the protagonist and that he is looking at a representation rather than at a real situation (Oakley 2). Consequently, the emotions of the audience and of the characters on screen are very different as well. For example, when a character is in danger the spectator would feel concern or suspense, while the character is utterly terrified (Carroll 1990, 91). So Carroll dismisses the term for two reasons: 1. a perfect symmetry between spectator and character is impossible, and 2. if only a partial correspondence between spectator and character is required, why would the phenomenon still be called identification (Carroll 1990, 94)? Carroll’s solution is the term assimilation, which refers to an external view of understanding a situation and knowing how a character feels without duplicating these feelings (1990, 95). This notion is very similar to the idea of sympathy, based on emotional evaluation, instead of the more instinctive and direct reaction of empathy. Smith introduced an alternative theory of engagement that breaks the notion of identification down into three levels of engagement. Like other theorists, he found the term “identification” ill-defined, for it is too generic and vague to grasp the dynamic and complex emotions experienced by the spectator. Unlike Carroll, Smith does see some value

DYSRECOGNITION 12 in the term identification, which can be broken down into several degrees (1994, 39). The first distinction Smith makes, which he bases on Richard Wollheim’s work, is the one between central imagining, a full immersion into a character that is similar to empathy (and Carroll’s definition of identification), and acentral imagining or sympathy, where the distance between spectator and character is bigger (1994, 38). Smith offers an analysis of the various senses of identification and “a systematic explanation of emotional response to fictional characters” (1994, 34). This system is presented in the form of the structure of sympathy, consisting of three levels of engagement5. Even though it may seem like a hierarchical structure, all three levels have their own crucial role to play in engaging the spectator. The first level is recognition. Recognition seems like the most basic level, constituting the foundation for emotional engagement: “for example, we would not find ourselves attracted to (and so could not become allied with) an inert bundle of traits” (Smith 1994, 40). So recognition means the spectator sees a character as an individual, a subjective human being. Yet also important is how recognition is based on the concept of continuity, with possibilities for developments and change (Smith 1994, 40)6. As this research paper will illustrate, the level of recognition is in fact not as “basic” as Smith makes it seem in his structure of sympathy. Therefore, a revision of this model is needed and will be presented in the fifth chapter; a new structure that recognizes recognition’s problematic nature. The next level in the structure of sympathy is alignment. This refers to the extent to which a spectator has access to the actions and experiences of a character (spatial attachment) and his or her emotional state (subjective access) (Smith 1994, 41). Film critic Roger Ebert implicitly stressed alignment as fundamental to watching a film by saying “We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter

5 Although Smith acknowledges that he mainly focuses on acentral imagining, the structure of sympathy does draw on phenomena that are in fact forms of central imagining (or empathy) like affective mimicry and automatic physical reactions (1994, 39).

6 However, Smith does not really further discuss how higher levels of engagement are connected to this basic level of recognition. If this seemingly simple foundation falls away, engagement becomes impossible. Especially important for an analysis of The Congress, recognition of a character as the same person from scene to scene may be essential for the emotional engagement of the spectator.

DYSRECOGNITION 13 other minds, not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it” (Ebert). The last part of the structure of sympathy is the highest level of engagement. Allegiance depends on “reliable access to the character’s state of mind, understanding the context of the character’s actions, and having morally evaluated the character on the basis of this knowledge” (Smith 1994, 41). In short: allegiance takes into account the moral evaluation of a character:

To become allied with the character, the spectator must evaluate the character as representing a morally desirable (or at least preferable) set of traits, in relation to other characters within the fiction. On the basis of this evaluation, the spectator adopts an attitude of sympathy (or, in the case of a negative evaluation, antipathy) towards the character, and responds emotionally in an apposite way to situations in which this character is placed. (Smith 1995, 188)

On the one hand it can be argued that psychoanalytical film theory always assumes a dysfunctional spectator with repressed emotional traumas that explain the way he or she relates to characters in a film (Plantinga and Smith 12). On the other hand, cognitive film theory like Smith’s structure of sympathy is really a nuancing decomposition of the concept of identification, something that partly rejects but also complements what was already said about the way spectators connect to film. Cognitivists see the human being as both a social creature and as having a survival instinct. Although the perception of the human being is very different from both perspectives, identification does seem very much in line with the idea of recognizing other human beings and similar characteristics, morals and motives, as well as the human being’s need to develop in conjunction with his environment. Lacan’s Mirror Stage is after all thought of as a stage in the development of all human beings, and recognition would seem very much in line with his idea of the mirror image. Although the term “identification” has been almost completely discarded by cognitivists, the word itself does seem very close to the highest level of emotional engagement in newer models like Smith’s structure of sympathy. Within every new approach to film studies, traces of former theories remain visible. For example, David Bordwell pointed out how Culturalism still showed many similarities with subject-position

DYSRECOGNITION 14 theory, even though a shift from the former to the latter is visible in the last two decades of the twentieth century7 (6). One of these similarities is the use of the term identification as an overarching concept that covers all processes of representation (Bordwell 17). He offers the solution in the form of middle level research, which is less about what films mean and more about how films work (Bordwell 29). From this perspective, the relation between spectator and characters will possibly always remain something that needs investigation. Instead of letting go of the term entirely, identification could still be seen as an overarching concept that can be understood in several different ways. As will be shown later on in this chapter, its potential still shows in its numerous traces within various contemporary approaches to spectatorial engagement.

Figure 1. Character Engagement: central and acentral imagining (Smith 105)

7 With subject-position theory, also often referred to as screen theory, Bordwell refers to film theory inspired by Lacanian psychoanalysis and Athusserian theories of ideology, where the spectator is assumed to be created or positioned as a subject, instead of the other way around. Culturalism came into being in response to the objections to subject-position theory, especially concerning the spectator’s agency and the need for a more historical approach. However, the notion of identification remained prevalent within both theories.

DYSRECOGNITION 15 1.2 EMPATHY: MIMICRY, AFFECT, AND EMBODIMENT One of the focuses of Metz was still on understanding a film as something essential for the spectator. Likewise, cognitive models like Carroll’s notion of assimilation and Smith’s structure of sympathy are centred on thinking processes that evaluate certain emotions regarding the connection between the spectator and a character. However, a more direct connection between spectator and film is also possible. “[W]e can no longer say ‘I see, I hear, but I FEEL, ‘totally physiological sensation’” (Deleuze 1989, 158). As this section will point out, this too can be linked to the idea of identifying with something besides what is human-like. Up until now, emotion and sympathy have been central to this chapter, for the main question of this research is about the emotional engagement of the spectator. But one cannot consider emotion without looking at what precedes this reflective mechanism. Smith did make a distinction between empathy and sympathy, though he focuses mainly on the latter. Figure 1 shows his structure of sympathy, with on the left the process of central imagining, or empathy. Smith argues that this phenomenon is not entirely separated from acentral imagining, but rather acts as a basis for this and as a parallel process that functions in line with the structure of sympathy (Smith 1995, 103). Jennifer Barker discusses empathy as a bodily experience and argues, against Linda Williams, that all genres (and not just horror, pornography or melodrama) can be understood as ‘body genres’, for every response a spectator experiences with a film is necessarily a physical one (73-74). Amy Coplan uses the term emotional contagion, defined by psychological research, as an automatic and unintentional affective process of mimicry that occurs while watching a film (27, 35). However, the choice of the word emotion to describe an affective process may be poorly chosen, for within film studies emotion and affect are emphatically understood as two separate stages of the spectator’s reaction (Bruun Vaage 175). As argued by Deleuze: “Emotion is contextual. Affect is situational: eventfully ingressive to context. Serially so: affect is trans-situational” (Massumi 217). Affect does not necessarily have to do anything (yet) with emotion. The affection-image Deleuze described, is the close-up; a close-up of the face. And this isolated face, abstracted from its context or functions in everyday live, does not have to be a real face (Deleuze 87). Barker too argues that empathy and mimicry occur not just with on-screen characters, but rather with the film itself. She dismisses empathy in the sense of sharing a character’s location and subjectivity (which sounds a lot like Smith’s level of alignment)

DYSRECOGNITION 16 and emphasizes instead on how empathy exists between the body of the spectator and ‘the body of the film’, even in non-narrative films and films without human forms (Barker 75). The process of watching a film is therefore understood by Barker as an embodied experience between the spectator and the film, both moving interactively with each other in a muscular, reactional way. This is similar to Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenological notion of experiencing a film, which like Barker’s, goes against the psychoanalytic idea of a transcendental subject with an all-encompassing view. For theorists like Baudry and Metz, the eye (and definitely not the body) had a central position, taking everything in (Sobchack 1992, 271). For Sobchack, the act of seeing is always an embodied one. For her “the eyes are part of the whole body, and what the eyes take in, the body does also” (Sobchack 1992, 271).

Figure 2. The Man Who Took Leave of His Senses, by Terry Gilliam

This inevitable connection of the senses and the inescapability of the sensual experience as a linked whole is aptly illustrated in figure 2. On 24 February 2015, director Terry Gilliam, befittingly known for his use of animation within live-action films, posted this drawing on

DYSRECOGNITION 17 Facebook. It is titled "the man who took leave of his senses". Though it seems like a simple humorous drawing, this picture illustrates very aptly the idea of a phenomenological cinema experience. Not only does the image show how all the senses are connected, the man escaping his body through the back of his suit is no longer a man. What remains is a mere phantom, incapable of both physical and cognitive experiences. The lived body consists of a sensuous whole of experiences and emotions that cannot be understood apart from each other. As opposed to psychoanalysis focusing on the eye, this image illustrates a non-hierarchically linked structure of senses. The conclusion seems to be that no man can take leave of his senses, nor can one sense be given a status of higher importance than another. Carl Plantinga disagrees with the claim made by Sobchack that the film itself has a body. In his view “spectators have bodies, but films are structures artifacts in the viewing of which spectators are invited to have an embodied experience (Plantinga 2009, 117). Barker does nuance her statement a little when she stresses that although the movements of the film and the spectator are very different due to their very differently built bodies, a communication of muscular gestures exists between the two (Barker 78). An example of this physical connection occurs when the spectator hears a sound off-screen, turning his head in that direction, and the film cuts to the anticipated shot of the sound’s source (Barker 81). Other examples are the close-up and the zoom, responding to the need for a closer look, or the crane shot that creates distance or an overview (Barker 81). Muscular empathy as a basis for the embodied relationship between the spectator and the film could be important for the way spectators sympathize with certain characters as well. As Barker aptly puts it, the spectator feels for certain characters precisely because he feels with them: the spectator’s emotional sympathy derives from his muscular empathy (92). Comparable to Smith’s model in figure 1, empathy is once again understood as the basis for sympathy. Here too, a surprising continuation of ideas from semiotics and psychoanalysis is visible. Firstly, the communication of the film with the spectator through gestures refers yet again to film as a language (although here it is emphatically a body language). Secondly, the connection between spectator and film is once more emphasized as something that does not necessarily concerns human characters. Also, the idea of total

DYSRECOGNITION 18 immersion and experiencing a film as a rollercoaster ride (where spectators mimic the film, holding their breath, lose grip of reality and communicate with the film in a muscular way) seems like a seamless combination of apparatus theory and phenomenology. Instead of historicizing film studies as an exclusively evolutionary process, the continuation through seemingly separate theories shows how they actually complement each other, how the combination of these theories certainly can work for a contemporary analysis of concepts like the spectator’s emotional engagement.

1.3 (MIS)RECOGNITION IN THE STRUCTURE OF SYMPATHY To summarize, there are clearly many ways in which a spectator can experience a connection to a film. While even in cognitivism traces of the psychoanalytic idea of identification are visible, some discrepancies deserve further attention within this research. Although the structure of sympathy comes across as a very inclusive way of exploring character engagement, the level of recognition is taken too much for granted. One aspect that received too little attention is the difference between how recognition is constructed as a product of the film itself and how the spectator interprets this construction of recognition. The differences among spectators and the difference between the perspective of the spectator and the perspective of the filmmaker will be discussed in the second chapter of this thesis. The basic level of recognition as a level of engagement described by Smith goes against Metz’s idea of identification that can also be with other aspects like the camera (Metz 49). Smith described the indispensable level of recognition as identifying a character as a human being, but there is also still something to say for Metz’s idea of identification with other things than human-like characters. This idea returned in theories about affective responses and phenomenology. The aspect of recognizing emotions without the cognition of human faces will be further explored in chapter three. Within Smith’s structure of sympathy, the level of recognition is the most underexposed area of all three levels. The structure is understood as developing in a linear way, ignoring the possibility of other structures. For example, recognition does not have to take place at the basis of the structure of sympathy. Engagement might very well be possible without recognition of human beings or faces. In the world of gaming, a first person shooter never really shows the protagonist while playing, yet players do act

DYSRECOGNITION 19 through, and emphasize with, the character. The aspect of the avatar and its connection to central imagining, empathy and recognition will be further discussed in the fourth chapter. Although this thesis focuses on emotional engagement to characters, it is important to consider all of the possible connections in order to investigate why and at what level spectatorial engagement fails or succeeds in The Congress.

DYSRECOGNITION 20 2. Expectations: THE SPECTATOR and the film

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation. – Walt Disney (Chong and McNamara 22)

The first chapter was centred on theories about spectatorial engagement, or the possible ways in which the spectator can connect with a fictional character or with the film. But who is the spectator? It seems like a subject that is difficult to touch upon, for many theorists address this problem with a short passage covering their awareness of differences between spectators. This thesis contained such a passage in the introduction as well. It almost seems as if few theorists truly want to discuss different kinds of spectators, so everyone just adds a short clause like “the spectator within this research refers to the average spectator, male and female and of an average age”, to subsequently not discuss these differences among spectators any further. In other words; their focus is hardly ever on different kinds of spectators. The central question of this chapter is not only in what way The Congress forms an emotional bond with certain spectators and why, but more importantly, if certain differences among audiences really are of importance for the way spectators become emotionally engaged with the characters of The Congress.

2.1 ANIMATION IN THE CONGRESS: WHO’S WATCHING AND DOES IT TRULY MATTER? When doing research into differences among spectators, there is still relatively little to find about age differences. Again influenced by psychoanalytic film theory, the focus has been mainly on the male gaze and the differences between male and female spectators. When searching for literature on children as spectators, there is not much to find aside from the negative effects of film and television on children8. Once more, the psychoanalytic idea of the powerful apparatus pulling the strings of the audience seems prevalent. For this research it is really not of much importance what the effects of a film are on the child spectator, but rather the idea of how children and adults connect emotionally to fictional

8 Both traditional and more modern work has been written about the influence and effects of media on children, one of the oldest examples being the extensive collection from UNESCO published in 1961. Often rooted in sociology and psychology, most of these disputable studies are focused on the violent or sexual nature of the content (Barker and Petley 1).

DYSRECOGNITION 21 characters in different or maybe similar ways, and the question if these comparisons are even relevant for spectatorial engagement in the case of The Congress. On the one hand, it seems like one cannot ignore the differences between children and adults as spectators of an animated film. Animation is often understood as a genre (or medium) that aims at children. The origins of this presumption date back even to the origins of cinema itself. In his book Understanding Animation, Paul Wells emphasizes Reynaud’s invention of the Praxinoscope as particularly significant for the development of animated film, and with that the preconceptions about animation. He argues: “[T]he Praxinoscope soon became a popular children’s toy, and anticipated the fate of a great deal of work in animation by being dismissed as a novelty and relegated to a children’s audience” (Wells 2). The expectations of animated films are thus commonly raised according to general rules of a children’s (animation) film. Yet at the same time, the basis for spectatorial engagement with any sort of film might be rooted in commonalities within the audience, rather than in their individual experiences. If a theorist would always exclusively consider the implied spectator of classical Hollywood cinema being a white middle-class heterosexual adolescent male, many other possible interpretations and experiences are being ignored (Harvey 43). Even if the targeted audience of animation would consist mainly of children, who is to say adults cannot experience an animated film the same way? To state it most simply: every adult has been a child once. In his book, Wells argues that adults too can relate to animated characters, not just in a retrospective way as a childhood experience, but also because animated films and television programmes generally aim at both children and adults with respect to the content (225-6). Later on in his chapter about animation and the audience, Wells concludes by emphasizing that “any text is open to subversive use or different kinds of reading, and […] animation may be enjoyed differently under different conditions” (241). So conversely, who is to say that children would be excluded from understanding and appreciating content aimed at an adult audience? On a narrative level animated films might target children by posing subjects or Proppian characters and functions that children could relate to9. Nevertheless, a successful animated film can be

9 Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale offers a formalist approach as a basis for any narrative structure, so these characters and functions are not just limited to animation films (25). However, the fairy tale as

DYSRECOGNITION 22 “accessible to even the youngest child, yet it respects the intelligence of the most literate and cultivated adult” (McCarthy 138)10. A basis of common ground between different spectators leaves room for theories that could go in any direction, and emotional engagement as a cognitive concept can be seen as an example of such a foundation within film studies. Noël Carroll wrote “The Power of Movies” in the mid-1980s, an article that can be seen as a prelude to his later work that discredits conventional methodologies like psychoanalysis, and his and Bordwell’s 1996 collection of essays called Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, which can be seen as a further case for cognitivism in film studies (Plantinga 2002, 17). In his 1985 article Carroll investigates what makes motion pictures the dominant mass art, asking why responses to classical Hollywood cinema are so widespread and intense (1985, 80)11. According to Carroll, “the power of movies” resides in their graspable clarity for mass audiences by reason of three factors. Firstly, movies are pictorial representations that refer to their referents by means of displaying their recognizable resemblances. Secondly, the audience is guided by means of variable framing. Through cutting and camera movement, the filmmaker makes sure the audience perceives the right things at the right time. Finally, movies involve erotetic narration, which means that the narrative is centered on questions and answers. Because the audience makes sense of the world and every human action through narrative, they can relate to the narrative. All three elements make movies generally accessible and easy to follow, but these three stages are also surprisingly in line with Smith’s structure of sympathy. Emotional engagement and cognitivism may seem like two incompatible concepts on the surface; generally one does not think of emotions as a mental process; it does not seem to belong to the mind, but rather to the heart. But then again Smith’s and Carroll’s work illustrates how emotion and cognition are linked much closer than one might initially think. Going back to Carroll’s three concepts, a clear comparison can be drawn. Pictorial

discussed by Propp is most evidently visible in animated films for children, the best known example being Disney’s oeuvre.

10 McCarthy specifically wrote her book about Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films, but this quote can essentially be applied to any successful animated film, because for a film to be a success is to reach a large and widespread audience.

11 Carroll specifically uses the term “movies” instead of film or cinema, to refer to classical Hollywood cinema, because of the widespread and intense success this particular sort of film.

DYSRECOGNITION 23 representations are based on recognition, and form a basis for the accessible understanding of a widespread audience. Recognition in Smith’s structure is the basis for the engagement of the spectator. Variable framing guides the spectator to focus on what is important, but also, in doing this, it helps him to “follow” the protagonist, showing her every move and motive. One could thus argue that variable framing makes alignment possible by enabling spatial attachment and subjective access through the camera. Last but not least, the erotetic model of narrative as a universal way to comprehend every human action through questions and answers, might not immediately resonate allegiance in Smith’s sense. Yet the idea that later scenes in the film make sense in the context of earlier scenes provides cognitive clarity that can enable the spectator to make a morally based evaluation of a character (Carroll 1985, 89, 96). So all three levels of engagement and the three reasons for the success of movies together contribute to widespread and intense engagement that is based on a more universal than divergent cognitive experience. Carroll’s focus is unmistakably on commonalities of mass-movie audiences, instead of their individual experiences:

For only by focusing on cognitive capacities, especially ones as deeply embedded as pictorial representation, practical reason, and the drive to get answers to our questions, will we be in the best position to find the features of movies that account for their phenomenally widespread effectiveness; since cognitive capacities, at the level discussed, seem the most plausible candidate for what mass-movie audiences have in common. […] Thus, the power of movies must be connected to some fairly generic features of human organisms to account for their power across class, cultural, and educational boundaries. The structures of perception and cognition are primary examples of fairly generic features of humans. (Carroll 1985, 101)

Carroll is by no means arguing that spectatorial engagement is a downright universal experience. This particular aspect also happens to be one of the main critiques of 1970s screen theory, which assumed a homogenous audience. Especially from a cultural studies point of view, these differences are a key focus of researching audiences’ experiences. Carl Plantinga questions the generally assumed opposition between cognitive film theory and cultural studies at the end of his book Moving Viewers, arguing that the main reason for this supposed conflict is their difference of views on the nature/nurture debate, where cognitivism roots for nature and cultural studies favours nurture (2009, 224). He opts for a

DYSRECOGNITION 24 combination of theories, a mediation that is central for this thesis as well12. Exploring the individual differences in the experience of spectators when watching a film on the basis of extra-filmic factors like gender, age, race, or class, is one direction in which cognitive film studies might develop (Plantinga 2009, 224). Particularly when researching emotional engagement, differences among spectators might appear very important on the surface. Emotional engagement seems like something very personal, even while being aware of the fact that there are many processes at work to make the film work on this level. “Making the film work” within the context of exploring spectatorial engagement would mean that the spectator feels positive emotions for the protagonist(s) and negative emotions for the antagonist(s)13. Nevertheless, by addressing the audience’s cognitive faculties Carroll exposes the most basic foundation for spectatorial engagement, that which makes film such an effective, pervasive medium. Especially in the case of animated films the issue of age differences appears to be of little consequence for the way spectators relate to characters. For this reason other aspects of spectatorship need to be explored to investigate the way spectatorial engagement in The Congress fails or succeeds.

2.2 THE IMPLIED SPECTATOR: ADDRESS AND RECEPTION, SPECTATORS AND VIEWERS In addition to the audience’s expectations of a film (which will be discussed in the next chapter), the filmmaker also has expectations of his audience. There are two important distinctions or paradoxes, articulated by Judith Mayne in her book Cinema and Spectatorship, that concern the way spectatorship has been studied and question the notion of ‘the spectator’. The first one is the paradox of cinema as a homogeneous institution and the heterogeneity of different spectators. As opposed to ‘classical’ film theories cinema cannot be seen as either an ideological instrument or a challenge to ideology (Mayne 156). The second distinction is the one between the ideal (or implied)

12 Besides this combination of cognitivism and cultural studies, Plantinga’s whole book is articulated from a “cognitive-perceptual” point of view, as he characterizes it. By combining aspects from cognitivism and psychoanalysis, like his unusual choice of still exploring the idea of the unconscious, Plantinga responds to various critiques of cognitivism as focusing exclusively on logical and rational processes (2009, 8).

13 According to the structure of sympathy, this is translated into experiencing alignment and allegiance for a ‘good’ character and only recognition for a ‘bad’ character. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, like for example perverse allegiance, where the spectator sympathizes with a character whose moral values are not in line with those of the spectator (Smith 1999, 217). However, these processes do work within the same system of emotional engagement.

DYSRECOGNITION 25 spectator who is being addressed, and the actual audience. As Mayne argues, “it is one thing to assume that […] the various institutions of cinema do project an ideal viewer, and another thing to assume that those projections work” (159). Whereas the notion of address aims at an ideal spectator, reception concerns an actual spectator or, more precisely, the viewer14. In other words, it is important to note the difference between the expectations of the filmmaker and the actual reception(s) of a film. Especially in The Congress, this distinction is crucial for the discussion of whether the film works on the level of spectatorial engagement. So who is this addressed, ‘ideal’ spectator of The Congress? By making the spectator aware of the processes that are at work to engage or alienate him from the characters, he is at the same time pushed away from the diegetic world and pulled into the world of the filmmaker: a world in which the ideological construction that film is, is being exposed. The concept of media literacy is thus very important, because the film appears to aim at a spectator who can be aware of the cinematic processes that are at work to create meaning and convey ideological discourses through film. When a spectator ignores these processes, or fails to understand the way The Congress reflects on them, his emotional engagement with the characters can be completely different from that of the implied spectator. So the film could possibly succeed and fail at the same time, depending on the spectator. The film clearly consists of two sections. The first part of the film forms quite an evident critique of the film industry, where identities fade away and real actors have to make way for their virtual counterparts. By means of modern techniques, actors can now be scanned completely to form a digital copy that can do anything the actor cannot or does not want to do. In other words, the legal rights of the actor’s image are transferred to the distribution company, which, from then on until the contract ends, will “own” the actor. The consequences for the actress are the loss of control over her image, and the fact that she may never act again. On the website of The Congress Ari Folman states the following: “As an optimist, I think the choice for a human actor will win out and I hope The Congress is our small contribution to that goal (“Press”). So the first part already paints a

14 The difference between the implied or “ideal” spectator and the actual spectator is made even clearer when formulated as juxtaposing the spectator, which is a theoretical term, and the viewer being an empirical one, based on reception rather than address, using Mayne’s words.

DYSRECOGNITION 26 picture of an undesirable future of the entertainment industry, of the notion of identity (loss) and reality. The second part of the film, which is evidently based on Lem’s dystopian novel The Futurological Congress, continues with this criticizing tone. However, this part completely contradicts Folman’s earlier quote. Twenty years after Robin signs the contract that takes over her acting career and her identity, the world has changed radically. Not only are actors being scanned and digitized, people now take drugs to experience the world in a whole different way by shaping it before their eyes. The world as everyone experiences it is in fact merely a colourful perception filter that clouds the grey, worn out reality. This means that everything is now animated, literally. Including Robin. When she enters the “animated zone” she, as well as the world around her, becomes a cartoon. In an interview on YouTube, Ari Folman discussed the way spectators can and will continue to relate to the character of Robin Wright throughout the film (Wheat). According to the director, the spectator would still feel emotionally engaged with Robin no matter what, that the audience will follow her even though she becomes a cartoon. This time Folman seems to be saying that the choice for a real human actor will not always win out, that a cartoon can evoke the same intense emotions and engage the spectator the same way an actor can. This might indicate that Folman is well aware of the fact that his controversial film aims at two different goals that might be incompatible to achieve at the same time.

Figure 3. Message board for The Congress on IMDb.

DYSRECOGNITION 27 The Congress is a film about film. The intertextual layer criticizing the film industry is one way to reach an audience and the film might succeed in conveying this criticism to certain spectators (figure 3). The next chapter will expand on the idea that, by exposing a film’s artificiality, the audience can be pushed away and enabled to look at the film from a different angle. A break with immersion that moves the spectator away from the film leaves room for communicating criticism to the audience. In his book The Futurological Congress, Stanislaw Lem aptly posed the following question: “...how can I use a method to discredit that very method, if the method is discreditable (40)?” This is surprisingly similar to one question the film eventually raises for this chapter: how can a filmmaker criticize film by means of a film and still make it work as a film? The Congress is still a film. Does a film really have to succeed in engaging the spectator to succeed as a film? Looking at discussions on message boards for The Congress on the IMDb-website, the answer appears to be yes; an emotional bond between the spectator and the characters does seem necessary for making the film a success, just like the consistency of a two-part structure like The Congress (figure 4).

Figure 4. Message board for The Congress on IMDb.

So is spectatorial engagement determinative for the success or failure of a film? And what does it mean for a film to be a success in this context? On the one hand, The Congress can of course be appreciated for different reasons:

1. On a narrative level: emotional engagement a. Emotional engagement: sympathy and empathy b. Being pulled away from the film: alienation

DYSRECOGNITION 28 2. On an extra-filmic level: intertext and reflexivity a. Enjoying the film’s narrative complexity b. Appreciating the film’s criticism of the entertainment industry 3. On an aesthetic level: appreciating the film’s style 4. On a theoretical level: appreciating the problematic nature of the film’s failure

The first level of appreciating The Congress applies to any spectator, for it forms the foundation of the filmic experience. Without this basis, any appreciation would be an empty one. The second level can be understood as the implied, media-literate spectator, the one who breaks through the immersion of the narrative, who experiences a sense of distanciation to appreciate the film’s intertextual references and its reflexive layer. The third level can be applied to any spectator and combined with any of the other levels. Appreciating the film’s aesthetic style, especially with animated films, can contribute to the level of emotional engagement to characters, but it can also contradict this first level when it increases the distance between spectator and film. The fourth and last way to appreciate the film is also an odd one out, for the film can be appreciated especially because of its failure on other levels (specifically on the level of spectatorial engagement). This level implies the film scholar as a spectator, appreciating the film’s problematic nature as a fruitful research subject for a thesis like this one. But does The Congress (or film in general) have the ability to succeed on these different levels at the same time, or does one achieved goal deem the other impossible? The latter seems more plausible, for to criticize the film industry and to succeed as a film within that very industry at the same time may be called cannibalistic to some degree. The difference between the implied spectator and the actual audience of The Congress exposes the different ways a film can be a success or a failure: it can be appreciated as criticizing spectatorial engagement or it can engage the spectator, but can it do both at the same time? This might require a rather schizophrenic spectator, because the two ways of appreciating a film like this one seem incompatible. In short: even though a basis of common ground between spectators is essential for engagement and the success of a film, the film’s success can originate in other areas than spectatorial engagement, and it can differ per spectator after all when considering the aim of the filmmaker.

DYSRECOGNITION 29 3. EXPECTATIONS: ANIMATION AND Realism

We know that they are … drawings, and not living beings. We know that they are projections of drawings on a screen. We know that they are … ‘miracles’ and tricks of technology, that such beings don’t really exist. But at the same time: We sense them as alive. We sense them as moving. We sense them as existing and even thinking. – Sergei Eisenstein (Wells 223)

When do I see a photograph, when a reflection? – Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (223)

By outlining the distinction between the implied spectator and the actual audience, the last chapter has focused for a great part on the filmmaker’s expectations of the spectator. Of course, the expectations of the spectator on the other hand, are inherently connected to those of the filmmaker (Aurier and Guintcheva 15). These expectations are raised by a number of causes. This chapter will consider different possible foundations of the expectations the film raises for the spectator. For example, the designated genre of the film can function as a label which implicitly suggests comparisons with other films within that genre. The director, actor(s) or the medium (of animation in the case of The Congress) are other important influences for raising expectations (Aurier and Guintcheva 15)15. This thesis argues that these anticipations of spectators are of great influence to the way they engage with a film and its characters. In what way do the spectator’s expectations and preconceptions affect this level of emotional engagement? The first distinction that can be made regarding these expectations is the one between the first half of the film, which leads up to Robin being scanned, and the second half, which indicates more of a dystopian vision of the future that is based on the first part. The expectations of the spectator for the first part of the film can be mainly based on performance, authorship and the film’s presentation. The spectator’s awareness of the director, the actress and the designated genre and visual representation on a website like

15 Although animation is generally understood as a genre, for this paper it is important to perceive it as a medium as well. In the next paragraph animation in The Congress will be discussed as a medium within the context of realism, remediation and hypermediacy.

DYSRECOGNITION 30 the Internet Movie Database all fall under this category. The second part of the film raises expectations concerning genre and adaptation, because the film is partly based on the novel The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem. The question regarding these two interconnected parts is if the film can live up to any expectation at all.

3.1 GENRE AND VISUAL (RE)PRESENTATION Although genres are often seen as something obvious, the notion of genre has always been problematic in film studies because the definitions of, and boundaries between genres are principally unclear (Altman 7). Robert Stam names several significant problems with generic film labels (128-9). Extension refers to genres that are too broad or too narrow to be of use. The second problem concerns normativism, which means that there is a too strict preconception of what genres are and do. Another issue is that genres are sometimes thought of as monolithic; as if a film can only belong to one genre. The fourth problem Stam points out is biologism, an essentialist idea of genres as evolving through a life cycle, when in fact they do not move in such a linear way, but are always up for reconfiguration (129). Other issues with the notion of genre are Hollywood centrism and the inattention to acinematic features that contribute to genre as well. So where does this leave The Congress? On the Internet Movie Database the film is labeled as both animation and science fiction. The latter already suggests a specific kind of narrative (i.e. that of a dystopian future), which will be discussed in the next chapter. The film plays with many issues regarding genre and the three levels of diegesis, intertextuality and the spectator by turning around several concepts. This is related to the visual representation of the film and the way the film is marketed by means of film posters for Figure 5. Promotional poster for The Congress example. A simple example of the film’s play with as presented on IMDb.com

DYSRECOGNITION 31 expectations of the genre and the visualization of this, concerns science fiction. Science fiction as a genre is literally being ridiculed by characters in the film. Robin Wright does not “do” science fiction, says her agent (portrayed by Harvey Keitel), yet The Congress can be understood as science fiction with its subject of futuristic settings and likewise technology. This is noticeable in the first film poster, which is used for the film on IMDb’s website (figure 5). The poster shows no signs whatsoever that hint at an animated film. The cool blue colors and the abstract triangle-patterned dome surrounding Robin Wright suggest more of a science fiction-oriented film. When looking at this poster, not many spectators would expect a film that is for a large part animated. On the other hand, science fiction as a genre opens up many possibilities, so a spectator might expect that

Figure 6. An alternative film poster anything could happen in a film like this. A poster like for The Congress the one shown on the left seems to raise more accurate expectations, although the combination of live action and animation is worked out differently in the film (figure 6). Another example of the film playing with the idea of genre as a classifying tool is the ways in which the interpretation of animation as a genre is completely turned around. Besides the fact that spectators could expect a children’s film when they see the label “animation” connected to a film (as figure 7 illustrates), the notion of animation is literally about bringing something to life, breathing life into it or giving it a soul16. In The Congress, the opposite happens. When Robin and the world surrounding her become a cartoon, it seems to represent the end of life itself. In the narrative world, the real Robin disappears from the screen to live on in an animated pseudo- reality, which is basically a colourful veil that clouds the real world. Her scanned image takes over her career, as a mere projection of the real thing that becomes more important than the real thing. For the spectator of

16 The word animation originates from the Latin words animus and anima, referring to: rational soul, mind, life, mental powers, courage, desire, living being, anger, spirit, or feeling. The Proto-Indo-European root ane- in turn means “to blow” or, “to breathe” (Online Etymology Dictionary).

DYSRECOGNITION 32 The Congress, the opposite happens. The audience follows Robin as she becomes animated, knowing that this is the real Robin Wright now, and the Robin Wright that looks like the live action character is actually a virtual copy. But even the animated, ‘real’, Robin is just an avatar, a projection of Robin Wright who, in turn, is a fictional version of the real actress bearing the same name. So this is one point where the level of recognition already gets quite complicated. On a narrative level, the first half of the film raises expectations for the spectator about Figure 7. Promotional poster for The Congress the other half. These expectations however, are as presented on Wikipedia never really fulfilled in the second half. Using Carroll’s term of erotetic narration, it is fair to say that certain questions that are raised in the first part of The Congress are left unanswered. Because the genre is labelled as science fiction (and because, for example, a novel kind of technology is introduced at the beginning of the film), the spectator might expect to see the effects of this interesting development. The film increases the curiosity of the spectator up until the point that Robin is actually scanned inside the dome. At this point, the interest of the spectator is awakened in such a way that it would be very unsatisfying and even disappointing to not see the way this technology is used. After the scan, the film skips twenty years of Robin’s life: twenty years that cover the complete development of the scan’s success. Of course there are some short references to Robin’s virtual counterpart becoming a huge success, but the twenty-year gap between the scanning and the congress forms a rupture that is just too big to overcome in this sense.

3.2 ANIMATED RECOGNITION The style of the animation in The Congress is very different from Folman’s 2008 animated documentary Waltz with Bashir. For this film, animation was used as a post-production effect that transforms live action footage into animation. This technique called

DYSRECOGNITION 33 interpolated rotoscoping gives the film its distinct animated look (Sacco). Because the style is very detailed despite its comic book-like appearance, recognizable aspects of the actors are kept intact. This not very often used technique also showed up in the adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006), where more well-known faces from Hollywood are animated but still recognizable. Even more relevant in this is the 2011 Fringe episode “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide”. This episode of the science fiction television series is also partly animated in the same style as A Scanner Darkly and Waltz With Bashir. In this episode, with many references to films like Inception (Cameron, 2010), the animated world entered by the main characters (by means of taking drugs!) is completely shaped by someone's consciousness, comparable to the way this is done in The Congress (figure 8)17.

Figure 8. Walter (John Noble) realizes the world has turned animated in this Fringe episode.

Like Robin, the main characters are looking for someone by tracing their steps in an animated mind-made reality. This remarkable episode deploys the medium of animation as a tool for representing identity. In The Congress, a completely different animation style is used. The simplistic and at many times psychedelic cartoon style reminds more of films like

17 The scenes in which the main characters enter protagonist Olivia's consciousness, represented by a dystopian version of New York (complete with zeppelins and zombies) strikingly resembles scenes from Inception where the characters invade someone's mind as well. The citizens that inhabit this subconscious realm behave in a similar way as seen in Inception, turning against the main characters when the host's subconscious senses the intrusion.

DYSRECOGNITION 34 The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (Dunning, 1968). This particular style leaves little room for visual recognition, although the abstraction of human figures could also unexpectedly heighten emotional engagement. For instance, cartoon figures are known to display exaggerated, caricatural facial expressions (figure 9). Another common, comparable example is the ubiquitous use of emoticons in daily life. An enlightening study on the use of emoticons from 2006 revealed that emotions can be conveyed even without the cognition of faces.

Figure 9. Cartoon characters as caricatures with exaggerated facial expressions.

This even leads to the conclusion that the more abstract faces are, the better emotions are communicated to the receiver (Yuasa, Saito and Mukawa 1570). Although films might put recognition forward as a concept based on distinguishable appearances, the unconscious cognitive process of recognition that supports the interpretation of the spectator exposes that the communication of emotions does not require recognition of the human face at all in this sense. McKone, Crookes and Kanwisher studied the human development of facial recognition, and they determined that holistic face processing abilities are already “present within a few days of birth, and [even] in monkeys who have never seen faces before)”, while experience plays a destructive role for face discrimination (479). The simplistic, abstract style of emoticons in particular leaves the least room for misinterpretation (because the brain fills in the gaps of reality) and can therefore be seen as a universal language of emotions (Yuasa, Saito and Mukawa 1566).

DYSRECOGNITION 35 The aforementioned study implies that recognition of film characters has thus less to do with recognizable aspects of faces, and more with an empathic connection of unintentional mimicry rather than sympathy. As a universal language of emotions, the use of emoticons and cartoon characters exemplifies that the recognition of the human face can actually be skipped in the structure of sympathy, that emotional expressions can be conveyed without the cognitive process of recognition. Nonetheless, at the same time it could be argued that the abundant use of emoticons makes them so ubiquitous that users might not even see them anymore, become immune for their emotional meaning. To answer to a text message, a smiling emoticon can say more than a complete sentence and fill in the gaps of non-verbal communication in text-based communication (Rojas, Kirschenmann and Wolpers 642, 646). From a postmodernist view, the superficiality that eventually characterizes the use of emoticons results in a loss of their original meaning and depth, or as Fredric Jameson would put it: the waning of affect (1984, 61). This interpretation of contemporary capitalism, characterized by the loss of meaning and waning of affect, is also reflected in the animated zone of The Congress. Here, the overload of cartoon characters that surround Robin are so excessively cartoonish that their extreme emotional expressions have lost their meaning in their plenitude.

Figure 10. In The Congress, emotional expressions are either fixed or completely absent.

Robin on the other hand, is already completely stripped of any emotional expression once she enters the animated zone. In the first part of the film, Robin is often seen laughing and crying, expressing a diverse range of emotions. When she is being scanned, she is literally

DYSRECOGNITION 36 drained of emotions once they are captured on camera. The Congress not only turns around the concept of animation as bringing something to life, but does the same to the emotional features of cartoon characters. Nobody shows any genuine facial expressions when animated. Caricatural faces, like those of washed up actors, are rather fixed and static than vibrant (figure 10). Especially Robin and her animated partner Dylan are downright emotionless. The lack of real emotional expression in the animated part of The Congress obstructs any emotional mimicry for the spectator, which makes an empathic connection impossible. Robin can no longer truly be recognized because all of her emotions are cut off once she is animated. Interestingly, the very first shot of the film shows Robin crying, and the moments before her scan is complete show Robin laughing and crying as well (figure 11). The first section of the film thus begins and ends with Robin’s emotions. After the crucial point that marks the shift from live action to animation, the protagonist turns completely numb. Recognition of the character then fails because character traits like Robin's smile or any other facial expression, have disappeared.

Figure 11. The first part of The Congress lays emphasis on Robin’s emotional expressions.

The introduction of this thesis hypothesized that a shift from live action to animation would to be the most problematic option for spectatorial engagement. Yet it is not simply the shift from live action to animation that affects the emotional engagement of the spectator, but rather the connotation of the end of life and the loss of identity and emotion that characterizes the animated zone in the narrative.

DYSRECOGNITION 37 3.3 REALISM, REMEDIATION AND SIMULATION The animation style of The Congress is diverse and original in its style and form, but at the same time it remains very simplistic, unlike the immensely popular animation style of Pixar for example, which seem to get closer and closer to realism. On the one hand The Congress can therefore be understood as a critique of this everlasting pursuit of realism. Paradoxically, by keeping the animation simplistic in The Congress, the film can be closer to realism because of its obvious artificiality. As coined by Bazin, the guiding myth of total cinema is that film has to become more and more artificial in order to get closer to reality (17). The role of cinema would thus be to offer a complete representation, an immersive illusion of reality (Bazin 20). By not hiding every sign of the film’s construction and even emphasizing the artificiality and exaggeration of the cartoon style in The Congress, this film unexpectedly becomes real and artificial at the same time. Stephen Prince discusses cinematic realism his book on digital visual effects in cinema, arguing the following:

Major traditions of realism […] emphasized live action and sought to attain a realist design by severely limiting the inflections of style. […] These methods aimed to return cinema to a threshold of articulation that eliminated or reduced the ornamentations of style in the interests of respecting something true about the characters or places being dramatized. (Prince 2)

In The Congress, this happens in a unique way. Even though the film combines live action and animation by means of artificial effect, it does not fully immerse the spectator, because its construction is exposed at the same time. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin introduced the term remediation to describe the ways in which old and new media are constantly being “remade” through other media (5). In the making of various contemporary media, formats of other digital and analog media are used in the pursuit of immersion. This results in a rather paradoxical combination, a double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy that is very similar to Bazin’s argument about cinematic realism: “Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them” (Bolter and Grusin 5). By means of remediation, the aim is to get closer and closer to reality, to create a seamless whole that immerses the spectator. The use of animation in The Congress can be understood as a form of remediation. Here, a different

DYSRECOGNITION 38 paradox emerges between the level of the narrative and that of the spectator. The immersive function of animation as a medium is emphasized when Robin eventually merges with the animated zone. However, on an extra-narrative level the animation disturbs the level of immersion because it exposes the film’s artificiality to the spectator. The abrupt shift from live action to animation is essential here. Although there are quite a lot of positive reviews on IMDb’s page of The Congress, it is fair to say that most of them express appreciation for the film based on its narrative complexity and aesthetic value. Some of the more negative reviews pointed out that from their point of view, the film fails because of the critical shift from the first to the second part. One reviewer argues:

The biggest niggle I have is that it feels like two films that don't belong together. Very few of the juicy questions of the first act where expanded upon or explored in the second. Or if they are, they are obscured by the mixed metaphors and confusing tangents in the animated world. (“Reviews & Ratings”)

The reviewer continues his argument by emphasizing both the moral values of the protagonist, genre-based expectations and the shift from live action to animation:

Honestly, they lost me as soon as she took the drugs to enter the animated world. In fact it was so random and over the top that I thought we were just watching a short dream sequence or spoof sci-fi film the likes of which she specifically said in her contract that she did not want to be in! (“Reviews & Ratings”)

An important detail is that the shift from live action to animation is not permanent in The Congress. This was initially thought to be the most problematic outcome for spectatorial engagement, according to the hypothesis of this research. Robin eventually returns to the live action realm, but only to find out that this world she once knew is now lost forever. What she has lost, cannot be returned (including her emotions). Robin’s real world has become obsolete because humanity has chosen the animated zone. Now nothing is left of Robin’s former reality and identity, so she has no choice but to reenter the animated zone. In other words, the simulation has taken over reality and there is no way back. When in The Congress, humanity has chosen the animated zone over reality, the latter turns grey, the real world perishes. The animated zone however, is characterized as colorful, vibrant and alive. One of the two is just a pale shadow of the other. But which is

DYSRECOGNITION 39 which? The animated world has become more important than the real world; what happens there “counts”. In other words, the copy has now become more important than the original. Moreover, the actual referent or the real world is completely disconnected from its animated representation; reality and humanity have become obsolete. An important example of this form of simulation is the character of Dylan Trulinger. He is essentially just an avatar, representing someone completely unknown from the "real" world. Who this person is in the “real world” does not even matter. He is truly a representation without a referent or a “copy without an original”; a simulacrum. In The Congress his character could be understood as the ultimate example of Baudrillard’s idea of simulation that usurps reality. Dylan’s job as the “animator” who made Robin becomes all the more befitting, for he is the one that drags her into this pseudo-reality of psychedelic dreams. Within the narrative, the animated image of the real has thus become more important than the real, but this does not apply to the emotional experience of the spectator. This might also have something to do with the level of realism of cartoon characters, for seeing someone die or get hurt in live action has a much greater (visual) impact on the emotional response of the spectator than seeing a cartoon die or get hurt. In the eyes of the spectator, what happens in animation does nog ‘really’ happen. This aspect can also be related to Jameson’s commodification and the waning of affect. When even emotions or identities can simply be bought, their value and meaning rapidly start to fade. What is left is a meaningless fantasy world with only artificial emotions and identities, with pseudo-real or hyperreal experiences that can be sold in ampules to the highest bidder. This idea reminds of Baudrillard’s description of the era of simulacra and simulation, “in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance” (6). First, Robin's image is sold as a product to be owned by a production company in order to make lots of money. Eventually, anyone can buy “Robin”. Anyone can drink or eat her to become her. In The Congress, identity does not just become a commodity, it becomes something relative, even utterly meaningless. This implosion of meaning illustrates another argument from Baudrillard, namely that the excess of information paradoxically destructs or neutralizes its own

DYSRECOGNITION 40 meaning and signification (79). Besides that, Robin - the original - loses her value, and the simulation that is the formula of her identity becomes more important. In this film, the copy usurps the original, destroying the unique aura of the real in the process. The different phases of the image are sequentially shown in The Congress:

it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum. (Baudrillard 6)

When Robin's identity is drained from her, her individuality starts to lose its meaning in the narrative. For the spectator, Robin is still recognized as Robin on a cognitive level (based on her visual and aural features), but not emotionally. On an emotional level, the opposite happens: the original initially becomes even more important than all of her empty copies. Nevertheless, sooner or later the protagonist dissatisfies the spectator by failing on the level of allegiance. Eventually, Robin has become just as empty as her copies, which makes her unrecognizable compared to the person she was at the beginning of the film. She too has become just a rehash of the person she used to be. The digital image that took over her career has finally defeated her. The image of Robin is no longer of the order of appearances, but of simulation.

DYSRECOGNITION 41 4. EXPERIENCING THE CONGRESS: RECOGNITION/Dystopia

Perfect? No, but it’s not bad at all for the beginning of the revolution. – Steve, The Congress

Although the second chapter has shown that a distinction can be made between spectators and their different expectations and experiences of the film, it is important to explore the ways in which spectatorial engagement develops in The Congress, and to look at the role of Smith´s structure of sympathy in this. It is fair to say that the film was far from a worldwide success18. As the first chapter has also clarified, emotional engagement is crucial for the success of a film, because it is rooted in the experience of the spectator (Aurier and Guintcheva 5). This experience can of course be either a positive or negative one, or a combination of both. The second chapter has focused on different spectators and common ground between them as a basis for this emotional connection and with that, for the success of a film. Even though a film can be appreciated for more reasons than just emotional engagement, it still functions as a foundation for watching a film without inevitably tuning out. So why does The Congress eventually fail in engaging its spectator? The following analyses will take a closer look at Smith’s levels of engagement in The Congress, the role of both sight and sound, empathy and embodiment, and ultimately at the overall distance between the spectator and the film.

4.1 RECOGNITION AND THE VOICE In the last chapter realism has played an important role for the expectations and the experience of the spectator. This aspect has been influential ever since the “beginning” of the medium of film itself. However, the aural aspect is often overlooked, and especially the human voice as a distinct object rather than just a part of “the soundtrack”. After all, a total cinema could hardly be called “total” when leaving out attention to sound and, considering characters, the voice in particular. Bazin already named sound, together with color, as an artificial addition to silent film that adds realism but would also take away silent film’s “state of primitive perfection”, paradoxically (17). In the animated zone of The

18 According to IMDb, The Congress recouped approximately a mere three and a half ton of its estimated budget of almost nine million dollar (“Box Office/Business”).

DYSRECOGNITION 42 Congress, the voice of the protagonist is for a great part what makes her still recognizable as the same person. When all visual cues of recognition fall away, the only thing to hold onto as a spectator seems to be the character’s voice. Throughout the film, Robin’s real voice is always present in an unmediated way19. On the face of it this would imply a closer emotional bond between the spectator and her, based on an aural level. The distinct voice of the actor as a cue for recognition could function as a bridge between the estranging appearance of the narrative world and the protagonist. This might explain why Robin still evokes some positive emotional experience for the spectator when she has become animated. Realism has then become dependent on characters’ aural aspects, rather than appearance. Michel Chion wrote his book about the voice in cinema, focusing on the medium of the voice itself. He starts by asking the following question:

The voice is elusive. Once you’ve eliminated everything that is not the voice itself – the body that houses it, the words it carries, the notes it sings, the traits by which it defines a speaking person, and the timbres that color it, what’s left? (Chion 1)

With this quote Chion seems to understand the voice as something analogous to a separate identity or entity, completely disconnected from its context. This idea is also the subject of Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, in which a man (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an artificial intelligence named Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), who is represented only by a voice. Mazzei and Jackson examined the voice as something other than an effect of something tangible, and emphasize the possibility of thinking a voice “without organs” in a Deleuzian manner, as something that does not need to refer to some “thing” to exist (750). The episode of the science fiction series Fringe that was mentioned in the third chapter, also centers on the concept of identity and consciousness as a separate entity that can be put, say, in a computer. The notion of identity is already questioned when one person's consciousness is literally put into someone else's body. Here, the voice also becomes the key to identity when the recently deceased scientist William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) takes over the body of protagonist Olivia. The most important cue to the change in

19 This is true at least up until the point that Robin decides to become her son, which will be important in the second paragraph of this chapter.

DYSRECOGNITION 43 this person's identity is the voice of actress Anna Torv, which is still her own voice, but with a completely different way of speaking that was characteristic for Nimoy's character. When the characters of Fringe are situated in the animated zone, their voices support the recognition of their individuality even when the animation initially increases the distance between the spectator and the character. Taking the voice as an isolated entity, could a structure of sympathy be formulated, focusing specifically on the voice as a character? Films like Her would support this argument, although here too, the protagonist eventually does need a physical connection to Samantha with a surrogate body while this vocal being on the other hand, develops a need of something that goes beyond the connection with human beings. The film S1m0ne (Niccol, 2002), which resembles Her to some extent, supports this argument. In this film the artificial intelligence is represented by both aural and visual elements, which eventually enables this simulation to take over reality. The inescapability of the connection between the senses as discussed in the first chapter, along with the embodiment of experiences, dismisses any possibility for a structure of sympathy with only a voice. The development of alignment would require the spectator to follow the character’s actions and obtain insight in the character’s emotional state. Although this might seem possible thinking of audiobooks for example, a physical body would always be imagined by the spectator to embody the voice as an identity. The idea of allegiance with characters poses the same problem in this sense. Bearing in mind that allegiance is based on a characters actions and intentions, these actions and intentions would have to be visually imagined to actually have happened in the experience of the spectator. A question similar to Chion’s seems to be asked by The Congress: what would remain of identity or individuality when it is stripped of its physical body or its distinguishable voice? To get back to the 1968 film Yellow Submarine, this idea is also of importance. In this film, even the voices of the “actors”; The Beatles, are not even those of their own, as they did not actively participate in the production of the film (Strøm 60). One of the screenwriters and Yale professor at the time, Erich Segal, argued in an interview about the film that “..the verbal is completely subservient to the visual”, though the film was also praised for its verbal inventiveness and creativity (Casey 3). The Beatles did produce the music for the film, and eventually even appeared in a live action epilogue, but

DYSRECOGNITION 44 their real voices are only heard through the songs, as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The dialogue was entirely spoken by voice actors. The question that remains then, is what remains of recognition when it is disconnected from appearance and even the human voice?

4.2 RECOGNITION: AVATARS AND APPEARANCES The Congress constantly reflects on- and plays with, the experience of watching a film. 1970s Theory’s idea of identification in Hollywood cinema as an immersive ideological instrument assumes the spectator as experiencing the events that happen as the character, as a surrogate experience20. When Robin enters the animated world in the film, anything becomes possible. Even the concepts of time and space have no meaning anymore. Eventually Robin decides to live her life again as her son. The shot of her reflection in figure 12 can already be understood as an obvious hint at Lacan’s mirror stage and the idea of misrecognition, which makes it quite reflexive about the cinematic experience of the spectator according to apparatus theory. The experience of the characters within the animated world, and the idea of experiencing the world through someone else can be understood as a parallel with this alleged experience of the spectator. The concept of the avatar is important here, not just as another simulacrum, but especially in relation to the structure of sympathy and the level of recognition. The idea of the avatar as a surrogate entity to act through in relation to the cinematic experience shows a remarkable resemblance with the ostensibly obsolescent concept of identification as indicating that someone would see themselves “as identical to or one with the character” (Carroll 1990, 90). This also shows resemblance with Smith’s reference to central imagining, which implies that one represents events or emotions to themselves, as it were, from the “inside” (Smith 1994, 36).

20 A striking example of understanding cinema as offering a surrogate experience is Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in which the male spectator is presumed to project his gaze through a screen surrogate of a male character on the female body (12).

DYSRECOGNITION 45

Figure 12. Robin sees her own reflection after she has become her son.

This idea of centrally imagining is explicitly present in another film by Spike Jonze, namely Being John Malkovich (1999). Similar to Her, the separation of the mind and the body, as well as the notion of identity, representation, and the position of the actor as a “puppet on a string” are constantly being put up for discussion in this film (Dragunoiu 1).The tagline of the film; “Ever wanted to be someone else? Now you can.”, triggers the idea of the avatar as a surrogate being that can be used to act through. The philosophical idea of the avatar has been deployed in many other films already, with recent examples like Gamer (Neveldine and Taylor, 2009), Surrogates (Mostow, 2009) and Avatar (Cameron, 2009). The idea of a surrogate entity is even more present in the world of gaming, in which players always act through another character. This, in turn, is undeniably reminiscent of the Cartesian subject-object distinction and the post-humanist idea that the human body as a physical referent might have become obsolete. The debate revolving around the separation of the mind and the body is literally questioned in the film when Robin is in her hotel room at the congress. At some point all the lights go out in her room. She asks herself out loud “is it dark in here, or is this just in my mind?” Over the intercom, and later uttered by the robot servant, the answer she receives is the following: “Ultimately everything makes sense. And everything is in our mind. If you see the dark, you chose the dark.” This supports Sobchack’s idea that every experience is an embodied one (1992, 271). In her article about video game identities, Sheila Murphy emphasizes that these identities are deeply connected to the non-digital world, and that theorists often risk falling back into the 1970s idea of the “universal subject” by understanding identity through acts that dislocate embodied identity from the

DYSRECOGNITION 46 self (225). In The Congress, the virtual body or avatar can be understood as a similar play with identity, problematizing concepts of the self and of reality as well. For example, in the animated zone everyone can be anything or anyone, so from time to time people walk by that look like a younger Robin, and many famous historical figures or pop culture icons’ look-a-likes pop up in the animated zone (figure 13).

Figure 13. A combination of film stills showing some of the many famous faces in the animated world.

This also causes Smith’s level of recognition to become even more challenging when someone acts through an avatar, especially when the typical, recognizable aspects of this character (like their appearance and voice) have become variable. Daniel Shaw investigated the philosophy in Being John Malkovich, and elaborated on the definition of identity: “The film begs to be read in light of a Nietzschean, existentialist theory of personal identity, which sees the self as defined by its actions and the projects and values to which we dedicate ourselves” (Shaw 117). The insignificant role of similarity between the human ‘player’ (or puppeteer) and his avatar (the puppet) is emphasized by Trepte and Reinecke in their research on identification with avatars of video games (11). Their research suggests that visual recognition has just a minor role to play in the process of emotional engagement. This might be true in the narrative world of The Congress, but when considering the relationship between the spectator and the protagonist, this aspect

DYSRECOGNITION 47 becomes problematic. Because of the level of alignment and initially allegiance, this is only the case when the protagonist decides to become someone else. Everybody else who takes on another identity can already be considered a lost cause for the spectator. Of course Robin has already become an avatar, but initially she holds onto her individuality. Her first step was to enter the animated zone and to let go of her physical body. Eventually the next step is to look like someone else in this reality. When Robin becomes her son, no matter how noble her reasons are, by doing this she dismisses her individuality and humanity. It might very well be the case that, in a world of avatars, recognition is no longer based mainly on visual or aural elements, but rather on a character’s actions and motives21. Instead of being the basis of the structure of sympathy, recognition can then be placed at the other end, which means alignment and allegiance would support recognition. This would seem reasonable when considering the spectator’s emotional engagement to the protagonist of The Congress. The idea of recognition as the most crucial part of the structure of sympathy, supported by alignment and allegiance is less farfetched than it might seem at first glance. How many times do you hear characters in all kinds of films utter sentences like “I do not know who you are anymore”, or the surprised exclamation “who are you and what have you done with [name]?” The latter can even be used in a positive or negative way. In cases like these, recognition of a character by other characters is emphatically based on their actions and the (moral) choices they make, rather than on what they look or sound like. According to Smith, allegiance always depends on “reliable access to the character’s state of mind, understanding the context of the character’s actions, and having morally evaluated the character on the basis of this knowledge” (1994, 41). And these moral values are exactly what make the protagonist of a dystopian narrative like The Congress recognizable. As a spectator you know it is her, because of the choices she makes as opposed to all of the other characters that look just like her in the animated zone. Spectators do not get disconnected from Robin because of what she is or looks like, but rather because of what she does (or more specifically, what she does not do, eventually).

21 In The Congress, it seems as if the protagonist’s visual and aural elements reflect this change in her actions and moral values. When Robin has let go of her identity by becoming her son, this is reflected by her altered appearance and the disappearance of her authentic recognizable voice.

DYSRECOGNITION 48 The spectator’s rejection of the character might not come entirely from the fact that the mode of the film changes from live action to animation, but can rather be evoked by the moral foundations of characters’ actions. These aspects will be discussed further in the next paragraph, which focuses on the expectations of the spectator and how they influence the distance between the spectator, the protagonist and the narrative world of the film.

4.3 INDIVIDUALITY AND FREEDOM, TIME AND SPACE In The Congress, the spectator’s emotional engagement can be either temporal or spatial, and sometimes both. There are two radical temporal shifts present in the narrative. Both are important for the engagement of the spectator, because they are closely related to anti-utopian aspects of individuality and freedom of the protagonist (Jameson 2005, 7). One critical temporal shift occurs when Robin is frozen for seventy years in the animated zone. When seventy years have passed, at least in Robin's head, the spectator does not know anything about what happened during this period, or even if seventy years really have passed. In this fantasy world, time and space do not even matter anymore. When Robin walks with Dylan through the suspended gardens of New York after she is woken up, her voiceover describes it as following “Time is now a subjective matter, […] after a while you will probably lose the numeric calendar, as we once knew it.” This idea can be truly damaging for the commitment of the spectator, especially to the narrative world. When time is of no importance anymore, is this not the end of time? Would this not mean in an existentialist way that the world and any kind of meaning or being would end? The infinity and insignificance of time and space in the animated world in The Congress support the nihilistic idea that life itself has no intrinsic meaning or value, so every individual can create or define their own meaning through their actions (Arp 170). This sense of individualism, professed by Sartre as “existence precedes essence” also adds to a moral contingency when it is consciously ignored. And this is exactly what happens when Robin decides to merge with her animated surroundings and accepts this new reality for what it is. At this point she ultimately renounces her individuality and freedom. Because Robin is no longer committed to her individuality, she, like the world around her, has no meaning anymore. As engagement and commitment are understood as the basis

DYSRECOGNITION 49 for meaning, meaning simultaneously forms the basis for spectatorial engagement. When meaning fades, emotional engagement does also. Earlier in the film, another temporal shift occurs when twenty years pass in the blink of an eye after Robin is scanned. The result of her virtual scan is never shown. Robin enters the dome-like structure and is literally being captured (on film, but also by the contract). The film seems to say that here she is already starting to give up her individuality and freedom. A shot of Robin inside this dome even shows a strong resemblance with a prison surrounding her (figure 14).

Figure 14. Robin is being captured; on film and by the company called Miramount.

Notable is the figure who guides Robin through both temporal shifts that affect her freedom and individuality. This man, who seems to play the part of the ferryman Charon, almost literally carries Robin’s soul to the “world of the dead” that the animated zone is (figure 15). He turns up twice in the narrative, and at both times he is the one who carries out a life changing process that the protagonist submits herself to. First, this person is introduced as the Miramount employee who will perform the scanning of Robin, which eventually results in her loss of identity and freedom. Later, this same man turns up in the animated zone. Here, he is the person who freezes Robin for seventy years, which causes her to completely disconnect from the “real” world and merge with the animated zone. This too affects her individuality and her freedom in a drastic way.

DYSRECOGNITION 50 After the moment Robin is scanned there is an abrupt blackout with just an intertitle saying “20 ANS PLUS TARD”. This period, which is the duration of the contract Robin signed, covers what seems to be an important part of Robin’s life, but nothing of this is shown.

Figure 15. Robin will be scanned and later frozen by the same figure.

Consequently, the spectator does not truly get to know her or her relationship with her children, which means there is no emotional foundation to build your emotional engagement on as a spectator. No characteristics of Robin as a character are known. The fact that Robin Wright is an actual existing person problematizes this even more. On the one hand the spectator knows her from her films, so she shouldn't need an introduction. But because the story is fictional, it is unclear what is kept from her real person and what is fiction. Therefore the basis for an emotional connection is missing from the beginning. Recognition is once again the problem here: as spectators we recognize the actor, but the film does not build a character out of her. Robin is just the actor without characteristics that one can relate to. This begs the question: who is this Robin really? A large share of alignment is missing: both spatial (and temporal) attachment and subjective access have been made impossible by withholding twenty years of Robin’s life. Eventually the spectator knows what she wants, but not why she wants it. It is not difficult to relate to the general idea of a mother trying to reunite with her children, so allegiance is not that problematic at first glance. But the lack of individuality and access to Robin’s personality obstructs the way she is recognized throughout the film. Recognition is made impossible because there is no basis for it on any level.

DYSRECOGNITION 51 Recognition of the protagonist in The Congress thus fails in multiple ways:

 Recognition of actor obstructs recognition of character: Performance: Robin the actress becomes Robin the character.  Recognition of live action character obstructs recognition of animated character: Visual mode: Robin the character becomes Robin the cartoon character.  Recognition of animated character obstructs recognition of animated character: Individuality: Robin the cartoon character becomes her son.

So there are three levels of recognition in The Congress, or three ways in which recognition is obstructed. Firstly, the level of performance refers to the protagonist being recognized as the actress, which troubles the way the spectator connects to her as a fictional character. Secondly, the visual mode questions the nature of identity and the way the spectator recognizes the character in a different form. Finally, the notions of individualism and identity hinder recognition on the basis of moral values. Folman’s animated autobiographical documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008), already touches upon these problems of recognition in the sense that the protagonist represents an animated version of the director himself. The levels of performance and the visual mode however, remain consistent throughout this film, while in The Congress, these modes keep shifting, which also troubles the level of emotional engagement from the spectator. Another significant difference crucial for the emotional engagement of the spectator is the one between being connected to the protagonist and being connected to the narrative world. When the film gets more and more abstract, for example when the congress is invaded and complete chaos breaks out, it all starts to feel like some crazy nightmare. Robin even asks to be shot to escape this “hallucination” that is now her life. However, the bullet does not kill her; Robin wakes up in a hospital room where she will be frozen for seventy years. Robin, and the spectator, eventually just take everything in, accepting everything that happens because both are completely detached to this strange reality (figure 16). This can be understood as a sense of alignment with Robin because she too is disconnected from her environment. The spectator would thus experience a strong emotional connection with Robin here, and at the same time a complete disconnection from the narrative world.

DYSRECOGNITION 52

Figure 16. After the congress is invaded, Robin seems disconnected from the animated world.

Even if the spectator does get used to this strange new world, and an acceptance of it becomes possible, the level of recognition is crushed by the fact that Robin escapes and then reenters the animated zone. Because the animated zone is different every time someone enters it, there is nothing recognizable for the spectator to hold onto. Despite Robin’s noble reasons to go back; she is after all still a mother determined to reunite with her son, the distance between the spectator and the protagonist, as well as the distance between the spectator and the narrative world, increases because of the level of recognition. Unlike the spectator, Robin eventually does embrace this animated reality. When she makes the decision to accept the animated world and merge with it, the emotional connection between the spectator and her begins to collapse. As was said earlier, this is partly because of the fact that she forsakes her individuality and identity by doing this. However, there are two other different but interconnected moral grounds for the spectator’s rejection of the animated world, and with that his rejection of the protagonist.

4.4 THE CONGRESS AS A DYSTOPIAN NARRATIVE The first reason for the spectator’s rejection of this escapism is the feeling that the protagonist gives up hope by giving into and embracing the animated world. Any hope for

DYSRECOGNITION 53 resistance and going back to the way it was before is gone when she decides to live on in this fantasy world. The second, more important problem of the spectator with the animated world in The Congress, is related to the genre of science fiction, the dystopian narrative, and the expectations of the spectator regarding the role of the protagonist. The fact that the film is for a large part based on the book The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem is one of the ways in which expectations are raised by the film. Lem’s dystopian story suggests the genre of science fiction and, more specifically, a narrative that is centered on an individual who will rebel against a society that has fallen into disrepair (Booker 625). The aspect of changing the world and communicating this idea to the reader or spectator is often understood on the level of reception as inherent to the genre of science fiction, having “…the potential, through estrangement and cognitive mapping, to move its reader to see the differences of an elsewhere and thus think critically about the reader's own world and possibly act on and change that world” (Baccolini 519-20). So here, genres’ problem of normativism as described by Stam influences the expectations spectators have of the film and with that, their emotional engagement to the film’s characters. The genre of science fiction is often linked to the early tradition of utopian fiction, with its characteristic political agendas and the focus of alternative worlds, implicitly criticizing the values of modern society (Cornea 3). An interesting view for this thesis comes from Darko Suvin, who claims that science fiction encourages what he calls cognitive estrangement. With this term he refers to the way the genre facilitates subversive ideas as an inspiration for resistance of the oppressed (Suvin 8-9). This would encourage the reader or spectator to think about society in a different way from a distanced perspective (Cornea 3). Vivian Sobchack names the relationship between man and the physical environment surrounding him the basic thematic concern of all science fiction (1987, 103). Science fiction as a genre is said to strive to transcend limits of human knowledge and imagination by means of alienation, anxiety, and to some extent, abstraction (Sobchack 1987, 103). However, this abstraction has to have its limits to maintain meaning:

Although they may contain many alien images, isolated for wondrous effect, images which evoke the “unknown” in all its scientific, magical, and religious or transcendental

DYSRECOGNITION 54 permutations, the films must obligatorily descend to Earth, to men, to the known, and to a familiar mise en scene if they are to result in meaning rather than the abstract inexplicability of being. (Sobchack 1987 103-4)

This abstraction might just be what is taken too far in The Congress, so that the film becomes more of a philosophical abstraction of being at the expense of meaning and emotional engagement. The tangibility of reality ultimately gets lost when the abstract, animated world becomes more important than the real world. In his book Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Suvin emphasizes that “for all its adventure, romance, popularization, and wondrousness, SF can finally be written only between the utopian and anti-utopian horizons” (62)22. As an important part of the science fiction genre, utopian narratives center on philosophical concepts of future worlds as an ideological illusion of idealism (Jameson 2005, 89):

The fundamental dynamic of any Utopian politics (or of any political Utopianism) will […] always lie in the dialectic of Identity and Difference, to the degree to which such a politics aims at imagining, and sometimes even at realizing, a system radically different from this one. (Jameson 2005, xii)

This dialectic that Jameson describes comes to life in the animated world of The Congress, where identity and difference lose their meaning and perish through their ultimate fulfillment (figure 17). When the two of them walk through the animated version of New York, Dylan tells Robin that thanks to chemistry, there is no more ego (implying that this is a good thing). This scene illustrates how individuality eventually disappears through its own fulfillment. This aspect is visually emphasized by the two characters wearing neutral, white clothing against the colorful background full of extreme looking characters. In fact, the two stand out in their surroundings by looking neutral among the extreme. In their book Utopia/Dystopia, Gordin, Tilley and Prakash emphasize that dystopia should not simply be understood as the opposite of utopia, for this would suggest a society

22 Jameson stresses the difference between utopia, anti-utopia, dystopia and critical dystopia in his book Archaeologies of the Future, though for this thesis the main idea of estrangement by warning against a utopian vision that seems too perfect to be true is used to describe The Congress as a dystopian narrative (2005, xiv, 154).

DYSRECOGNITION 55 that is “either completely unplanned or is planned to be deliberately terrifying and awful” (Gordin, Tilley and Prakash 1). Dystopia should thus rather be understood as a utopia that has gone wrong, or one that only works for a particular part of society. The role of the protagonist of the dystopian science fiction film would consequently be that of the individualistic rebel or a hero of a classic populist-style revolt (Jameson 2005, 343).

Figure 17. “Thanks to Chemistry we have been redeemed. There is no more Ego.”

Even though the inescapability of the dystopian society is one of the main themes in Lem’s novel, Ijon Tichy watches the developments of the new world in horror, while Robin consciously makes the decision to live in that world. The idea of not living your own life, or living your life inside your head suggests a safe environment for all sorts of experiences, but also the feeling that this is not a real life. This also shows a level of criticism of film spectatorship as escapist immersion, because of the similarities with the spectator’s surrogate experience in the theatre23. By means of this ideological critique the moral dilemma between safe escapism and breaking through the immersion to rebel against a totalitarian society is illustrated on a narrative level as Robin’s choice for either the animated zone or the harsh reality of a world that is lost. From the moment that Robin sniffs the ampule to enter the animated zone, everything that happens only seems to happen inside her head. All boundaries between what is real and “what is in your head” are questioned and blurred. It is no longer clear what the concept of ‘real’ even

23 However, Ernst Bloch stressed that even though utopian escapism is regressive in its nature, it also offers the potential for seeing the world from a different point of view, for social change (Kellner 92).

DYSRECOGNITION 56 means, or what it means to live. On the surface the general idea for the dystopian narrative appears to be that it takes courage to wake up and see the harsh reality for what it is. The most obvious example, and also a film The Congress is often compared to in reviews, is The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999), in which protagonist Neo literally has to be woken up from this alternate world that suppresses the human race by clouding reality with a better looking fantasy. The aim of the dystopian protagonist must then once again be to accept the real world as real and to change it instead of escaping it. Of course these expectations are mainly based on general characteristics that are universally admired or rejected based on a universal moral code. As a spectator you know what the right thing to do is, because it supports generic positive qualities like courage or loyalty. Cowardliness and escapism on the other hand are generally understood as negative features that are not allowed for a protagonist. Even if these characteristics are tolerated or even admired, it only concerns child protagonists like Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, or the children in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Children, who are still innocent, seem to have all the rights to escapism, while adults on the other hand “should know better” than to escape into a fantasy world24. This discrepancy between the moral values of the spectator and the protagonist seems to be what causes the sense of alienation, but not only because of the shift from live action to animation. Alignment and allegiance cause the level of recognition to collapse when the protagonist makes a choice that goes against the “rules” of a film about a dystopian future world. The hypothesis for this thesis was that a complete shift from live action to animation would trouble the level of recognition and therefore take away the basis for allegiance. But the problem appears to be rooted in alignment and allegiance as a foundation for the level of recognition of the protagonist. The next chapter will focus more on estrangement and overall distance between the spectator, the protagonist, and the narrative world.

24 This raises another question, namely why this would only be allowed for children. Are spectators secretly jealous of adult characters who do manage to escape reality while they have to face reality every day because of their impossibility to escape in such a way?

DYSRECOGNITION 57 5. ESTRANGEMENT and/or Engagement

You climb to the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down. – Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad (265)

As the previous chapters have illustrated, the emotional engagement of the spectator with characters in The Congress is problematized in multiple ways. Many aspects cause the distance between the spectator, the protagonist and the film to keep changing during the film. Instead of leading up to engagement, the structure of sympathy (when applied to The Congress) deviates from the conventional structure by resulting in emotional estrangement instead. This chapter will first discuss the distance between the spectator and the film by focusing on specific moments where this distance increases or decreases to investigate why this happens. The concept of estrangement will be explored, which eventually leads to the conclusion that in The Congress, dysrecognition takes place on the level of engagement with characters as well as the narrative world. A revision of Smith’s structure is needed to investigate this alternative outcome. This chapter will end with such a revision: one that focuses on both engagement and estrangement, recognition and dysrecognition.

5.1 THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE SPECTATOR AND THE FILM: IMMERSIVE ESTRANGEMENT? In The Congress, the distance between the spectator, the protagonist and the narrative world is contradictory and keeps changing. Although at some points the distance from the narrative world can increase while the spectator feels closer to the protagonist, the overall distance between the spectator and the film shows an interesting fluctuation over the course of the narrative. Several specific moments in the film represent this changing distance between spectator and film. When discussing The Congress with different spectators, several moments from the narrative come up as either immersive or estranging for the spectator25. Soon it became clear that at some points, the film pushed the

25 This group of spectators consisted of seven people, of which three male and four female, between the ages of thirteen and thirty-six years old. None of them had seen The Congress before and none of them had any prior knowledge about this film, film theory or the structure of sympathy. These spectators were first asked what they thought of the film, the protagonist and the narrative. Basic questions about categorizing the film already made clear that none of the spectators really enjoyed the film, although they did find its

DYSRECOGNITION 58 spectators away and it became difficult to keep watching the film and to relate to the protagonist. Eventually, the discussion went on with questions about when the film drew their attention and why, when the film was most promising or interesting, and of course when the opposite occurred; when the film lost their attention or when they did not really follow the story or the protagonist any more. What follows is a brief description of these moments, categorized as either immersion or estrangement.

In The Congress, immersion occurs...

…when the possibilities of the scanning process are introduced. This arouses the spectator’s curiosity about how this technology will develop, and what the boundaries of these possibilities might be. Considering the film as part of the science fiction, it is the idea that “anything could happen” that intrigues the spectator.

…when Robin is being scanned, once again the film raises certain expectations about the result of Robin’s scan. Questions like “what will her digital image look like?” and “what does this mean for Robin’s identity, her life, her family, and her position as an actress?” attract the attention of spectators and draw them closer to the film.

…when Robin stands up in front of the crowd to give a speech at the congress: in this scene, the film raises expectations of the protagonist of the dystopian narrative. The aligned emotions between the spectator and Robin cause immersion here.

…when Robin goes back from the animated zone into the live action world. Here too, it is primarily curiosity about what has become of the narrative world since Robin hopped into the animated zone.

subject “interesting” and unique. The film was labeled as science fiction by the majority, and described as quite long and depressing, like an eerie but beautiful nightmare.

DYSRECOGNITION 59 On the other hand, the film estranges the spectator…

…when twenty years have passed. This temporal shift increases the distance between the spectator and the film by withholding information and not giving the spectator the satisfaction of seeing the results of the interesting technology that was introduced earlier.

…when Robin enters the animated zone. The film initially makes the spectator curious, but soon this world is rejected because of its dystopian atmosphere.

…when seventy years pass. This is another temporal shift causing estrangement.

…when Robin merges with the animated world. This scene, where Robin flies away with Dylan in the animated zone, seems to represent the loss of hope and freedom.

…when Robin becomes her son. By doing this her individuality ultimately gets lost. There is no longer a protagonist anymore to figuratively hold onto as a spectator.

…when Robin reenters the real world. The harsh, gray reality of a lost world can now only disappoint the spectator. Robin manages to escape the nightmare of the animated zone, but discovers that there is nothing left to go back to.

Of course, the distance between the spectator and the film is something that has been continually in motion ever since the origins of the medium itself. The first chapter of this thesis started out with theories about the cinematographic apparatus. Theorists used to attribute agency exclusively to the apparatus, ignoring the autonomy and agency of the spectator. A well-known example is the fantastic, almost mythical description of the audience’s first reaction to Arrival of a Train at a Station by the Lumière brothers from 1895: “Suddenly a train appeared. Women cried out with terror. Men threw themselves to one side to avoid being run over. It was panic. And triumph” (Hanson 6). On the one hand this idea shows the ongoing enthusiasm of cinema offering a “realistic” experience, getting

DYSRECOGNITION 60 closer and closer to reality. On the other hand, this idea assumes technology to position the subject that is the spectator, overlooking the possibility of the opposite. Tom Gunning already rejected the assumed naivety of the spectator when he expressed his suspicions about spectators’ horrified responses to early cinema (31). He argues that it is the impression that “I know, but yet I see”, representing the balance between immersion and being aware of the construction that the film is, that adds to the visual power and intellectual disavowal which can make or break a film (Gunning 33). This balance between immersion and distanciation also reflected in the reviews on The Congress’ IMDb-page. One reviewer aptly linked the immersive impact of The Congress to an experience of direct affect, as a result of central imagining (or literally identifying) with the protagonist:

You'll never understand the feeling of delusion better than when The Congress cuts from an hour-long orgy of flashing colors and amazingly designed characters and creatures in the world of hallucinations to the harsh truth in the reality […] All in all The Congress is an experience like there are just a few in cinema history. (“Reviews & Ratings”)

Being immersed into the narrative in the sense that the spectator experiences an affective connection to the protagonist, and at the same time being completely disconnected from the narrative world (together with the protagonist) might even result in a paradoxical combination that could be called immersive estrangement. Still, even though the connection between the spectator and the protagonist can differ from the connection between the spectator and the narrative world, it seems highly unlikely that this combination can apply to the engagement of the spectator to the protagonist as well. Bertolt Brecht introduced the idea of cinema’s social potential to evoke Verfremdung, which can be translated as “distanciation” or “estrangement”. He suggested that “once illusion is sacrificed to free discussion, and once the spectator, instead of being enabled to have an experience, is forced as it were to cast his vote; then a change has been launched which goes far beyond formal matters and begins for the first time to affect the theatre’s social function” (39). In short, the Verfremdungseffect can be described as “a representation which […] allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar’ (Suvin 6-7). Introduced by the famous writer of dystopian fiction, Philip K. Dick, dysrecognition describes a process similar to Suvin’s cognitive estrangement or

DYSRECOGNITION 61 Brecht’s Verfremdung, but aptly emphasizes the level of recognition as crucial for the engagement or estrangement of the spectator. Dick’s leading idea is that the genre of science fiction produces a ‘shock of dysrecognition’, meaning that the narrative world is recognizable for the reader (or spectator) to some degree, but with one substantial alteration that makes this reality unthinkable to be in (76-77). This aspect appears to apply not only to the narrative world of science fiction films, but can also be attributed to the emotional connection between the spectator and the protagonist. Dysrecognition causes estrangement because “the fictitious world [is] tethered or ‘orthogonal’ to our own” (Rudge 34). Translated to the structure of sympathy, this would mean that the protagonist is recognizable to a certain extent, but also develops unrecognizable aspects that estrange the spectator. The spectator’s dysrecognition of film characters can be crucial in the structure of sympathy. A revision that includes both recognition and dysrecognition will follow in the fourth paragraph of this chapter.

5.2 PROBLEMATIZING RECOGNITION Just like Smith’s argument about the notion of identification being too generic and vague, the same can be said about Smith’s concept of recognition within his structure of sympathy. What is still missing is the distinction between the way the film constitutes the basis for recognition, and the way recognition is established from the perspective of the spectator. Considering Smith as a cognitivist, you would expect him to make this distinction especially clear. Within Smith’s structure, the focus of recognition seems to be primarily on appearances. This visual aspect also becomes clear in the general meaning of recognition. Even a simple Google image search on the word mainly displays images of technological developments like facial recognition software and examples of the psychological process of recognizing human beings, facial expressions, and emotions. As the third chapter has demonstrated, the visual aspect of recognition can obviously not be denied. However, besides the lack of attention to sound and the voice, there are many films that problematize the meaning and function of recognition even more by focusing on other aspects that redefine the term. An interesting example is La Piel Que Habito (Almodóvar, 2011). In this film, the level of recognition is problematized by letting it take place near the end of the film.

DYSRECOGNITION 62 The film skips the level of recognition in the structure of sympathy. After the roles of the “good guys and bad guys” have already been established, two very different characters appear to have been the same person this whole time. According to the structure of sympathy, spectators would sympathize with characters in an increasing way after learning more and more about them. But in La Piel Que Habito, the already established roles of protagonist and antagonist are completely mixed up. Vicente (Jan Cornet), a man who rapes the daughter of protagonist Robert (Antonio Banderas), starts out as just a perpetrator, fitting the role of an antagonist. The character of Vera (Elena Anaya) on the other hand, is presented as an innocent victim, who is held captive by Robert. The two very different characters of Vera and Vicente evoke opposing emotions for the spectator. When eventually, the two are revealed to be one and the same person, the spectator finally knows the whole story. After alignment and allegiance have seemingly been established already, only then recognition takes place. The linear structure of sympathy, developing from recognition to alignment to allegiance, crumbles when a crucial part of alignment that was missing earlier is filled in much later in the narrative. Another way of problematizing recognition concerns the level of performance and the balance between reality and fiction. In the previous chapter, this idea has already been touched upon regarding The Congress. When the line between reality and fiction is blurred, the formation of characters can be obstructed, and with that, the engagement of the spectator. This happens in films like Being John Malkovich, where the actor is the center of the whole film. Another, more recent, example is Birdman (Iñárritu, 2014), which also blurs the line between reality, fiction and fantasy. Michael Keaton plays a fictional version of himself, but with a different name. In both these examples, the characters are recognized on both a narrative level, and at the same time on the level of performance. Smith also emphasized on the latter, when he argues that characters are initially already individuated on the basis of star personae (1995, 123). In films with a “real” protagonist (an actor playing a fictional version of himself), the level of performance might predominate the narrative level of recognition in the sense that the spectator’s knowledge of the actor obstructs any further introduction of the character’s traits. This results in a problematic structure of sympathy because the other two levels of alignment and allegiance would then have no solid foundation. Last but not least, the level of individuality

DYSRECOGNITION 63 also blurs the recognition of characters. This specifically regards the in the previous chapter discussed concept of the avatar, bringing back the sensory (primarily visual) basis of recognition. When everyone can look or sound like anyone, recognition no longer has anything to do with visual or aural elements, but is rather based on characters’ actions and moral values. The problem in most of these cases, seems to lie not in the process of recognizing characters as individuals, but rather in re-identifying characters as the same person, or as fitting a particular role they took on earlier. In 1995, Smith expanded the meaning of recognition in his book Engaging Characters, by focusing more on the two interconnected aspects of individuation and re-identification (110). This means spectators do not just perceive a character as an individual person, but they also re-identify them as that same person “in different contexts, under different descriptions, or at different times” (Smith 1995, 110). Here, Smith already shifts his focus more to the aspect of continuity, instead of just ‘superficial’ recognition of characters as human beings. However, re- identification as part of recognition is the most crucial level in the structure of sympathy, and determinative of the outcome that can be either engagement or estrangement. On top of that, re-identification is not only based on individuation, but also on alignment and allegiance. What will follow is a revision of the structure of sympathy, splitting the recognition of characters into two sections that take place at different points. This structure does not just result in engagement (or no engagement), but offers different outcomes, based on the essential level of recognition.

5.3 A REVISED STRUCTURE OF SYMPATHY The hypothesis for this research was that the shift from live action to animation would cause The Congress to fail in engaging the spectator emotionally, because the basic level of recognition would obstruct the other levels. However, the real problem does not completely originate from this particular film, but rather from the structure of sympathy itself. The Congress is only one example that illustrates the problem of recognition. There is a category of films that just don't work within Smith's structure. Therefore, the way engagement is approached needs to be revised. The Congress exposes how a film can be successful or failing to engage its spectator according to a slightly different structure of sympathy. In this structure, recognition can be supported or hindered by alignment or by

DYSRECOGNITION 64 allegiance (or by both). The level of recognition should be split into two levels: individuation and re-identification, the latter taking place after the levels of alignment and allegiance, making it crucial for the engagement of the spectator (figure 18).

Figure 18. A revised version of Smith’s structure of sympathy, emphasizing the importance of recognition.

Although the problem of recognition lies in re-identification for the largest part, this does not mean that the process of individuation as part of recognition always automatically runs smoothly. In The Congress, even the level of individuation is problematic for different reasons. As was said in the last paragraph, in different films where actors are playing themselves, their characters are not really introduced to begin with. Here too, characters are not really introduced, but are rather based on the

DYSRECOGNITION 65 expectations the spectator has of the real actor. So the basis for recognition is already missing in the film. Correspondingly, the narrative world of The Congress should look familiar to the spectator, but is unrecognizable from the start of the film. Instead of living in Beverly Hills, Robin lives in an old airplane hangar in the middle of nowhere. When she ‘goes to work’ in Hollywood, not even a glimpse of the famous sign is shown to indicate the setting. From the beginning of the film, dysrecognition of the narrative world and the characters already starts to estrange the spectator. Alignment can influence re-identification when the film withholds important parts of characters’ emotions, experiences and actions. Important parts of Robin’s life are never shown in The Congress, Regarding the level of allegiance, the dystopian narrative of The Congress is of importance26. The moral structure of the protagonist within the dystopian narrative requires the protagonist to fit the profile of the individual against a society. When the protagonist does not fit this profile (anymore), recognition of him/her as a hero/ as the protagonist is made impossible. The basis for this kind of recognition lies in the allegiance of the spectator. As a spectator, you initially do care for Robin, and considering her role within the dystopian narrative, you expect her to make certain choices. When she does not make these choices, the film gets more and more depressing. The dysrecognition of the future world, like the city of New York that now consists of suspended gardens, sets alarm bells ringing for the spectator, but not for Robin. Not only does the film estrange the spectator by giving the narrative world a complete psychedelic makeover, this sense of dysrecognition takes place on an emotional level as well for the spectator. The protagonist; Robin, becomes unrecognizable on both a visual level and narratively, as fitting the role of the individual who stands up against an evil society. Both alignment and allegiance obstruct the level of recognition here, for there are many spatial and temporal shifts in the narrative, as well as a change in the moral values of the protagonist. When dysrecognition takes place, the levels of engagement become levels of estrangement instead. The idea of allegiance and alignment as a basis for recognition is not limited to the dystopian narrative. In La Piel Que Habito, appearance, gender, and identity all complicate

26 This, of course, does not mean that the obstruction of recognition by allegiance is exclusively limited to dystopian narratives, nor do all dystopian narratives automatically problematize recognition.

DYSRECOGNITION 66 the spectator’s emotional engagement. The roles of protagonist and antagonist are already established, only to be mixed up and become ambivalent when the two appear be one and the same person. Here, not only the appearance of the two hinders the structure of sympathy, but also their morally founded actions. Similar to what happens in The Congress, here too allegiance becomes a foundation for recognition instead of the other way around. The spectator follows these separate characters, and can therefore ally with one, and against the other. However, because of the film's temporal complexity, a crucial part of alignment is missing (namely the part where Vicente is transformed into Vera). This means re-identification cannot take place because the two characters are not recognized as the same person. When they appear to be just that; the same person, the spectator is left with mixed emotions about this character. Because in The Congress, both alignment and allegiance fail, re-identification is ultimately obstructed. And this is exactly why the film eventually fails to engage its spectator. In the revised structure of sympathy, recognition is not just the construction of characters, but also the re-construction of characters on the basis of both their individuality and their role within the narrative. As the conclusion of this structure then, either recognition or dysrecognition of characters can take place. When characters are successfully reconstructed as the same person, the result is recognition and engagement (figure 19a).

Figure 19a. Recognition involves both the construction and reconstruction of characters.

When characters cannot be recognizes as the same person (when re-identification fails), dysrecognition would take place, meaning that characters are deconstructed and even misconstrued by the spectator, causing estrangement instead (figure 19b). In The Congress this reflected when Robin disconnects from her environment, but eventually reconnects to it and merges with the animated zone. When the spectator stops having aligned emotions

DYSRECOGNITION 67 with her, she can no longer be reconstructed as the protagonist from before. Although her actions and motives might be understandable and noble to some degree, Robin dissatisfies the spectator by not fulfilling her role as the protagonist, and therefore becoming unrecognizable. This does not mean that estrangement cannot be transformed into engagement at all. An alternative, negative scenario of engagement might also be possible (figure 18). This would lead to antipathy rather than sympathy for a character. In a film like The Congress, the way in which the protagonist is (re)presented is altered in such a radical way that the spectator does not recognize her anymore. From this basis the spectator is being pushed away more and more until he is completely estranged from the character and the narrative world.

Figure 19b. Dysrecognition of characters causes estrangement instead of engagement.

Because the character is dysrecognized, there is no possibility for spatial attachment or subjective access, for there is no longer a character to attach to or to access. When estrangement eventually causes negative emotions, the spectator can be pulled into the film again, for his emotions for the character do grow stronger. This stage brings the spectator back to the other side of the structure, resulting in (negative) engagement: antipathy. Unlike the structure of sympathy, this shows a fluctuation of emotional engagement rather than a linear build-up. The rather strong emotion of antipathy (or aversion) is only possible if the spectator did actually feel something for the character before. Just like the line between love and hate, the one between sympathy and antipathy appears to be just as thin. Representing this line is the foundational level that once again turns out to be crucial: recognition. Antipathy occurs not because of the shift to animation, but rather because of on Robin’s moral orientation that gets lost in the process of her

DYSRECOGNITION 68 journey. Specific scenes evoke this sense of antipathy, accumulating towards the end of the film. Initially Robin resists the scanning process because she finds it dehumanizing. A few scenes later she is being scanned. The moment when Robin is scanned it happens in a big dome surrounding her, with lots of flickering lights and photos capturing her whole being, everything is being recorded or scanned. This strongly suggests that Robin’s identity is forcefully being drained from her. The scene abruptly ends with a black-out. After this, the narrative jumps to the future, skipping twenty years of Robin’s life. This gap is a meaningful one, for it seems to be saying that in those twenty years, nothing has happened, or nothing is left of Robin’s identity. Another example is the moment Robin literally flies away with Dylan and embraces the new, seductive world with all of its possibilities, even though she felt it was wrong earlier on. Just like the spectator, Robin questions the nature of the animated world at first. Several hints can be seen as red flags for the spectator and for Robin. One is the loss of identity; the dehumanizing nature of living a life inside your head. Another warning is the means by which one enters the animated zone: by taking hallucinogenic drugs that mask reality. This aspect is another reference to The Futurological Congress, which can be seen as a critique of a culture in which the society depends on addictive substances like psychoactive drugs. However, unlike Lem’s protagonist Ijon Tichy, who rejects this society despite being powerless, Robin Wright eventually gives into it. And this difference between the two characters is crucial for the engagement of the spectator. Equally problematic is the filmmaker’s double standard (or hesitant attitude?) within this moral debate, as discussed in the second chapter. On the one hand, he seems to be saying that humanity must win against dehumanizing technologies, for he claims to be optimistic about the film industry’s choice of an actor over a digitized copy of an actor. On the other hand, he argues that it would not matter if a character becomes a cartoon and leaves the real world behind to escape into a drug infused reality of animated dreams. “Does it really matter?” On the website of The Congress Folman asked himself if computerized characters can evoke the same excitement and enthusiasm as real actors and if this truly matters, as quoted in the introduction of this thesis. Although Folman’s film was understood by many reviewers as an aggressive attack on Hollywood’s power

DYSRECOGNITION 69 structures, The Congress does provoke the spectator to think about this by estranging the spectator, which allows the film to be a medium that can alter the way people think about the world and about the entertainment industry. Sarah Kozloff argued the same thing, defending films that focus on social injustice, made for mass audiences (2). She claims that this “cinema of engagement” can actually be very effective in raising consciousness and inspiring action (Kozloff 2). With this in mind, Folman seems optimistic after all, considering his hope in conveying a message to spectators through film. This paradoxically shows cinema’s strong potential for ideological criticism and entertainment at the same time, just like Judith Mayne already argued in 1993 (156). As the basis for the structure of sympathy, recognition was initially described as merely a cognitive process of recognizing certain features without any emotional connotation (yet). However, strong emotional engagement, like allegiance, can actually function as a foundation for recognition, which makes re-identification in particular more emotional by nature. Alignment shows the same function, for subjective access and spatial-temporal attachment both contribute to how characters behave in a recognizable way. In The Congress, you know the protagonist is Robin, because you follow her every move. You know that Robin is the protagonist because you have access to all of her actions, emotions and experiences. As a spectator, you want Robin to win from the evil, destructive society, because this is the role of the protagonist in the dystopian narrative. Instead, the level of allegiance fails when Robin becomes part of this “evil” society. From that moment on, there is no protagonist to hold onto any more, no one to fill in the role of the hero who stands up against the system. The level of re-identification therefore fails, forming a breach in the structure of sympathy. Because recognition has now become impossible, the film ultimately fails to engage its spectator any further.

DYSRECOGNITION 70 CONCLUSION

There is no such thing as the place you came from. – Doctor Barker, The Congress

This thesis started out as a research of films with both live action and animation in them. The reason for this was the 2013 film The Congress, a unique film that combines the two modes, and one that stands out because of its failure to engage the spectator. The film was no success, and the reason for this lies in the essential emotional connection between the spectator and the characters. The more this thesis got into this film, the more it became clear that the combination of live action and animation should not be the only focus of this research. Many other aspects appeared to be of influence for the emotional engagement of the spectator. The first chapter explored different ways of approaching the emotional connection between the spectator and the characters of a film. Various ways of engaging to characters, consisting of different levels, were discussed in order include all possible options for emotional engagement. The main focus was Smith’s structure of sympathy, both because it can act as a valuable method of investigating spectatorship, and because The Congress did not seem to ‘work’ within this structure. From this starting point, it all came down to the level of recognition. After investigating and comparing the position of the spectator and the filmmaker, the expectations before watching a film also appeared to be of influence for spectatorial engagement. Chapter three discussed these expectations, as well as the genre of animation. The balance between realism and artificiality is closely related to this aspect. Immersion and estrangement were further discussed in relation to the dystopian narrative in the fourth chapter. Here too, the focus was partly on the distance between the spectator, the protagonist, and the narrative world. Although the distance between these three keeps changing and is sometimes contradicting (when the spectator feels close to the protagonist but disconnected from the narrative world), eventually the result is cognitive and emotional estrangement. The last chapter started with a report on spectators’ experiences of The Congress, revealing that at many points in the narrative, the distance between spectator and film changes. Immersion does occur, but is often soon cut off by failing to satisfy the aroused curiosity of the spectator, or because of crucial temporal shifts in the narrative. Besides

DYSRECOGNITION 71 estranging the spectator by making ‘the familiar strange’, dysrecognition occurs with both the narrative world and the protagonist. Emotional estrangement flows from this level of dysrecognition as a result of a slightly different structure of sympathy. By cutting the level of recognition into two phases; individuation and re-identification, it became clear that the problem generally lies in the latter. Here, the structure of sympathy can be split into two directions: recognition or dysrecognition. Dysrecognition can take place at the end of the structure of sympathy for different reasons, such as:

1. ..when characters are not recognizable by their visual or aural aspects; 2. ..when characters are actors playing themselves; 3. ..when parts of the narrative (alignment with characters) are missing; 4. ..when characters “become someone else” entirely; 5. ..when characters do not fit their role within the narrative anymore.

Depending on the way characters are constructed, reconstructed, deconstructed or misconstrued by the spectator, this might result either in engagement to or estrangement from a character. In The Congress, spectators experience estrangement from Robin when they cannot recognize her anymore. In other words, the dysrecognition of Robin increases the (emotional) distance between the spectator and her. This character is deconstructed when parts of her personality and appearance change or disappear. Therefore, reconstruction of this character is heavily obstructed. Misconstruction of the character takes place when she does not fit the profile of the protagonist within this narrative anymore. When estrangement has occurred, it is still possible to re-engage to characters, although it might result in a negative way of engagement. Estrangement can lead to antipathy as well, bringing the spectator closer to the character again. Still, more research might be needed on this alternative outcome of the revised structure of sympathy, by focusing on characters that evoke this sense of antipathy. In short, the existing structure of sympathy from Murray Smith now appears to be too limited to investigate the emotional experience of the spectator. As the examples of The Congress and other challenging films have exposed, a different structure is necessary to explain why emotional engagement succeeds or fails.

DYSRECOGNITION 72 This study could even be extended by combining it with neuroscience, considering the connection between memory and emotion in the hippocampus and the amygdala inside the human brain. Many neurological studies have already shown that vision, memory, and emotions are interconnected areas, and thus form an important combination for (face) recognition (Swaab 9). Cognitive Neuroscience might be particularly useful to explain how emotional engagement as a psychological process is produced by the brain, and at the same time what it means to experience these different emotions in different degrees for film characters. The combination with cognitive theory about the experience of the spectator in the theatre, can expose new connections to further backup and expand the research on this subject. By further deepening the structure of sympathy on the level of recognition, this thesis has revealed that recognition in fact happens at two separate stages of the structure of sympathy, and that recognition is not always successful. The first stage represents recognition as Smith introduced it in 1994. This level consists of the construction of characters by individuating characters as subjective human beings. The second stage of recognition; re-identification, is dependent on both alignment and allegiance. This means characters are recognized as the same person. From this stage, taking place at the end of the structure, flows either recognition or dysrecognition. The revised structure introduced in this thesis can explain why spectators feel emotionally engaged to certain characters, or why they can experience estrangement instead. Dysrecognition can turn engagement into estrangement, but it might also happen the other way around: characters that are initially evoke negative emotions for the spectator can possibly become sympathetic when they are dysrecognized. A case study of specific films with an antagonist that turns into a protagonist, or a different radical change from a negative to a positive emotional experience for the spectator, could be used to further explore this alternative side of this thesis' topic. It might be a fruitful subject to expand this research and to consider every possible side of spectatorial engagement to and estrangement from film characters.

DYSRECOGNITION 73 Appendix: QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

The following questions were used in a focus group discussion between seven people, male and female, the ages ranging from thirteen to thirty-six years old. The discussion took place after watching The Congress. The purpose of these questions was to find out what the emotional experience of the film was like for each person and why engagement or estrangement occurred.

Information about (watching) the film 1. What kind of film is The Congress? 2. What genre does this film belong to? 3. Are there other films like this one, and which ones? 4. Please give a summary of the narrative of The Congress in a few sentences. 5. Is The Congress a long or short film? 6. What was the balance between live action and animation like? 7. Did you watch the whole film from beginning to end? Did you pause, when?

Experience of the film and the characters 8. Did you like The Congress? Why (not)? 9. How did you feel after watching this film? 10. What do you think of the characters in The Congress? 11. What character did you like the most and why? 12. What were your expectations of the narrative and the protagonist? 13. How did the film respond to these expectations? 14. At what points did you feel close to the film or the character(s)? 15. At what points did the film lose your interest?

General questions about spectatorship 16. What is your favorite film to watch? 17. What do you like about this film? 18. What is your age and sex?

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DYSRECOGNITION 82