Empathizing with fictional characters

[ChatNoir]

Here is something I’m thinking about lately in conjunction with my recent readings:

Does the empathy we feel about a movie character different from the empathy we feel in everyday life about a real person?

In watching movies, do we “identify” with the protagonists in a sense we put ourselves in their shoes, or are we looking at them as a third party observer? (If the latter, what is the empathy process like?)

I’m thinking of writing a blog about this subject. I am in the process of forming my own opinions and wonder what yours are. (By the way, please let me know if you rather not I quote you in the blog that I might or might not write.)

[EthanRunt]

More often than not characters are given a lot of backstory, relatable traits and we go for a ride with them that ultimately changes them, I always try to connect with the characters in the films I watch, sometimes they're one dimensional and impossible to care about but the best films have more chance of connecting with you than most people do.

[LewisQ]

I would have thought there was a clear difference in that the empathy we feel for a fictional character is an idealized and unqualified empathy which we can never feel for a flesh-and-blood human being. All our relationships in real life are accompanied by any number of social, cultural or pragmatic connotations which make absolute engagement impossible in all but the most intimate of relations. The removal of those barriers is probably what makes (or can make) the plight or personality of a fictional character seem more vivid. Not everyone who cried at A Dry White Season left the cinema resolving the boycott South African goods.

As for identifying with protagonists, Oscar Wilde wrote that every first novel depicts the author as Jesus or Faust. I'd remove the "first" qualifier and extend that maxim to most works of art, and to the audience. We project and/or appropriate those aspects of a character's personality which we perceive as heroic or heroically flawed.

[Dulci]

I don't know if it's so much empathizing with a fictional character as much as it is romanticizing him/her - perhaps subconsciously creating a backstory that fits our own experiences and expectations. At that point, we naturally empathize with them because we added a piece of ourselves into their personality.

[Daninsky]

I don't think that it's possible to make a blanket statement to this topic, the levels of identification or empathy for a character vary from movie to movie (or better story to story), but yeah in some cases it is simply easier to empathize with a fictional character (or real persons we don't actually know) because of their lack of depth or, to put it better, because our perception gets narrowed down to only see a certain part of their life.
We do never get to see, much less to put up with, the complexity of their character.

Now, do we put ourselves in their place or are we simply observers?
It's difficult to answer, do we when we empathize with real persons put ourselves in their place?

Instead of a clear answer:
I did find watching Gran Torino to be a most harrowing experience because we get to know that neighbor so well that when she got attacked it evoked a physical feeling of anguish, rage and ultimate helplessness over the situation.
So, yeah, I'd say in that moment my empathy with the character and the ordeal she went through was in no way different from how I would have reacted if that happened to a real person.

On the other hand, watching Juno there's never a real moment of empathizing with any of the characters going on but I do on a level understand what Jennifer Garners character goes through, yet it is never more than observing what happens and being able to relate on a remote level to the emotions that the character wents through.

I guess with characters that go through a similar experience than we did at some point we might actually put ourselves in their place in the sense that we relive that same particular moment from our life, with all it's heights or lows.

[sexymaria]

Originally Posted by ChatNoir

Here is something I’m thinking about lately in conjunction with my recent readings:

Does the empathy we feel about a movie character different from the empathy we feel in everyday life about a real person?

In watching movies, do we “identify” with the protagonists in a sense we put ourselves in their shoes, or are we looking at them as a third party observer? (If the latter, what is the empathy process like?)

I’m thinking of writing a blog about this subject. I am in the process of forming my own opinions and wonder what yours are. (By the way, please let me know if you rather not I quote you in the blog that I might or might not write.)

In the midst of the folly of man, the greatest theature is our social life, and especially those who can perform in the theature of life, whos character moves beyond the mundain, and make our eyes water when we laugh. The most obnoxious, unreasonable, and moraless people often are the most intertaining, (though i would never let them know i am enjoying there obsurd notion of being a legend).
And yet there are those who really shine, who are masters at human behavior and have experiance and knoledge in the man's social madness.
Therefor, every once in awhile, a movie will come out, that truely captures those rare individuals who can truely entertain, simply by being more then the mundain human repitition.
I appreciate mankind as the ultimat drama, and if we can be more then the mundain, in the daily world, why not do so?

[ChatNoir]

It's interesting that most of you who expressed your thoughts on that matter said "identification" or "empathy" does not seem to involve really putting yourself into the other person's shoes in most of cases. I share that view, and it is almost astonishing that some philosophers and cognitive scientists seem to simply begin with the opposite assumption.

I also agree with some of you who said that it is easier to feel empathy to a fictional character than to a real person. My own suspicion is that it is because we get to know more about fictional characters' inner lives than we usually do about the inner lives of the real people we encounter in real life. Also, like Dulci said, we tend to Romanticize with these fictional characters, and as LewisQ said, there is less pragmatic consequences involved in empathizing (and romanticizing) with fictional characters. (I think What Daninsky said about our narrowed down view on fictional characters means more or less the similar thing.)

My current thought is that empathizing with fictional character and doing so with real person involve the same process at the fundamental level (with some differences in less fundamental ways). I am not saying that fictional characters are real enough, but that the mental state of the real people's can only be fictional to us at best (in a sense that we can only imagine it and there is no better way to approach it.)

[sisch]

Maybe it's also easier to empathize with a character in a movie because of the nature of a movie - most of the time, the number of people in a film is limited. So it is much easier to focus all your attention on those few characters and putting your own everyday cares in the background, which makes it easier. And you go to a movie wanting to connect (at least I do) - if I'm not able to connect in some way, most of the time, I dislike the movie.

I'm not sure if I put myself in their shoes - but I'm certainly able to ampathize, for example, even with a character who goes on a killing spree... not sure what that says about me, though.

[Rogue (Flat Earth)]

Personally I don't find myself empathizing or identifying with characters... for in no way can one truly hope to understand another's mind over a lifetime, much less doing so over the course of a movie (or book, for that matter, although that's easier as you can actually see what's going through their heads, normally).

Rather, I find myself sympathizing with characters going through events that I am familiar with. It is experiences, rather than personalities, that draw an emotioinal connection out of me

[Harb40]

I think, subconsciously, we look for something in a character that we have experienced or felt and then use that to guide our thoughts on what the character really is.

Empathy, possibly. Romancing, in one way, yes. We might like to fancy ourselves as that character so we tend to watch them closer than another character. Identifying, most definitely.

In my opinion, we take some of the characters and try to associate them with someone we know to make it easier to understand why they are doing what they are doing.

Is it easier to feel for someone on screen than in real life? As ChatNoir said, we are able to know more about the character onscreen in 10 minutes than we do a real person in several years. So I would have to yes yes, it is easier to feel for the character.