The above is because I don't really have a working title for this paper. Or even a thesis quite yet. This is just to get ideas down for later use.
A topic that really struck a chord with me from the second half of this class is empathy. Specifically the empathy a reader feels for fictional characters.More often than not, the goal of an author of fiction is to get an audience invested in a work, and believable characters the reader can connect to is one of the best ways to do it. But what happens when a character within a work has problems empathizing with others, or an author intentionally creates a gulf between audience and characters? Then you get The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, and the works of German playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Definitions of empathy:
Keen: Feeling what we believe to be the emotions of others.
Dictionary.com: 1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.
Wikipedia: the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being.
Empathy can be distinguished from sympathy as a feeling with, rather than a feeling for. "I feel what you feel" as opposed to "I feel a supportive emotion about your feelings"
Emotional contagion: "catching" a mood or a feeling
Summarize how narrative empathy might work, quotes from Keen: "Theory of Narrative Empathy," Zunshine "Why We Read Fiction"
Examples from common/popular literature & theater, distinguish between sympathy and empathy again.
Brecht, epic theater, alienation effect: short bio, clarification of genre, examples of alienation techniques, Mother Courage and her Children
Alienation techniques: opening narrations, geste, learning in dialect performing in Hochdeutsch, stripping away the illusion of scenery, visible lights & wings, timing: set over 10+ years, coherence of story: scenes may be years apart and don't "flow" smoothly, characters distant in and of themselves, subject matter: war, death, "just good business."
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Autism, theory of mind, and empathy. Are we alienated from Christopher when we read because of his trouble relating to other characters? Is he alienated from other people in the same way Brecht desires his audience to be alienated?
Facts versus emotion: Christopher and Brecht think about situations/death/tragedy instead of feeling about them.
Geste and Christopher's sheet of paper with the faces: complex expressions are hard to interpret.
Differences of scale: A week in 1 small town in England v. 10+ years in at least 3 countries. One family and one dog versus 30 years of war and 3 dead children
How much Theory of Mind to work in? Christopher has trouble mind-reading, does the alienation Brecht desires exclude it as well? Are we supposed to be able to mind-read his characters?
Mother Courage: Is there something special about this play w/empathy because she has to hold herself distant from the world and the deaths of her children? Doesn't empathize because she's shut herself off, rather than because her brain is wired that way.
Brainstorm complete. Hope I can pull some good ideas & sensible structure from this.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Are you paying attention?
Once again, this class seems to come full circle. In our discussions of alternate cognitions, we land on ADD/ADHD, and come once again to the topic of attention in the brain. One particular aspect that has caught my eye this time around is the idea of "deep" attention versus "hyper" attention, as explained in the Hayles article. The former is the ability to focus on one particular stimulus to the exclusion of all else for long periods of time; absorption in the latest Harry Potter novel, for instance. The latter is the ability to switch focus rapidly between many different stimuli; for instance, your typical multi-tasking modern college student. (I personally must confess that I have 3 tabs open on my internet browser unrelated to this blog post, as well as Duke Ellington and his All Star Road Band playing in the background.)
What particularly fascinates me is how our society has changed over the centuries in what kind of attention it prefers. Earlier on in human history, when hunting for food and then fighting for territory were of prime importance, we favored hyper attention. The recent series Percy Jackson and the Olympians explains the ADHD of many modern demigods in this fashion. With brains that are hard-wired for the intense stimulation of combat, Percy and many like him just lose interest in the modern classroom.
As we moved on and built aristocracies and monarchies, the focus shifted to deep attention. To be able to pay attention to only one thing for hours at a time, especially literature, art, or music, was a luxury reserved for the upper classes. Boredom even more so: what the bored mind can create became one of the prevailing themes of the German Romantic. As Hayles discusses, deep attention eventually took over: our schools and systems of higher education revolve around this type of attention, requiring it of our students if they are to succeed.
And the wheel continues to turn: with technology becoming so pervasive in modern society, we return to hyper attention. Ever-present computers, radios, televisions and digital music players bombard people with a constant barrage of stimulation. This barrage has become so normal to recent generations that it has reached the point of being a security blanket: how many people every day do you see walking around campus with their earbuds in or their headphones on? Tired of the stimulation of the natural world, we have been spurred on to create unnatural stimulus and have come to prefer it.
Is it possible to unite these two kinds of attention? Hayles brings up the example of video games: a very stimulation, interactive environment, but one that you can immerse yourself in for hours. To connect back to the combat example above, I have found a similar synergy of attention when fencing or performing for marching band: my world reduces to those stimuli useful to me, shrinking down to the fencing strip or the space from goal line to goal line. All three of these activities require quick reaction time and close attention, and offer rewards in return: whether it's beating the level, winning the bout, or performing a show without being an inch out of place. I believe that attention, like so many other things, will find its best use through balance.
What particularly fascinates me is how our society has changed over the centuries in what kind of attention it prefers. Earlier on in human history, when hunting for food and then fighting for territory were of prime importance, we favored hyper attention. The recent series Percy Jackson and the Olympians explains the ADHD of many modern demigods in this fashion. With brains that are hard-wired for the intense stimulation of combat, Percy and many like him just lose interest in the modern classroom.
As we moved on and built aristocracies and monarchies, the focus shifted to deep attention. To be able to pay attention to only one thing for hours at a time, especially literature, art, or music, was a luxury reserved for the upper classes. Boredom even more so: what the bored mind can create became one of the prevailing themes of the German Romantic. As Hayles discusses, deep attention eventually took over: our schools and systems of higher education revolve around this type of attention, requiring it of our students if they are to succeed.
And the wheel continues to turn: with technology becoming so pervasive in modern society, we return to hyper attention. Ever-present computers, radios, televisions and digital music players bombard people with a constant barrage of stimulation. This barrage has become so normal to recent generations that it has reached the point of being a security blanket: how many people every day do you see walking around campus with their earbuds in or their headphones on? Tired of the stimulation of the natural world, we have been spurred on to create unnatural stimulus and have come to prefer it.
Is it possible to unite these two kinds of attention? Hayles brings up the example of video games: a very stimulation, interactive environment, but one that you can immerse yourself in for hours. To connect back to the combat example above, I have found a similar synergy of attention when fencing or performing for marching band: my world reduces to those stimuli useful to me, shrinking down to the fencing strip or the space from goal line to goal line. All three of these activities require quick reaction time and close attention, and offer rewards in return: whether it's beating the level, winning the bout, or performing a show without being an inch out of place. I believe that attention, like so many other things, will find its best use through balance.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Curious Controversy
At last we come to the namesake of this blog: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. As with the last time I read it, I couldn't seem to put it down for very long at a stretch, finishing it in less than twenty-four hours. (It feels good to be a bit ahead in this class for once, I must say.) There's something about this little book that sucks you in and doesn't let you go, like the black holes the main character discusses in one chapter. It is also a book that has stirred up quite a bit of controversy and internet discussion since its publication
Our theme for this week is "alternate cognitions," and it is the "alternate cognition" of the main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time that has sparked such vehement argument. The lead is a fifteen-year-old boy named Christopher from the small town of Swindon, England. It is never stated outright within the text itself, but Christopher shows many symptoms of autism or Asperger's syndrome. He has an intense interest in science and mathematics to the exclusion of almost all else, is unable to process subtle nonverbal cues, and has many peculiar routines and habits that he must stick to, such as avoiding all things yellow and brown.
However, the author himself has neither disorder, and therein lies the rub for many people. These readers say he cannot possibly get inside the head of a person with autism or Asperger's and it is demeaning to try. Readers who are themselves autistic or who have Asperger's are divided on the verisimilitude of Christopher's actions and thought processes as presented in the novel: some say that they relate very closely with Christopher, others joining the earlier-mentioned camp who think his presentation is overly-simplified and an affront to people with autism-spectrum disorders.
It is interesting to me that people can be so deeply divided over the presentation of mental disorders such as autism in fiction. We have "alternate cognitions" about "alternate cognitions," as it were. I wonder if something similar would happen if someone who has an autism-spectrum disorder were to write a novel with an autistic main character. Would similar reactions arise from those who don't share the same symptoms, accusing the author of not being "really" autistic? Will the literary world ever see something like "The Yellow Wallpaper" for autism? It's difficult to say, as we have so far to go to fully understand the neurotypical brain.
Our theme for this week is "alternate cognitions," and it is the "alternate cognition" of the main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time that has sparked such vehement argument. The lead is a fifteen-year-old boy named Christopher from the small town of Swindon, England. It is never stated outright within the text itself, but Christopher shows many symptoms of autism or Asperger's syndrome. He has an intense interest in science and mathematics to the exclusion of almost all else, is unable to process subtle nonverbal cues, and has many peculiar routines and habits that he must stick to, such as avoiding all things yellow and brown.
However, the author himself has neither disorder, and therein lies the rub for many people. These readers say he cannot possibly get inside the head of a person with autism or Asperger's and it is demeaning to try. Readers who are themselves autistic or who have Asperger's are divided on the verisimilitude of Christopher's actions and thought processes as presented in the novel: some say that they relate very closely with Christopher, others joining the earlier-mentioned camp who think his presentation is overly-simplified and an affront to people with autism-spectrum disorders.
It is interesting to me that people can be so deeply divided over the presentation of mental disorders such as autism in fiction. We have "alternate cognitions" about "alternate cognitions," as it were. I wonder if something similar would happen if someone who has an autism-spectrum disorder were to write a novel with an autistic main character. Would similar reactions arise from those who don't share the same symptoms, accusing the author of not being "really" autistic? Will the literary world ever see something like "The Yellow Wallpaper" for autism? It's difficult to say, as we have so far to go to fully understand the neurotypical brain.
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