Forget Immersion: Sympathy vs Empathy

[Jason Lee]

I would imagine that there is some sympathy involved with empathy. I'm not sure how important that is outside of a mistake often made in film that sympathy = empathy, when it isn't. We may like the character on the screen, we may not, but if your recognize something of ourselves in the character, we're likely to be hooked.  But, Hollywood continues to mistake sympathy for empathy so we get pretty, pretty people playing flat, flat characters who don't engage us as they should. I think it might be like a ven diagram where empathy is inside a sympathy box, but I don't think it's that structured. It's possible to empathize with characters we don't like and/or think are unsavory. McKee notes that the audience empathized with the villian of Blade Runner instead of the protagonist, which is why that film is a cult classic instead of a block buster. Most of the world empathized with Hannibal Lector. There was something about the doctor that made millions overlook his cannibalism and insanity.

McKee had basically boiled down his definition of empathy to "like me" with the quotes indicating the audience thinking this about the character. The getting what they want bit comes from the chapter dealing mostly with empathizing with the protagonist, which the audience *must do* or the film will flounder (see the comment on Blade Runner above) .

There's a whole bunch of stuff involved with this, which I don't think is relevant to the conversation here. But focusing on the protagonist may be why my definition above sounded a little narrow.

My gut reaction is that I don't see identifying the character necessitating them being like me.  There might be some context I'm missing here, or I could be failing to see a character's "like-ness", because it's built into the character personality by myself or someone with similar thematic tastes.

I think I'm really going to have to read this book.  The bit about Blade is fascinating, and I think I need to know how he arrived at the conclusion of "like me" before I can agree/disagree.

A couple side notes:

If I squint at it, Sympathy = Characterization, and Empathy = Deep Character.  Then if I stop squinting, it still looks like that.

Maybe I just don't get the whole Venn diagram thing, but as I've seen them used on The Forge, it's contrary to my understanding, which I admit is limited.  A Venn diagram is some circles that overlap, like: [Sympathy (Identification with Character) Empathy], with the shared relationship/similarities expressed in the overlap.  I know the definition of Venn diagram isn't really relevant to the discussion, but it has been bugging me for a while.

So, a Venn diagram seems quite correct to me, because Sympathy and Empathy retain their independence while both contributing to another concept.

I agree that the whole nested boxes thing seems too structured for this concept.

[Valamir]

Maybe I just don't get the whole Venn diagram thing, but as I've seen them used on The Forge, it's contrary to my understanding, which I admit is limited. A Venn diagram is some circles that overlap, like: [Sympathy (Identification with Character) Empathy], with the shared relationship/similarities expressed in the overlap. I know the definition of Venn diagram isn't really relevant to the discussion, but it has been bugging me for a while.

So, a Venn diagram seems quite correct to me, because Sympathy and Empathy retain their independence while both contributing to another concept.

I agree that the whole nested boxes thing seems too structured for this concept.

I don't follow you here Jason.  The Big Model is a Venn Diagram.

You have the circle of Exploration on the left, you have the circle of Technique on the right.  In the area where they overlap you you Creative Agenda.  Ron often describes CA as an arrow, which is a little different imagery, but its always been the case that CA was not just a "nested box".


That's how I've always understood the relationships anyway...

[Jason Lee]

Hey Ralph, I've split this topic off to The Whole Model & Venn Diagrams.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hi, John

Well, I agree that they may not directly correspond, but I don't accept this argument. Based on this logic, empathy is in no way related to any techniques involving pictures (moving or flat) -- because all those thousands of years of oral and textual storytelling did without it. So in comics or film, all the work with images has nothing to do with empathy.

Hmmm... this is a little difficult to respond to because in the bit you quoted, I was addressing something Emily said but your respose  quite honestly taken it in a totally different direction. I'm really not sure how to answer that.

I think that step two is an uphill battle for theater and film, but a relatively easy one for role-playing.

I'm not so sure about that in either case, that it is diffcult in theatre and flim nor easy in roleplaying. It think part of it has to do with the skill of the artist, and with a good director, good actors, good writers, professionals who make a living at it, they seem to do this with ease. Since most roleplayers are amateurs and many are unskilled ones, it just doesn't gel a lot of the time. At least not for me and for many people I've watched play, anyway.


Hi, Jason

My gut reaction is that I don't see identifying the character necessitating them being like me. There might be some context I'm missing here, or I could be failing to see a character's "like-ness", because it's built into the character personality by myself or someone with similar thematic tastes.

I'll quote McKee on this since my paraphrasing in the first post was rather poor.

Empathetic means "like me." Deep within the protagonist the audience recognizes a certain shared humanity. Character and audience are not alike in every fashion, of course; they may share only a single quality. But there's something about the character that strikes a chord. In that moment of recognition, the audience suddenly and instinctively wants the protagoinist to achieve whatever it is that he desires.

BTW the bit about Blade Runner has to do with things like character dimension and center of good, if that helps any.

If I squint at it, Sympathy = Characterization, and Empathy = Deep Character. Then if I stop squinting, it still looks like that.

Erm... sort of. I guess the best way to talk about that is that if we were talking about painting, a brush is not a brush stroke, if you follow me. Things like Deep character, Character dimension and such are tools to hopefully have the audience make that connection described above.

Oh, and forget the Venn diagram thing. I don't even understand Venn diagrams and I'm sorry I ever said that.