The transformative power of fiction has been acknowledged since antiquity and technologies such as cinematography have amplified it. This power resides in its capacity to move us, to change our emotional states. Arguably, film fictions are particularly effective at eliciting emotions resulting in moral transformation, since they tap directly into our prelinguistic abilities to mimic and understand others through their faces and bodies, that is, to empathize with them. Research on our responses to moving images has been concerned with what happens inside of our body and how these phenomena correlate with other bodies, measuring for example inter-subject correlation or ISC and employing neuroimaging techniques (e.g., fMRI and EEG), which may be combined with other methods such as self-reports. Emerging techniques such as mobile EEG allow for improved conditions of study and hold promise to deepen our understanding of the neural underpinnings of film. These studies need to be considered along with the exploration of the contextual aspects of our engagement with films beyond what happens in our embodied minds, not simply in relation to other minds but also to the wider social and cultural human networks, artifacts, and circumstances that they interact with and are part of. In this talk, I briefly introduce three models or approaches, including my own, that have been proposed to account for cinematic empathy and that are particularly helpful to frame current and future conversations about our engagement with film and its transformative potential.

The Lebanese civil was (1975-1990) emerged from the postcolonial struggles in Lebanon and the Arab world following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and British and French colonialism in the early twentieth century. They caused sectarianism, division, identity crisis, and political tensions within the country. In the context of such violence, artists were responding and creating works that represented the ongoing conflicts. Artist and writer Etel Adnan produced works that were embedded in non-linear narrative, abstraction, and empathy. Her texts are filled with journeys and political engagement. Her artworks are vibrant, dynamic, and filled with flow – of the word, the line, the narrative. They deal with text and landscapes inspired by Islamic philosophy, nature, and trauma. Visually, they reveal the nuances of pain and love for Lebanon and the complexity of empathy in the postcolonial Arab world. How does and can art depict the nuances of empathy? This paper analyses how artistic and engaged processes can represent forms of visual empathy at the intersection of the postcolonial context – through the work of the Lebanese women artist in the 1970s. Supplemented by visual analysis of Adnan’s artworks in the 1970s, the paper will incorporate concepts of empathy from Islamic, Arab, and Middle Eastern philosophies. Themes will include aesthetics, artistic processes, political engagement, trauma, non-linear narrative, postcolonialism, and the representation of empathy during the Lebanese civil war.

One of the central questions explored by cognitive cultural studies is whether narratives have the potential to foster social change and what are the processes that mediate this transformation. This talk delves into the empathic mechanisms of our responses to film, with particular attention to the empathy-altruism hypothesis—the notion that empathy can lead us to help the other in a disinterested way—which was developed in the field of social psychology (Batson), subsequently influenced the view of literature (Nussbaum, Pinker), and eventually permeated literary criticism and film studies (Keen, Plantinga) by helping us to understand the affective aspects involved in the reception of film narratives. My case study, Princesas (Aranoa, 2005), tells the story of two prostitutes who come from both sides of the Atlantic: one from Santo Domingo (Zulema, an undocumented immigrant), and the other (Caye) from Madrid, where the action unfolds. The vicissitudes of the two protagonists, initially rivals and later friends, nourish the dramatic tension that maintains the attention of the spectator. However, the audience immersion into the film world fundamentally follows affective-cognitive processes. Our capacity for empathy (controlled by the cinematographer) facilitates such immersion into what occurs on the screen, by putting the viewers in the shoes of the “other,” leading them to affectively identify with the characters, understand the complexity of their situation, and, thus, humanize them. Within this frame, Aranoa develops a narrative strategy aimed at both fostering and attenuating the emotional response of viewers, and may effectively prompt social reflection and change.