Fiction Film and the Varieties of Empathic Engagement

Mindreading, simulation, empathy and central imagining are often used interchangeably in current analytic philosophy, and typically defined as imagining what the other wants and believes - to run these states "off-line" as the lingo often goes. By imagining the others beliefs and desires, one will come to understand and predict his emotional and behavioral reactions. Many have suggested that films may trigger engagement in the characters' perspectives, and one finds similar use of these terms in film theory. Imagining the character's states- with emphasis on mental states - has for example, been labelled as central imagining, (Choi 2005; Smith 1995), imagining from the inside(Smith 1997), and empathetic re-enactment (Currie 1995). In a similar vein, understanding the meaning of a narrative event for a character is understood as empathy (Tan 1996). These accounts all point to ways in which the spectator understands the character and the situation the character is in. Nevertheless, one also finds a different use of the term empathy in film theory, namely as a matching feeling with the character. The emphasis here is not on understanding the character and the narrative situation, but on the emotional output of the process.