Face-to-Face, or Face-to-Visor. Is Cinematic Virtual Reality the “Ultimate Empathy Machine”?
Abstract
My paper makes a comparison between one possible definition of empathy and the spectator’s experience in VR with the aim of assessing whether these two structures are compatible in a more rigorous way. Following the phenomenological works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Vittorio Gallese’s writings on embodied simulation, I will define empathy in the VR context as the result of four different conditions: 1) the VR user and the VR character must share the same ontological structure, for the other is a “second self”, therefore 2) the character must be directly accessible in an intersubjective and reversible relation. Furthermore, 3) it is necessary for the VR user to understand the object of the character’s emotion to strengthen the empathetic response provided by the embodied simulation, but 4) this does not ever mean that empathy leads to a total correspondence of state of minds, as the character’s suffering is always different from what the spectator feels while seeing that suffering. Taking these four conditions in mind, I then apply them to the analysis of the VR documentary Clouds over Sidra (Milk, Arora, 2017), which follows the story of Sidra, a refugee child displaced in the Za’atari refugee camp. My conclusion is that VR engenders an occasion of emotional contagion, which is the quite literal infection of the character’s feeling to the VR user.
Keywords: Embodied Simulation, Emotional Contagion, Intersubjective Relation, Phenomenology, Virtual Reality
Downloads
The author retains the copyright of his work whilst granting anyone the possibility “to reproduce, distribute, publicly communicate, publicly exhibit, display, perform and recite the work”, provided that the author and the title of the journal are cited correctly. When submitting the text for publication the author is furthermore required to declare that the contents and the structure of the work are original and that it does not by any means compromise the rights of third parties nor the obligations connected to the safeguard of the moral and economic rights of other authors or other right holders, both for texts, images, photographs, tables, as well as for other parts which compose the contribution. The author furthermore declares that he/she is conscious of the sanctions prescribed by the penal code and by the Italian Criminal and Special Laws for false documents and the use false documents, and that therefore Bollettino Filosofico is not liable to responsibilities of any nature, civil, administrative or penal, and that the author agrees to indemnify and hold Bollettino Filosofico harmless from all requests and claims by third parties.