Recently, I watched a film on Netflix called Room which tells the story of a woman who is kidnapped at 17 and kept in a shed with a child conceived when the man who took her raped her. It's extremely hard to watch as it continues to follow these characters after they escape the hostage situation and attempt to live in normal society and a world which is entirely new to the boy, who has known nothing but the shed. As I watched, I realized the extent of our empathy and understanding is inevitably limited. I couldn't begin to imagine the emotions felt despite the fact that I was watching them play out. We hear of horrific things that occur everyday, though can't comprehend the actual pain if we aren't directly involved. In a way, I think the world can sometimes indirectly numb us to things which should be inconceivable. It's almost a double edged sword in that we can be moved and broaden our capacity for empathy through things such as social media and film, though overexposure could have the opposite effect or give us the notion that we understand things we simply can't fully. I then thought of Sing, Unburied, Sing and the question that has come up regarding Leoine and the amount of empathy that would be right to give her. I believe it's human nature to try to understand and form opinions on things, though I also think our limitations in understanding should remind us to keep open minds.
Furthermore, this could connect to the allegory as it addresses our limited perspective as a fact of the human condition. Similar to the characters who can only imagine what the shadows cast on the wall depict, we can only imagine what we would feel if we experienced the things we form opinions on in reality. It's in our nature to draw conclusions from what we see, regardless of its authenticity.
I would be really interested to hear what you guys think regarding this question and the extent to which we can form opinions considering we haven't gone through the same experiences.
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3 comments:
That's an interesting perspective!!! I totally agree! In my daily life, I try to remind myself that I cannot understand everyone's struggles. It sounds easy, but in the past, I've found myself in situations in which I realized I didn't understand what someone was going through as much as I formerly thought. Limitation is not always easy for us to accept (am I right, y'all?). Many of us strive to surpass our limits, but we're not gods! I've had to accept that I'm only humannnn. *music plays and AP English IV understands Duran Duran reference*
Anyway, what I really wanted to say in response to Alana's post was that I actually thought of another similar (Netflix) example. In a CW show (that is currently on Netflix) called iZombie, the zombie protagonist/heroine, Liv, experiences depression and a feeling of isolation from the rest of the human world when she becomes a zombie. Not only is she deathly pale with white hair and deadly fingernails, but she cannot enjoy human food (like pizza and ICE CREAM), which is even more terrible than having an uncontrollable urge to devour brains (yummy!). In some ways, viewers can relate to Liv; she has to keep a secret that if released could change people's perception of her. She also feels cut off from society, which isn't uncommon for people to experience. However, the majority of us don't have to worry about an entire city fearing us, experimenting on us, or ultimately killing us. Most (probably all) of us are human. And most of us don't crave brains (or do I?). In all seriousness, although people may find ways in which they can relate to Liv, there's still some sense of disconnect and limited understanding, just like Alana mentioned, which is probably one of the reasons the show is so popular. We tend to gravitate toward the absurd.
The film you are describing reminds me of one of my favorite books, a memoir called A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard. This is a real event of a girl who was held captive for 18 years, in which she was forbidden from saying her name (that she soon forgot and did not learn again until she escaped) and forced to be a mother to two children fathered by her captor. The captor was aided by his wife for these 18 years, however, in certain points throughout the book, you begin to feel somewhat of a sympathy for the wife as her husband overrules a lot of the horrible decisions. Clearly Jaycee is the victim and deserves the utmost sympathy and compassion, however, it just shows the need (or desire) for good in the human mind. This ties into what is "correct" to sympathize for in situations like these. Although this real event is on a more extreme level than Leonie neglecting her children in a fictional novel, it still presents a correlation to a reader's perspective and emotions.
Wow Alana, that's actually really strange that you would bring up that movie, as I have seen it before and was actually very close to bringing it up during our class discussion. However, the comparison I was thinking of is a bit more straightforward than yours. I was simply going to compare the child in the movie to the people chained in the caves. The similarities are quite striking actually. Alana did not mention that the child (conceived by the kidnapper, as she said) did not see a single glimpse of the outside world until he and his mother escaped when he was seven. To hide her child from the terrible reality that his mother was kidnapped, raped, and they are being held against their will day in and day out, the mother raises the child to believe that the shed in which they live is the entire world; she does not tell him of the beauties of the outside world. All the boy knows is the tiny shed. The boy watches television regularly but has no idea that everything he sees on the tiny square screen is actually real, as his mother tells him it is completely imaginary. The similarities between the boy's situation and the prisoners in the cave are so obvious that I probably don't even need to touch on them, but I will anyways because I'm that kind of guy. The boy, of course, represents the prisoners--trapped inside a cave (the shed for the boy) and only subjected to false reality (the shadows for the prisoners and the television for the boy).
When the boy and his mother finally escape, he cannot comprehend the real world. Watching him try to adjust to the real world is rather depressing, as he lives in denial that what he is seeing is real for many months. He wants to go back to the shed because that is all he has ever known. Eventually, though, he adjusts to the outside world and is able to lead a normal, healthy childhood. Again, this is remarkably similar to Plato's Allegory: when the one prisoner ascends out of the cave, he is "blinded by the sun"--unable to understand or believe what he is seeing. As time progresses, however, he, like the boy, comprehends increasingly complex elements of the world.
I recommend everybody go watch this movie, not only for the great story it conveys, but for its near exact portrayal of Plato's Allegory; the film unknowingly does a marvelous job of capturing the psychological elements of the Allegory and is truly a MUST SEE.
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