Hard to watch all of these characters filled with pride pretending that they have no emotion.
If you have no emotion, you don't care about career advancement.
Arrogance is also an emotion.
Strange that an entire film is dedicated to a paradoxical premise. Apparently the world rallied to the cause of not rallying to causes.
Yeah I agree with you there. I'm not sure people would be very functional at all without any emotions. No motivation to get out of bed + no fear of your boss = staying in bed.
Fun movie though!
"No motivation to get out of bed + no fear of your boss = staying in bed."
wow - that sounds like you are under prozium already
"No motivation to get out of bed + no fear of your boss = staying in bed."
This sounds more like depression than emotionlessness.
There's always a motivation to get out of bed or mattress as the case may be. One motivation is, that it's too boring to just stay there and do nothing. Another is, your muscles need to move when you are awake, so you can't just lay there endlessly (I am sure there are people that can, though).
Another is a very pragmatic motivator; you KNOW your body needs food, and even if you can't feel emotions, you can still feel hunger and other forms of pain and discomfort. You don't have to be motivated by FEAR to do things.
There's such a thing as self-preservation instinct. Also, what if you like your job? Liking is not an emotion, you can like things without emotions.
Also, spiritual 'feel' is not an emotion, but I don't think this movie goes as far as all that.
But not every 'feel' is an emotion, and 'arrogance' is more like ego-based attitude with a lust component than emotion. Arrogance may be the RESULT of emotion sometimes, but it's not emotion in itself.
You KNOW you would feel horrible hunger and other forms of pain if you didn't eat, so you go to your job so you can keep eating. It can be purely pragmatic.
Also, why can you envision someone having motivation to go to bed, but not envision someone having motivation to keep job so they can buy food so they can eat?
In order to be subversive most stories do take on some contradictory and ridiculous elements ... look at Gulliver's Travels ... the mere ridiculousness of the plot lets the real message seep into your subconscious mind where it will at some point permeate your brain ... if the artwork or message resonates. I really liked this movie a lot.
shareMost of these screenwriters get an F in Psychology 101. People without emotions would be catatonic. Almost as good as people without consciousness. We don't really know what an emotionless human being would be like but my guess is he/she would be unable to have reactions, motivations or even consciousness, self-awareness. It simply doesn't make sense.
'Officer, I didn't mean to be incestuous. The priest told me to go down on my niece.'
I doubt emotion is functionally critical. Do ants need emotions?
shareYeah, those children from Village of the Damned come to mind.
shareI forgot to add: it is possible for someone to have no emotions. It's a Psych diagnosis. I forgot the name of it. I'll have to look it up.
shareI'm intrigued, can you point me toward the research?
shareThe term is Alexithymia, and it's a sub-clinical personality trait, and not a DSM dx, as far as I can tell, but is used to help classify patients with this disorder, as well as identify co-morbid conditions/diagnose. According to research, it's present in about 10% of the population.
shareAlexithymia is very interesting, because it suggests that people can live (almost) normally without consciously feeling emotion, which is contrary to what most philosophers since David Hume have thought. According to Hume, reason is the slave to emotion, and without emotions, we would do nothing - not even make the effort to drink when thirsty or eat when hungry - so we would soon be dead. The phenomenon of alexithymia seems to indicate that some basic drives and habits essential to keeping us alive and functioning socially are distinct from what we typically think of when we hear the word "emotion", so Hume was (at least partly) wrong.
There are human beings who seem to be without emotions (or, at least, without empathy). Psychologists call them "psychpaths"
shareLack of empathy is not the same thing as lack of emotion.
shareFirst of all, yes, it does. Empathy is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another person. Without emotions, there is no empathy.
This is a moot point though since the entire movie makes zero sense. Don't try to explain this film. You can't. It will just make you seem foolish.
"First of all, yes, it does. Empathy is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another person. Without emotions, there is no empathy."
wrong
Wrong?
Really, than what is empathy?!
Now I see the caliber of intellect required to enjoy this film. You not only have no idea what empathy is, but are too lazy/stupid to use the internet(you are currently on) or even a dictionary to fact check your own statement.
Thank you for proving my point; Only an idiot could think this film makes sense, let alone is well made.
Wrong?Yes, wrong. Empathy is not emotion; it is the ability to understand the emotions of others. Lack of empathy is a defining symptom of autism. The more severe the autism, the less ability there is to understand how others feel. This leads to abnormally awkward social interactions. It doesn't mean autistic people have no emotions, though. In severe autism, there is totally selfish behavior, but emotions can be quite extreme - including tantrums, panics, elation, depressive moods, etc.
Really, than what is empathy?!
Yes, wrong. Empathy is not emotion; it is the ability to understand the emotions of others. Lack of empathy is a defining symptom of autism. The more severe the autism, the less ability there is to understand how others feel. This leads to abnormally awkward social interactions. It doesn't mean autistic people have no emotions, though. In severe autism, there is totally selfish behavior, but emotions can be quite extreme - including tantrums, panics, elation, depressive moods, etc.
I have to disagree. Empathy is the ability to recognize emotions in others. That doesn't mean you have to have them yourself, nor even you have to understand them.
Maybe I am mistaken as to your point, but if there is no emotion, then it can't be picked up on by others. But they will still aknowledge there is no emotion.
The whole premise of the clerics is they have to eradicate 'feelings'. They only have to recognize them, not have emotions themselves.
Empathy is not merely recognizing the emotions of others, but also being able to identify with them. An emotionless being is unable to identify with the emotions of others because they have nothing internal to compare them to.
To use an example from Star Trek, Data was able to recognize the emotions of others, but he lacked empathy because he didn't have any emotions of his own. Troi, on the other hand, was an empath and it was no coincidence that she was the most emotional character on the show. Empathy is inextricably bound to emotion.
Just because you can't recognize and identify with the feelings of others does not mean you have no feelings. See Asperger's Syndrome.
What we got here is... failure to communicate!share
That's not what I said at all. I said that in order to identify with the feelings of others you have to have feelings of your own. I did not say that having feelings of your own guarantees that you will be able to identify with the feelings of others.
shareI'm not sure that even that is true. Emotions are pretty easy to tell sometimes. Data could get them at times.
What we got here is... failure to communicate!share
You're conflating recognition with identification. By identification I mean one's ability to personally relate. Data could tell when someone was experiencing the emotion of humor, but he was never able to understand WHY something was funny.
Note that I said Data was never able to identify WITH emotions, not that he wasn't able to identify emotions. The two phrases have completely different meanings.
I don't think that's what identify means. I guess it has more than one meaning.
What we got here is... failure to communicate!share
Actually, emotion IS functionally critical.
Without emotion, people make terrible decisions, and even that is when they are capable of making any decisions. There is a place in the prefrontal cortex generally referred to as the "Gage Matrix" which is critical in higher emotions. When people have damage to that area, thereby dulling or even eliminating their emotions, but have no deficits in intelligence, memory,, etc., they became largely unable to function effectively. They not only lose a guide to allow them to follow laws, rules, mores, etc. but they also become incapable of making simple every day decisions about what to do first, what strategy to use to get tasks accomplished, things like that.
Look up the somatic marker hypothesis, and _Descartes Error_ By Antonio Damasio.
Oh dear, the drug does not wipe out all emotions, it just suppresses them, there is a difference.
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Stop taking what I write personally and chill out!
"People without emotions would be catatonic. "
No, they wouldn't. They could function and think perfectly. They would know exactly what to do to keep themselves from getting hungry or tired, etc.
Do you really believe emotion is the only motivation for people do to things? Many, MANY things can be done purely by habit, pragmatism, because one thinks its a good idea, etc.
Emotion is not needed for functioning at all, it's only needed for fight-flight-response, getting angry at others, being egotistical and selfish, and hatred.
Technically, what people (also in this movie) consider emotions, aren't really emotions at all. Joy can be felt without emotions, for example, and Love is something so cosmic, people shouldn't even talk about it until they truly and deeply know what it is (emotional lust is not love, romantic lust is not love, sexual lust is not love, etc.).
So all forms of delight are something else, but not emotions. All destructive, tearing and down-bringing 'feelz' are emotions.
But your main point is true, though - it's hard to visually show emotionless people, because if you have emotions, you wouldn't really know what it would be like if you didn't.
However, if you have ever taken drugs that basically dull your emotions and other feelings, you know exactly what it's like.
And of course we really can know what an emotionless human being would be like - so many people are on psychiatric drugs these days, you can just ask them.
Typically, someone emotionless (lacking empathy, etc.) is called a sociopath or psychopath, because they don't have anything inside them to restrict them from doing 'whatever they want', feelingwise. Sociopaths quickly learn to mimic emotions, though, so they can be very charming.
It's not a good idea to make the whole populace sociopaths in my opinion, which is why the premise is extremely silly.
The premise is flawed by neuroscientific findings from 1998, that there are 7 basic emotions in all mammals - 'seeking' being one of them. And there is plenty of that in this film.
shareIt's not about having no emotions!
It's about having a tamer emotional response. Prozium in the film moderates the responses so they don't get too high or too low.
An example would be the Star Wars Jedi warriors. The Masters easily control their emotional responses. The apprentices are learning. The warriors are somewhere in between. Meanwhile, the talented Anakin Skywalker could not when it mattered most. Note the Darth Lords also temper their emotional responses well.
Someone brought up the Star Trek Vulcans. By training and cultivation, they too have tamed their emotional responses.
In reality, science has demonstrated that practicing certain meditation techniques tempers emotional responses.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121112150339.htm
A decade ago, the artists might not have known what is possible and could only portray what they thought was possible. In the "making of", they could only see the two extremes, zombies or raging lunatics. They saw the middle as a failure of portrayal and hoped the audience was forgiving.
In effect, they had a premise they couldn't wrap their heads around.
So, it's not a silly premise to have Darth Lords, Jedi Masters or Vulcans ruling a civilization.
It is about having no emotions. Dupont says in the beginning that the clerics' "sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel."
shareI'm glad you realized that too. Nothing in this movie makes any sense.
Pure garbage(except Sean Bean, he was good for all of 5 minutes).
The clumsy "no emotions allowed" premise aside, it was the horridly unintelligent plot that made the movie fail for me. Better writing would have at least made it semi-passable.
I don't care what you call it, Dodging bullets is dodging bullets and it is not up for debate if humans have the capacity to react that quickly. Much less calculate mathematically the likely trajectory of a bullet. Embarrassingly stupid.
share"..it is not up for debate if humans have the capacity to react that quickly"
Who are you to decree what's up to debate and what's not?
I say it's very much up to debate.
It's not that the human body moves -faster- than the bullet can hit it - it's that they can PREDICT where the bullets will hit "soon", so they get out of the way 'in the nick of time', just before it happens.
At least this is the way it was done in the old Spider-Man comics, and there it worked very nicely (though of course Spider-Man could move inhumanly fast, too) - the spider-sense alerted him where and when the bullets will hit, so he knew where -not- to be at that exact moment, so he could dodge a BIT earlier, before the bullet leaves the gun, so he will be out of the way by the time that happens.
It's not like anyone is claiming a human can dodge a bullet AFTER it leaves the gun - just intuitively knowing where the bullet will hit, so dodging just before the bullet is shot is enough.
In any case, I wish this movie had used the 'intuition' concept rather than 'probability' crap.
In fact, how can Brandt "feel" there is something wrong with Preston if he is supposed not to have emotions? Pride is also an emotion, the guy giving a speech to hundreds of people is full of emotions, etc. The entire film is just an entire contradiction. It's not too bad anyway, nice visual achievement.
shareI agree, at the begining we see Bale shooting the crap out of the resistance. He shoots his friend..Bean, and then all of a sudden within 24 hours he starts to change. Not good. As you say if you have no emotion why are they looking for a career advancement.
shareNo emotion does not mean no rational thinking. There is this colleage he has no feelings about him, but he worked with him for years. Ok there is brain wash going on everywhere, but the drug still does not eliminate questioning why.
share"As you say if you have no emotion why are they looking for a career advancement."
It's almost scary how many people seem to either be motivated solely by emotion and 'feelz', or THINK that's what motivates people to do anything.
Look, I can draw nice artworks when I am not in the mood to do it, and when I don't feel anything about it. I can pragmatically think that hmm, I will get hungry in 5 hours, unless I eat soon, and the hunger will be painful.
It's not like you don't feel physical things, like hunger, just because you can't emote inside.
You can go swimming because you rationally and pragmatically know that it will keep you in better health, thus avoiding pain of being in bad health. You can want to advance in career, not for some 'emotional reason' (I don't even know what that would be, besides some ego-lust, which shouldn't be what motivates actual, civilized human beings anyway), but purely by realizing that it would give you access to more power, more money, and thus more resources, and this would lead to more comfort in your life.
I mean the luxury-type comfort, not the emotional type. So you can buy faster cars, live in better, less crowded places, eat more delicious food (surely food still tastes like something).
You can pragmatically want to have a better and nicer lifestyle, because you know there would be less pain and less discomfort in such a life, and you could at least physically feel better every day, but also psychologically know you are more 'secure' and accomplished.
Plus, it gives you something to do, it creates a nice 'purpose' for life, so you don't have to consider the philosophical implications of an 'empty life', etc. (not that it could scare you). Having a direction in life can be enjoyed without emotions, purely pragmatically.
Think if Star Trek's Data - it doesn't feel, but it has many aspirations, and even a pet!