“How do we identify with characters?”

Summary:

In “How do we identify with characters”, Smith discusses how film and television “lures” the audience in to identify with a character. He makes the distinction that in film, with various techniques by filmmakers, the spectator is encouraged to take on the character’s perspective and not be “distant” from it as you might be looking at a photograph. By putting the audience in a spectator position, they can see the perspective of the character without feeling responsibility. The first step in identifying with a character is alignment, “the process of giving us access to character information”. It’s important to acknowledge that this has its limitations because the filmmakers can alter the perspective any way they want you to see it, for example, spatial attachment where information for one character is presented more than others. The next stage is allegiance, “the moral evaluation of a character”. This also can be limited by filmmakers because they can make choosing the morally preferable character easy or difficult through casting or making them successful. However, in some respects, the identification can be skewed.  Some filmmakers do not want the audience to identify with the characters to preserve their judgement, while some viewers might identify with characters other than the protagonists.

Personal Example:

This article reminded me of the film “Capote”, a movie about Truman Capote writing his novel “In Cold Blood” about a family murder in a rural small town. We read the book and watched the movie in one of my classes and it reminded me of putting the audience in the spectator position as well as the perspective we are seeing through Capote’s eyes. One of the questions asked when analyzing this was “Is it moral to sell this story without permission of the family just for entertainment?” This made us go beyond the spectator position because while watching, we felt no responsibility for the fact that we were giving attention to murderers, which can also connect to crime shows today. We also had to analyze the information presented about the murderers. Capote investigates and presents many stories and interviews with one of the murderers but not the other, and as a viewer, showing pity on one.  

Reading Connection:

On pages 44-47, the article describes alignment and allegiance. In Capote, alignment is distorted by the perspective of Capote about his views of Perry and allegiance is seen through spatial attachment to Perry. In the article it says “By following certain characters more than others, by positioning the camera near them, by spending more time with them, the media makers tell us which characters they think are more important”. In Capote, Dick is seen very little and when they show him, they show him with Playboy magazines, while Perry is seen a lot and is seen as an intellectual reading law books and through letters that give him a backstory that makes Capote, and ultimately, the viewer have sympathy for him. The part of allegiance says “If we make judgments about the characters, we are more likely to care about what happens to these characters”. The movie makes us think he is the morally preferable character because they show his remorse for the crime and the backstory given to us makes us feel bad for him because of his bad childhood and early adult life. By doing this, the filmmaker makes us care about the death penalty at the end whereas Dick, we don’t identify with at all.