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Jul. 27th, 2019 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Hmmm...
When You Are Most Likely To Catch Other Peoples Emotions
Researchers have largely assumed that people’s emotions get influenced automatically—in an unconscious, immediate response to other people’s emotions, said Goldenberg. His team’s new research challenges that perspective.
“Our emotions are not passive nor automatic,” Goldenberg said. “They are a little bit of a tool. We have the ability to use our emotions to achieve certain goals. We express certain emotions to convince other people to join our collective cause. On social media, we use emotions to signal to other people that we care about the issues of a group to make sure people know we’re a part of it.”
Further research needs to be done in order to understand the relationship between people and their emotions. One of the next topics Goldenberg says he wants to examine further is whether the desire of people to want to see and experience certain emotions lies at the core of how they choose their network of friends and other people around them.
“It seems that the best way to regulate your emotions is to start with the selection of your environment,” Goldenberg said. “If you don’t want to be angry today, one way to do that is to avoid angry people. Do some people have an ingrained preference for stronger emotions than others? That’s one of my next questions.”
Well avoiding angry people is easier said than done. What if you work in cubicles next to them or are staying with one during a vacation? Or living with someone who is angry? Or on the train with them? Meditation does help and shielding, also ignoring it. That's it. You can't just avoid people.
Interesting bit about social media and how it can fuel angry. This is why I tend to avoid Twitter -- Twitter is VERY angry. And is constantly yelling and cursing at everyone. Facebook is somewhat less angry. Instagram is just pictures -- so no not really angry. DW...it depends, but not quite as angry.
2. Just finished watching the film directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodgriez, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Issacs, called Annihilation -- which I would categorize as biological and psychological horror, with alien influence. Although I didn't really find it scary, so much as weirdly horrifying and beautiful at the same time.
Lena, Natalie Portman, is a doctor of biology, studying cancer cells -- when her husband who had been missing in action for a while, mysteriously reappears. Her husband, Oscar Issacs or Kane, had been on a secret mission. He returns oddly changed and then suddenly gets very ill with seizures. On the way to the hospital, Lena and her husband are taken into custody by the military. Apparently her husband had been part of a secret mission to investigate "the shimmer" -- something odd has taken over an area of the New England Coast -- a remote area with a lighthouse and a small village. They've quarantined it and evacuated people within a fifty mile radius -- stating it is a major chemical spill. No one has come in or out of it, except Lena's husband.
Lena joins an expedition of women scientists and researchers to investigate. All have problems. So it is a dysfunctional crew. And what they find inside forever changes them and they don't all make it out again.
It surprised me. I expected it to go one way, it went the other. And there were aspects that were creepy and beautiful at the same time. I wouldn't call it gross, or I didn't find it so. Just trippy and weirdly pretty, in an oddly horrifying way.
Portman is rather expressionless during most of it -- so it's hard to really care that much about her character. She plays it as if she's numb or in shock or a ghost of herself. Thompson and Rodriguez put the most into the performances, and feel the most present. Tuvy who plays Shepard is creepy. And Jennifer Jason Leigh -- is cold and bitchy, and difficult to like or care about. This results in a weird distancing from the film, and it is hard to be afraid for the characters or care that much. Not helped by the fact that you know from the very beginning that only Portman's character makes it out alive. The director seems to be more interested in the special effects and imagery, than his characters -- and this shows in both the slow pacing, and the inability to care all that much.
I enjoyed it in an intellectual sort of way, but it never truly engaged my emotions.
The reason I watched -- was the descriptions I'd read had intrigued me and I was admittedly curious. It is different from most of the horror that I've seen to date.
Should I provide more extensive spoilers? Eh no. Everything I've provided above you learn within the first fifteen minutes of the movie -- so they aren't really spoilers.
When You Are Most Likely To Catch Other Peoples Emotions
Researchers have largely assumed that people’s emotions get influenced automatically—in an unconscious, immediate response to other people’s emotions, said Goldenberg. His team’s new research challenges that perspective.
“Our emotions are not passive nor automatic,” Goldenberg said. “They are a little bit of a tool. We have the ability to use our emotions to achieve certain goals. We express certain emotions to convince other people to join our collective cause. On social media, we use emotions to signal to other people that we care about the issues of a group to make sure people know we’re a part of it.”
Further research needs to be done in order to understand the relationship between people and their emotions. One of the next topics Goldenberg says he wants to examine further is whether the desire of people to want to see and experience certain emotions lies at the core of how they choose their network of friends and other people around them.
“It seems that the best way to regulate your emotions is to start with the selection of your environment,” Goldenberg said. “If you don’t want to be angry today, one way to do that is to avoid angry people. Do some people have an ingrained preference for stronger emotions than others? That’s one of my next questions.”
Well avoiding angry people is easier said than done. What if you work in cubicles next to them or are staying with one during a vacation? Or living with someone who is angry? Or on the train with them? Meditation does help and shielding, also ignoring it. That's it. You can't just avoid people.
Interesting bit about social media and how it can fuel angry. This is why I tend to avoid Twitter -- Twitter is VERY angry. And is constantly yelling and cursing at everyone. Facebook is somewhat less angry. Instagram is just pictures -- so no not really angry. DW...it depends, but not quite as angry.
2. Just finished watching the film directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodgriez, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Issacs, called Annihilation -- which I would categorize as biological and psychological horror, with alien influence. Although I didn't really find it scary, so much as weirdly horrifying and beautiful at the same time.
Lena, Natalie Portman, is a doctor of biology, studying cancer cells -- when her husband who had been missing in action for a while, mysteriously reappears. Her husband, Oscar Issacs or Kane, had been on a secret mission. He returns oddly changed and then suddenly gets very ill with seizures. On the way to the hospital, Lena and her husband are taken into custody by the military. Apparently her husband had been part of a secret mission to investigate "the shimmer" -- something odd has taken over an area of the New England Coast -- a remote area with a lighthouse and a small village. They've quarantined it and evacuated people within a fifty mile radius -- stating it is a major chemical spill. No one has come in or out of it, except Lena's husband.
Lena joins an expedition of women scientists and researchers to investigate. All have problems. So it is a dysfunctional crew. And what they find inside forever changes them and they don't all make it out again.
It surprised me. I expected it to go one way, it went the other. And there were aspects that were creepy and beautiful at the same time. I wouldn't call it gross, or I didn't find it so. Just trippy and weirdly pretty, in an oddly horrifying way.
Portman is rather expressionless during most of it -- so it's hard to really care that much about her character. She plays it as if she's numb or in shock or a ghost of herself. Thompson and Rodriguez put the most into the performances, and feel the most present. Tuvy who plays Shepard is creepy. And Jennifer Jason Leigh -- is cold and bitchy, and difficult to like or care about. This results in a weird distancing from the film, and it is hard to be afraid for the characters or care that much. Not helped by the fact that you know from the very beginning that only Portman's character makes it out alive. The director seems to be more interested in the special effects and imagery, than his characters -- and this shows in both the slow pacing, and the inability to care all that much.
I enjoyed it in an intellectual sort of way, but it never truly engaged my emotions.
The reason I watched -- was the descriptions I'd read had intrigued me and I was admittedly curious. It is different from most of the horror that I've seen to date.
Should I provide more extensive spoilers? Eh no. Everything I've provided above you learn within the first fifteen minutes of the movie -- so they aren't really spoilers.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-28 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-28 12:29 pm (UTC)She loved the book I wrote and encouraged me to publish it.
So, I wasn't drawn to her because of the self-destructive, addictive behavior -- I didn't even know it was there until I got to know her better.
I just chose to handwave it.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-28 02:23 pm (UTC)In many ways, this movie reminds me of Andrei Tarkovsky's "Stalker"--another film about a group of explorers journeying to the center of a "forbidden zone." If anything, Tarkovsky's movie is even more distant and oblique than this one, and he refuses to give the audience a definitive explanation for what happens in the zone.
(Spoilers ahead....)
Maybe Alex Garland should have followed that example. For most of the movie, all that talk about cell division and the pre-set limit on life led me to believe that the Shimmer was going to be a realm where the limits of cell division were off, and everything was in a state of constant mutation. I half-expected the research team to be looking into the Shimmer as a possible path to immortality. (The idea intrigued me. Would you want to be immortal if you couldn't really be you anymore? I thought this idea fit in better with the return of "Kane" at the start, and the ending.)
Then, we had the real, definitive explanation--the Shimmer as cosmic prism--and the air kind of went out of the movie for me. It didn't quite fit what I was seeing. If there really was that much genetic commingling going on, I thought the area should have looked much weirder. And the SFX on Lena's mirror twin looked kinda....1980s video game.
I don't know. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but rather than framing the Shimmer as a suicide run, maybe it would have been better to frame it as a siren call, drawing people into it with hope of transcending mortality. It would be a more convincing motivation for most of these characters (who were thinly drawn in the first place).
When Josie wandered off to become part of the human topiary, that's when I felt the movie worked best: the lure of becoming something bigger and different from yourself.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-28 07:17 pm (UTC)I wouldn't say I was necessarily impressed, just relieved and intrigued that it went a different route than I'd expected. But also I went in with the view -- okay, if this is gross body horror, I'm out of here. And at first it looked like it would be going in that direction. The set-up reminded me of Event Horizon (which was gross body horror, and similar idea...and I stopped) or The Expanse. In Event Horizon -- a team goes to investigate what happened to a space ship that went to the great beyond. Similar concept? The Expanse -- a ship mysteriously runs into something, and yes, we end up with gross body horror. Some of which looked similar to the first part of this movie. So I'd veered away from this one expecting that.
As you know, it did not go in that direction. YAY! So I was somewhat intrigued. I'd read enough vague reviews not to expect too much, apparently the book is far better.
For most of the movie, all that talk about cell division and the pre-set limit on life led me to believe that the Shimmer was going to be a realm where the limits of cell division were off, and everything was in a state of constant mutation. I half-expected the research team to be looking into the Shimmer as a possible path to immortality. (The idea intrigued me. Would you want to be immortal if you couldn't really be you anymore? I thought this idea fit in better with the return of "Kane" at the start, and the ending.)
Well, no, you missed the fact that she was discussing "cancer" cells -- which not only take over the previous cell but change those cells and attempt to slowly annihilate them in order to survive -- often mirroring or refracting the previous cell. It wasn't just cells -- it's cancer cells. (That's important.)
And that often cancer cells copy or react to the specifics of the DNA and organism itself...to adapt and thrive within it. Even stay hidden. That's why cancer is hard to fight.
I think you were reading it as a philosophical or existentialist film, while it's more of a psychological and biological one -- about cancer. Or trying to be. I didn't see any philosophy or questions of immortality anywhere in there. I did see questions about mortality and the film's title is "Annihilation". Cancer annihilates you, to thrive. And we annihilate cancer to thrive.
There's various clues to this throughout. Both Shepard and Beatrice have either struggled with cancer in the past, or are now. Both are quiet and say nothing about themselves. And Shepard who is now on the other side of losing her daughter to cancer -- states that she lost two people, her daughter and the person she once was -- they were annihilated.
Beatrice -- the leader of the group, we discover half-way through the film went into the Shimmer because she'd been diagnosed with 5th stage cancer and had just a few months left if that. (It's hard to hear, Jennifer Jason Leigh mumbles. I picked it up from another character, and it's only mentioned twice.)
When Lena comes across Beatrice in the lighthouse -- Beatrice states it doesn't want anything but to devour what is in front of it and incorporate it into itself resulting in annihilation of what made up the thing before it. Which is what it does to Beatrice.
But...that's because Beatrice sees it as similar to cancer -- she relates to it as cancer. And wants to face it.
Lena is introduced to us as first and foremost, a doctor and educator in a "Cancer" clinic, who is researching cancer cells. She's a cell biologist who specializes in the fight against cancer. And at this point in her life, can't help but wonder if she's become the cancer in her marriage -- she can't share her work with her husband and he can't share his with her. They are both soliders.
When they venture into the Shimmer...
* They discover tumors -- reflecting back to the cell that Lena is looking at in the beginning of the film. This was a tumor, a cancerous tumor, that Lena was researching and discussing with her class.
* Then, they discover an alligator who has suffered a severe mutation.
It goes on from there. The shimmer or alien substance changes the make up of what it interacts with, but it's changes are specific to that organism. And no, not everyone will relate to it the same way, just as not everyone relates to mortality or cancer the same way.
It's not a metaphysical film, it's a psychological one. The emphasis is on Lena's emotional and psychological relationship with her husband. She journey's to the Shimmer out of a sense of rage, duty, grief, and guilt.
Beatrice states at one point that the reason people didn't return was they eventually self-destructed, that the potential for self-destruction is coded in all of our DNA. And perhaps what led everyone into the shimmer - was that call to self-destruct. Beatrice is a psychologist, who profiled everyone who went in and the film seems to be very psychological in how it is constructed, with Lena's flashbacks. Note we are solidly in Lena's perspective throughout. Which is part of the problem with the film -- in regards to emotional engagement, because Lena has to some degree cut herself off emotionally from everyone and everything around her. So we're looking through the eyes of someone who is emotionally detached from her life and everyone around her.
But I think it is mainly a psychological film about dealing with cancer and how cancer changes you, whether the cancerous growth be psychological or physical. And cancer has been described as a tumorous growth that doesn't really have an intent outside of devouring and annihilating what it has attached itself to.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-28 07:38 pm (UTC)Ha, exactly! If people were able to control their environments they would be happier regardless of what they were including or excluding. Having any sense of control would be helpful.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-28 07:57 pm (UTC)This reminds me of the stupid advice I saw online after the 2016 election.
"Divorce or ban everyone who voted for Trump."
Yeah, right. That's going work. I can't exactly divorce my co-workers, or a couple of select family members related by blood (although I don't see any of them, so much easier).