Taking the Other’s perspective means that the ingroup viewer has a personalised and relatable experience of the outgroup character. This is how they can actively imagine how the Other is affected by their situation.
Perspective-taking is similar to feeling empathy for someone else. But the trick is to avoid false empathy, through which the filmmaker projects their own perspective onto the character. It really needs to be from the character’s perspective. A great example is the film Planet of Snail (2012, Seung-jun Yi), which portrays the life of Young-Chan, a deaf-blind poet.
The film uses two layers to prompt perspective-taking with Young-Chan:
Physical perspective: This is about experiencing the character’s actions through space and time. This includes the character’s perspective of their current location, their transition to a different location and their physical environment. For instance, if the character experiences a journey from A to B as long and difficult, and if they perceive A and B to be significantly different locations, the viewer must perceive this spatial and temporal transition in a similar manner.
Planet of Snail uses a variety of shots to establish locations, weather and time of day, so the viewer understands Young-Chan’s physical environment. Also, it uses plenty of walking and driving shots, so the viewer experiences transitions between locations from the character’s perspective.
Psychological perspective: This is about understanding the character’s experience on a cognitive (knowing, learning, understanding, making choices) and affective (sensations, feelings, moods, emotions) levels. These experiences need to be externalised into the physical world on screen through editing rhythm, time of day, choice of location, voice-over, interview, lighting, colour grading, emphasising body language, highlighting facial expressions, etc.
In Planet of Snail Young-Chan’s world without sight and hearing is expressed through the metaphor of diving underwater. His sense of touch is evoked by showing occasional close-ups of his fingers touching objects, such as rain drops. His intimate relationship with his partner is expressed in wide shots that show their bodies doing similar actions (walking, washing dishes) closely together.
Ultimately, the aim of perspective-taking is for the viewer to experience a character as rounded, multi-layered and complex. This involves the character being a unique individual, as well as a member of multiple social groups, including disability.
Perspective-taking also makes the viewer understand the character as a product of their personality traits and their situations. Personality traits combine unique characteristics and social group characteristics. Situations are external circumstances, like a social context, a particular event or simply the weather.
Planet of Snail is very effective at expressing Young-Chan’s personality traits through his psychological perspective. At the same time it shows how situations, such as the weather or his partner undergoing a surgery, determine his mood and actions.
There are two anthropological concepts that are very useful for using representational strategies that prompt perspective-taking and construct rounded characters:
Materiality: The character interacts closely with objects and within spaces. This includes the physical interaction with other people. Material interactions evoke a range of physical and psychological experiences that link situations to personal traits. It also mediates sensory experiences.
Everydayness: The character engages in everyday life occurrences that they regard as ordinary, such as rituals, tasks, routines, disruptions, little accidents and improvisations. This prevents an excessive focus on disability, which becomes sometimes more obvious and sometimes less obvious
Several scenes in Planet of Snail show Young-Chan physically interacting with objects and other people. He touches tree barks, he holds the hand of his friend at the hospital, he makes the kite fly, he changes a light bulb together with his partner, and he communicates with her.
For another example of perspective-taking, although not related to disability, look at the beginning scenes of The Eagle Huntress, which tells the story of Aisholpan, a young Mongolian girl who aspires to become an eagle huntress.
For more information about perspective-taking, materiality and everydayness, see Chapter 8.
The next section looks at another strategy to reduce parasocial distance and stigmatising disability stereotypes: surprising identity. It can be used in addition to perspective-taking to maximise the effect.