March 17th 2021
One of my favorite films has a unique sub-plot designed to illustrate the psychological attachment that audience’s develop towards movies… specifically from watching and re-watching individual scenes.
And that film is of course… “The Cable Guy.”
And in that film, the film’s main character is constantly warping in and out of his alter ego… which he has developed from years of isolation spent watching television. In essence this relationship to film then became a part of who the main character was as a person, a person who now spent his life vicariously living the roles that he had come to love on TV. But why does this phenomenon occur? And what is the reality behind this sort of personality development? Is this a real life occurrence? Do people relate so deeply to movies that they sometimes take on the characters they see on film? And how does that occur, more specifically? Or to take that a step further… can humans be programmed to behave a certain way by watching TV?
And I believe that the answer to that last question is YES. And I personally believe that in a Stanley Kubrick style reality, brainwashing through television could be very much possible. Furthermore, from a non-scientific perspective… I simply believe that society is greatly impacted by WELL WRITTEN and relatable characters. Now whether that simply fills a void of boredom in all of our lives or becomes a Virtual Reality, remains to be seen…yet, on face value, I believe that film has the capacity to manipulate it’s viewing audience’s behavior, IE advertisements.
In fact, advertising is a science basically designed to manipulate a viewing audience through the mediums of film and audio.
So let’s take that a step further, why? What in our brain dis-allows us to differentiate between the fictional nuances of characters whom portray traits we see redeeming or inspiring… such as; comedy, bravery, cunning, whit, charm, etc etc… but what specifically disallows a viewer to differentiate from that and the reality of everyday life?
Or is it when we encounter greatness in our own lives… that it becomes so relatable, as often times film only portrays or most notably portrays… grandiosity and idealism? Or more simply put, is that relatability concocted because the film portrays levels of comedy that we only rarely, if ever see? And if that was quantified into numbers and specific statistics, of relatability and comedic value, would that better explain the phenomenon of vicariously developing character traits by watching television?
Or rather, if a movie scene was rated an 8/10 in terms of universal, “funniness,” then would that explain why people are so strongly attached to it? What if it was literally the funniest thing ever filmed in the world?
And my conclusion on that subject… is that film and radio ARE IN FACT, simply primitive forms of Ai and that film itself… is subsequently the same as an Ai’s, “memory bank,” whereby the strongest memories draw the strongest reactions.
Whereby, I’ve recently begun adding a photo-vision section to my robot on ArtificialIntelligenceProject.com / AiRobotVision.com… essentially combining text inputs with photographs… for the robot to decipher… and we’re developing that chat-bot/robot now. However, in deciphering these early images and breaking down the first pieces of data for the robot to decipher… html color codes, text inputs, etc etc… it’s become clear to me that memories, specifically generated by films or movies… such as relatable film scenes or TV shows, are in many ways similar to primitive forms of Ai/ artificial intelligence but just devoid of statistics quantifying the emotion in the film!
From a somewhat soulless, numerically statistical… data driven, robot perspective… anyway.
Or from a human perspective explaining how we feel about what we’ve seen or watched.
-William Larsen, CiviliansNews.com