"Forced empathy under traumatic texts: Examining the potential ethical issues in The Displaced (2015) and Clouds Over Sidra (2016)."
"The Displaced" (2015) is a short film produced by The New York Times as part of its "The New York Times VR" series. The film was directed by Ben Solomon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and captures the experiences of three children displaced by conflict in different parts of the world: Hana, a 12-year-old girl from Ukraine; Oleg, an 11-year-old boy from South Sudan; and Chuol, a 9-year-old boy from Syria.
Clouds Over Sidra (2016) is a virtual reality (VR) documentary produced by the United Nations and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and directed by renowned directors Gabo Arora and Chris Milk. The film focuses on Sidra, a 12-year-old Syrian girl living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Through virtual reality technology, the audience is able to immerse themselves in Sidra's daily life and experience her living environment and experiences in the refugee camp. The film shows her spending time with her family in the tent, attending classes in the camp school, and moving around in and outside the camp.
First of all, both CVR shorts focus on refugee issues and are CVR texts that express trauma and memory. However, although both focus on refugees, they both use children as representatives of refugee images. Such an ideal refugee image will make the audience understand the image of this group too one-sided. The use of children's images is to evoke stronger emotional participation and empathy, while existing as an innocence embodiment in the non-political realm (Suzuki, 2022, p1276). The image of Sidra in Clouds Over Sidra is a female child, and the image of a vulnerable and docile victim who needs rescue by refugees evokes the audience's sympathy (Suzuki, 2022, p1276; Abu- Lughod, 2002; Johnson, 2011). "Innocence is also gendered and racialised" (Suzuki, 2022, p1276).
Clouds Over Sidra(2016)
The images of three children in "The Displaced" (2015) are:
9-year-old Chuol from South Sudan, 12-year-old Hana from Lebanon and 11-year-old Oleg from Ukraine. Compared with Clouds Over Sidra (2016), the images of children are richer, from different races and genders. Although it is impossible to escape, the image of refugees is still limited to children, but they are not racialized and gendered.
The Displaced (2015)
The first shot of Clouds Over Sidra (2016) places the audience in a vast desert, with the voice of a child in the voice-over telling the story of her family's experience and their desire to find their lost home. The 360-degree desert environment encouraged me to immerse myself in the story of Sidra's family walking in the desert for several days, but I think it failed. My attention is on the voiceover, and the presence of the narrator makes me aware that I am not “Sidra”. There is also a standard shot of humanitarian VR in a refugee camp (Gruenewald and Witteborn, 2022, p149), namely the small room of Sidra’s family. I am allowed to look around the room 360 degrees, and I enter the interior space of the protagonist. Sidra looks directly at me, and the eye contact makes me aware of my presence, that I am not a bystander, but a participant. This is indeed effective in evoking my emotional participation. “She looks directly at the viewer as they appear to be sitting together, a very common arrangement in UNVR and other humanitarian VR films” (Gruenewald and Witteborn, 2022, p149; Nash 2018b, p. 128) . There is another scene where I see many children being driven forward by male guards to go to school through the fence. The perspective at this time made me feel the oppression of the tall male police officer. The film wants me to feel the fear and oppression of these children when they are driven away. However, this scene is abrupt and rigid to me. Since the film is very short and there are not many effective narratives, this scene makes me feel that it is just to generate empathy, rather than to wear memories and trauma through narrative. This is exactly the simplified narrative I mentioned in the previous post. The audience can only focus on emotional participation and lack rational thinking.
Compared with the simplified narrative in Clouds Over Sidra (2016), the immersive creation of discomfort forces emotional participation. The Displaced There was no scene in The Displaced (2015) that caused me a strong emotional response, but I actually visited the living environment of the refugees. The film's shots were very long and slow, and there was no narration to attract my attention. I was allowed to look around the dilapidated environment in the area where the three children lived. The camera left enough time for the broken houses, dry ground, etc., allowing the audience to think about the damage that the war brought to the city. The three children also looked at me when they appeared, but I think this look was just right in terms of emotional arousal. First of all, there was no sound interference in this look, and the children were still, which gave me time to observe their images. Secondly, the embodiment of some shots made me feel sensory arousal, but not excessive emotional involvement. For example, in the scene below, I followed the boy through the swamp. I subconsciously avoided the grass, but I was not overly emotionally aroused. This was just a realistic experience, not forced empathy.
The Displaced(2015)
In the review of "The Displaced" (2015) and "Clouds Over Sidra", the two CVR short films, (2016), we can see the forced empathy under the traumatic text and the potential moral issues caused by it. Although both films aim to allow the audience to deeply experience the lives of refugee children through virtual reality technology, the differences in emotional arousal and narrative methods reveal the differences in the creators' strategies on how to use the image of children to stimulate the audience's empathy. Therefore, on the issue of trauma and memory, CVR can abandon excessive emotional arousal and give the audience more time to think in the narrative.
Bibliography
Gruenewald, T. and Witteborn, S., 2022. Feeling good: Humanitarian virtual reality film, emotional style and global citizenship. Cultural Studies, 36(1), pp.141-161.
Suzuki, M., 2022. The limits of humanisation:‘ideal’figures of the refugee and depoliticisation of displacement in virtual reality film Clouds Over Sidra. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(5), pp.1266-1285.
The New York Times,2015 The Displaced | 360 VR Video | The New York Times. 7 November Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecavbpCuvkI [Accessed 18 August 2024]
UNICEFIreland, 2016 Clouds Over Sidra 360. 16 September Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwUpq5y84Dk [Accessed 18 August 2024]