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.
When watching screen characters, perspective-taking involves two layers:
Physical perspective: understanding the character’s actions through space and time – 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.
Psychological perspective: understanding the character’s cognitive and affective experiences – 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.
What exactly are cognitive and affective experiences?
Cognitive: This is how our mind thinks, knows, learns, understands, interprets and makes choices in this world.
Affective: These are sensations, feelings, moods and emotions, and how these affect our thinking and behaviour.
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.
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.
Sometimes characters have a lot of control and sometimes very little control over these circumstances. Whatever the case, the way characters react to situations they face is shaped by their personality traits.
How can documentaries effectively generate perspective-taking in viewers? There are two anthropological concepts that are useful here:
- Materiality: representing characters in close interactions with objects, spaces and other people
- Everydayness: showing characters engaging in everyday life occurrences that they regard as ordinary, such as rituals and routines, but also disruptions and moments of trial-and-error
Let’s look at two beginning scenes of The Eagle Huntress, which tells the story of Aisholpan, a young Mongolian girl who aspires to become an eagle huntress.
Scene 1:
Aisholpan is at school, engaging with her teacher, books and friends. It is an ordinary everyday event, in which she interacts with objects within spaces and with other people. Her physical perspective is created by all the shots centring her and establishing the classroom from her perspective. Her psychological perspective is expressed by seeing her smiling and cheerful, whilst the soundtrack plays a playful lullaby – she has a joyful personality and enjoys going to school.
Transition to scene 2:
Her father picks up Aisholpan from school and they ride on a motorbike to their home yurts in the Altai Mountains. The picking-up is an ordinary everyday routine. The long transition of four shots from one location to another illustrates her perspective of the spatial and temporal passage and contrast. Her journey from the town school to the rural yurts obviously takes some time and changes her situation.
Scene 2:
In her yurt she looks at photographs and trophies displayed around her. We also hear an internal monologue about her family’s tradition of eagle hunting, and how she strives to be an eagle huntress. She interacts with the objects by looking directly at them and reflecting on them. The photographs are not scanned but placed in the same material space.
Her physical perspective is created through establishing shots placing her in the yurt and through alternating reaction and POV shots. Her psychological perspective emerges through the internal monologue expressing pride and ambition.
For more information about perspective-taking, materiality and everydayness, see Chapter 8.
The next section looks at another major approach to creating parasocial contact and reducing stigma: intersected identities. It can be used in addition to perspective-taking to maximise the effect.