Developing emotional attachment in a video game or film

Polanski: End credits: The Pianist: 2002


The ability to empathize with the characters portrayed in a narrative is vital to both film and game. The actions of a character are designed to enable an audience to develop empathy with a particular emotional experience in the expectation that this will allow the audience to understand why the characters feel the way they do. However in a game both the player and the developer have control over a character’s actions. In fact the association between a player and a particular character can become extremely intense. I can clearly remember my sister an obsessive MUD player, being totally obsessed with her character. She used her involvement in the game’s fantasy world to "shut off" her own life so that she could become part of another reality. The writer Sherry Turkle (1997) wrote extensively about this and in particular how participants might create more than one personality which would allow them to act out several types of roles. The interesting issue here is that these ‘personalities’ are partly a construct of the game designer and partly the player. The character is not a ‘tabula rasa’ or blank slate, it is designed to fit into a particular world and respond to the rules and principles laid out for it. (See previous post: 14 December 2011: “Therefore when designing stages one of the first issues is how to begin the narrative and then how to get the player to learn the rules.”) So what are the ways a designer can set out conditions for character development and how does a player develop these further?
The designer will usually start with a decision as to the type of world the game will exist within, (science fiction, war, fantasy, historical, etc. etc.) this world will already have associations with pre-existing stereotypes which the player will subconsciously take into the situation. (If a combatant in a war game, the player will expect to behave in certain ways probably using clichés developed by going to war movies/reading books or comics etc). The formal design of the game may be emotionally suggestive, (dark colour palette, high contrast, a section where everything goes purple, sharp angles to all the forms experienced, soft out of focus feel, lots of shadow, intense colour saturation etc etc) and background sound may be used to either sooth out tensions or build anxiety. However it is through the game-play that most emotional intensity will be experienced by the player. As each challenge is overcome or not as the case may be, the way this is achieved will add to the player’s understanding of their character. This understanding will then be laid upon a growing awareness of the ‘narrative’ of the game and its particular goal. Thus narrative consequence will have a direct influence on emotional engagement, in particular when the player’s character is involved with other characters within the game world, the player will be unconsciously comparing and contrasting his/her own player’s characteristics with others.
Emotional intensity is often associated with player accomplishment. The balance between player skill and game difficulty is central to this. “If the game is too easy the player quits because they are bored. If the game is too hard players quit because they are too frustrated.” Lazzaro (2008) The diagram below designed by Lazzaro sets out some of the issues.



N. B. Fiero is ‘the Italian word for “Personal triumph over adversity.” It is the emotion that accompanies the experience of mastery.


In film emotional intensity is partly developed by the building of empathy with particular characters and partly by creating a general emotional atmosphere as a formal quality. This can be through the use of sound (I will be putting up a post on this at some point), editing style, cinematography, actor’s ability to give depth and weight to a character, and of course directorial ability as co-ordinator of all these elements. What is sometimes being aimed for is ‘emotional catharsis’ Once again this is a very old term. Aristotle pointed out that in a play or drama what was important was the controlled release of pent-up emotion. He also outlined the fact that this was both on the part of the audience and the characters in a play. This has also been called, ‘emotional cleansing’ as a result of experiencing strong feelings. Through these emotional experiences the inner turmoil built up in an audience can be released.
For instance, in the Roman Polanski film ‘The Pianist’ (2002): the ending is a wonderful catharsis. The body of the film deals with death, persecution and destruction but at the end redemption occurs. Over the end titles, the central protagonist plays Chopin’s ‘Grande Polonaise for piano & orchestra’ with the Warsaw Philharmonic in a concert hall, a close-up on the sensitive concert pianist’s fingers setting the scene for a cathartic balance between emotional release and spiritual yearning. In order to achieve this there are no opening credits or titles, all the text, including the title, appear at the end of the film, thus allowing Polanski to direct the audience to focus on the cathartic moment. Again we experience ‘personal triumph over adversity’.

What is a MUD? Originally this term came from Multi-User Dungeon, (As in Dungeons and Dragons) with later variants Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain. A MUD is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat.

If you wanted to explore these issues further the texts below would be a useful start.
Bellantoni, P. (2005) If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Colour in Visual Storytelling New York: Focal Press
Freeman, D. E. (2003) Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering London: New Riders Games
Lazzaro, N (2008) Why We Play Games. Baltimore: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Lazzaro, N (2008) Halo Vs. Facebook: Emotion and the Fun of Games. Etech Conference. http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/detail/1589
Lazzaro, N (2007) The 4 most Important Emotions of Game Design Available at: http://www.2007.loginconference.com/session.php?id=46
Turkle, S (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet London: Simon & Schuster

Is film an art form? Part 2

Plato's Cave

The last post argued that stained glass is an art form; however it can come in very different formats. A Medieval cathedral round window, a narrow niche in a college foyer, a lamp shade etc. I think there has often been slippage as to what is considered an art form and what is a format. I would argue that a symphony is a musical format, so is a 3 minute pop record, someone singing in the bath and a folk song. Non of them necessarily are aesthetically pleasing unless they “provide a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction”. My problem now is the word ‘pleasure’. Is giving pleasure enough? We tend to associate ‘pleasure’ with ‘entertainment’ and disassociate the term from ‘meaning’. Perhaps this is a mistake. Much art is ‘difficult’; hard to understand, jarring, designed to shock etc. Modernism (as in Dada, Surrealism etc.) is often ‘transgressive’, which itself is defined as, “of or relating to fiction, cinematography, or art in which orthodox cultural, moral, and artistic boundaries are challenged by the representation of unconventional behaviour and the use of experimental forms”. So the old chestnut, “But that’s not art!” is perhaps not as simple to get round as we think it is. If an art form is “a conventionally established form of artistic composition”, if this convention is broken, is this not a way of therefore establishing the fact that what is there is not art? Again though there is the problem of ‘convention’. Who establishes this and why? Conventions have often been overthrown because they were out of date or put in place by power structures that have now been deposed. The avant-garde as a concept presumes that artists should operate at the boundaries of convention. Is this something to do with how a society establishes its ‘moral’ fabric? What is it right and proper for me to do as a member of society?
It might be of interest at this point to go back in time somewhat. Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) believed that knowledge is derived from the senses. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, were therefore at the centre of life’s decision making. He tried to demonstrate the differences between natural desires, (need for food etc) and artificial ones (need to pander to vanity, have more riches etc). He was looking to develop a philosophy that led to contentment of mind. He would therefore suggest that transgressive art forms were to be avoided as their assimilation could lead to a disturbance of mind. Inner peace or ‘ataraxia’ is what we should be aiming for. Therefore forms of art that lead to contemplation are what he would advise we should develop. All this however seems in opposition to Aristotle's ethical and social activism.
In Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics Book VI he states: “What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts.”
In order therefore to make choices “reasoning must be true and the desire right.” So it isn’t enough to set out a clear reasoned argument for the establishment of an art form, the emotional need for art must also be given a voice.
My feeling is that emotional needs are linked to deep psychological drives and that these have been wired into us over thousands of years of evolution. It could be argued that human psychological traits are evolved adaptations to solve recurrent problems that have faced humankind in the various environments we have found ourselves living within. So why do we get pleasure or satisfaction in sitting together in the dark watching an illuminated screen of moving images?


Being inside a dark cinema is similar to being inside a cave or the womb


We have archeological evidence of human beings doing similar things over 30,000 years ago. In 1976 Richard Dawkins published ‘The Selfish Gene’, in this text he proposed that there was a way to look at culture from an evolutionary standpoint. He came up with the term ‘meme’ his word for a unit of culture that was supposed to be rather like a ‘gene’, something that is carried by a mind and that can be reproduced from mind to mind. In the same way that a gene is subject to the ‘survival of the fittest’ evolutionary test, a meme will survive if it is useful to us and our collective survival.
There is a wonderful book by David Lewis-Williams called ‘The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art’. He proposes a scenario where early humans collected together in caves to develop a particular set of rituals which were essential to collective survival. The shape and form of these rituals is I would argue still apparent within our present cultural products and activities. Williams describes a scene from 30,000 years ago, where people enter through a narrow passage that opens out into a cavern. The darkness is lit by flickering lights and images appear to almost move as the light flickers across the surface of undulating stone. Sounds of drumming fill the space and chants are sung and narratives told as social rituals are enacted. I’m sure certain modern forms of entertainment reflect these conditions quite closely. On the other hand, caves, in particular those structured in similar ways to the Rock Womb at Nenkovo, are clearly womb-like structures, the significance of which is inescapable.


Still from Herzog's 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams'

What really struck home with me however was Lewis-Williams’ description of the wall of the cave as a membrane. A surface that was understood as a barrier between the world of the living and the world of the spirit. It is an awareness of this divide and a need to come to terms with it that I feel lies at the core of what ‘art’, ‘religion’ , science’ and all our other forms of collective coming to terms with what’s out there are all about.

The psycho-analyst Lacan has a term called ‘the big other’. This is something that is so radically different to us that it goes beyond the imaginary. This term is usually linked to his understanding of constructions such as the law. However if we think of death as a passageway between what has life or ‘élan vital’ as Bergson would put it and what is inanimate or dead, the big issue is what is it that changes? At one moment a human being is alive, moves and has soul, at another there becomes no difference between a body and a stone, both exhibit complete inertia and are lifeless. This is a fundamental thing that we as conscious beings have to come to terms with. Perhaps all our ‘art’ forms are in one way or another simply trying to help us understand what it is to accept death as part of life’s experience. Without the development of culture our lives would be meaningless. In this sense culture has an intimate relationship with the development of religion. My experience of religious chanting or whirling dancing being at times not far away from my experiences in raves; my experiences in art galleries has at times reminded me of visiting a cathedral.

So is film an art form? Well yes and a powerful one. It brings together light, movement, sound and narrative in a collective environment and its images and stories attempt to make sense of the world. How many times as we leave a film with a partner do we end up discussing, “what was that all about?” What it was about was a meditation on the human condition. Whether or not it was a useful one, a deep one or a superficial one is another issue.

Immersion

One of the issues that has come up recently in conversation with level 5 students has been why and how do game players get hooked into a game. In particular I know some of you are interested in how to design for levels. Issues such as allowing for a player to become familiar with the game world and its mechanisms during low level gameplay have been discussed in seminars and how as levels get harder the player gets sucked in as adrenaline levels rise have been hinted at in my previous post. But there are lots of other issues to consider. One of which is game immersion.
One way of describing immersion in a game or a film or other media environment is when "media contents are perceived as ‘real' in the sense that media users experience a sensation of being spatially located in the mediated environment." (Wissmath, Weibel, & Groner, 2009).

The immersive experience is a kind of relocated spatial world that the user inhabits and starts to believe in. Once they believe in this world they can start to make decisions within it that make sense as to the ‘rules’ of this world. If the world is undersea, you can swim or dive even though you are of course in reality on dry land. If an audience or player is completely immersed in their experience they have what Coleridge termed, complete ‘suspension of disbelief’. However, if the plot or storyline has inconsistencies people can easily break out of their imagined world and therefore game designers have to be very careful as to how they integrate elements from outside that world. For instance a learning tutorial can be written into a video game as part of the overall plot.
Wirth, Hartmann, et al. (2007) in their article, ‘A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences’ provide a diagram of their unified theory Here it is:


A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences


Those of you that had to sit through my lecture on Communication theory might notice a similarity with some of the communication theory diagrams.
The stages in the process model show how first of all players form a representation in their mind of the world they have encountered within the game, then the next stage is to make the game world their primary point of reference or ego reference frame, which is where they suspend their disbelief.

As Jamie Madigan pointed out (2010) “Once that mental model of the game world is created, the player must decide, either consciously or unconsciously, whether she feels like she's in that imagined world or in the real one”.
There are two main factors that encourage total immersion, the first is a detailed and thorough world model (sound, images, spaces, types of movement, characters, strong plot etc) and the other is a consistency of how things operate within that model, (do you have to suddenly use an awkward device such as a button to activate that doesn’t seem consistant, heads up displays, tutorial messages, damage numbers appearing over enemies' heads? )
As Madigan points out (2010) “Cognitively demanding environments where players have to focus on what's going on and getting by in the game will tie up mental resources. This is good for immersion, because if brain power is allocated to understanding or navigating the world, it's not free to notice all its problems or shortcomings that would otherwise remind them that they're playing a game”. Above all though, I would suggest it is the strength of the narrative that will suck a player in, just as in a film or a book.
Therefore when designing stages one of the first issues is how to begin the narrative and then how to get the player to learn the rules. The total immersion point should be not too far into the game or the player will not get sucked in, but not too early or the player will not have time to acclimatise to the rules and nature of the game world.

Madigan, J (2010) Analysis: The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29910/Analysis_The_Psychology_of_Immersion_in_Video_Games.php Accessed on 14. 12. 11
Wissmath, B, Weibel, D., & Groner, R. (2009). Dubbing or Subtitling? Effects on Spatial Presence, Transportation, Flow, and Enjoyment. Journal of Media Psychology 21 (3), 114-125.

Wirth, W., hartmann, T., Bocking, S., Vorderer, P., Klimmt, C., Holger, S., Saari, T., Laarni, J., Ravaja, N., Gouveia, F., Biocca, F., Sacau, A. Jancke, L., Baumgartner, T., & Jancke, P. (2007) A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences. Media Psychology, 9, 493-525
N.B. Jamie Madigan, Ph.D. is a psychologist and gamer who explores why players and developers do what they do by studying the overlap between psychology and video games at The Psychology of Games website. He is an excellent writer to look at for anything to do with video gaming and psychology.

Gaming, realism and hyper-reality

Image from World in Conflict


“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
RONALD REAGAN, speech, Aug. 8, 1983

It’s interesting to reflect on Ronald Regan’s musings from the 1980s. As a former actor turned president he was probably more aware than anybody how reality can be a construction. Realistic war simulators are now the norm in combat training and for a while now the divide between realism and simulation has been blurred.
As Galloway (2006) notes, “The conventional wisdom on realism in gaming is that, because life today is so computer mediated, gamers actually benefit from hours of realistic gameplay. The time spent playing games trains the gamer to be close to the machine, to be quick and responsive, to understand interfaces, to be familiar with simulated worlds.”


David Wong (2007) was worrying about war sims when he wrote this, “I'm starting to think that even World in Conflict, a real time strategy game so "realistic" it takes a NASA-built Quantum supercomputer to run it, has left me woefully unprepared to fight an actual war.” He went on to describe what he would like to see in ‘reality’ war games, including:
“I want a war sim where native townsfolk stand shoulder-to-shoulder on every inch of the map and not a single bomb can be dropped without blowing 200 of them into chunks. Forget about the abandoned building wallpaper in games like the Red Alert series. I want to have to choose between sending marines door-to-door to be killed in the streets or levelling the block from afar, Nuns and all. I want to have to choose between 40 dead troops or 400 dead children, and be damned to hell by chubby pundits from the safety of their studios regardless of which way I go.”

But this type of ‘real’ reality isn’t what people want to see. Most gamers want an escape from reality, but paradoxically want more levels of realism when making that escape. So what’s this about? I posted a blog a while ago that included some thoughts on, the Sublime, the Liminal and Moments of Epiphany. (16th Dec 2010). I was reflecting on why certain images hold our attention in such a powerful way that they seem to take us beyond our everyday experience and provide an entry into higher states of consciousness. One aspect of the sublime I didn’t really unpick was the sublime as “an idea belonging to self-preservation” (Burke, 2009). In On the Sublime and Beautiful Burke goes through lots of different ways in which the sublime can be approached. At one point particular qualities of sound are picked out by Burke, such as the sound of far off cannon fire or a slow ominous beat, as being sublime in their effect. What runs through all his examples is a sense of thrill or excitement that is created by being able to observe something potentially fatal without having to actually experience death or near death. The rumble of far off cannon fire is very different to the experience of actually being fired upon, but there is still a thrill and adrenaline jump when you hear those cannons in the distance. The sublime could perhaps therefore be used as a concept within which to explain the need for an escape from reality, together with the need for higher levels of realism within the games that we use to affect our escape from reality.

Burke’s observations are similar to some descriptions of adrenaline addiction. As Lisa Fritcher (2009) has observed, “Some adrenaline junkies place themselves into dangerous situations. Others prefer to know that they are physically safe, but pit themselves against obstacles that make them feel unsafe”. What we do know is that a thrilling encounter creates a rush of endorphins that is simultaneously energizing and relaxing. However, this "feel good" hormone that was designed to alleviate stress on a short term basis or for emergency situations is something we can become addicted to, and as Hart (1995) suggests, adrenaline addiction can be the unfortunate outcome.

The physiological make-up of human beings lies at the core of how and why we behave. When an animal is confronted with a perceived threat it reacts. The animal will use as many resources as needed and as much energy as possible to deal with the threat. When faced with danger, the two main options are fighting, or getting away. In the face of danger, the body automatically induces high levels of physiological arousal which prepare the organism for emergency responses. (Hayes, 1994). As Atkinson (1996) explains, when the external balance is disrupted, our body changes its internal balance accordingly. These internal changes include; increased heart rate, blood pressure and respiration, which accompanies the pumping of more blood to the muscles, and the associated supplying of extra oxygen to the muscles and the increased work rate of the whole heart-lung system. This is linked to increased sugar rates in the blood, facilitating rapid energy use, and accelerating metabolism for emergency actions. Thickening of the blood then occurs to increase oxygen supply, enabling better defence from infections and to stop bleeding quickly.
What the individual experiences as these things take place is a sharpening of the senses. Your pupils dilate; hearing is sharper, muscle response faster and you think much more quickly with your body/brain. This is because you have increased blood supply to peripheral muscles and the heart, as well as to motor and basic-function regions in the brain but you also have decreased blood supply to your digestive system and irrelevant brain regions (such as speech areas). At the same time as all these events are occurring, endorphins; natural painkillers are secreted. (Atkinson, 1996; Hart, 1995, Hanson, 1986) This physiological explanation of what happens when we encounter a fight or flight situation mirrors what happens when we play a video game. If we let ourselves think there is danger to ourselves ‘self-preservation’ comes to the fore, and this lies at the core of both Burke’s idea of the sublime and the reason our chemicals kick in. Realism in gaming could therefore be read as the creating of more and more effective triggers for this response.

The recent development of procedural animation technologies, have allowed the development of games that rely heavily on the necessary suspension of disbelief to make your body think there is a real threat. The necessary levels of realism can now be facilitated by realistic whole-body muscle physics combined with ‘ragdoll physics’ as an integral part of the immersive gaming experience. Real-time simulation of biomechanics and a related motor control nervous system is now possible because of the developed link between software applications that simulate both evolutionary biology and robot control theories. As different areas of scientific understanding and technology are integrated and software developed that is compatible to 3D form generation and movement software, we will experience higher and higher levels of simulated realism. The lack of differentiation from the real world might of course become a problem, however ghost stories have always induced fear and excitement and the associated release of adrenaline and endorphins and we have never had any historical difficulty in sorting out the real from the imagined, I suspect therefore that we might still be able to sort out which is which. If we can’t differentiate fantasy from reality we will lose one of our essential survival mechanisms, but if we can fake it, we should also be able to spot the fake, as lying and truth detection have always been essential to the human condition.


Bibliography
Atkinson R. L. et al. (1999) Hilgard's introduction to psychology London: Wadsworth

Burke, E (2009). On the Sublime and Beautiful London: OUP

Galloway, A. R. (2006) Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture London: University of Minnesota Press

Hanson, P. (1986) The Joy of Stress London: Stoddart

Fritscher, L (2009) Adrenaline Junkie http://phobias.about.com/od/glossary/g/adrenalinejunkiedef.htm Accessed on 3. 12. 11

Hart, A. D. (1995) Adrenaline and Stress London: Thomas Nelson

Mirtich, B. V. (1996) Impulse-base Dynamic Simulation of Rigid Body Systems Berkeley: University of California http://www.merl.com/people/mirtich/papers/thesis/thesis.html Accessed on 4. 12. 11

Batman and Tintin

There is a new Batman Game 'Arkham City' being launched this week, as well as the new Tintin film coming out. This of course had me thinking about their roles as transmedia characters and why these comic book figures have survived for so long and still seem to have relevance.
I looked at the on-line promotional materials for the new Batman game and interestingly there was no gameplay, it was simply a series of images that were designed to reinforce what we already know of the character and the environment of Gotham city. The opening sound was of course the theme tune to the Batman movies, (not of course the "Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da BATMAN!" one), but the Danny Elfman written theme from the 1989 Tim Burton film. http://www.hark.com/clips/rttkwddvls-batman-theme-song. Burton established the dark gritty feel of Gotham using both Frank Miller’s reinvention of the character and a nod to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for the setting. The game keeps this dark lighting and in the clip there were further references to the settings of early James Whale Frankenstein movies, in particular the lightning flashes and operating tables.
Rocksteady's David Hego has explained that Arkham City's use of light and shadow and warm and cool lighting are used to direct a player's attention within the environment. He has had much to say about the stylised realism used to design the characters. He called the exaggerated features and realistic textures of the character models, especially that of the Joker, a kind of hyperrealism. He feels that hyperrealism also circumvents the problematic issue of the uncanny valley. (See my post of Monday, 29 November 2010, as well as http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/27/tintin-uncanny-valley-computer-graphics?INTCMP=SRCH a Guardian article on the problems with the new Tintin film, which I shall get back to). As Hego states, "One of the big advantages of the stylised realism was we were jumping across the uncanny valley… By making [the characters] so stylised, you can forget about uncanny valley because you accept that it's not real."
In some ways the game is a celebration of the Caped Crusader’s expansive mythology.
The main narrative of Arkham is a story based on the internal corruption of Gotham City which is portrayed as a type of disease, the Joker is slowly dying, internally corroded and we get the sense that everything is diseased and old. These are themes that Paul Dini (a long time Batman writer) has used several times before and of course Grant Morrison has been scripting Batman recently (Batman Incorporated) and has imported his unique take on conspiracy theories and double layering of realities. All of this seems perfectly suited to the current climate of economic depression and corruption within the global economy and banking systems.
It’s interesting to unpick why Batman (created in 1939) should still be relevant and Tintin, a character created in 1929 should be not quite so pertinent to life now. Both though have resilience as transmedia characters that has ensured that they are returned to over and over again.
The key to Batman’s cultural longevity is that perhaps the “devil has all the best tunes” and taps into deep archetypes, and holds together in one character several key concepts and archetypal psychological models that enable us to on the one hand have empathy with the roles he plays out and on the other accept his almost god like powers to overcome evil.
Perhaps it’s the 19th century where we need to look for the roots of these fictional beings. Both Batman and Tintin are detectives, they hark back to the classic model of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes who first appeared in 1887, but Tintin is more in the Alan Quatermain mould, a character developed by H. Rider Haggard in 1885, (Indiana Jones being a more recent reinvention of this) he is an adventurer inconceivable outside of a colonial or post-colonial setting.



Batman can be traced back to the 1886 novel by Stevenson, ‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and Bram Stocker’s ‘Dracula’ of 1897.






These images are specters that haunt an evil society. The late 19th century was a time of heavy industrialization and it saw the rise of global capital, mass population transfer to city living, the evils of slums, downtrodden populations. In 1848 Marx had published the Communist manifesto, a manifesto that starts, “A spectre is haunting Europe” this spectre was a response to the evils of a capitalism that was then as now rampant and people’s fears were echoed in the shaping of new archetypes that could combat the dark forces they were confronted with. Science being on the one hand a potential savior, but on the other a means of destruction, this duality reflected in Mr Hyde’s horrific nature as the reverse of the scientifically minded Doctor Jekyll. The ability of scientific thinking to solve problems was a clear vindication of the Enlightenment project, (a project that was to be questioned by the Romantic movement) and paradoxically once again, just as science seemed to be the only real answer to the world’s problems a new dark territory opened out to us through the work of Freud and an awareness that our unconscious was shaping our supposedly ‘logical’ responses to life. This duality, the potential of science to solve problems, (the detective) and the awareness of the power of the unconscious (the vampire, the bat in the night, Mr Hyde) is what makes Batman so interesting. Perhaps there is not enough contradiction in Tintin’s make up to ensure his relevance to our lives under 21st century late Capitalism. Tintin is essentially only knowable as a comic book figure. His complexity lies in the relationship between Hergé's ‘ligne claire’ drawing style and the printed text. Batman on the other hand has had numerous writers and artists depict the character, Bob Kane as an artist and Bill Finger as a writer, never fixed his image beyond the initial concept which has morphed with the times. Tintin would not be Tintin without Hergé, hence the problems with the new Tintin film, but Batman is open to constant re-interpretation.
Both characters are tied to childhood, but in different ways. Batman will forever act out the night of witnessing the death of his parents, Tintin will never grow up. It’s only when we are happy supported children that we believe that we don’t need parents, because their support is such that they seem as natural as water is for fish to swim in, we can’t imagine the world without them. As we mature, there will be always a point of parental loss and we then have to make our own decisions about life and face the tragedy of our own drama. Perhaps this is why Batman’s early loss resonates with audiences as they get older and Tintin’s angst free life is more something for the child in us. Tintin’s fictional life is one that is essentially comedic, the action may be tense but it never descends into the dark, his soul is spotless, but Batman’s is dark and torn around the edges and is tragic.
Both characters have animal shamanistic elements. Tintin and Snowy come as a unit. An inseparable combination reminiscent of Philip Pullman’s dæmons. Batman is of course a ‘manbat’, he dresses as a shaman would, clothed in an animal costume designed to alter his persona and strike fear on his enemies. His bat animus (Jungian term) being a primary anthropomorphic archetype of the unconscious mind. In one comic thread Batman first learned of the powers of bats from ancient North American indian folklore, so it is not too far-fetched to assume that his writers have been very aware of the shamanistic links and play with them, Hergé of course never reflects on this relationship and Snowy is simply a very knowing dog.
Perhaps above all the fact that Batman is normal, (well as normal as an Olympic athlete is), means that we can see ourselves being able to do the things he does. This is often the flaw in Superman, who is very hard to relate to and therefore to defuse this films of Superman often have a comic element. Superman’s origins on a farm, don’t have the same relevance to us as an urban childhood. However I’m now drifting off the point so perhaps I better stop. It would be interesting to hear readers own views of these two releases.



The above image of a shaman is from Les Troyes Feres cave complex and is over 14,000 years old.