TW: Contains fictional imagery that may be disturbing for some readers. Imagine being given a medium, with no prior knowledge of its source or narrative. You observe a scene and it unfolds like this: A young fawn and his doe mother is seen fighting through a snowstorm. The food is scarce, with no other soul in sight. The baby deer struggles to eat off the barks of withered trees nearby, relying on his mother to reach them for him. Time passes; the wind subsides, leaving us a scenic imagery of the full moon surrounded in white. Finally, we see a breakthrough in the environment: a batch of fresh green grass. The fawn, no longer worrying about starving, grows ecstatic and devours it with joy. Though to his mother, something is wrong. As the viewer, you don't know what it is. You cannot see it. However, You can hear it. She quickly realises that they are not alone, and urges her son to run to the thickets with her immediately. Gunshots radiate throughout the forest, as the scene intensifies. "Keep running!", cries the mother deer. Just as they both reach towards the embrace of the woods, one last harrowing gunshot is blasted. However, the fawn does not stop running - not until he reaches home. "We made it!", exclaims the fawn. The exhausted baby deer looms out of his hiding spot, confused. "Mother?" He is met with nothing, but silence (Figure 1). Figure 1 This disturbing scene is what establishes the narrative's tone shift in Disney's Bambi (1942), a film exploring the coming of age through the experience of a young deer. Throughout this film, Bambi learns about the loss and blooming of the relationships in his life. Even without its synopsis, the film successfully communicates the dangers in life, allowing viewers the relatability of losing a loved one through Bambi's story. From the orchestrated diegetic, to the bleak ending confirming Bambi's loss. Every single element within this scene ties into an overall message of grief - a feeling we can all experience. Queue in the philosophical explanation behind our experience with media. Originally, the concept of affect theory was still relatively an independent field of studies during the 1990s. This process of figuring out the correlation between media and affect is till on-going to this day. In finding out the impact of affect within today's media, let us first establish the foundations of affect as a concept. Cultural theorist Clare Hemmings (2006) studied the subject of affect within cultural theory surrounding the foundations of constructivism and psychoanalysis within, which she delves into the sociocultural research of gender theorist Federica Giardini (1999). In her papers, Giardini states that affects are defined as "necessary states of pain and pleasure", further clarifying its establishment within both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis: being the "qualitative expression of our drives' energy and variations" (Giardini, 1999, p. 150). Hemmings further elaborated on Giardini's claim, stating how affects and emotions are separate, by pointing out that affect "broadly refers to states of being, rather than to their manifestation or interpretation as emotions" (Hemmings, 2006, p. 551). Furthermore, Hemming explains the impact on affect within the grounds of cultural theory, stating that affects are "what enable drives to be satisfied and what tie us to the world" (Ibid. p. 551). Hemming also claims that as well as being an object distinguished from emotions, the idea of affect is capable of transferability, which she compares and states that "unlike drives, affects can be transferred to a range of objects in order to be satisfied, which makes them adaptable in a way that drives are not" (Ibid. p. 551). Thus, affects can enable the satisfaction of a drive or interrupt it; this is useful in explaining context of where the drive for hunger is satisfied with good food versus interrupted with bad food (Ibid. p. 551). In its basic form, affect is when a source creates an emotional charge in its atmosphere, so much so that it spreads out and contaminates the subjects around. In short, is it a type of force or intensively, unbound to any distinct feeling and emotion. One way a medium does to reel in its audience is to present their product in a way that captivates their feelings. In the instance of Bambi, aside from diegetic sounds, the film also utilises visual traits of affect. The traditional animation within the film is depicted as raw and genuine, supported by Disney's renowned style. This is evident through the variety of depictions involving Bambi's struggle throughout the winter season, as well as his grief and distress over losing his mother. This can be further elaborated through Creative Technology associate professor Sophie Mobbs (2015), an animation enthusiast who produced a paper focusing on affect in animation. Mobbs explains that animators "learn a set of postures and expressions, piecing together an emotional scene with an alphabet of symbols, almost as if spelling out a word" (Mobbs, 2015, p. 80). As employees within a company, model sheets are likely used as guide for animators who worked on the production of Bambi. This is a standard protocol within the animation workforce, of which all departments in a team must co-operate with each other's workflow. This is to help present a seamless flow within a product, thus maintaining consistency throughout the entirety of its film. Animators refers to this as being 'on model' (Figure 2 and 3). Figure 2 Figure 3 The fluid, impactful motions carefully crafted within the movements of Bambi throughout the film helps convey to viewers each expression he makes, thus providing a sense of emotion exuded from his character. In short, the ability of animators to convey emotions through their works enables the ability to evoke emotions from their spectators - equivalent to understanding emotions portrayed by actors within films. However, while a medium may set out clear visual implications of how we should react to certain cues of affect, they are merely implications at best. This means that, without the context of narrative, the meaning behind visual performances will risk being misinterpreted; Mobbs states that when tasked with portraying expression in animation, animators still face the difficulty of their audience only possessing the ability to perceive emotion through "the filter of the animator" (Ibid, p. 80). This makes more sense when provided Stuart Hall's theory of encoding and decoding of affordances, which Adrienne Shaw critically engages with the pitfalls of failed communication in the coding circuit (Figure 4). Figure 4 According to Shaw, Hall's explanation to failed interpretations of a distribution associates with how the encoding and decoding stages "may not be perfectly symmetrical", due to the likelihood of misunderstandings or 'distortions' arise from "lack of equivalence between the two sides in the communication exchange" (Hall, cited in Shaw, 2017, pg. 596). This explanation from Hall was cited in the cultural theory papers of Simon During (1993), which further explored the dilemma regarding the encoding and decoding model; while each stage of encoding and decoding are equally 'autonomous' from one another, the coding of a message does manipulate its reception, as each stage have their own determining limits and possibilities (During, 1993, p. 90). When referring back to the scene of tragedy in Bambi, as much as animated expressions go, the depiction of deer feeling despair over the loss found in a predictable situation such as hunting is as far of a tear-jerker as it goes. Therefore, in regards to its affect on its audience, the interpretations would vary from inconvenience to wildlife at worst, and pensiveness in losing a parental figure at best. So, while the objective in causing affect through media may not overall pan in favour of its intent, this could be dependent on the type of medium - after all, Stuart Hall's theory was only an analysis on products such as television. With that, what if we delve into a more interactive medium? A type of media where the prior limitations explored are not present is gaming. Gaming, a medium known for complete interactivity with debate on its inclusion of narrative, could be able to demonstrate affect that does not require the necessity to establish narrative conventions; this approach pertains to the affect of horror games and their audience's experiences. Figure 5 While affect surfacing certain emotions such as happiness and sadness may be challenging, the scope of horror games is, especially if of good-quality, the easiness of conveying horror itself to evoke fear from audience. Many people are scared of horror, especially since they cannot be sure of what to expect - this is the strong suit of games in its ability to convey such affect. No Players Online (2019) features a seemingly abandoned map, paired with the eerie ambience of diegetic sound effect. Its players are left with no context of the deserted server, other than a 'score 0/3' objective and the ability to explore around. As the experience progresses, players are encouraged to resolve this predicament by collecting all three flags scattered throughout. However, this aim is a fallacy, in order to blindside gamers with a build-up of horror, such as jump scares by a disfigured stranger and amped-up dread from misplaced elements intentionally spawned (Figure 5 and 6). Figure 6 Even towards the ending of the game, a narrative was never established; all that was left was the mystery of a lore merely hinted, but never revealed. Despite the puzzle of its plot, the experience of No Players Online was made clear that players were meant to be scared of whatever lurked in there. Therefore, the connection between affect and to a game like No Players Online proves to be successful in what it intended to evoke, which is fear in anyone that plays it. The simplicity of horror and effect is a genuine evocation, due to it being an expression everyone is familiar with, and so we are not immune to the surprise of horror games, or the idea of horror itself. This can be further elaborated through the affect-cognitive theory, a model which explains how our behavioural strategy in decision-making is based on our experiences, emotions and irrationality. Using findings by psychologist Daniel Kahneman (2003), strategy researcher Matteo Cristofaro created an affective-cognitive theory in relation to how individuals vary in reaction towards decision-making, which he explained how cognitive functioning within the human mind is made of two "systems" (Cristofaro, 2020, p. 346). He states that the first system is where "intuitive and unconscious thinking lays", while the second system is reserved for more reflective thoughts, in which prompts individuals to recognise mistakes that occurred within reasoning (Ibid. p. 346). From his investigation, Kahneman observed how cognitive operators of "System 1" are "fast and automatic", due to being driven by prior experience and emotions, thus making them "difficult to control or modify" (Kahneman, 2003, cited in Cristofaro, 2020, p. 346). In contrast, operators of "System 2" are "more likely to be consciously monitored and deliberately controlled", which the psychologist describes as the filtering output for System 1 (Ibid. p. 346). While the theory concerns the action of decision-making, reactions to horror games may still apply regarding our cognitive functions processing fear; our first round of gameplay will produce an involuntary reaction, compared to our second, of which by then we will know what to expect. Another psychologist, Robert Zajonc (1980), further clarified that judgements are "evoked by an affective evaluation happening even before any higher level reasoning occurs", which papers from other researchers (Finucane et al., 2000) found that for decision makers to efficiently assess risks and benefits of certain situations, their emotions will "substitute logical reasoning" through rapid judgements (Cristofaro, 2020, p. 346). Sources: Bambi(1942) Directed by D. Hand. [Feature film]. California: RKO Pictures. Cristofaro, M. (2020) “I feel and think, therefore I am”: An Affect-Cognitive Theory of management decisions’, European management journal, 38 (2), pp. 344–355. During, S. (1993) The cultural studies reader. Routledge. Hemmings, C. (2005) ‘INVOKING AFFECT: Cultural theory and the ontological turn’, Cultural studies (London, England), 19 (5), pp. 548–567. Mobbs, S. (2015)The Evocation and Expression of Emotion through Documentary Animation. Animation Practice, Process & Production: Intellect. Pype. A., D'Heer. W. (2019)No Players Online[Video game]. Available at: https://papercookies.itch.io/no-players-online(Accessed: 31 December 2023). Shaw, A. (2017) ‘Encoding and decoding affordances: Stuart Hall and interactive media technologies’, Media, culture & society, 39 (4), pp. 592–602.Media and Affect in Game and Film
