CGA-Unit 3 Environment Essay.

Investigating Roberts Zemeckis film The Polar Express (2004) using Sigmund Freuds ideas of the uncanny and how it impacts to the audience.

Anastasios-Odyssefs Ntinopoulos

Introduction This essay will explore Freuds idea of the uncanny in relation with the computer generated film The Polar Express (2004) which has been directed by Robert Zemeckis. This essay will explore the impact of highly realistic computer graphics that has been produced in the movie Polar Express (2004) in relation with Sigmund Freuds ideas for the uncanny. The realism of the characters and the animation of the film will be discussed and analyzed of how it interacts and includes the ideas of Sigmund Freud for the uncanny. Also the impact of this movie to its audience with the use of the ideas of the uncanny will be discussed. A variety of sources will be used and examples of other movies will be given in order to be fully understood and explain how the uncanny works with CG movies and CG productions which fall into the uncanny valley. The sources I will use will be: Uncanny Symptoms in German Literature and Culture (2010), Horror Film and Psychoanalysis : Freud's Worst Nightmare, Forms of the Uncanny in the Contemporary French Novel (2010), Essay on The Uncanny (1919). Uncanny: the class of frightening things that leads us back to what is known and familiar. (Freud, 1919). Main Body The Polar Express (2004) is a computer generated movie based on a childrens book with the same title written by Chris Van Allsburg. The movie is a fairytale story for children. The movie is set in Christmas time where a child named Hero Boy is embarked into a magic train with destination to the North Pole in order to see Santa. He hesitates but he goes. During the trip with the magic train many adventures happen. The film is about believing in Christmas spirit and never give up. It has a really charming story which makes it the movie really good. The movie has great sets and beautiful generated places. Especially during the travelling with the train you can see the great job that has been made with the Computer Graphics in the various places the train stops and in general the film has great concept art. Besides the charming story the movie in general has dark scenes and low lighted scenes which make most of the scenes seem uncanny.

Figure 1: Beautiful set from the movie Polar Express (2004)

Figure 2: CG produced set in the movie Polar Express (2004)

Although the charming story and the nice sets the movie gave to most of its viewers the feeling of something creepy and scary going on. The dark scenes and the low lighting in combination with the characters produce a really uncanny effect. The characters of the movie has been generated by live performance capture technique which means that the movement of the characters is very realistic and it has been generated exactly from the movements of real people.

Figure 3,4: Actor from the movie Polar Express (2004) using the technique of live performance capture.

Also the character design with the use of the technology is highly realistic and resembles to real characters even the fact that they are computer generated. Although they have been designed and made very human alike the characters lack some expressions and feelings expressions of human. They look like dolls to the audience despite their highly realism due to the lack of emotional and facial expressions. This creates a highly uncanny effect to the viewer. To experience and examine the uncanny is to experience a way of knowing while not knowing (Ruth:2010). As viewers we know that the characters are generated in CG but we perceive them as real in the movie. The fact that we see blank expressions and lack of human emotion in their faces creates us the effect of suspecting that they might not be real and this creates us an uncanny effect. Also the darkish tone in the movie enhances you the effect that you can receive from the characters making the movie more uncanny.

Figure 5: CG character resembling a real human.

Figure 6: Creepy girl character from the movie Polar Express.

Their faces and the whole image that has been produced to make the characters is very real. This fact that the characters which are CG produced by acting so realistic and being so realistic in their movement but lacking human expressions produces an unpleasant feeling to its audience. By seeing the computer generated characters acting in this way it frightens you and it creates you an unpleasant feeling making the movie uncanny and failing to provide to its audience something nice and pleasant. According to the uncanny valley , uncanny can be something like-human acting like a human. In our situation the characters succeed in this by having certain lacks which distinguish them from the reality and from real humans. When a character is made to be realistic its easier to spot the lacks of the human resemblance. This makes it highly uncanny. They produce an uncanny effect to the audience. According to Freud something that is familiar and being alienated in our mind by different effects it creates the uncanny. The uncanny, he suggests, is that class of frightening things that occasion anxiety because they relate to repressed affect: something which is familiar and oldestablished in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression ( Freud, cited in Schneider, 2004:56). In agreement with this point it seems that when it comes to depict something, in our case its the characters in the film, highly realistic similar to humans but knowing that they are not it creates an alienated effect which distances us from the original idea and scares us. This is not the first time that CG artists try to produce something really human alike and failing by falling into the uncanny valley. Many animated movies and realistic games have fallen into the uncanny valley because they produce to the audience the alienated effects which divides the reality with the artificiality of the things. The same happened with Disneys movie A Christmas Carol (2009).

Figure 7: Main CG character from the movie A Christmas Carol (2009) looking creepy,

The same effect with the characters can been seen in this movie. The realism in the characters animation lacks some minor details which creates a personality detachment from real to the superficial. The uncanny involves a flickering sense (but not conviction) of something supernatural. (Nicolas Royle, cited in Connon 2010:12). This is really evident when we are dealing with movies and in the area of CG where things have an artificial and supernatural sense in a minor stage which is enough to create the effect. According to Sigmunds Freud theory for the uncanny The uncanny is anything we experience in adulthood that reminds us of earlier psychic stages, of aspects of our unconscious life, or of the primitive experience of the human species. (Freud: 1919). In our situation this can be linked to the fact that we are perceiving the characters as dolls and as artificial characters by spotting the minor deficiencies in their movement and in their facial expression movement. This can bring to most of us memories from dolls and scary fairytales making us repressed by seeing these kind of characters. The uncanny valley and in general the uncanny effects our psychic and emotional word most times without realizing it. The uncanny can work in our subconsiousness from past experiences and beliefs we have about certain things. This kind of things can be seen even in

kids movies like in Polar Express (2004). Thats what Freud is stating. The uncanny arises as the recurrence of something long forgotten and repressed, something superceded in our psychic life. (Freud:1919). Furthermore there are some key factors that can create uncanny effects to the audience. In our situation its the human alike characters in the movies, but also the dark scenes. Conclusion: In modern CG movies the effect of the uncanny can be seen because the realism that the producers try to show in the screen often falls into the uncanny valley. The realism is really amazing but it effects the audience by making it uncanny. The audience perceive in another way the characters and the images shown with a result of the movie being uncanny even if its made for an audience like kids. In our situation with the movie Polar Express (2004) this happened for the reasons I explained previously. Freuds ideas adapt to the fundamentals of the uncanny in the movie I wrote about and his ideas are justifying the effect of the uncanny. Illustration List: Figure 1: The Polar Express (2004): Beautiful set from the movie Polar Express (2004). http://blog.echoenduring.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/the-polar-express-500x554.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012) Figure 2: The Polar Express (2004): CG produced set in the movie Polar Express (2004) http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/251665/polar-express-train-moutain.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012) Figure 3: The Polar Express (2004): Actor from the movie Polar Express (2004) using the technique of live performance capture. http://viewerscommentary.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/polar-express-tom-hanks-and-theconductor.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012) Figure 4: The Polar Express (2004): Actor from the movie Polar Express (2004) using the technique of live performance capture. http://www.motionin3d.com/images/hankspolar.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012) Figure 5: The Polar Express (2004): CG character resembling a real human. http://basementrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/polar-express-conductor.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012) Figure 6: The Polar Express (2004): Creepy girl character from the movie Polar Express. http://www.slantmagazine.com/images/film/polarexpress.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012) Figure 7: A Christmas Carol (2009): Main CG character from the movie A Christmas Carol (2009) being creepy http://www.criticplanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/christmas-carol-2009.jpg (Accessed: 18/1/2012)

Bibliography: Johnson, Laurie Ruth (2010) Aesthetic Anxiety : Uncanny Symptoms in German Literature and Culture. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi Schneider, Steven (2004) Horror Film and Psychoanalysis : Freud's Worst Nightmare. USA: Cambridge University Press. Connon, Daisy (2010) Forms of the Uncanny in the Contemporary French Novel. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. Freud. Sigmund, (1919) Essay on The Uncanny. London: Penguin Classics, 1st Edition. .