Theory of Mind and Fictions of Embodied Transparency

Theory of Mind and Fictions of Embodied Transparency Lisa Zunshine (bio) 1. Upping the Agony It's another day at The Office—a British mock documentary about the "boss from hell," David Brent, regional manager of a fictitious paper company. David (played by Ricky Gervais) is about to interview two candidates for the position of secretary, and he has just put his receptionist, Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis), in an embarrassing situation, flaunting his own lack of professionalism and making Dawn seem somewhat complicit in his offensive behavior. Used to her boss's ways yet painfully ashamed of his antics in front of the two strangers and the camera, Dawn stands next to him silently, now smoothing her hair nervously, now checking her nails, and trying to avoid any eye contact (Figure 1). The Office cultivates such scenes of recorded unease. The documentary format allows the film crew to focus pitilessly on people's faces just when they would rather not be seen, encouraging the kind of staring that would be considered rude in real life. As Gervais, who co-directed the mini-series with Stephen Merchant, puts it, one "advantage" of having the ever-watchful camera in The Office is "that it would up the agony" (Commentary). And although we may share some of that agony as we watch Dawn cringe and squirm, we remain glued to our screens. Such moments of embodied transparency—we can see what Dawn feels even if she doesn't want us to see it—appear to arise naturally out of the unique makeup of this particular show: its genre (documentaries have a complex relationship with End Page 65 voyeurism), its setting (offices build strange interfaces between intimacy and bureaucracy), and the peculiar sensibilities of the directors and actors. However, I want to consider yet another factor behind The Office's obvious fascination with putting people into such trying emotional situations that they can't control their behavior and so their feelings are written all over their bodies: a factor grounded in our cognitive evolutionary heritage and, specifically, our Theory of Mind. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The Office Why turn to evolutionary history? We know so much about the immediate cultural history of The Office that it is not at all clear why we must also put Dawn's squirming into a hundred-thousand-year perspective. As this essay will argue, however, by cultivating moments of transparency, The Office participates in a particular representational tradition that extends well beyond its immediate genre, but to uncover this fascinating pedigree we need that hundred-thousand-year-old evolutionary perspective. I begin with a brief overview of Theory of Mind,1 drawing on the work of cognitive evolutionary psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists. I then spell out the key assumptions underlying my argument, first, that Theory of Mind is a "hungry" adaptation that constantly needs to process thoughts, feelings, and intentions, and, second, that the body occupies a double position in relation to this cognitive hunger, figuring as both the best and the worst source of information about the mind. I show further how this double perspective informs our cultural representations—novels, paintings, and moving images—in which bodies are temporarily forced into functioning as direct conduits to mental states. I conclude by speculating about further applications of this cognitive-evolutionary view of the body to analyses of cultural media, including the Internet. Prompted by The Office's commitment to "agony," my essay thus seeks to explain why our cultural representations repeatedly invent End Page 66 new contexts for making characters reveal their true feelings, often against their will, and why these moments of embodied transparency must be brief to be convincing. 2. Theory of Mind Theory of Mind, also known as mind-reading, is the term used by psychologists and philosophers to describe our ability to explain behavior in terms of underlying thoughts, feelings, desires, and intentions. We attribute states of mind to ourselves and others all the time2 (e.g., we see somebody reaching for a cup of coffee and assume that he is thirsty). Our attributions are frequently incorrect (the person who we thought was thirsty might have actually wanted...