Negative Empathy and Dystopias: A Study on Negative Empathy in A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid’s Tale, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Their Adaptations

Abstract

Since its formulation by Stefano Ercolino, the concept of negative empathy as a form of high-level empathy consisting of a cathartic identification with negative characters is receiving increasing attention in academic studies. Stretching from a range of fields of study such as psychology and neuroscience to literary studies and film studies, the present thesis attempts to defining a type of negative character that is able to trigger such empathy in the audience. Described as a psychologically complex and tormented character who possesses impressive rhetoric abilities, this study will test such theoretical hypothesis on the characters of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Commander Joseph Lawrence in The Handmaid’s Tale, and Roy in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner. The research thesis is divided into three chapters. The first analyses the figure of Alex the droog as created by Anthony Burgess and portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, underlining the negative effects that a prolonged exposure to a characters’ lack of remorse could have on the ability to empathise with them. The second takes into consideration the figures of various Commanders portrayed both in Atwood’s novel and in Bruce Miller’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with major attention given to Bradley Whitford’s portrayal of Commander Lawrence. The final chapter studies the figure of an android, Roy from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Rutger Hauer’s’ replicant in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and the ability of a machine to feel and incite human feelings.