Cinema's compassionate gaze: Empathy, affect, and aesthetics in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

This study of Julian Schnabel’s 2007 film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (hereafter referred to as Diving Bell) seeks to understand the cinematic articulation of compassion by examining how screen aesthetics and narrative content affect audiences and inform the construction of meaning. Drawing in part on philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s account of the ethical and social dimensions of compassion and on the semiotic approach to phenomenology pioneered by Vivian Sobchack, this analysis aims to further understandings of the ethics of affect, and to explore how film can express and invoke empathy and compassion