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https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00026.abd (proofs)
Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5:2 (2018), pp. 378–411. issn 2213-8722 | e-issn 2213-8730
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 379
1. Introduction
pay little attention to humorous blends in moving images, or, in film, and espe-
cially the body-swap genre – note that film is a “multimodal” medium par excel-
lence, because it usually draws on several modalities (Forceville 2016a: 20).
Drawing on insights from blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner 2002),
multimodal mental models (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983; van Dijk 2003, 2008,
2014), and the method acting process as described by, e.g., Stanislavsky (1995,
2008) and Brecht (1964, 1970), the present study addresses the following four
questions:
1. What is so funny in body-swap movies?
2. How do blending processes operate in body-swap films? Or what patterns of
compression or decompression are at play in body-swap templates?
3. Can humor be a strong determiner of moral-political cognition?
4. And what connections can be drawn between acting and cognitive neuro-
science?
As this paper digs deep into the notions of “compression” and “mental models,” it
brings in pragmatics – a dimension that, at least until recently, blending scholars
have too much ignored (Forceville 2016b: 94; see also Abdel-Raheem 2017). More-
over, the budding interest in film blends seems to be an exciting and promising
development. For instance, application of the notions and terms charted in the
present study is likely to demonstrate blending to be a useful tool in the analysis of
how cinema, as well as other art forms (such as television and theatre), communi-
cates meaning, and can further sharpen the analyst’s awareness of the role played
in filmic blends (but not just in blends) by different modalities (see also Forceville
2016a). Conversely, systematically investigating blends in film will also benefit
both blending theory and humor studies. For example, in exploiting the fortuitous
structure that arises in blends, humorous instances (in this case, body-swaps)
permit us “to test the flexibility of our conceptual system, navigate the space
of possible construals, and explore the radically different social and emotional
consequences they can trigger” (Coulson 2003: 87). It is assumed that body-swap
movies often have a serious rhetorical agenda. Crucially, by projecting film char-
acters into new contexts, filmmakers, just like cartoonists, can show us the ridicu-
lous side of a serious situation, or, the serious side of the ridiculous.
The structure of this article is as follows. In Section 2, some of the basic termi-
nology will be explained. Specifically, the principle of “(de)compression” and the
concept of “mental models” will be discussed, and an integrated two-level frame-
work of multimodal film analysis will be developed. Section 3 will present a few
case studies. The article ends with some thoughts for future research (Section 4).
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 381
2. Terminology
2.1 (De)compression
In blending networks, links between input mental spaces (also known as “outer-
space” links) can be compressed into relations within the blended space (also
known as “inner-space” relations). In other words, blends permit “compression”
of events that in reality occur sequentially into a single representation (Forceville
2016b: 94; see also Pagán Cánovas and Turner 2016). Compression takes place in
many cartoons, comic panels, advertisements, movies, and so on.
As an example of this phenomenon, consider a statement like “Dinosaurs
changed into birds,” employed to propose the new theory according to which
birds are descendants of dinosaurs. At one level, as Fauconnier (2005) points
out, this story of evolution spans millions of years, in which many creatures
lived and died, none of them actually “turning” into anything. These creatures
are linked by important conceptual relations such as Cause-Effect (genetic evolu-
tion), Analogy (one dinosaur is analogous to another) and Disanalogy (offspring
are disanalogous to their ancestors), and Time. In the human-scale blend, the
Analogy is compressed into Identity (a single dinosaur becomes a single bird)
and the Disanalogy is compressed into Change for that unique identity. Time is
compressed into the lifetime of a creature, which at the start is a dinosaur and
at the end is a bird (see also Coulson and Pascual 2006; Fauconnier and Turner
2000; Turner 2006, 2014).
Some observations must be made. First, identity is not just a vital relation
but perhaps the primary vital relation, without which the others are pointless.
According to Fauconnier and Turner (2002, “[h]uman mental life is unthinkable
without continual compression and decompression involving identity” (2002: 115).
Second, integration and disintegration, compression and decompression, are two
sides of the same coin (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 119). Clearly, the above blend
does not provide the appropriate understanding on its own; it must be linked
to the rest of the network, in which things that are compressed in the blended
space are decompressed and held separate. In other words, the understanding is
importantly a matter of invoking and connecting compressions and decompres-
sions simultaneously in the entire conceptual network (see also Fauconnier and
Turner 2000).
Compression is, thus, seen as a major force in human conceptualization
that permits comprehensive or complex stories such as biological evolution
to be reconstrued with simpler, more familiar, human-scale concepts (Coulson
and Pascual 2006; Fauconnier and Turner 2000, 2002; cf. Houggard 2008). It
is somewhat paradoxically claimed that the unrealistic cognitive models devel-
382 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
clear what counts as a mental space in the first place (2016b: 94; see also Bateman
2017: 145 for other critical comments).
Mental models (as defined by van Dijk, Kintsch, and others) are unique repre-
sentations of personal experiences in episodic memory (EM) (part of long-term
memory (LTM)) – with personal opinions, emotions, etc. – and also represent
the unique personal interpretation of text or talk (van Dijk 1997, 1999, 2003,
2008, 2014; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983; see also Johnson-Laird 1983; Tomasello
2008). They are construed from (i) external data (perception, comprehension,
etc.) and (ii) instantiations of generic knowledge (organized in schemas, scripts or
whatever). Because mental models involve all possible, embodied, experiences of
participants – vision, audition, touch, smell, feeling, sensorimotor, etc. – they are
multimodal (van Dijk 2014: 315).
So, as van Dijk claims, while in most forms of discourse between members
of the same community mental models will be similar enough to guarantee
successful communication, it should be emphasized that “mental models neces-
sarily embody personal elements that make all discourse productions and inter-
pretations unique – and hence misunderstanding possible – even when they have
many, socially shared, elements (2008: 60; italics added; see also van Dijk 2014: 52).
As such, “discourse comprehension involves the context-controlled construction
of mental models based on knowledge-based inferences” (ibid.; italics added; see
also Graesser, Singer, and Trabasso 1994). This also means that people (readers,
speakers, writers, etc.) invoke their own knowledge system to understand
discourse (van Dijk 2014: 66). Thus, high-knowledge subjects tend to do better
on most aspects of discourse processing (better comprehension, more recall, etc.)
than low-knowledge subjects (van Dijk 2014: 67–68) – note that prior knowledge
not only pertains to general world knowledge but also involves knowledge of the
language (van Dijk 2014: 74).
This also means that discourse is controlled not merely by underlying
semantic situation models (a tiny fragment of selected dimensions of an event),
but also by pragmatic context models that in many ways may change underlying
knowledge and beliefs in order to be more appropriate or efficient in the commu-
nicative situation, for example because of politeness constraints (van Dijk 2008,
2009, 2014). In other words, “the control structures of actual text and talk as
appropriate social action and interactions are cognitive, namely situation models
and context models” (van Dijk 2014: 255; see also van Dijk and Kintsch 1983).
Context models are conditions of discourse (also temporally as they mentally
precede the actual discourse/utterance). For instance, to issue an appropriate
384 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
construed mental models of fictional events” (2014: 44; see also McGinn 2009) –
note that fictional discourse may well be about the imagined actions or properties
of ‘real’ individuals, “thus mixing real and imagined worlds in construed situation
models that resemble models of real events even more closely” (van Dijk 2014: 42).
This means that the actress, as Blair (2009) states, must have a capacity to engage
the character’s experience imaginatively while at the same time maintaining a
sense of self that is separate from the character (2009: 100; 2010; Chekhov 1985;
Kemp 2012; cf. Hill 2009, 2010; Stanislavsky 1948, 1961) – this need to maintain
a sense of self “might be contested by actors who “lose” themselves in the role,
such as Daniel Day Lewis, who is said to stay “in character” from the beginning
to the end of filming” (Blair 2009: 100; quotation marks in original). For spec-
tators, the perceived living, moving, and speaking body is a supreme material
anchor. The outer-space relation, according to Fauconnier and Turner, is one of
Representation. Typically, Representation is backed by outer-space Analogy, so
that, for instance, a middle-aged male character will be played by a middle-aged
female actor. In the blended space, these outer-space relations ‘are compressed
into uniqueness.
In principle, actors and actresses are connected to characters by virtue of
performing in the real world actions that share physical properties with actions
performed by the characters in a represented world (Fauconnier and Turner
2002: 266; see also Oakley 2013). This permits spectators, as Erving Goffman
(1974) notes, to be aware of more than one framing. Although a single scene
is perceived, the spectator is simultaneously aware of the actress moving and
talking on a stage in front of him, and of the corresponding character moving
and talking within the represented story world. Common to the two frames or
input spaces are some language and action patterns (the so-called ‘generic space’).
While films are of course technologically more complex, the spectator can also
be aware simultaneously of the character and the actor or actress. As Fauconnier
and Turner explain, in Gone with the Wind, for example, viewers see Rhett Butler
and also know that they are seeing Clark Gable. Rhett’s actions are interpreted
as part of the story, andthe very same actions, attributed to Clark Gable, as part
of movie making. In this sense, as Fauconnier and Turner claim, “in each partic-
ular theatrical representation, there will be rich shared generic structure between
“reality” and “fiction”“ (2002: 266; quotation marks in original).
Spectators, according to Fauconnier and Turner, can decompress the blend to
recognize outer-space relations between these frames, as when they observe that
the actor has not quite got the accent right or Hamlet trips over the stage lights.
Decompression, in my view, is at its best when the actor “breaks the fourth wall,”
that is, refers to, acknowledges, or addresses the spectator, usually for comedic
effect or as an avante-garde technique. For example, in Brecht’s plays, the actors
386 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
routinely address their spectators out of characters and interrupt the narrative
to provide some commentary on the action within the play (Dickey 2015: 50; see
also, e.g., Brown 2012; cf. Thabet 2002). Similarly, in Egyptian plays (such as, e.g.,
Rayyawi Skina [Rayya and Skina, 1980], Sok Alaa Banatak [Lock Your Daugh-
ters in, 1980], and Al-Wad Sayyed Al-Shaghal [Sayyed The Servant-Boy, 1985]),
as well as movies (such as AshraBaladi [Baladi Progression, 1952]), the actors
show maximum awareness of themselves as actors and of their immediate circum-
stances. In Al-Wad Sayyed Al-Shaghal, for instance, we see Sayyed (played by Adel
Imam) telling Asim (played by Omar El-Hariri) that he has watched him play a
role in the Ramadan TV series Alf Lila wi Lila [One Thousand and One Arabian
Nights, 1985], asking him to remind him of the name of character he has played. In
the same scene, Imam also tells late Egyptian actor MostafaMitwali that he often
sees him on TV, addressing him with his real name and commenting on his role
in BakizawiZaghlool [Bakiza and Zaghlool, 1986], while Mitwali, trying so hard
to stop laughing, asks him to let them “work” (act) – interestingly, the scene has
hit over 4 million views on YouTube. After all, actors and actresses, as well as the
director, also line up and hold hands on stage, bowing to the crowd at the end.
The theatrical notion of “breaking the fourth wall” overlaps with an important
aspect of construal known in Cognitive Grammar (CG) as subjectivity vs. objec-
tivity (Langacker 2008; Oakley 2013). In the subjective viewing arrangement, the
spectator remains unaware of her involvement and thus is outside the objective
scene, while in the objective arrangement she places herself (or is placed)inside
the objective scene (Oakley 2013: 24; Langacker 2008: 77). Spectacular examples of
complete story awareness and subjectivization, as Oakley illustrates, are evidenced
in spontaneous reactions from spectators to the events unfolding before them, as
when a spectator might try to tell the actress that she is being poisoned or might
try to warn the actor that he has indeed been brainwashed (2013: 21). Conversely,
spectators’ applause for a particular scene (so common in Egypt), for example,
means that they are maximally aware of themselves and their own immediate
circumstances. That is, spectators, like actors, can break the fourth wall, also by
greeting the actor as he first appears on stage – at least that is the case in Egyptian
theatres – and the actor takes center stage, greeting them in return. But the power
of drama (or film), as Fauconnier and Turner claim, comes from the integration
in the conceptual blend, rather than from outer-space connections: The spectator
does not go to a performance of Hamlet so as to measure the similarity between
the actor and a historical prince of Denmark (2002: 267). According to Fauconnier
and Turner, spectators are “able to live in the blend, looking directly on its reality”
(2002: 267). As Goffman points out, in extreme cases, the spectator has been
known to lose the framing of himself as a spectator and of the actress as an actress,
and has rushed onstage to stop the murder or had a heart attack when the heroine
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 387
1. But, of course, cinema and theater are two different mediums/genres which carry different
experiences for spectators.
388 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
Finally, one should also draw a line between mental models of directors and
mental models of spectators. This is a crucial issue, since mental models, as laid
out above, are subjective mental constructions and representations of (experi-
ences of) situations, and the director is typically the person in charge of all the
creative dimensions, both interpretative and technical, on a film or play produc-
tion, and the one who has to make the right decisions to get the right mix of
all ingredients, from acting to lighting to editing, to make up a motion image
(Fischer 2000: 2). It is thus convenient to talk of feature films or plays as the inten-
tional objects of directors, while at the same time noting that as largely collabo-
rative efforts they also bear intentional properties of many constituents (executive
producers, sponsors, ratings boards, writers, actors/actresses, editors, cinematog-
raphers, critics, preview audiences, etc.) (see Forceville 2014: 67; Oakley 2013: 28) –
but note that some theatre practitioners such as Stanislavsky had grown frustrated
with the so-called “table work or analysis” (“the process where actors [or actresses]
sit with the director at a table and verbally analyze the script, identifying moti-
vations, objectives and actions” [Kemp 2010: 136]), after realizing that it allowed
his actors/actresses little freedom, making them come on stage with stuffed heads
and empty hearts, and could act nothing (Stanislavsky 1991: 325–226; Carnicke
2000: 32; 2009: 195; Kemp 2012: 25, 112); this frustration led him to develop a
system called “active analysis” (also called the “Method of Physical Actions”),
which is more easily controlled by the actor/actress (see, e.g., Kemp
2012: Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion).
This illustrates an essential point: namely, in film or drama, communication
occurs at multiple levels of conceptual organization. In this case, a higher-level
communication between the director and the spectator emerges within and influ-
ences a lower-level communication between the characters (see also Dynel 2013
for analogous findings). Again, each communicator and addressee here has their
own unique mental models. Thus, a movie is a shooting of the subjective mental
model ofa story as it is construed and shot by the director, and the spectators each
construe their own personal interpretation, their own mental model, of the story
as referred to by the movie. What the spectator sees, then, is one interpretation,
but never the only possible interpretation, of the film. Productions of the ‘same’
movie (or play) by other directors may offer drastically different interpretations,
resulting in drastically different visual and aural styles (see Brockett, Ball, Fleming,
and Carlson 2014: 25; Monta and Stanley 2008: 67).
Filmmakers, as Oakley (2013) observes, try to align their spectators’ expe-
riences with those of the story’s protagonists. Here, understanding a scene as
it relates to the rest of the movie, claims Oakley, requires the construction and
dynamic activation of a network of five mental spaces and a “Relevance Array”
(arguably to “stabilize” the network). Specifically, this author proposes that
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 389
semantic analysis proceeds with a “ground space”, where the spectator is being
“absorbed” in the world of the story, i.e., keeping track of the events presented
before her and seeing the characters on the screen and identifies with them,
sorting the villains from the heroes or antagonists from protagonists (Oakley
2013: 10–11). There is also a “presentation space”, which aligns the audience with
the character’s knowledge of the current situation. The third space is called the
“reference space”, which, in contrast, indicates the spectator’s knowledge of the
present situation, including privileged knowledge of the villains’ inward inten-
tions. The fourth mental space in Oakley’s model is referred to as the “virtual
space”, which, as the composition of the blend (the fifth space) selective structure,
is projected from the presentation and reference mental spaces.
Oakley is not alone in positing blending as the cognitive basis of spectating.
Recent conference papers (e.g., Gordejuela 2014), articles in key journals (e.g.,
Blair 2009) or in edited volumes (e.g., Bateman 2017; Oakley and Tobins 2012;
see also McConachie and Hart 2006), and monographs (e.g., Blair 2008; Kemp
2012) have demonstrated “blending’s remarkable potential to enrich the field”
(William 2017: 30–31; see also Dannenberg 2012; McConachie 2008). For
example, Oakley and Tobins (2012) argue that suspense is a function of human
social cognition, with “joint attention” (in which two or more individuals are
both focused on some external object and mutually aware of this shared focus
[2012: 2; see also PagánCánovas and Turner 2016; Steen and Turner 2013]) and
conceptual blending (in which, as mentioned earlier, elements and vital relations
are selectively projected from multiple input mental spaces, and processes of
composition, completion, and elaboration give rise to new emergent structure in
the blended space [Oakley and Tobins 2012: 2]) as the two cognitive operations
that give life to the anticipation and dread that accompany people’s engagement
with manipulated story worlds (2012: 20). Similarly, Gordejuela (2014) discusses
blended joint attention, time compression, viewpoint integration, and identity
and analogy connections, attempting to answer the question of how spectators
make sense of film flashbacks.
What is so painfully missing from such approaches is dynamic, cognitive
context models, which feature a knowledge device (K-device) that regulates the
complex managementof Common Ground shared by the filmmaker/actor/etc. and
the spectator (the participants in the higher-level communication) and by the
characters (the participants in the lower-level communication). Crucially, the
filmmaker presupposes that spectators will know what the characters are saying,
she assumes that they will think and interpret scenes more or less like her, and
she predicts that they will produce specific psychological responses. This also
means that in some cultures, directorsmay keep spectators (especially if under
18) from accessing different types of knowledge, particularly knowledge around
390 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
2. At the same time, access to such scenes, also about violence, is more likely to be regulated
by boards of media and film censors.
3. Note that the opening sequence could be placed in the middle of the movie or series, gener-
ally after the first scene. Here, the first scene aims not just to set the tone of the work the spec-
tator is about to watch but also to set up its premise or to introduce the main character (see
also Braha and Byrne 2011). This is the case for the title sequence of, e.g., The Adventures of
Sinbad, produced by Atlantis Films and All American Television in 1996–1998. After all, notice
that opening, as well as closing, sequences function as “(de)compression (or (dis)integration)
signals” (see below). In The Adventures of Sinbad, for example, signals such as “Atlantis Films &
All American Television present,” “The Adventures of Sinbad,” “Starring,” “Dermott as Himself,”
and “Jacqueline Collen as Maeve,” and so on prompt the spectator to unpack the reality-fiction
blend (i.e., reconstitutes the roles, relations, and inferences in each input frame).
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 391
not merely strategically pre-define overall topics but also serve to pre-invoke the
generic knowledge needed to understand the (rest of the) discourse. This means
that the presence of the incongruity in comedies is not completely surprising
or sudden (cf. Attardo 1994, 2017; Dynel 2013). Similarly, a reader searching the
Internet usually already has a plan to read, e.g., jokes and even to search specifi-
cally for such knowledge in NokatMasria (“Egyptian Jokes”), and hence construes,
invokes or updates the partial context model that will control the process of
searching and reading. Indeed, much of the context model is already construed
before starting the activity, given the person’s general, sociocultural shared knowl-
edge of the situation, or his (or her) own, personal knowledge of such a situation
derived from earlier context models (van Dijk 2014: 55). In short, then, context
models represent the parameters of the communicative situation that at each
moment are relevant for directors and/or spectators. Hence, “they also provide
a more cognitively embedded theory of relevance than more philosophical and
formal approaches to relevance” (van Dijk 2014: 54).
The body-swap genre, however, is extraordinarily complex, for several
reasons. First, we are dealing here with two complex blends usually involving two
actors(or actresses, or one actor and one actress) and two characters. Second,
body-swap films, TV series, etc. are particularly rich in “(de)compression signals”
(like “Give me my body back!”, “You want your body back?!,” “I was transformed
into (or made) Y,” “X believes I am you,” etc.) to help spectators to unpack mainly
character-character (rather than actor-character) blends, to construe local coher-
ence, to construe or (re)invoke relevant mental models or model fragments, to
invoke generic knowledge and in general to invoke and integrate all knowledge
relevant for adequate understanding. (De)compression signals are thus like traffic
signs, guiding the spectator from one scene to the next. Of course, they are not
only linguistic, but also visual or multimodal. Importantly, gesture (especially
if the body-swapping is into a different sex) and incongruity (which is a direct
result of the body-swapping)are also strong (dis)integration signals. Put another
way, far more than linguistic expressions are involved in communication (Kendan
2004: 69). Tones of voice, modes of hesitation, styles of talking, patterns of into-
nation, vocal quality, bodily posture, bodily movements of all sorts, glances, facial
expressions, all function as (dis)integration signals. This is in line with Brickman’s
(2012) view that one of the ramifications of the ambivalent approach to changing
gender norms, for instance, is that “gender quickly exposes itself as masquerade”
(2012: 156–157). In the mother-daughter body-swap film Freaky Friday (1976), for
example, the body switch literally “unhinges” gender from the body, as the femi-
nine housewife [Mrs. Ellen Andrews, played by Barbara Harris] has to maneuver
in her daughter’s [Annabel Andrews, played by Jodie Foster] athletic milieu and
the masculine daughter has to inhabit the role of domestic helpmate (Brickman
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 393
2012: 157). The movie, as Brickman observes, seems to get out of its way to stress
the humor of the performance of gender, for instance “by having Foster as
Annabel imitate the voice and mannerism of Barbara Harris, which transforms
hernotorious “froggy” voice into a higher pitched motherly tone” (2012: 157;
double quotation marks in original). This overt performance of gender resurfaces
when the Annabel employs her mother’s body to forge a relationship with Boris, a
neighbor whom she has harbored a crush (see Brickman 2012 for a discussion).
While incongruity is an indispensable condition for humor, it is insufficient
(Dynel 2011a: 67). The enjoyment of multimodal jokes, as El Refaie (2011) shows,
relies to a large extent on the background knowledge, moral values, and attitudes
of the individual (see also Abdel-Raheem 2018). If, for example, a body-swap film
is too threatening to somebody’s core sense of identity, it is likely to create anger
and alienation rather than amusement.
Below, two case studies are used to further illustrate the theory.
The case studies analysed are Made in Egypt (AmrSalama, Egypt 2014;
https://ok.ru/video/90286524991, last accessed 3 December 2017) and The Hot
Chick (Tom Brady, USA 2002; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnJun-lZ_wg,
last accessed 1 December 2017). One reason is that Made in Egypt, produced by
New Century Production and Shadows Communications, is the Arab world’s first
ever body-swap movie, and generally Arab cinema is among the most neglected
subjects in the field (Landau 2016: xi; Khouri 2010: xxiii; see also Shafik 2007).
Second, The Hot Chick, which involves a stereotypical man switching bodies with
an equally stereotypical woman, is ideal for the analysis of the construction and
performance of gender identity in discourse. The film is rated PG-13 (Parents
strongly cautioned), and – according to Holden (2002), for example – is “loaded
with off-color humor and sexual innuendo” (2002: para. 8).
Again, broadly speaking, the body-swap genre is a good medium for
exploring (de)compressions and multimodal mental models. In the first place, it is
particularly rich in its exploitation of (de)compressions. Moreover, in body-swap
movies, blends are double-scope both for Identity and for framing. Typically, the
person in the blend has the public identity and powers of X but literally a new
character (mental model) that delivers someway of proceeding that is not avail-
able from the character (mental model) of X alone – note that, again, there are
two types of blends here: “actor-character” and “character-character” (see below).
This means that, in line with Fauconnier and Turner (2002: 254–255), not just the
394 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
identities but also the frames themselves may be strikingly different and yet lead
to creative blends.
At the risk of stating the obvious, one wants to stress that the analyses do
not aim to demonstrate that interpreters of the films need to be taught blending
theory or multimodal mental models in order to understand and be moved by
them; conversely, one hopes to show that comprehension (or production) and
aesthetic enjoyment of the films is governed by cognitive processes of compres-
sion and decompression and by multimodal cognitive models.
Summary
A lazy young Caireneman, Alaa el-Farsi (Ahmed Helmy), inherits his father’s
marionette-making workshop. Instead of pursuing his father’s career and of
fulfilling his 7-year-old sister’s wish that he would make puppets for her school
show, Alaa transforms a section of the workshop into a shop selling Chinese-made
toys, gifts, fashion accessories, and boxer shorts, among other things, taking out a
bank loan. Accidentally, a giant teddy panda bear, Panda or Dabdoob (also played
by Ahmed Helmy), instead of boxers is shipped from China to the shop. Panda,
unlike Alaa, speaks Classic Arabic and highly values work (often quoting some
important Muslim figures like Imamal-Shāfiʿī [767–820] on that). Alaa’s sister,
Tamtam (Nour Osman), therefore starts to love Panda more than her brother.
As a lazy and careless person, Alaaforgets to lock the shop’s door, and conse-
quently all goods get stolen and he finds himself unable to repay the bank loan.
His beloved Ola (Yasmeen Raees), who works at her father’s lingerie shop opposite
his, describes him as a loser, so do his sister and mother, Hoda (Dalaal Abdel-Aziz).
Tamtam, then, wishes that Panda would turn into her brother, and her brother
into Panda. The wish gets fulfilled, and many hilarious scenes follow. Most of the
jokes revolve around not only the physical but also the mental differences between
Alaa and Panda (see below). Alaa eventually emerges from his travails a better,
more responsible person. In his campaign to undo the curse, he not just makes
puppets for his sister’s play but also acts in it. Only then does Tamtam wish her
brother would get back to his original body. And what of Panda who finds himself
in Alaa’s human body? The film pays him equal (if not more) heed given the
person in the blend now has the public identity of Alaa. For example, with help
from Tamtam, Panda (in Alaa’s body) succeeds in striking a puppet export deal
with some Chinese toy traders. It is such a new character that excites Ola’s admi-
ration, which then turns into love.
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 395
Analysis
The opening title sequence of Made in Egypt is reduced to the film title and release
date. This represents an occasional tendency to downsize opening titles (see Stan-
itzek 2009). Of course, this, as Stanitzek notes, does not mean that the rest of
the credits vanish (2009: 48). They are relegated to the end titles, with which the
opening titles not merely share the function of framing the film, but also a mutual
reciprocity (Moinereau 2004). Importantly, in the current case, the end title func-
tions as a decompression signal, with, e.g., the movie’s name, release date, produc-
tion companies, etc., as well as the actors’ names and roles.4
This does not, of course, preclude that the context model is partly pre-planned
for the present communicative situation, or genre, even before its detailed
meaning or cognitive model, let aloneits precise “grammatical” realization. A
spectator going to the cinema or searching YouTube usually already has a plan
to watch comedies and even to search specifically for Ahmed Helmy’s new or
most recent movie, Made in Egypt, and hence construes, invokes or updates
the partial context model that will control the process of searching. Moreover,
the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b-AAXxu9wE) – like the movie
posters (e.g., Figure 1), newspaper advertisements, stills, etc. – is an “epitextual
form” (as described by Stanitzek 2009: 52–53). Its main purpose is not just to
arouse the spectator’s curiosity and expectations about the movie (see Maier
2006: 1–2) but also to transpose the heralded movie to the future perfect: “This is
the experience you [the spectator] will have had (and of which you will be able
to tell your friends)” (Stanitzek 2009: 53). In other words, the trailer’s advertising
function necessitates a concentration on the plot summary – incomplete, as is
the case for all film trailers – that draws on footage from the movie, on touting
the movie’s star cast and special effects, and explicitly over-the-top formulations.
Here, Tamtam, Hoda, and Ola, among others, all describe Alaa as a loser. There are
also many verbal and non-verbal (de)compression signals. For example, in a post-
transformation scene, Panda (in Alaa’s body) addresses Alaa (in Panda’s body),
saying “You’re me, and I’m you.” In another scene, Ola addresses Alaa, saying
“What you’re saying will make people think that you’re crazy”; “Crazy because I
said that I was a teddy bear and became a human being?!” Alaa replies. In a third
scene, Alaa asks Panda to hail a taxi, but Panda hails a white jeep, asking the driver
whether he is a taxi. In a fourth scene, Alaa (in Panda’s body) says, “Finally, I
knew how I would turn back into Alaa.” Obviously, from those and other scenes,
the spectator can infer that the film is about a man-toy body swap, that the man,
unlike the soft toy panda, does not value work, and so on. Of course, this also
4. It may be important to note, however, that all Egyptian black and white films have opening
title sequences, but not end titles.
396 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
means that “intertextuality and interdiscursivity are at the basis of any trailer”
(Bortoluzzi 2009: 142).
The film has two hyper-blends, involving at least three input frames – namely,
an actor (Ahmed Helmy) and two characters (Alaa and Panda), each of which has
his own multimodal mental model – again, note that mental models “define and
control […] everyday perception and interaction in general and the production
and comprehension of discourse in particular” (van Dijk 2014: 49). The person in
one blend (Alaa in Panda’s body) has the public identity of Panda but the char-
acter or subjective experience (mental model) of Alaa – note that Panda, voiced
by Helmy, is already a blend, even before the transformation: he has some of the
properties of a toy, such as having a battery and being made of cotton, but he
also has many human properties, such as speaking classic Arabic. So the blended
“Panda” speaks Cairene Arabic, is lazy, knows about everyday routine actions
and their intentions and goals, has expertise in making puppets, etc. The person
in the other blend (Panda in Alaa’s body) has the public identity and powers of
Alaa but the character or mental model of Panda. So the blended “Alaa” speaks
Classic Arabic, severely lacks knowledge about routine actions and their inten-
tions and goals, about (Egyptian) social norms and values, about computers and
the Internet, about giving an injection, about making marionettes, about amuse-
ment parks, etc., and is illiterate. Matters are somewhat more complicated when,
in order to disguise, Alaa (in Panda’s body) occasionally speaks Classic Arabic;
Panda (in Alaa’s body), mostly Colloquial Arabic (see below). After all, Alaa is a
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 397
“Ramses,” with the title “Made in Egypt” (which appears at both the beginning and
end), and so on. Spectators see Alaa El-Farsi and also know that they are seeing
Ahmed Helmy. They interpret Alaa’s actions as part of the story, and the very same
actions, attributed to Ahmed Helmy, as part of film making. In this sense, in the
film representation, there is, again, rich shared generic structure between “reality”
and “fiction.”
True to its genre, the film is especially rich in character-character (dis)inte-
gration signals, which help the spectator figure out which is which. In one scene,
for example, Alaa (in Panda’s body) says, “Oh my! I have been transformed [into a
panda].” In another scene, Alaa leaves Panda a message saying, “I’ll be away for a
few days, as I am traveling to Sharm El-sheikh with a friend; don’t reveal the secret
that I have turned into a teddy bear, otherwise I’ll kill you […].” Similarly, when a
man punches Panda (in Alaa’s body) on the nose, Alaa says “Oh, my nose!”
Of course, (de)compression signals, as mentioned earlier, are not merely
verbal, but also nonverbal or multimodal. These once again operate on physical
and mental incongruity between input frames. Individual differences of knowl-
edge, as pointed out earlier, can be accounted for in terms of multimodal
mental models construing variable personal experiences depending on context.
Without a minimum of shared basic knowledge, not just of language, discourse
and communication, but also of the natural and social world, mutual under-
standing and social interaction would be problematic, which may create humor.
In the present case, for instance, when told by Tamtam that he had an email
from China, Panda (in Alaa’s body) asked her to let “him” (i.e. the email) “come
in.”Similarly, when asked by Olato give her father, Hassan (Abdullah Mishref),
an injection, Panda handed the syringe to him. Panda also displays a total igno-
rance of, e.g., male urination and has to be instructed by Alaa (in Panda’s body),
of social norms, giving a bra to Ola as a gift and hugging girls he does not know,
and so on. Similarly, Alaa’s experience models are fundamental and crucial for
his everyday life; they are his everyday experiences – whatever he does: Alaa
(after the transformation) represents himself, in a specific place, time, with a
current (but variable) identity in relation to other characters (or object), doing
something (like trying to watch Ola changing her clothes) from the moment he
wakes up, and becomes conscious of who he is, where he is, what he does, etc.
Hence, they are called “experience models” (van Dijk 2014). They define what IS
a (subjective) experience.
Some observations need to be made here. First, in line with Morreall (1983),
“[w]herever there is a principle to be violated or regularity to be upset, there is
room for incongruity and so for humor” (1983: 82). Crucially, most of the incon-
gruities people laugh at, especially in comedy, are “human shortcomings – igno-
rance, stupidity, awkwardness, mistakes, misunderstandings, and moral vices”
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 399
(Morreall 2008: 234; see also Berger 1993; Ritchie 2004). Indeed, a great many
scenes of Made in Egypt, as can be seen above, are transparently contingent on
circumscribed topics, such as body taboo, sex, and so on. It should be stressed
here that the understanding and appreciation of humorous phenomena in film
discourse relies not only on the background knowledge, values and attitudes of
the spectator, but also on the broader socio-cultural context in which the film is
encountered (see also El Refaie 2011: 87). Once again, if, for example, a scene or
film is too threatening to a spectators’ score sense of identity or too challenging
to her cultural and/or religious values, it is likely to create anger and alienation
rather than humor.
Second, frame-shifting (Coulson 2001) or incongruity in humor or (multi-
modal) jokes is, again, not completely “surprising” (cf. Attardo 2017; Dynel 2013,
2017 and references therein). Once again, the fictional discourse of films, for
example, operates on two levels of communication: the lower (micro) level, repre-
senting the fictional participants’ interactions, and the higher (macro) level,
concerning the spectator’s interpretation of the former, as carefully devised by
the film production crew (see also Dynel 2011b). This presupposes a fundamental
distinction between ‘character’ and ‘spectator’ communication models or knowl-
edge, which may imply the general condition of lack of knowledge on the part
of the character (e.g., Panda in Alaa’s body) and the assumed knowledge of the
spectator. To repeat, the cognitive mental models play a crucial role in discourse
production and understanding. Crucially, context models are partly pre-given (or
-planned) for a great many communicative activities, and in film spectators can
also experience continuity from scene to scene relying on analogical coherence
(involving extracting a “template” from one situation and applying it to another
situation [Oakley 2013: 6; see also French 1995]). The second scene depicting
Panda (in Alaa’s body) ignorant of how to give an injection is a “reminding
incident” of the previous situation depicting Alaa (before the transformation)
injecting Hassan; the third scene depicting Panda (after the transformation)
injecting Dr. Ashraf (Edward), of the second scene. It is also important to note
that the trailer itself shows parts of these scenes. All this goes to show that
Panda’s levels and stages of knowledge acquisition and evaluation, for example,
are different from those of the spectator. Since the situation models of Panda
and other characters are different, partial understanding or misunderstanding of
discourse is so common. This is why Ola and her father take advantage of the
opportunity in the next turns (e.g., fourth) to perform some operation on the
trouble-source turns (e.g., first), by saying “Wait a second, Mr. Alaa; please give
my father the injection!” and “Give me the injection here [i.e., in the buttock], Son;
[…] insert the needle and inject [the medication],”respectively. As the film goes
on, Panda acquires knowledge (of, e.g., language, medicine, social norms, etc.).
400 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
It is thus important to repeat a point made before, namely that context models
ongoingly regulate which information of the situation model(e.g., of an experi-
ence, an event) is relevant to be expressed at each moment, which information is
already known by the spectators or which can be easily inferred, which is inter-
esting or less so, polite, etc.(van Dijk 2014). In short, the socially shared generic
meaning and mutual knowledge of the filmmaker and spectator guarantee that in
most scenes understanding is adequate. Of course, most spectators, unlike Panda,
know what the expression “give someone an injection”, e.g., means.
Moral cognition
The movie recurrently invokes strict-father(or conservative) values (as described
by Lakoff 1996), such as self-discipline, independence, individual responsibility, and
direct causation. For example, Panda (both before and after the transformation)
usually comes out with wise old sayings on hard work (e.g., “He who works
hard achieves (goals);” “He who plants will harvest;” and “He who seeks high-
ness must spend nights awake”). Importantly, Panda again, via both metaphor
and metonymy, stands conceptually for (hard working) China, whose economy is
export-driven. In contrast, Alaa, through both metaphor and metonymy, stands
conceptually for (lazy) Egypt, whose economy is import-dependent. The film
can thus be seen as a call for replacing “Made in China” with “Made in Egypt.”
Crucially, its scenes place the fault for unemployment or failure with the indi-
vidual/Alaa(who did not work hard enough). Somebody who embraces nurtu-
rant-parent (or liberal) morality, however, is more likely to place the fault for
unemployment or failure on social and economic trends (which can result in
unemployment, no matter how hard a citizen works) (Wehling 2013: 13).
The film also has a go at gay people. Importantly, in aurination scene, Alaa
(after the transformation) falsely accuses Panda of trying to peek in at his private
parts, and therefore a group of people starts to beat up Panda, saying, “Oh! Are
you one of them [i.e., homosexuals]?” Of course, this is influenced by the group’s
cultural background and religious beliefs. Surely, every community has its own
moral views and needs. What works in other societies may not fit in the Arab
or Muslim world, and the reverse. Many spectators may refuse to be amused by
the scene because they find the whole subject of homosexuality too challenging,
regardless of what they perceive the filmmaker’s attitudes to be (see also El Refaie
2011 for supportive experimental evidence). Some may also feel reluctant to admit
to being offended by the scene, particularly if this involves revealing their own
sexual orientation. After all, the problem does not reside in criticizing homosex-
uality but rather in encouraging violence against other people or groups. In other
words, it is the duty of the executive and judicial departments of a state, but not of
the public, to enforce a law.
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 401
Summary
Jessica Spencer (Rachel McAdams) is a spoiled, snobbish high school cheerleader
whose whole world suddenly falls apart when she loses half a pair of cursed
earrings she has stolen from an antique shop, “mambuza: treasures of the
ancient world.” When a petty 30-year-old criminal, Clive Maxtone (Rob
Schneider), finds the lost earring at a gas station and puts it on, he and Jessica swap
bodies. In her campaign to lift the curse, Jessica has to, for example, enlist the help
of the uncool peers she used to disdain. The film, on the other hand, does not pay
Clive much heed until the end, when it brings most of the main characters to a
sleazy bar, the Pole Cat, where he is making a fairly decent living as a feisty exotic
pole dancer (Holden 2014).
Analysis
The opening title sequence of The Hot Chick is reduced to the production
company (Touchstone Pictures and Happy Madison) – indicating who is respon-
sible for the film and, more crucially, right to ownership as well as copyright
and terms of use – and the film title. The opening scene then shows Abyssinian
Princess Nawa (50 B.C.)using the cursed earrings to escape a bad marriage. Her
last words to her slave girl before the body swapping were “Soon you will live your
life in jewels and not chains.”This title sequence thus provides a focus that allows
for a transition into the film. Crucially, it leads into what follows, sets the course in
this respect, captures the genre, and the specific “mood” of what is to come, so that
one is initiated into the cinematic narrative, the “diegesis” (in the sense of Stan-
itzek 2009). The title sequence is thus a “peritext”; it is tied more or less securely
to the movie it introduces (Stanitzek 2009: 52).
Of course, context models, as laid out earlier, are partly pre-given for films
or genres, even before their detailed meanings or mental models. A spectator
going to the cinema or searching YouTube usually already has a plan to watch
comedies and even to search specifically for Rob Schneider’s movie and hence
construes, activates or updates the partial context model that will control the
process of searching. Furthermore, the task of marketing the movie has already
been fulfilled by its trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z5zbY-0QCA),
poster (Figure 2), and so on. The trailer, like the poster, concentrates on the plot
summary, again constituting an epitext (located at a greater distance from the
text/movie to which it refers). Besides showing scenes from the movie (e.g., of
Jessica (after the transformation) telling her closest friend April [Anna Faris],
“Please, it’s me; I’m Jessica,” or kissing her saying, “I’m so lesbian right now”;
or of April asking Jessica, “Can I see it [i.e., the wiener]?”), the trailer has a
402 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
narrator’s “voice-over” describing certain things about the movie (e.g., “Jessica
Spencer, she is Miss Perfect, she is Miss Popular, … but a curse is about to turn
her into a Miss … [Mis]ter … Now, she’s got to reverse the spell … or live like
this forever; from Touchstone Pictures; Rob Schneider is the Hot Chick”). This
means, again, that the spectator already has a large portion of the context model
in place before watching the film.
Besides the Princess-Slave blends, the film has two complex blends, involving
at least four input frames – namely, an actor (Rob Schneider), an actress (Rachel
McAdams), and two characters (Clive and Jessica, respectively). The person in one
blend (Jessica in Clive’s body) has the public identity of Clive but the character or
subjective experience (mental model) of Jessica. Here, Clive displays a total igno-
rance of, e.g., male urination and has to be instructed by a kindly, dumbfounded
attendant (Dick Gregory), and is horrified to discover hair growing in his/her
nose and ears. To some spectators, the character also appears as an effeminate gay
stereotype (Holden 2002: para. 6). The person in the other blend (Clive in Jessica’s
body) has the public identity of Jessica but the character or mental model of Clive.
Here, Jessica is a sleazy crook. Finally, spectators see, e.g., Rob Schneider and also
know that they are seeing Jessica/Clive. They interpret Jessica’s actions as part of
the story, and the very same actions, attributed to Rob Schneider, as part of movie
making. Conversely, as in the previous case, the fictional situations and events
represent the intentional objects of higher-level mental (meta-)models reflexively
self-representing the actor or actress as imagining these situations and events: Rob
Schneider as Clive Maxtone; Rachel McAdams as Jessica Spencer; Rob Schneider
as Jessica Spencer in Clive Maxtone’s body; Rachel McAdams as Clive Maxtone in
Jessica Spencer’s body. Again, the actor says just what the character says and, on
some level of his psyche, is surprised, even though he knows in advance that he is
going to be surprised (see also Cone 1974: 126; Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 267).
All this means that “[m]ental models may be combined in larger, hierarchically
more complex models […]” (van Dijk 2014: 50).
The movie, true to its genre, is so rich in (de)compression signals. These
include expressions such as “It’s me, … Jessica,” “So… do you really have a
penis;[…] it’s not every day that your best friend grows a penis,” “I had my
period,” “I want my body back right now,” OK […] I’ll give you your body back,”
etc. Also included are the credits relegated to the end title (e.g., coporate logo,
actors’ names, film title, directors, etc.). Of course, (dis)integration signals are
also nonverbal. For example, Jessica (in Clive’s body) appears as an effeminate
gay stereotype. Crucially, most of the film’s jokes revolve around the physical and
mental differences between men and women. Again, Jessica (after the transforma-
tion) displays a total ignorance of, e.g., male urination, one of the funniest scenes
to some (e.g., Holden 2002: para. 4).
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 403
Figure 2. Poster for The Hot Chick portraying Rob Schneider with a towel covering his
hair, and green facial cream covering his face, and holding two cucumber slices in his
hands over his chest – all metonyms for a woman; the textual “hot chick” anchors (in the
sense of Barthes 1986; see also Unsworth and Cléirigh 2009) this interpretation, but for
many viewers this text is redundant; so is “Rob Schneider.”
Moral cognition
As in the previous case, the current comedy film is transparently contingent
on circumscribed topics, such as body taboo, sex, political dissatisfaction, etc.
Crucially, it has its share of gay innuendo, though careful to mute any “homo-
phobia” (Holden 2002: para. 6). Late in the movie, for example, there is a delicately
handled flirtation with lesbianism in which Jessica’s best friend, April, confesses
her attraction – also used in the trailer. Similarly, although Jessica’s boyfriend,
Billy, recognizes his sweetheart inside her new body, he, disgusted, cannot bring
himself to give her a kiss – note that at the cheerleading competition, Billy has
thrown up after the identity of disguised Jessica was accidently revealed. Physical
disgust – according to Eskine, Kacinik, and Prinz (2011) – can increase moral
disgust (see also, Schnall, Benton, and Harvey 2008a; but see Schnall, Haidt,
Clore, and Jordan 2008b). Conservatives are both maximally concerned with
purity and easily disgusted (Lakoff 1996; see also Wehling 2013 and references
therein). After all, the enjoyment of a multimodal comedy, as emphasized earlier,
depends to a large extent on the background knowledge, values and attitudes of
the spectator.
4. Conclusion
The paramount goal of this paper was to explore what some recent developments
in cognitive science can tell us about film or drama spectatorship and creation.
These explorations not only led to new ways of understanding the meaning
conveyed by particular body-swap films, but also provided insight into the poten-
tial or actual social/moral impact of these films. Compared to earlier theories of
(humorous) film processing and the role of knowledge in discourse production
and comprehension, the current theory featured (or emphasized the need for)the
component of van Dijk’s (2014) “mental models” as the basis of both the semantics
and the pragmatics of discourse. Crucially, it was proposed that such component
is not only a crucial pragmatic factor pertinent to blending theory and humor
concerns, but also provides ways of addressing two basic dimensions of the actor’s
work that are central to the Stanislavski an method of acting and which were
significantly informed by his encounter with science – imagination and action.
Such an enterprise is, no doubt, ambitious, and this study lays claim to
nothing more than providing the first version of a theory to examine how cinema
or drama, in general, and body-swap comedies, in particular, communicate
Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies 405
meaning. In this manner, the theory can be further tested, refined, or elaborated in
future research. Such research will aid both film or drama scholarship and (moral)
cognition studies based on visual or multimodal stimuli.
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Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
Department of English Studies
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin
Poland
rheem.ahmed@gmail.com
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