Donnie Darko, Heider Experiment, and The Lion King

[from the Extended and Deleted Scenes. The class is discussing Watership Down]
Karen Pommeroy: This could be the death of an entire way of life, the end of an era...
Donnie: Why should we care?
Karen Pommeroy: Because the rabbits are us, Donnie.
Donnie: Why should I mourn for a rabbit like he was human?
Karen Pommeroy: Are you saying that the death of one species is less tragic than another?
Donnie: Of course. The rabbit's not like us. It has no... keen look at something in the mirror, it has no history books, no photographs, no knowledge of sorrow or regret... I mean, I'm sorry, Miss Pommeroy, don't get me wrong; y'know, I like rabbits and all. They're cute and they're horny. And if you're cute and you're horny, then you're probably happy, in that you don't know who you are and why you're even alive. And you just wanna' have sex, as many times as possible, before you die... I mean, I just don't see the point in crying over a dead rabbit! Y'know, who... who never even feared death to begin with.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/quotes]

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The experiment performed by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel (if you missed it, see my previous post) demonstrates not only how people construct causal links in their minds (as Kahneman talks about in Thinking, Fast and Slow), but, I believe, also demonstrates an emotional response to signifiers. We associate the actions performed by these shapes and they signify different personalities and relationships to us. We see that the circle and small triangle appear to be friends and that the larger triangle is made upset by this. We can read the "language" of the movements of the circle as being frightened by "watching" the large triangle "beat up" the small triangle. This narrative is being told to us by our minds. In fact, they are only shapes moving across the screen.
I wonder if the same holds true to why we react emotionally to scenes from Disney movies, lets say, The Lion King, when we watch Simba's father being killed by the evil uncle. Although they are only animated figures in a movie, we know what they signify and so we give them value, identities, and even moral qualities because of what they signify to us--perhaps some struggle of good and bad or a weak character becoming a stronger character through the challenges and tragedies that he encounters in his life.
In our minds, they (the rabbits, the shapes, Simba, etc) do have minds, do have histories, do fear death, do share love. It is what they signify that matters, not what they are, as well as the ability for either the author to show causal relationships, and/or our ability to create them in our mind. It is as though we respond to the concept and not to the characters at all.

~Patrick Conners Jr 1/27/12