Psychology at the Movies

by Skip Dine Young

  The people I interviewed about meaningful movies conjured up powerful memories of movies, particularly early ones. One respondent recalled that his earliest memory was seeing The Wizard of Oz on television. Another remembered movies like The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and that the film merged with his memories of playacting the characters in the film, to the point that he couldn't remember which was which. Movie memories mixed with other memories can also be seen in the recollections of the participant who associated White Christmas with holiday events such as wrapping presents and decorating the tree.

  Not all memories were wholesome. Another respondent remembered sneaking into movie theaters with his hoodlum friends to see movies condemned by the Catholic Church (Town Without Pity). Since movies are often viewed with other people, some recollections are shared. One interviewee talked about reconnecting with a former girlfriend and renting Tromeo & Juliet, a violent, satiric punk version of Romeo & Juliet they had watched as teenagers. Seeing the film again led the couple to other reminiscences and helped them view their relationship more positively.

  Like all autobiographical memories, cinematic memories can be inaccurate. A psychoanalyst vividly remembered Three Came Home, a 1950 film about a Japanese prison camp he had seen when he was young. When he watched the film again 40 years later, he was surprised by important elements he had forgotten, most notably, the fact that the film featured a young boy around the age he'd been when he first saw the film. In fact, numerous scenes seemed to echo his own life (the boy's fondness for monkeys and his mother being pregnant). As a psychoanalyst, he concluded that forgetting about the boy character was a defense against the anxiety of the storyline, but might also have been a result of oedipal guilt at enjoying scenes in which male prisoners, including the boy's father, were segregated by the Japanese guards, leaving the women and children alone.52

  “The Movie That Defines Me”: Identity Functions

  Autobiographical memories are the stories that make up our identity, our personal sense of who we are. For developmental psychologists like Dan McAdams, the study of narrative is essentially the study of identity. It is almost impossible to think of ourselves or describe ourselves without using stories. If a person describes herself as courageous, such a claim may be followed up by the question, “In what ways?” To answer that, she relates the time she stood up to bullies or saved her family from a house fire (like the Meryl Streep character does in Albert Brooks's poignant Defending Your Life).

  Stories—and identities—take many forms. Some people see themselves as helpers, and their stories are about the times they helped people. Other stories are about people seeing themselves as fighters or lovers. McAdams believes that all these types are variations of the fundamental dimensions of self-concept—the agentic dimension (how we conceive ourselves as individuals with the power to leave our mark on the world) and the communal dimension (the way we see ourselves connected to the people around us).53 All of our stories express our uniqueness or our relationships to other people (or sometimes both).

  When we watch a movie, we temporarily identify with many or even all of the characters. We may identify with the tone or style of the film. Most experiences, like memories, are fleeting. Every once in a while, we come upon a film where our identification is so strong that we become aware of it, and will continue to identify with an aspect of the film (or at least our memories of the film) long after it is over. At this point, movie memories will become a part of our personal identity. It's what people mean when they say a movie truly defines who they are or some period of their lives.

  As we have seen in Chapter 2, one can apply many psychological interpretations to a movie like The Wizard of Oz. But, although the interpretations imply something about the viewer, they are abstractions. On a more personal level, novelist Terry McMillan asserts that the film was important to her during her childhood. While she was aware of the contrast between her own life as an African-American growing up in an industrial town in Michigan compared with a white girl on a farm in Kansas, these differences weren't as important as the things to which she could relate: Aunt Em's bossiness, which reminded her of her mother; Dorothy's feelings that nobody really cared about her; the trip to Oz, reflecting McMillan's fantasies about escaping her drab circumstances for a world that was colorful and exciting. Ultimately, the part of McMillan that craved adventure and delighted in the imagination would inspire her to become a novelist as an adult.54

  One of my interviewees related how a film can define a whole era in a person's life.55 In his mid-thirties Ethan56 described the impact that Animal House had on him. He and his college fraternity emulated the wild partying, anti-authority antics of Bluto (John Belushi) and the rest of the animals. They frequently got in trouble with the administration, and evoked disparaging parallels between Dean Wormer (John Vernon) and the actual dean of students at their college. While Ethan and his friends were aware of the connections they were making, they probably didn't reflect deeply on it at the time. However, as Ethan matured, he came to regard his former self in a highly critical manner. Now, whenever he watches the film, he remembers his previous identification with the film, even as he is offended by it.

  Another participant, Judy, a married mother of two in her early forties, spoke of how To Kill a Mockingbird, particularly Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), defined her complex relationship with her father. The movie first became significant when she was eight, and watched it with her dad. The bond was solidified when her father began to call her Scout after the daughter in the movie. When Judy was a teenager, her father died in a fishing accident. She began to see the similarities between Atticus and her father, a respected doctor who frequently treated the poor without payment. In contrast with Atticus, however, Judy realized her father had “a major flaw”: he was “not willing to sacrifice his drinking for the safety and love of his children.” At the time of his death, their close relationship was already becoming distant due to his alcoholism. Judy experienced a difficult adolescence after her father died, followed by “a string of really bad trying-to-save-my-father boyfriends” in her early adulthood. While To Kill a Mockingbird had always been important because of the role it played in her early relationship with her father, she didn't become aware of the complex feelings she had about Atticus (or her father) until after she married and entered therapy.

  Identity formation is particularly visible in the phenomenon known as “fandom.”57 Fans form an intense attachment with some aspect of popular culture, such as a movie (Gone with the Wind), genre (horror or sci-fi films) or director (Quentin Tarantino). Fans typically share their interests through clubs, conferences, chat rooms, and so on. This communal spirit can have a major impact on identity. The arena of action moves away from private reflection to interpersonal dialogue and elaborate social exchanges.

  The cult popularity of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the 1970s and 1980s exemplifies this social side of identity development. It is difficult to imagine anyone who unwittingly stumbled on this rather disjointed movie finding it profoundly meaningful. However, in a midnight show, surrounded by fellow fans wearing elaborate costumes and engaging in animated rituals, the film becomes a spectacular exercise in community building.58 The entirety of this social experience affects aspects of identity related to peer bonding, self-expression, struggles with sexual identity and the exploration of non-mainstream values.

  “The Movie That Changed My Life”: Transformative Functions

  Stories have always been used by parents, clergy, and dramatists as informal forms of therapy, but therapists have develop forms of narrative therapy in which counselors help clients to revise the stories they tell about their lives.59 Narrative film facilitates this revisioning process through not only cinematherapy, but the personal insights we gain from everyday viewing. More than just healing (which implies a wound that needs to be mended), the notion of transformation suggests that movies can be used to facilitate our ongoing development as human beings.60

  Ju
dy's affinity for To Kill a Mockingbird is an example of the transformative use of film. She not only used the film to understand her past, but she now sees it as echoing her present life with her children. In particular, she sees Atticus as a model for parenting:

  I certainly am parenting very differently than my parents parented me, with the idea to teach tolerance and to teach respect and self respect and all the things that I feel like are in that character, and to stand up for what you think is right in the world. To be fair.

  While rarely conscious of the movie in day-to-day life, she becomes aware of those connections in moments of reflection. The movie underscores realities of her life, but also offers possibilities for what her life and her children's can become.

  Sometimes transformation occurs over a period of many years and viewing multiple films. This complicated process can be seen in Norman Holland's memoir Meeting Movies, in which he reflects on movies that have been important to him (2006). One theme that runs throughout is his love of literature and stories. This passion became a source of conflict, when Holland struggled over whether to become a writer or a critic. His ambivalence manifested itself with John Huston's biopic Freud. When Holland approaches the film as a scholar, he found he could flex his analytical muscle, and his psychoanalytic training gave him a deep understanding of the film's subject. Yet, when Holland tried to come to terms with the creator of the film, he felt threatened by Huston's larger-than-life persona and ability to create masterpieces like The Maltese Falcon. Comparing Huston's seemingly boundless energy to his own sense of repression and stalled efforts to become a writer forced Holland to realize that no matter what strengths or flaws he might find in Freud, his own work as a scholar was overshadowed by Huston's brilliance as a director.

  Holland's take on Children of Paradise emphasizes this theme. He sees Baptiste's (Jean Louis Barrault) early infatuation with Garance (Arletty) as an example of how the romantic ambitions of youth are dimmed by the realities of adulthood. While he successfully rebelled against his father's wish that he become a lawyer, he never became the great artist that he imagined he would be. In contrast, his reaction of Shakespeare in Love reflects his coming to terms with this conflict. While he always loved Shakespeare's work, Holland confessed that he had been envious of Shakespeare's apparently limitless talent. By the time Shakespeare in Love was released, Holland was late in his career. He found the film to be a delightful fantasy that celebrated young Will's artistic and sexual triumphs and found he could enjoy the film without guilt or longing. This experience helped him finally accept his place in the world.

  Closing Shots: Seeing Movies from a Different Angle

  Movies as equipment for living grew out of many of the approaches discussed in this book, yet it involves looking at movies from a different position. The process of interpretation in numerous guises is not an end in itself but a crucial symbolic mechanism by which movies may become functional. Before someone can consciously act on a message, they have to understand the message. As viewers reflect further, they can begin to consider how the meaning of a film is related to the meaning of their lives.

  The richer one's interpretive capacity, the wider the range of significance that film and other art forms can have. In a study I conducted, some participants were asked to interpret a film they had just seen, others were asked to describe the film's plot, and still others were asked to reflect on an event from their day unrelated to the film.61 Following this reflection, all of the participants were asked to imagine what applications the film might have in the future. The most personal ideas came from those who had been encouraged to interpret the film's meaning.

  Using movies as equipment for living assumes the ability to put a psychological distance between oneself and the film. Therefore, this process is not the same as “merging” with a film, in which viewers believe they are living in a movie (or that the movie is living in them). While such blending may often occur in the immediate experience of watching a movie, it typically dissipates once people leave the theater. People who continue to confuse the real and the cinematic suffer from cognitive immaturity or even psychosis (perhaps resulting in some of the copycat behaviors discussed in the previous chapter). Instead, movies as equipment for living implies that viewers know who they are and what is happening on the screen, and have the wisdom to tell the difference.

  Self-reflection is required in order to use movies as equipment for living. It is therefore difficult to observe in a strictly controlled laboratory setting. Narrative, qualitative, and journalistic methods such as case studies, interviews, personal testimonials, and even textual analysis can be provide avenues for studying the phenomenon, but it can be difficult to prove that a movie changed someone's life. This approach places a premium on human experience: how people perceive, feel, and understand the events that happen to them. While mercurial, these processes are the materials of self-awareness. Scholars, teachers and therapists who are exploring the possibility of self-consciously using film in professional and daily life tend to be excited about movies and are hopeful that films may be beneficial to the never-ending goal of human beings to understand ourselves.

  Further Reading

  Burke, K. (1973) The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

  Dine Young, S. (2000) Movies as equipment for living: A developmental analysis of the importance of film in everyday life. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17 (4), 447–468.

  Hesley, J.W. and Hesley, J.G. (2001) Rent Two Films and Let's Talk About It in the Morning: Using Popular Movies in Psychotherapy, 2nd edn.. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Sommerset, NJ.

  Mar, R.A. and Oatley, K. (2008) The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 (3), 173–192.

  McAdams, D.P. (1993) The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. Guilford Press, New York, NY.

  Niemiec, R.M. and Wedding, D. (2008) Positive Psychology at the Movies: Using Films to Build Virtues and Character Strengths. Hogrefe & Huber, Cambridge, MA.

  Rubin, A.M. (2009) Uses-and-gratifications perspective on media effects, in Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 3rd edn. (eds J. Bryant and M.B. Oliver), Routledge, Taylor & Francis, New York, NY, pp. 165–184.

  Chapter 10

  Conclusion—Putting the Pieces Together

  The summer of 1977 was a time of transition. I was 10 years old, sandwiched between childhood and adolescence, that period captured in Stand By Me. Since the age of five, I had lived in Stuttgart, Germany on a small American military post, but my dad, an Army major, was being transferred back to the US.

  Although I had few conscious memories of America, for me and my friends it was a promised land. Anything touched by America's glow took on irrational value; a bag of Pixie Sticks candy sent by grandparents could be sold for 50 cents apiece or bartered for all manner of contraband.

  Now I was going back to this mythical place, and despite my excitement, the impending move was scary. The army post had been an idyllic place to grow up. Kids were free to roam in packs throughout the post on one side of the gates and endless woods on the other. I felt sad and scared to leave.

  Illustration 10.2 Alec Guinness & George Lucas on the set of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) © AF Archive/Alamy.

  Illustration 10.3 Skip Young, Star Wars fan, age 10.

  A few weeks before we were to move, I was watching the only English-language television station available and saw a story about a movie that was causing a sensation in the States. There were genuine Americans, in a real American city, lining up for blocks to buy a ticket. I watched a film clip where an oddly shaped spaceship narrowly escaped some exotic planet. There were laser guns, bad guys wearing white body armor, a giant hairy ape, and a man in a black vest who was clearly the coolest human being who had ever lived in any galaxy. I was mesmerized. The thought that I would be able to see this movie in a few
weeks, instead of having to wait a year before it got to the always behind the times post theater was exhilarating.

  As I said goodbye to my friends and the only home I knew, my excitement about seeing Star Wars soothed my anxiety and focused my attention. Once the move to Colorado Springs was over and the boxes unpacked, one of the first things my family did was take a trip to a sparkling new mall that had a movie theater right inside. Though Star Wars had been out for months, we still waited in line for an hour as my anticipation built.

  Finally it was time. As the opening titles scrolled up the screen, John Williams's score awoke something in my soul. The space battles were strikingly realistic. The characters were compelling, new yet familiar. Exotic creatures popped up faster than I could process. Glimpses of Darth Vader, masked and towering, were terrifying yet thrilling. Occasionally, at just the right moment, tension was followed by comic relief, and the audience would explode with laughter (Han Solo after shooting Greedo: “Sorry about the mess”). In the end, the characters did what they should, with Luke believing in the Force and Han finding redemption. Star Wars captured my imagination like nothing else I had ever seen.

  The movie became my transition object, helping me connect to my new home. Many of my activities were filtered through it. Before its first theatrical run was over, I'd nagged my mom into taking me four more times (an unimaginable indulgence). I bought the magazines, the bubblegum cards, and the action figures. These objects formed a shared playing field for making new friends.