Figure 1.1 Symbolic activity in film.
Symbols always have physical properties; films are made up of images and sounds projected onto a screen. They are not random but have the potential to be comprehended. A blue neon tube of light accompanied by a humming sound in Star Wars is understood to be a light saber (as opposed to a random stream of blue light bouncing around the screen). Symbolic meanings usually build upon one another as individual images are related to other images. As viewers begin to grasp the Star Wars universe, they recognize that the person holding a light saber is a member of the Jedi order. Most movies combine symbols into coherent narrative wholes in which a cast of characters participate in events that take place over space and time.14
The meaning of symbols can be extended beyond the story world and understood as representations of people, places, and ideas that have relevance to the real world; that is, viewers can interpret the Jedi's weapon as a symbol of heroism. This theme can in turn be used to interpret Star Wars as a film about the triumph of good over evil.
Symbols can be interpreted in many ways, some of which may be contradictory.15 A Freudian psychoanalyst might look at the long blue beam of light and interpret it as a phallic symbol (it symbolizes erotic yearning). A feminist critic might spin this interpretation and argue that the light saber is actually symbolic of displaced masculine hostility. (This kind of thing can go back and forth for a while.)
Symbols never spring from a void—somebody has to give them life. Symbols are created by symbol-makers. Graphic artists, novelists, sculptors, even the writers of technical manuals on how to shingle a roof, all rely on symbols to communicate their meaning. Moviemakers are another type of symbol-maker. Directors, writers, actors and other artists collaborate to produce the particular symbolic objects shown in multiplexes. Filmmakers inevitably bring aspects of themselves—their deep inner passions, their habitual behavioral patterns, their self-conscious values, their unexamined cultural biases—to the symbols they create.
Finally, symbols are received by other people. They are sensed (seen, heard, felt, smelled and/or tasted) and processed by those who are exposed to them. The potential audience for the cinematic symbols is enormous. Blockbusters like Avatar or Lord of the Rings are seen by billions of people worldwide.16 The processing that happens before, during and after viewing a movie is of core psychological interest. Why do viewers decide to spend a Friday evening watching a particular film (whether it's Saw XVII or Woody Allen's latest bittersweet comedy)? What is going on inside (both physiologically and psychically) viewers as they watch? And what are the consequences for viewers after seeing a movie and reemerging into their everyday lives?
Every example presented in this book can be seen as a “symbolic event.” If a film is said to have meaning, it is symbolic. If the personal characteristics of the filmmakers impacted their artistic choices, it is symbolic. If an audience member responds to a film in a certain way, it is symbolic.17
Organization of Psychology at the Movies
Figure 1.2 outlines the structure of the book, with filmmakers on the top, the process of meaning making in the middle, and movie viewers on the bottom.
Figure 1.2 The many faces of Psychology at the Movies.
Chapters 2 and 3 consider representations of human action that may be found in the movies. Chapter 2 looks at a variety of human behaviors represented in movies, focusing on interpretive approaches (e.g., Freudian psychoanalysis) that hunt for deeper meanings that many not necessarily be obvious to the average viewer. Chapter 3 narrows the scope to offer an intensive view of activities associated with psychology in the public imagination as they are portrayed in movies: psychological disorders (schizophrenia, alcoholism, narcissism, etc.) and psychological interventions (psychotherapy).
Chapter 4 moves away from movies as objects and considers the people who create movies. What do these filmmakers bring to movies, and in what ways do they infuse aspects of themselves into their creations? While it is probable that everyone who works on a movie brings something of him or herself to the activity, I focus on those artists whose individuality is in the foreground—the directors (who make the final choices about how a movie looks and sounds) and the actors (whose visual likeness is so vividly captured on the screen).
Chapters 5 through 9 focus on the other end of the symbolic spectrum—the viewers who interact with the film's images and sounds. Chapter 5 takes a broad view of the audience to consider such psychosocial questions as: What kinds of movies do people watch? Who watches movies? Where and when do people watch movies? Chapter 6 looks at the cinematic moment—what is happening inside people as they watch a movie. Viewers must perceive images and comprehend them in order to figure out what the story is about. Simultaneously, watching a movie involves a great deal of emotion and can provoke intense feelings of fear, delight, and sadness.
Chapter 7 picks up after the movie has stopped playing yet continues to live in the memories and ongoing reflective processes of the viewers. After leaving the theater, viewers often evaluate their experience—good versus bad; enjoyable versus not enjoyable; depressing versus uplifting. Also viewers sometimes take the time to interpret a movie more thoroughly, reflecting on its themes or how it reflects the real world.
Chapters 8 and 9 focus on the consequences of watching movies: Do movies change the thoughts and behavior of the audience? Chapter 8 considers the evidence that movies can affect the behavior and thinking of some people some of the time, even though they may not be aware that film is having an effect on them. Chapter 9 highlights the ways in which movies function as “equipment for living”—those situations in which people self-consciously use movies to promote education, healing, and identity development.
Finally, Chapter 10 puts all the pieces together to consider how the many approaches to the psychology of film interact with each other. The combined panorama of perspectives offers a rich, dynamic portrait of the role of film in society and individual lives.
Further Reading
Munsterberg, H. (1970) The Film: A Psychological Study. Dover, New York, NY.
Sternberg, R.J. and Grigorenko, E.L. (2001) Unified psychology. American Psychologist, 56 (12), 1069–1079.
Werner, H. and Kaplan, B. (1984) Symbol Formation. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Chapter 2
The Search for Meaning—Psychological Interpretations in the Movies
What is the meaning of The Wizard of Oz?
This question upsets some people. They stare at you, squint and declare, “What do you mean, ‘What does it mean?’ It's a kids' movie. It doesn't mean anything.” This type of person is going to hate this chapter.
Then there is another type who loves questions like this. Their eyes light up when they hear phrases like “hidden meaning” and “deeper significance.” These people are going to love this chapter.
Like it or not, over the years The Wizard of Oz has been the object of much high- and low-minded speculation. Because the film has always had a particular fascination for me, I have kept a mental record of the different things people have said about it. One of the first commentaries about Oz came in junior high when the phrase, “There's no place like home” was presented as an example of a theme or moral. That made sense, but when I thought about it, I began to wonder if that was the real message. I remember thinking that the movie's case for the superiority of “home” was kind of weak. Kansas is presented in dull sepia tones as a barren place of drudgery, while Oz bursts with Technicolor, fantasy and adventure; the choice of which was the better place seemed obvious to me.
The search for meaning didn't stop with these casual musings. In high school, I learned that in his book, L.L. Baum used the Yellow Brick Road as a symbolic defense of the gold standard. I didn't understand (and hardly cared) about turn-of-the-century economic politics, but the interpretation did bring home the possibility of metaphor appearing where I didn't expect it. A few years later, I was exposed to the persistent rumor that if Oz was synced wi
th Pink Floyd's classic album Dark Side of the Moon, all sorts of cross-references would appear (e.g., a heartbeat heard at the end of “Eclipse,” just as Dorothy puts her hand on the Tin Man's chest). What this actually suggests about the meaning of Oz is unclear, but this mystical synchronicity did drive the film even deeper into the realm of the profound.
Critics have also spent time interpreting The Wizard of Oz. One analyst interprets Dorothy's journey in the film as a metaphor for the feminine transition to adolescence.1 Another writer extends this analysis to the cultural domain to argue that the film represents a puberty rite.2 The gender focus is shifted to argue that Dorothy's experience captures gay male individuation, including the coming-out experience.3 Yet another observer has argued that the characters of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion represent Dorothy's attempt to achieve balance by integrating masculine characteristics.4 Finally, a psychotherapist argues that the plot systematically captures qualities associated with therapeutic healing (the establishment of interpersonal bonds and the development of perceived mastery).5
This chapter takes the perspective that films are windows or mirrors into the world of human behavior, the workings of the mind, and human nature itself. Contained in movies, we can see individual development taking place—the operation of unconscious defense mechanisms, social-psychological processes, and so on. Here, film is a landscape on which psychological entities are projected.
Through a process of reading or interpreting film as one type of symbolic text (other types include novels, poems, photographs, statues, etc.),6 it is possible to gain greater insight into individuals and society. This interpretive approach has been very popular when it comes to films, not only for the field of academic film studies, but for scholars in other disciplines, film critics who write for newspapers and magazines, and movie buffs who enjoy getting their hands dirty with deeper meanings.
While theorists periodically attempt to laud film for its realism, there has been a long running tendency among film commentators to view films as dreams.7 Movies have a mysterious quality that suggests their surfaces are not what they appear to be and therefore beg for a more satisfactory explanation than literalism can provide.
If a shared impulse compels people to understand what a movie means, there are few universally shared beliefs about how one should go about interpreting a movie. This is where theory comes in; when interpreters approach a movie, they typically have pre-established ideas about the essence of film, society or human nature that directs them as they go about their meaning-making business.8 The history of film studies is characterized by dozens of more or less distinct theoretical approaches involving textual interpretation.9
If we focus on the fact that human minds create films (people make choices about costumes, lightning, dialogue, etc.), all films may be seen as reflections of the human mind. Thus, movies can't be discussed unless they are watched by thinking, feeling human beings. When we analyze a film, we are, at least in part, analyzing the mind through film. In this chapter I focus on several approaches to film interpretation explicitly grounded in psychosocial theories of human nature and embodied in phrases like “behavioral patterns,” “repressed desires” and “mental apparatus.”
Human Behavior in the Movies
While there are infinite realms of human behavior that could be depicted in the plots, characters and setting of films, not all of these behaviors require sophisticated theories to understand. Social scientists have taken a magnifying glass to many behavioral domains shown in the movies including sex, violence, politics, gambling, gender, motherhood, smoking, drinking, sports, college, crime, juvenile delinquency, dreams, poverty, wealth, romance, anger, domestic violence, old age, psychotherapy, and mental illness.10 Usually studies that zero in on particular types of behavior or people are interested in trends across multiple movies. While these cinematic depictions do not necessarily portray objective reality accurately, we can assume that they capture widespread perceptions of particular behaviors and even viewers’ attitudes toward these behaviors.11
One approach to classifying behavior exhibited in film is relatively intuitive. An analyst simply defines a particular behavior pattern and then identifies select films, characters, and genres that exemplify these trends. It has become common for movie critics in publications like Time and Entertainment Weekly to refer to the “man-child” phenomenon in the comedies of the 1990s and 2000s—emotionally stunted characters often played by Adam Sandler, Will Farrell, or Seth Rogen who reflect the hesitancy of Generations X and Y to “man-up” and accept their responsibilities. Intuitive approaches also appear in scholarly journals; one article examines films since 1970 that routinely portray evangelical Christians as hypocritical, naïve, or psychotic.12
Content analysis is a more systematic approach to studying human behaviors in media; it can be applied to written (novels and poetry), aural (music), or visual (magazine advertising and film) forms.13 This approach has two defining components: systematically generating a sample of films to be analyzed, while consistently applying an explicit coding scheme to each film in the sample. Content analysis represents an alliance between mainstream social scientific approaches and textual/interpretive approaches. Since the coding scheme is designed to be applied by anyone and yield the same results, a demonstrable degree of “reliability” is established (the observations of one observer are shared by other observers). Thus, a carefully conducted content analysis is able to assert that a particular analysis is not just the idiosyncratic fantasies of one clever critic.14
Just like rock and roll, the most common topics of interest for film content analysis have been violence, sex, and drugs (and other unhealthy behaviors).15 In regards to violence, a widely cited national study documented that children's programs were significantly more violent than adult programming, with up to 30 acts of violence per hour. 16 Many of these incidents were less graphic and more humorous than adult violence, however. It is likely that this pattern holds for children's movies as well. While some believe that unrealistic violence is less disturbing to children, the authors point out that such depictions can be relatively more influential on children's behavior because the negative consequences of violence are downplayed.
Researchers have also focused on “relational aggression”—indirect but harmful actions such as spreading rumors, exclusion, and the silent treatment captured in Mean Girls.17 Animated Disney films were found to represent indirect aggression nine times per hour.18 Interestingly, both “good” and “bad” Disney characters engaged in relational aggression. However, the good characters’ actions tended to be lightly aggressive (e.g., a defiant gesture or a dirty look) while the bad characters’ actions were more harmful to others (e.g., pressuring, casting harmful spells, or scheming, such as Gaston's plotting against the Beast in Beauty and the Beast).
Sex in the media has also received a great deal of attention, not just in mainstream film, but in women's magazines, television, and pornography. The practical reality of how these studies are conducted is a bit surreal: graduate students in austere laboratories, surrounded by stacks of porn, watch people have sex while they hold clipboards in their laps and take notes on the variations in sexual partners and positions. The results of this odd activity sometimes confirm what most people would intuitively guess, but occasionally the results challenge assumptions.19 By watching a sample of R-rated films from the 1980s, researchers found that sex between unmarried couples was more commonly depicted than sex between married couples. While this may not be shocking in itself, the strength of the pattern was surprising: 32 unmarried sex acts to one married sex act. Either Hollywood believes that married people do not have sex, or marital sex just isn't that interesting to screenwriters.
Analyses of pornographic videos/movies tend to focus on tabulating gender-pairings and types of sex acts.20 Such studies provide a picture of the kinds of pervasive images that are part the cultural environment. One finding from a large-scale analysis of 443 sexually explici
t videos from the 1980s looked at power relationships in the depiction of sex acts.21 It found that only a third of the sex scenes clearly indicated that both partners were equally motivated. Instead, the majority of sex acts were initiated by the physical domination (usually by the male) or manipulation (e.g., an employer exploiting a worker) of one partner over the other.
The combination of sex and violence in the movies has proven to be an irresistible research topic. In the mid-90s an unlikely scholarly debate broke out between two factions of social scientists arguing about the gender-ratio of violent deaths in so-called “slasher” films (horror films in which a homicidal maniac stalks and kills a series of victims).22 One group of researchers contended that movie slashers were equal opportunity killers when it came to gender, while the other group emphasized the frequency of violence against women and the degree to which the female characters’ sexual activity was related to their ultimate demise. The pattern that “good girls” survive while “bad girls” are killed is recognized outside academia; characters in the blockbuster Scream self-consciously muse about the fate of other characters based on their sexual behavior. The most recent analysis of this issue confirmed that, indeed, sexualized females characters are less likely to survive slasher films and that their death scenes are likely to be extended.23 This is a good example of how social science research can overlap observations made by attentive fans and critics.
Health-related behaviors (or, more typically, unhealthy behaviors) in film such as alcohol/substance use, condom use and exercise are frequent topics of content analysis. This interest corresponds to the recent expansion of health psychology, an applied subfield dedicated to helping prevent and treat health problems through the application of psychological techniques.24 As one of the crucial applications of health psych is on smoking prevention and cessation, it is not surprising that smoking in movies has been an area of interest.
Psychology at the Movies Page 3