Hunt for the wilderpeople (2016)

In contrast to the previous movie we have watched, which is a heartbreakingly sad film about grief and coping with death (Grace is Gone), this week was extremely fun and exciting in comparison. Since I did not submit a blog entry for the previous movie, allow me to spend a short while to talk about it as I do see some similarities in terms of theme and central message between the two.

Grace is Gone (2007)
I have always hated watching sentimental movies, not that I hate the content, I just hate crying in front of others especially because I am easily touched. For example, I heard quite a lot of sniffling sounds after the screening finished, and I tried my very best to suppress a sob simply because I did not want to join in. It is a bad habit of mine, to not let my emotions show to the point of blocking out whoever that wants to know me on a deeper level, even though I understand very well that it is much more healthier to acknowledge and embrace my own emotions.

As mentioned in class, "Grace is Gone" mainly revolves around grief. To be specific, how a person handles grief. The main protagonist, Stan, was extremely distraught and disorientated after his wife's death, as seen by his series of disorganized behaviors and his struggle on how to appropriately communicate this message to his children. We were able to witness his internal struggles to not only deal with his own emotions, but also to resolve issues his eldest daughter faced (loneliness, sleepless nights) while supporting his children emotionally after the death of their mother.

Hunt for the wilderpeople
Coming back to "Hunt for the wilderpeople", this movie is absolutely wonderful and honestly speaking I wouldn't mind watching it all over again. It was like reading a children's story book, with colourful scenery, animated performances, distinctive characters, and not to mention the exciting adventures Ricky and Hector had. Having said that, even though a lot of the serious issues were covered under the comedic atmosphere the film portrayed, I personally still see a resemblance between this and "Grace" as it is also a film about loss and coping.

Similar to "Grace", Hector and Ricky experienced the loss of Bella, who helped Ricky to open up to his new family and was like a mother figure to him. Even though the film touched very lightly on the grieving process of the remaining two, it should be taken note that Ricky first took off to the mountains in search for Bella's "resting place" as she had once told him. It is similar to a particular scene in "Grace", whereby Stan paced around his home and the room he shared with Grace after hearing about her death. As mentioned in class, it is one of the symptoms of people experiencing grief as they are reminiscing the times with their loved ones at a setting that holds a special meaning for them.

The one relieve that was seen after Bella's death was that Hector and Ricky were both moving on in their own way. Cohen, Mannarino, and Knudsen (2004) and Worden (1991) state that individuals who are able to achieve reconciliation with the death of a loved one generally go through the following tasks:
1. accepting the reality of the death
2. fully experiencing the pain associated with the loss
3. adjusting to life without the loved one
4. integrating aspects of the loved one into one's own self-identity
5. converting the relationship from one of ongoing interactions to one of memory
6. finding meaning in the loved one's death
7. recommitting to new relationships with other adults (as cited in Howarth, 2011).

Personally, I think Hector and Ricky were progressing pretty well as they were not preoccupied with Bella's death and did not wallow in loss which would hinder their daily functioning. Plus, Ricky helped Hector to truly accept Bella's death by bringing her ashes to the mountain, as opposed to him refusing to acknowledge the ashes in the beginning of the movie. This allows Hector to scatter Bella's ashes over a waterfall and achieve closure to her death as according to Ricky, she is now resting at a place she loved.

The other point I notice is that Hector and Ricky were unconsciously giving each other emotional support to come to terms with Bella's death. Social support is very important to an individual's overall well-being and is also effective in building resilience in times of stress (Wang, Cai, Qian, Peng, 2014; Ozbay et al., 2007). After a few months of spending time together, it is quite evident that both had developed love and care for each other (Ricky was very reluctant to hand Hector over to the child welfare and even resorted to falsely accusing Hector as a "molesterer" to prevent him from leaving), and that helped a lot for them to accept a new family as shown in the end of the movie, when Ricky found a new foster family to take care of him.

Me and this fat kid / We ran we ate and read book / And it was the best

Finally, another point to note is that children knows what is going on in their environment even if nobody tells them, as opposed to what many adults think. It is also the environment that plays a big part in shaping how a child is like, thus many children who display "abnormal" behaviors often have a reason for doing so. In "Grace", Heidi often stays awake late at night, causing her lack of concentration in class, and it was mainly caused by loneliness. In "Hunt", the deviant behavior which Ricky displayed, was mainly due to abandonment and lack of care.

This also brings to another observation, which is people often jump to conclusions very easily without spending time to know more about the background and motivation behind an occurrence or act. The woman from the child welfare described Ricky as an extremely difficult boy who caused havoc and trouble, but the audience were able to see a different side of the story when Ricky burnt down Hector's shed. After Bella's death, he was unwilling to go back to juvenile prison and be tossed around like a ball to different foster families who would eventually abandon him, and so he faked his own "death" by setting up a fire. It was not done purely for fun, as to me it was more of a desperate attempt to escape from a life where nobody understands and cares for him.

The same problem was seen when three hunters questioned Ricky about what has Hector done to him. They used leading questions (which is a big no-no during interviews) such as "did he push you off the...?" (ok sorry I can't remember the question) which were built on their own assumptions instead of the truth. This is what I feel we should all be more mindful about, to not view the world through our existing schemas and to not judge a situation or a person without first understanding the rational behind the outcome.


References:
Howarth, R. A. (2011). Concepts and controversies in grief and loss. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 33(1), 4-10. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17744/mehc.33.1.900m56162888u737

Ozbay, F., Johnson, D. C., Dimoulas, E., Morgan, C. A. III., Charney, D., & Southwick, S. (2007). Social support and resilience to stress. Psychiatry (Edgmont), 4(5), 35-40. doi:

Wang, X. M., Cai, L., Qian, J., & Peng, J. X. (2014). Social support moderates stress effects on depression. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 8(41). doi: 10.1186/1752-4458-8-41

Experimenter (2015)

Surely a lot of people have heard about Stanley Milgram's "shock" experiment back in the 1960's. We as psychology students have been exposed to this ever since year one, and by now I am pretty sure it won't trigger much response from us except "uhh again".

BUT. But. It is undeniable that Milgram was a brave man who brought upon an evolutionary breakthrough in the field of psychology because of his non-conforming attitude. This is also precisely why we still learn about his obedience experiment even though it was conducted over half a decade ago-- because he was daring enough and curious enough to do something no one else thought of doing.

Inevitably, I have to talk about "conformity and obedience" again when it comes to Milgram. Even though his experiment mainly focused on obedience, his environment demanded him to conform and comply to the moral standards of the academic field. Below are some detailed explanations regarding the three terms mentioned above:

1. Conformity

Conformity refers to a change in attitude or behavior of a person to cope with either real or imagined group pressure (Myers, 2014).This phenomenon can be justified through two generally categorized factors, namely normative social influence and informational social influence, with the former used in order to be accepted by the majority and be seen as normal, and the latter used to obtain information from the norm about situations that one is unfamiliar with (Ciccarelli & White, 2015). The film gave an example which is also another famous psychological experiment- Asch's conformity study (The "line" study, quoting Milagram's wife). It shows a participant choosing an obviously wrong answer to a question simply because other confederates picked the same wrong answer before him. As for Milgram himself, he was confronted by the IRB due to ethical issues with his obedience study, and they did not grant him a tenure in Harvard because he failed to conform to the ethical standards.

2. Obedience

Obedience, as shown in the movie, utilizes status and power to make others adhere to one's demands. Migram's participants showed a higher rate of obedience when the "experimenter" looked more professional or when the setting was more formal. Besides, the instructions given which requires them to continue the study acted as a motivator for them to go all the way with the electric shocks. It showed how much power the authority has over most people and whether they like it or not, most of them would commit "heinous" acts simply because they were asked to do so.

The biggest controversy surrounding Milgram's obedience study has always been the ethical aspect of it. In the beginning, I was also opposed to this study as it created psychological distress for some of his participants. However, after reading some of the follow-up reports as well as after watching "Experimenter", I feel that we should appreciate the obedience experiment more as Milgram opened our eyes to another side of human behavior that we have never been exposed to before this. And, as Dr Goh mentioned, we need more psychologists with the passion for experiment just like Milgram instead of people who run experiments and research just for the sake of completing a deadline. 

Having said that, below is my social experiment design:

The experiment will be set in a public restaurant near HELP University Damansara campus (since more students will eat at those restaurants), the restaurant will organize an event (a fake event, and we will need cooperation from the restaurant) which gives each customer a small piece of paper, asking them a series of questions about the restaurant so they will stand a chance to win a prize. Among the questions will be this: "are you feeling helpful today?". 

After customer A (target A) finished filling the paper, a confederate will walk into the restaurant and sit at the table beside the customer, there will be two conditions:

A) Confederate orders food but acts extremely rude to the waiter

B) Confederate orders food politely to the waiter

Afterwards, the confederate will leave his or her place but trips beside customer A, spilling his or her file full of papers. Then, we will see if customer A helps our confederate to pick them up.

- hypotheses:

1. Participants are more likely to help confederates who display higher level of agreeableness.

2. Participants' perceived helpfulness will contradict their actual helpfulness in condition A.

This experiment was inspired by the story of the Good Samaritan experiment, in which people will be less likely to help a person in need because of several circumstance such as short of time. However, this design has several limitations as we are unable to control the amount of customers coming into the restaurant, plus other customers might also help the confederate with his or her papers. Not to mention, by merely asking "are you feeling helpful today?", it may act as a reminder for potential participants to act more altruistically.

References:

Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2015). Psychology (4th ed.). England: Pearson Education Limited.

Myers, D. G. (2014). Social Psychology (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Amadeus (1984)

Amadeus, which took home 8 statuettes at the Academy Awards over 30 years ago, is undoubtedly an amazing parody to the story between Mozart and Salieri that is very enjoyable to both the eyes and ears. The opening scene made me think of the line "you had me at hello", as I was instantly drawn to the movie the second it played out (not the suicide, of course, the music). The outstanding performances on the soundtrack left a very good impression in me, and that impression stayed right until the end despite the plot being extremely dark, heavy, and depressing (talk about the power of primacy effects).

The story about the two musicians' rivalry started in 1830, where Alexander Pushkin published a short play called "Mozart and Salieri".

This is a long movie, for sure, and there were a few instances where my mind started wandering back to a time when I was still learning music. Piano, to be exact. I started my lessons at around 4 or 5, and quit at the age of 17 using SPM as an excuse simply because I hated every second of it (at least I thought I did). I was not talented. In fact, quoting Salieri's line, very mediocre. I have always loved music, but that love gradually faded away with every passing second of my lesson. Long story short, piano exam pieces were the only songs I got to play and my teacher did not see any point in teaching me something extra. It was not until recently that I started to miss the feeling of playing a musical instrument and the enjoyment of immersing yourself together with the music. Even though I do not intend to pick it up again as I have already sold my piano to make more space, I truly regret letting it go without trying to find a way to rekindle my passion.

Now, with that out of the way, let's talk psychology. The film portrayed a striking contrast between the genius and the talented, in which all forms of talent fades in comparison to Mozart's brilliance. Thus, the cognitive dissonance experienced by Salieri is also very apparent in my eyes. Cognitive dissonance, as mentioned in the previous entry, refers to when an individual's attitudes and behaviors contradict each other, same goes to contradicting sets of attitudes and beliefs (Ciccarelli & White, 2015). Salieri, the main antagonist in this film, experienced a dissonance between his worship for God and his resentment towards God for the "unequal" treatment in terms of musical talent. Plus, his love for Mozart's music, which he described as the "voice of God", also contradicts with his envy which eventually caused him to take "revenge" on God in his twisted ways. This is in line with Festinger's theory which states that when an individual is experiencing psychological discomfort due to cognitive dissonance, he or she will seek ways to reduce said discomfort through either "changing behavior, changing cognitions or adding new cognitive elements" (Metin & Camgoz, 2011). What Salieri did, was to change his cognition that God has abandoned him and has chosen Mozart to be his messenger so he will have a legitimate reason for his hatred, and then proceed to plan the murder and theft of Mozart's work so he will be able to gain recognition using his Requiem after the former dies.

Besides cognitive dissonance, Salieri's aggressive behaviors towards Mozart is also explainable with the concept of social psychology. The frustration aggression theory states that aggression is triggered when a goal-directed behavior is blocked (Myers, 2014), which explains Salieri's malicious intentions as he feels threatened by Mozart's music. Typically, when the frustrated individual believes that aggressive behavior will reduce said frustration, he or she will act in ways that may put others' in harm's way. This is also an accurate illustration of the theory of relative deprivation, in which frustration occurs when there is an established perception that one is less well off as compared to others. Salieri is unable to shake his feelings of inferiority especially after Mozart effortlessly improvised his welcoming march in front of the Emperor. He realized then, that Mozart's music is something he could never achieve, and even though people regarded him as highly talented as prestigious, it is his own sense of inferiority that haunts him, thus marked the beginning of his resentment.

"God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar."

The theory of learned helplessness is also present in this movie, but instead of Salieri, it is reflected on Constanze, Mozart's wife. Unlike the beginning of their marriage, where Constanze would go out of her way to beg Salieri to give her husband a job, she stopped making an effort to recommend his works after Salieri humuliated her in front of his servant, and proceed to lay at home without doing anything productive, as shown when Mozart's father visited him and found her sleeping in, leaving their house in a pile of mess. On the surface, it might seem that Mozart is the one that was trapped in learned helplessness towards the end of the movie, but in my opinion he was still working even in his death bed to earn a living for his family, and that to me is the greatest evidence of a man's struggle against the misfortune life has presented him.

I am actually very fond of this picture. It looks oddly calming, if not for Salieri's deliberate murder attempt to literally work Mozart to death and claims the piece as his own. While I understand his frustration and struggles of not being able to be at par with someone so much more gifted and advanced than him (been there, done that), it also made me reflect on my past behavior, on how competition can sometimes be so toxic you might lose yourself in the process of trying to outperform another person.

*Disclaimer: I don't actually hate my "mediocrity" when it comes to music, I believe every one has their own talent and uniqueness in different areas, you just have to look harder/ wider/ deeper. 


References:

Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2015). Psychology (4th ed.). England: Pearson Education Limited.

Metin, I., & Camgoz, S. M. (2011). The advances in the history of cognitive dissonance theory. 
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(6), 131-136. Retrieved from http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol._1_No._6;_June_2011/14.pdf

Myers, D. G. (2014). Social Psychology (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.


*I am not sure why the font size of my references' is so small but it's bothering me and I have been adjusting it for the past 10 minutes.