Contents

This edition first published 2012
© 2012 Skip Dine Young

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Young, Skip Dine.
Psychology at the movies / Skip Dine Young.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-97177-2 (pbk.)
1. Motion pictures–Psychological aspects. 2. Psychoanalysis and motion pictures.
3. Motion picture audiences–Psychology. 4. Psychiatry in motion pictures.
5. Psychoanalysis in motion pictures. 6. Mental health personnel in motion pictures.
I. Title.
PN1995.Y63 2012
791.43′6561–dc23
2011042656

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

To My Family

List of Illustrations and Figures

Illustrations

Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) © AF archive/Alamy

Director Martin Scorsese holds a gun on the set of Taxi Driver © Steve Schapiro/Corbis

John Hinckley Jr, who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, poses in front of the White House. © Bettmann/Corbis

Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Judy Garland & Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz (1939) © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) © AF archive/Alamy

Robin Williams & Matt Damon as Sean & Will in Good Will Hunting (1997) © Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in New York City. March 1986. © Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

Mia Farrow & Woody Allen as Judy & Gabe in Husbands and Wives (1992) © AF archive/Alamy

Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers in Black Swan (2010) © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Jim Carrey & Kate Winslet as Joel Barish & Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) © AF archive/Alamy

Linda Blair & Max von Sydow as Regan & Father Merrin in The Exorcist (1973) © Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy

Juliette Lewis & Woody Harrelson as Mallory & Mickey in Natural Born Killers (1994) © AF archive/Alamy

A still from a security video shows Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris on the day they killed twelve students and one teacher at Columbine High School, Colorado. April 20, 1999. © Reuters/Corbis

Al Pacino as Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) © Photos 12/Alamy

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher & Harrison Ford as Luke, Leia & Han in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

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

Skip Young, Star Wars fan, age 10

Figures

Symbolic activity in film

The many faces of Psychology at the Movies

Symbolic activity in film viewing: Comprehension, emotion and perception

Symbolic activity in film viewing: Interpretation and evaluation

Symbolic activity in film viewing: Function and effect

Symbolic activity in film (expanded)

Acknowledgments

I would especially like to thank Lindsay Marsh and Mary Ryan. Without their help I would never have been able to finish this book (at least not in the current decade). As my research assistant, Lindsay’s patience and attention to detail allowed me to focus and work around my own limitations. Mary’s invaluable editing and commentary made the manuscript infinitely more readable and helped me (begin) to unlearn decades of bad writing habits.

I appreciate the feedback I received on drafts of the manuscript from my colleagues Bill Altermatt, John Krantz, Ellen Altermatt, Mark Fearnow, Bill Bettler, Jared Bates and Ron Smith. Their comments helped me make adjustments and gave me perspective when I needed it. I am lucky to be a part of a vital faculty that is a tribute to the liberal arts.

Hanover College has been a great support to this project. The grant I received from the Faculty Development Committee and the sabbatical leave from the Board of Trustees provided me with the funding and time I needed. In addition the staff at Duggan Library (especially Patricia Lawrence, Mary Royalty, Ken Gibson and Lela Bradshaw) were extremely accommodating in my attempts to acquire the materials I needed for my own little psychology and film library. I would also like to thank whoever made the decision for the College to mow the lawns on campus housing. That was one distraction I didn’t have to worry about that might otherwise have pushed me over the edge.

I am grateful to the many students I have worked with, particularly those who have taken “The Psychology of Film” over the past 15 years. I have found that having students is the only way professors can figure out what is really important.

I thank the faculty at Clark University, particularly my mentors Bernie Kaplan and Lenny Cirillo. Most of the ideas in this book first came to me in graduate school, and I am eternally grateful for the unique intellectual environment at Clark that nurtured so many different thoughts and convinced me that psychoanalytic interpretations of movies and psychological experiments belong in the same universe.

The publication team at Wiley-Blackwell (Andy Peart, Karen Shield and Tori Halliday) gently guided me through a process that was new to me. I appreciate the opportunity.

Special thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, George Lucas, and the many other filmmakers who inspired my passion for film in the first place.

Finally, I’d like to express my gratitude to my family for accommodating my distraction and diminished energy. I hope to spend more time with them now, playing and maybe watching a few movies (instead of just writing about them).

Chapter 1

Introduction—The Many Sides of Psychology and the Many Faces of the Movies

Like all art, movies are saturated with the human mind—they are created by humans, they depict human action, and they are viewed by a human audience. Movies are a particularly vivid art form, making use of striking moving images and vibrant sounds to connect filmmakers to the audience through celluloid and the senses.

Consider the following story: Martin Scorsese was born in Flushing, New York in 1942 and grew up in the tough Little Italy section of lower Manhattan. Because of an asthmatic condition he could not play like the other children and spent much his time indoors watching movies, where he was partially protected from the mean streets of New York City, yet felt lonely and isolated. He was deeply immersed in Catholicism and briefly attended a seminary before enrolling in NYU's film school.

By the mid-70s, Scorsese was one of the young, ambitious directors (along with Arthur Penn, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and others) who were revolutionizing Hollywood. In 1976, he made Taxi Driver about an emotionally unstable cabbie, Travis Bickle, who is trapped by the haunted streets of New York City. Actor Robert De Niro starred in the film and invested Travis's intrapsychic struggles with a terrifying realism.

Taxi Driver was a tour-de-force of raw language, disturbing imagery, and innovative cinematic techniques. In one famous sequence, an elaborate, slow-motion overhead tracking shot surveys the carnage that has resulted from Travis's convoluted attempt to rescue a child prostitute (Jodie Foster). That scene in particular was considered so violent that the Motion Picture Association of America insisted that Scorsese alter the hue of the blood in order to avoid an X rating.

Despite its less than commercial subject matter, Taxi Driver was highly successful and audiences lined up. Reactions among audience members were polarized. Some viewers proclaimed it to be not only technically brilliant but also a cathartic descent into the scarred psyche of an individual character and of America itself. Other viewers found the film to be exploitative and morally misguided. A scene in which Travis, shirtless but outfitted with multiple guns and holsters, looks into the mirror and asks threateningly, “You talkin' to me?” became a part of the common lexicon.

In 1981, one viewer, John Hinckley, Jr, watched the movie 15 times in a retro theater. He was inspired to assassinate President Reagan in order to gain the attention of Jodie Foster with whom Hinckley was romantically obsessed. The assassination failed, but Reagan was shot and several people were seriously wounded, including Reagan's Press Secretary, James Brady, who was paralyzed for life. Hinckley was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and found not guilty by reason of insanity. The incident became part of the cultural debate on the insanity defense, gun control, and the role of media in society.

Over 30 years later, Taxi Driver is still used frequently by pundits and college professors to make points about all manner of things—the cultural zeitgeist of the 1970s; the distortion in media representations; the nature of paranoid thinking; and so on.

Where is the psychology in this story? Obviously, it is everywhere. Scorsese's personal background in a difficult social environment becomes melded with his individual talents and obsessions. These themes of sin, hardship, aggression and redemption appear in films like Taxi Driver, not only in the stories but in the choice of camera angles and color schemes. Aware that art has a relationship to the world outside of the theater, some viewers laud the film for its insightful portrayal of insanity and cultural rot while others find the film disturbing and worry about the message it sends. One psychotic viewer takes the movie as a usable model for assassinating the president. One can easily imagine an entire book on The Psychology of Taxi Driver.

Perhaps a more revealing question is: What is not psychological about this story? There are elements that could be divorced from the realm of psychology—perhaps the technical use of tracking shots or the historical aspects of America in the 1970s. But these distinctions break down if you think about them too much. After all, a camera shot forms the basis for the audience's perceptual experience. And the history of the 1970s is embodied in characters like Travis, artists like Scorsese, and audience members like Hinckley. Once you start looking for it, you can't escape psychology in the movies. There may be ways of talking about movies without highlighting psychological elements, but as a psychologist, I am not sure why anybody would want to.

Goals of Psychology at the Movies

The basic premise of this book is that all movies are psychologically alive, exploding with human drama. This drama has been looked at from many different angles. It is significant that both laboratory psychology and clinical psychoanalysis emerged at almost the same historical point as motion pictures—the end of the nineteenth century. The cultural impact of both psychology and film over that next century-plus has obviously been enormous. All along this historical path, there have been many occasions when psychologists have looked at movies as well as many times when movies have looked at psychologists. This book creates a snapshot of the fascinating interweaving between psychology and the movies.

There is no way to even summarize all of the work that has been done on the psychology of movies in one book. The body of available studies, analyses, and commentaries is truly vast—worthy not of a single book but of a library. One prominent early psychologist (and still the psychologist with the best name), Hugo Munsterberg, wrote a book, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study in 1916, and the scholarship has been expanding for a century. The present book can be thought of as a kind of directory for the mythical “International Library of Psychology and Film,” identifying different sections of the library and calling attention to some of the most interesting works.

The scope of fields I cover is far-reaching. As far as I am aware, no other book has attempted to bring so many diverse approaches together under one cover. It considers everything from Freudian psychoanalysis of Hitchcock films to the uncanny popularity of certain movies to children's film-inspired aggression toward a Bobo doll. As the research on film has become more abundant, it has also become more fractured; most recent books addressing issues related to psychology and film are likely to cover only one or two of the chapters contained here. Throughout this book, I hope to distinguish different approaches, concisely describe fundamental issues, and provide evocative cinematic examples. In every case, my overviews are not meant to be definitive; instead they are meant to provide clues for further exploration.

The primary intended readers for this book are students and non-professionals who have a love of movies and/or psychology. Therefore it is relatively jargon-free, and when I do use technical terms, I pause to explain them. All of the research traditions discussed in this book are grounded in essential film-related human phenomena about which many people are curious; my task is to reveal those kernels of widespread fascination to a broad audience. In addition, the book may be useful to individuals already familiar with certain areas of the psychology of film. By drawing connections between diverse areas of study, alternative avenues of exploration are suggested that may be instructive even for experts. Ultimately, my goal is to help as many people as possible more fully appreciate the movies in our midst.

My personal and professional background has prepared me well for this undertaking. Most importantly, I am a movie fan. Ever since biweekly trips to the grimy movie theater on the American Army post in Germany on which I grew up, I have loved the movies. When I returned to the US in my ‘tweens, I discovered the wonders of an ever-expanding cable revolution that made many movies easily available. In my teens, trips to the movie theater and VHS rentals were a critical part of both my social life and my alone time. I learned to like all kinds of movies—American and foreign, popular and arty, old and new—but I developed a particular fondness for Hitchcock, suspense movies in general, and dark, satirical comedies.

It was this passion for movies that led to several educational choices when I got to college. As an undergraduate at Miami University (Ohio), I majored in psychology and minored in film studies. I wrote movie reviews for the school newspaper. I did my senior honors thesis on college men's experiences of watching violence in film using the then-current Blue Velvet as my primary stimulus.

I subsequently chose to do my graduate work at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Clark holds a unique place in the history of American psychology: It was co-founded by the prominent early American psychologist, G. Stanley Hall, and it has the honor of being the only place in America where Freud ever spoke. Clark's intellectual flavor was strongly influenced when developmental psychologist Heinz Werner settled there after fleeing Nazi Germany. Werner considered “development” to be a guiding concept that considers what it means for humans to progress toward some imagined end point (e.g., maturity, transcendence, enlightenment, happiness, etc.). His approach was more open to interdisciplinary thinking than much of mainstream American psychology, and Werner's work naturally integrated child development, anthropology, clinical psychology, and philosophy. This unrestricted spirit thrived at Clark in the 1990s when I was in graduate school. I was trained as a clinical psychologist, but I was also immersed in other dimensions of psychology (including developmental psychology, cultural psychology, narrative psychology, and neuropsychology) and was exposed to cross-disciplinary influences such as interpretive philosophy and literary studies. I ended up receiving an almost classical liberal graduate education. In this rich environment, I continued to pursue my interests in the psychology of film.

When it came time to pursue my career, I naturally gravitated toward liberal arts colleges. These kinds of (usually small) colleges take a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to education and strive to teach students fundamental intellectual skills such as writing, critical thinking, and the ability to engage in rational dialogue. I am currently a professor in the Psychology Department at Hanover College in Indiana where I have taught for 15 years. I teach clinically oriented classes like Behavior Disorders and Counseling and Psychotherapy, as well as pet courses like The Psychology of Film. I am also a licensed clinical psychologist.

Teaching at a liberal arts college has helped prepare me for writing this text. I have spent thousands of hours in close proximity to students, giving lectures to small groups, discussing ideas in seminars, and sitting with students working on independent projects. I have frequently used movies, music, and other symbolic media as teaching tools. My students are typically bright, curious individuals, but they do not often share the same language as their professors. This can be a good thing; if one spends too much time around other “experts,” it is easy to get lost in jargon and technicalities and to forget the fundamental assumptions of a field. Undergraduate students, on the other hand, tend to ask the basic questions, and far from being naïve, these often get to the heart of the matter. I want Psychology at the Movies to focus on the heart of the matter as well.

The type of scholarship that is expected at a liberal arts college is also an advantage in writing this book. Liberal arts colleges are sometimes referred to as “teaching colleges,” indicating the high value these institutions place on teaching and student learning. Professors at most liberal arts colleges do not function with the “publish or perish” mentality that characterizes much of modern higher education. I have published in the area of psychology and the movies, but I have also had the freedom to do research on student retention and even on the music of Bob Dylan.

In contrast, much of modern academics has become so specialized that researchers often work in sub-subfields that allow for minimal contact with individuals outside of their specialty, even when they are in the same discipline. The liberal arts philosophy applied to scholarship requires an integrative, interdisciplinary approach. Psychology at the Movies casts a wide net designed to fall across many current intellectual divides and, because of this, it will hopefully be stimulating to readers who have an open-minded interest in all things psychological and all things cinematic.

Story, Entertainment and Art in the Movies

This book is about “movies,” a term everybody understands intuitively. However, there is some fuzziness around the margins that may occasionally be confusing. So in order to limit the scope of the book, I will focus on narrative, theatrical films created for entertainment/artistic purposes. A few of these terms are worth exploring:

A Liberal Use of Psychology

Many people who have never taken an academic course in psychology tend to associate “psychology” with the ideas of Sigmund Freud (e.g., dreams and the unconscious) or with clinical psychology more generally (e.g., counseling and psychological disorders). These associations are relevant but narrow, since psychology also covers neuropsychology (the chemical activity of the brain), social psychology (people's behavior in crowds), sensation and perception (the workings of the inner eye), learning (modeling the actions of others), cognition (memory) and many other areas and subspecialties. Moreover, psychology overlaps other disciplines in the social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and communication. Since people are biological beings, there is a strong historical connection between psychology and biology. Finally, psychologists are often interested in the same topics—social relationships, products of the imagination, and human nature—as scholars in humanities such as philosophy and literary criticism.

Psychology is undeniably a broad field, and I treat it even more broadly than most psychologists: I think of it simply as the study of thought and action, with a focus on humans. This definition is not so different from those found in most intro psych textbooks. However, textbooks typically follow with caveats about how the study of thought and action must be done in a certain way in order to qualify as psychology—particular methods must be followed. This attention to method is important to the textbook writers in distinguishing “real” psychology from what is often referred to as “pseudo-psychology” or “pop-psychology.” It is also used to distinguish psychology from related academic disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities.

Psychology at the Movies takes a liberal (as in “the liberal arts”) approach to what is meant by psychology. In these pages, experimental psychology, cultural psychology, Freudian psychoanalysis, mass communication and film/literary criticism (not to mention bits of philosophy, neuroscience and pop-psych) coexist and intermingle. One of my models is Malcolm Gladwell and his best-selling books Blink (2005) and Outliers (2008). I find Gladwell to be among the most interesting commentators on social psychological phenomena in the past decade. Gladwell's background as a journalist frees him from strict disciplinary loyalty and allows him to freely mix neuroscience, experiments, demographics, and good old-fashioned case studies as he develops his ideas.

In response to the compartmentalizing tendencies of modern academics, Robert Sternberg and his collaborators have called for a “unified psychology” that integrates various related disciplines and subdisciplines by focusing on particular phenomena of interest and not simply drawing lines based on different methods and historical traditions. Psychology at the Movies is written in this unifying spirit: people in movies, people making movies, and people watching movies are the phenomena of interest. If there are research traditions out there that have been interested in these phenomena, I have attempted to address them, at least cursorily. Unfortunately, many of these approaches have developed in relative isolation from each other over an extended period of time. When there has been contact, it has sometimes been hostile. By making interconnections, I hope I can facilitate overdue conversations between these previously divorced perspectives and methods.

All methods are not the same nor equal in achieving particular ends. Some may be based on nonsense and lead to nothing. However, one can safely assume that any of the methods that have been used by intelligent, thoughtful scholars over a period of many years have a basis in reason. That doesn't mean they never lead to mistakes, but it does strongly suggest there is likely some compelling rationale for the “method in their madness.”

Every method allows us to see some things, but it also keeps us from seeing other things. I like the example of an astronomer looking through a powerful telescope allowing him to see faraway galaxies that are invisible to the naked eye, thereby making enormous contributions to knowledge. However, by using a single method, there are many parts of reality of which the scientist may be unaware: he is not only blind to parts of the galaxy where the telescope is not aimed at a given moment, but even to actions occurring in the room, such as his wife walking up behind him. If he wants to see and understand her, he would be advised to use a different method.

Therefore, I will consider all established methodological approaches which claim to shed light on the relationship between movies and human actions. These include methods that lie at the core of psychology as a scientific discipline (e.g., a laboratory-based experiment in which factors are carefully controlled and varied), but also methods that are closer to psychology as a clinical discipline (e.g., a case study of film being used in insight-oriented psychotherapy) and the humanities (e.g., interpretation of a film based on feminist relational theory). Each method is discussed in terms of its advantages (what it tells us) and limitations (what it does not tell us). What might at first appear to be different disciplines reaching contradictory conclusions could turn out to be different disciplines looking at different aspects of reality. This approach to method is at once inclusive yet discriminating.

A Symbolic Framework for the Psychology of Film

The psychology of film can be unified by thinking of movies as symbols. Movies are symbols that have meaning; these symbols are created by filmmakers, and they are received by audiences. The four components of this framework are outlined in :

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.

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. 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. 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.

Organization of Psychology at the Movies

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.

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.