Film Analysis on Girl, Interrupted - Movie Review Example

Film Analysis on Girl, Interrupted Film Analysis on Girl, Interrupted Behavioral confirmation is a social-psychological principle that is evident in this film. It is portrayed in Lisa, a sociopath. The scene in play is the event in which Susanna is about to be released, and Lisa targets her for ridicule. She secretly takes Susanna’s diary and reads it to Polly and Georgina, with the aim of turning them against Susanna. Lisa and the other two ladies are in the corridor mazes that are just below the wards, and Susanna overhears them. She confronts the three, and Georgina threatens to have her killed. However, Susanna is a changed woman, and she gets the strength and courage to face Lisa, telling her that she only returned to Claymoore because she had nowhere else to go. She claims that there is a high possibility that Lisa is a self-proclaimed sociopath and that she is not mentally challenged but fakes it so as to be at the hospital. This confrontation leads to a suicide attempt by Lisa, but Georgina talks her out of it. Lisa ends up crying in pain, acknowledging the possibility that her sociopathy could be false. This principle is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that people expect someone to behave in a certain way in the society pushes the person involved to act in a way that confirms these expectations. Human beings may act routinely in ways that differ to their true beliefs, feelings or attitudes so as to fulfill the stereotypes that others have on them. A case study conducted by a psychologist, Mark Snyder, showed that the behavior of people is highly influenced by the belief of others. The physical attractiveness experiment carried out by Mark made a group of college men believe that they were communicating with an attractive female and a possible date via a tape recorder. Another group as convinced that they were talking to an unattractive date. The experiment showed that those who thought they were talking with a beautiful woman showed a lot of confidence, unlike the others. It was evident that the belief of an attractive woman influenced their behavior. In this scene, Lisa tries to act like the sociopath that people believe she is. She tries to manipulate Polly and Georgina so that she can psychologically hurt Susanna. However, Susanna is bright enough to see beyond the behavior of Lisa and confronts her with the fact that she is just an ordinary lady who poses as a strong, fearless woman. Lisa realizes how hard she had tried to conceal herself behind the sociopath stereotype and ends up breaking down. The displacement principle is also evident in this film. This principle can be seen in the early scenes of the movie in which the teenager Susanna takes and overdose of aspirin that gets her the Claymoore Hospital admission. She inflicts this pain on herself in an attempt to avoid going to college. She desires to become a writer instead of continuing with her studies. This act of swallowing pills is a form of rebellion against her guardians and the society members who were insisting that she goes to college. An indirect experimental observation by John Aubrey on Sir Walter Raleigh involved the latter and his son. Raleigh slapped his son at the dinner table. His son was afraid of retaliating directly at his father, and he struck his neighbor, making it look like a game in which the slaps would go round the table. He hoped that the eventual hit would arrive at his father. This experiment indicates that people are afraid of retaliating at people who are stronger and more powerful than they are. Instead, they opt to take out their frustrations on a weaker person, or one who will not fight back. In this scene, Susanna takes out her frustration on someone she knows cannot cause her harm, and one who will not pose any opposition. This person is herself. It shows that she is afraid of the people who pushed her to go to college and believes that she cannot face or confront them. She takes the frustration on herself and swallows the aspirin pills, not minding whether they would kill her or not. Susanna is only able to tell her frustrations to the nurses at Claymoore, and they are shocked by the fact that she could not explain her career perspectives to someone else close to her. The person in charge of this situation is not Susanna, and she, therefore, tries to avoid the fact that she has to go to college. This development leads to her getting cornered on the issue of whether to go to college or pursue her writing prospects. The bystander effect is also evident in this film. It can be seen I several scenes within the film, with a distinct one being where Daisy hangs herself. Susanna fails to help her through Lisa’s abusive nature just because Lisa is present. This scene occurs when Lisa influences Susanna to escape from Claymoore, and the two go to Daisy’s house. Daisy was recently released and was at home. Lisa takes her through emotional abuse by abusing her and opening up her personal life. Susanna is unable to stop her because of Lisa’s presence. She fails to look for Daisy throughout the night, which she would have done if Lisa were absent. In the end, Daisy hangs herself. This suicidal event would have been prevented if Susanna had stopped Lisa from abusing Daisy. She had also failed to go check on her during the night, and she ended up committing suicide. The bystander effect is a social-psychological principle that involves more than one person’s presence in an event. One person fails to help another due to the presence of another person. It applies mostly because one is afraid of the reaction of the bystander or person accompanying them. The bystander is mostly the offender, and the person who is in the capacity to help the one being offended fails to do so because the bystander is watching. Bibb Latane concentrated on the bystander effect by performing laboratory experiments. The tests were based on the observation of how people reacted to emergencies if at all they did. He mostly checked on the amount of time taken by people to respond to emergency situations that were staged by the researcher. These experiments were conducted in the presence of crowds and showed that the probability of people helping out in an emergency decreased relative to the crowd watching. One specific experiment included the posing of a woman in distress. In a solitary situation, more than three-quarters of the bystanders rushed to help the distressed woman. In the presence of a crowd, less than half of the witnesses went to check on the woman. This scene conforms to the bystander effect in the way Susanna’s behavior is determined by the presence of Lisa in Daisy’s house. The fact that Susanna fails to help Daisy during her period of mental torture under the pain of Lisa shows proves the bystander effect. This social-psychological principle is shown in the many ways that Susanna failed to intervene in saving Daisy from suicide (Girl, Interrupted, 1999). References Girl, interrupted [Motion picture]. (1999). Columbia Tristar Home Video Read More