I love to watch movies, which I think will be clear by the end of this
email. I was reading your interaction on using movies in psychology, and I
wanted to share my ideas.
Someday I want to construct a Psychology class around films, just as I have
plans to build one around novels someday. One could go to different levels
of analysis with the film media, 1) how a scenario or character reflects a
psychological concept--and was it done well or badly, was it true to form
or false, 2) the story line, 3) how it was played (interpreted) by the
actor, and 4) how the director used a technique that made use of
psychologial principles on us, the audience.
In the meantime, I want to say that there may be a way to show those film
clips in class other than by hooking up the vcr/tv set and priming it to
the clip! I was at a technology seminar earlier this summer and learned how
to capture video clips onto an html file. We also learned how to make use
of local html by burning a cd. Thus, I could collect these examples using
producer (I think that was the program but it might have been publisher, I
have it written down in my notes), put them on an html page so that when I
clicked on a word or icon, it activated, by hot link, the video clip, burn
the html files onto a cd, then play the local html file on a computer image
projected onto a screen for the class. I use many of the same references
every semester or each time I teach a course, and I am seeing new movies
all of the time from which I could add material. If I use the local html
file, I don't have to depend on the server (being down) or on a site (being
down).
Here are some more movies.
Kiss the Girls and Switchback for forensic psychology.
STand by Me, the autobiography of Stephen King, for the campfire scene
where some boys are discussing the gener of Goofy or Pluto, and other are
dicussing WOMEN! I use that for puberty in human growth & development. Also
the scene from Parenthhood (Steve Martin) where the young boy is discussing
wet dreams with Keanu Reeves. Poor fatherless child thought he had cancer.
My Life with Michael Keaton is good for Death & Dying, as is Dying Young.
Don't forget the oldies! Gaslight (Charles Moyer) where the husband tries
to make his wife think SHE is crazy! In fact, I think the tendency to try
to make another think THEY are crazy (assuming that they are not) got its
name, gaslighting, from that movie. Silence of the Lambs (Jodie Foster,
Anthony Hopkins) was well directed and is useful for discussion of violence
toward women as well as forensic psychology. There is a neat scene
repeated at
<http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2417/lamb.html> where Hannibal
Lector asks Clarice if she thinks that by saving the girls she will stop
the nightmares she gets from the screaming lambs. On a more humorous note,
there is the scene from Heart and Souls when the four ghosts have
reappeared to the adult Robert Downey Jr's character and he checks himself
into an insane asymlum. IN that scene in the hallway of the institute, a
fellow inmate passes and says, "How come he gets visitors?" indicating that
she sees his ghosts. Speaking of insane asylums and "WHO determines what is
sane?" don't forget Awakenings- the Robin Williams movie. Mentioning Robin
Williams puts me in mind of his character in Patch Adams- especially when
HE is in the insane asylum. I am thinking of the scene where he is visiting
with the smart guy and learns how to see 8 fingers! That is good. And
before we leave sanity (*) don't forget Couch Trip (Dan Akroyd) and Dream
Team (another Keaton). Keaton did a good job portraying psychotics, I
thought, in Pacific Heights, that one where he was renting the apartment
from Melanie Griffith, and in the recent one, Desperate Measures, where the
boy needs his bone marrow. I would like to extract one scene from each.
Primal Fear (Richard Gere): When did YOU know that the prisoner was FAKING
MPD? I would excerpt from Sybil with Sally Fields. Which reminds me of
another MPD, Three FAces of Eve. I saw an interview on Oprah, I think I
taped it, with the "real life" son of the woman portrayed as Eve in the
fil. The interview was about what it was like to live with a mom with MPD.
OK This is too long, but since we study behavior, and moview portray it, I
think that there is a rich source of images that we could use to capture
the attention of this young audience, and use it as an elaboration memory
tool to associate psychological principles. Remember the scene from
Catherine where she decides to employ the symbols of the Virgin Mary in her
appearance to invoke their worship. That's rich for invoking associations,
manipulating impressions, and role playing for influencing majority
opinion- even if it wasn't exactly historically accurate.
In fact, if I were teaching that course, I think I would like to get the
ball rolling, then get the students involved. I could teach the students
how to do the video capture, how to build it into the html format, and have
them research the psychological concept that the scene that they have
selected portrays, and write the page around the video clip. After a few
semesters, we might have built quite an interesting site. WE could just
index the principles, and your students could click on a page to see the
movie clip. It would encourage them to look for psychological principles in
their environment, and perhaps, to remember them better.
Dr. Joyce Johnson
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Developmental/ Experimental
Centenary College of Louisiana
Shreveport, LA
