For those that use movies to illustrate points in courses, that is, as
examples of psychological phenomena or the life of individuals,
there is an interesting article on HuffPost concerning the "factiness"
of three movies currently up for Academy Awards, namely,
"Lincoln", "Argo", and "Zero Dark Thirty"; see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/lincoln-inaccuracies-argo-zero-dark-thirty-fiction_n_2723733.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment
I always worry about the use of commercial films in psychology
courses because it is not clear whether the instructor is aware of
the profound differences between a commercial film and, say,
a documentary film (which have their own set of problems).
For example, a biopic like "Lincoln" or "Argo" is less concerned
with whether all details are factual or not because they have different
purposes in mind while, say, a psychologist writing an article
or making a documentary would be concerned with factual
accuracy (or at least one hopes so).
Consider the movie "Lincoln" where, in addition to other factual
inaccuracies, there is the problem of representing how Connecticut
voted for the 13th amendment: all four delegates voted for it but
the film claims that only two did. For more problems with the film,
see:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Mr-Lincoln-Goes-to-Hollywood-174944931.html
In the HuffPost article, there are several statements that show what
the goals are of people involved in film-making and how it differs
from the "truth-finding" that psychologists presumably engage in
(i.e., making up data is bad, changing the data to suit our viewpoints
is bad, misrepresenting other researchers positions is bad, and so on).
Concerning the changing of the Connecticut vote, the screenwriter
Tony Kushner provided this view (quoting the HuffPost article)
|In response to a complaint by a Connecticut congressman,
|Kushner acknowledged he'd changed the details for dramatic
|effect, having two Connecticut congressmen vote against the
|amendment when, in fact, all four voted for it. (The names of
|those congressmen were changed, to avoid changing the vote
|of specific individuals.)
|
|In a statement, Kushner said he had "adhered to time-honored
|and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical
|drama, which is what `Lincoln' is. I hope nobody is shocked to
|learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and
|invented characters."
People involved with film making have different views on this
situation. Quoting HuffPost:
|One prominent screenwriting professor finds the "Lincoln" episode
|"a little troubling" - but only a little.
|
|"Maybe changing the vote went too far," says Richard Walter,
|chairman of screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles.
|"Maybe there was another way to do it. But really, it's not terribly
|important. People accept that liberties will be taken. A movie is a
|movie. People going for a history lesson are going to the wrong place."
NOTE: Given the problems that people have with source memory,
how will they distinguish "facts" learned from factual sources and
movies that "take liberties for dramatic effect", i.e., "poetic truth"?
|Walter says he always tells his students: "Go for the feelings.
|Because the only thing that's truly real in the movies are the
|feelings that people feel when they watch."
I think anyone who uses movies to represent psychological concepts
in class should keep the above statement in mind.
|Carson Reeves, who runs a screenwriting website called Scriptshadow,
|says writers basing scripts on real events face a constant problem:
|No subject or individual's life is compelling and dramatic enough
|by itself, he says, that it neatly fits into a script with three acts,
|subplots, plot twists and a powerful villain.
Another point to keep in mind. Movies tend to "sex" things up to
make them more attractive to an audience (e.g., in Woody Allen's
movie "Zelig" compare Zelig as presented in the movie with the
Zelig that represents him in the documentary "film in a film"; NOTE:
if there ever a movie about me, I want George Clooney or Brad
Pitt to play me ;-).
One final quote from the HuffPost article, from the screenwriter of
"Zero Dark Thirty":
|Mark Boal, the movie's screenwriter, said in a recent interview
|that screenwriters have a double responsibility: to the material
|and to the audience.
|
|"There's a responsibility, I believe, to the audience, because they're
|paying money, and to tell a good story," he said. "And there's
|a responsibility to be respectful of the material."
|
|In a later interview with the Wall Street Journal, he added:
|"I think it's my right, by the way, if I firmly believe that bin Laden
|was killed by aliens, to depict that. ... In this country, isn't that
legit?"
I assume that Boal means "space aliens" when he say "aliens".
Yeah, that would work.
A final point, in movies the term "verisimilitude" has been used to a
style of film making that attempts to make a movie appear as close
as possible to reality. Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thief/Thieves" is
a classic example of the "New Realism" that developed in film after
WWII (see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040522/ )
which used actual locations, "real people" as extras, and other touches
that one would be familiar with from everyday life. But it is interesting
that Wikipedia has two entries for verisimilitude, one that is general
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude ) which is of direct
relevance to scientific research, and another entry on verisimilitude
in narratives (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_%28narrative%29 )
which is concerned with how good a "simulation" is of real life.
Gimmicks that allow one to "suspend disbelief" help the reader
of a narrative or a watcher of movie to "believe" that what is being
presented on the screen is "real" regardless of whether the subject
matter is fictional or non-fictional. The more real a person or event
in a movie "feels" to a person, the more real it is perceived.
Given the choice, what would one accept: a dull reality or an exciting
simulation of reality (BTW, anyone remember "Beatlemania").
Critical thinking requires one to be able to distinguish fact from fiction,
style from substance, and to determine the reality below the surface
representation. Presumably science and psychologists accept this
view while film makers, well, not so much. After all, say, does anyone
really care that you shouldn't be able to hear explosions in outer
space? Explosions are cool visual devices but lack something if
silent. And being cool trumps the truth seven days a week and twice
on Sundays.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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