Movies are media works of action targeted to entertain, teach or reveal an aspect of life. Psychology on the other hand refers to our behaviors as a result of trainings of interests by the society that we live. Like all art, movies are saturated with humankind. They are created by humans, they depict human action, and they are viewed by a human audience. Movies are usually vivid art form, making use of striking moving images and vibrant sounds connect filmmakers to the audience through celluloid and the senses.
In defending a purposive psychology, a number of submerged philosophical themes surface from time to time, action versus behavior, freedom versus determinism, and so on.
Exploration of the nature of personality is the aim of psychology, clarification of the nature of the society is the aim of sociology, and consideration of the relationship between the two is the aim of the social psychology. Unless these disciplines are held to be redundant there must be some deficiencies in our knowledge of personality and society (Collins 117).
Consider the following story: Raymond Klein was born in Flushing, Florida in 1942 and grew up in a tough little Netherlands section of lower damson. Because of the asthmatic conditions that he suffered he could not play as much and free as the other kinds. Due to this problem, Raymond spend much of his time watching movies, where he was partly protected from mean of streets of Danford city, still felt isolated and lonely. He was deeply immersed in Catholicism and briefly attended a seminar before enrolling in a film school.
Taxi driver was on a tour force of raw language disturbing imagery, and innovative cinematic techniques. In a sequence, an elaborate, slow motion overhead tracking shot surveys the carnage that has resulted from Travis convoluted attempt to rescue a child prostitute. That scene in particular was considered so violent that the motion picture association of Europe insisted that Raymond alter the hue of the blood in order to avoid rating.
Despite it less than commercial subject matter, taxi driver was highly successful and audiences lined up. Reactions among the audience members were polarized. Some viewers proclaimed it to be not only technically brilliant but also a cathartic descent into the scarred psyche of individual character and that of America itself. Others viewers have found the film to be exploitative and morally misguided. A scene in which Travis, shirtless be outfitted with multiple guns and holsters, looks into the mirror and asks threateningly, who was talking to him.
In 1981, one viewer, John Hinckley, watched the movie over twenty times in retro theater. He was inspired to assassinate President Reagan in order to gain attention of Jodie Catherine with whom Hinckley was romantically obsessed. The assassination failed, but Reagan was shot and several people were seriously wounded, including Reagan’s press secretary, Milan 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 (Hays 211).
Over thirty, years down the line, 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.
One will always wonder where psychology in this story/movie is. Obviously, it is everywhere. Raymond’s personal background in a difficult social environment becomes melded with his individual talents and obsessions. These themes of sins, hardship, aggression and redemption appear in films like a taxi driver, not only in the story but also 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 usable model of assassinating the president. The above has been a story aimed to indicate the relationship behind psychology and movies.
The extent to how psychology guides a person in understanding of the events in a movie cannot be underestimated at any level; psychology also enables one to influence interests in a movie. Movies try to play with one’s mind, how to trick and convey a certain message to the viewers or observers. For a movie to bring influence and impact in a person, it should be well framed and shot to convince a person.
There are several devices that have been employed in this movie to make viewers always attentive. These are psychological devices that people employ to play with the minds of the people. These include devices like rhetorical questions. In this movie, we encounter a lot of rhetoric issues. All these are aimed to keep the viewer in need to know what next. By doing so, the authors of movie ensure that viewers are not bored by the movie. It maintains the need to keep on watching by the viewers.
Sarcasm has been employed to entertain the viewers. Once sarcasm has occurred to a character in a movie, without any clue about it, this tends to be very entertaining to the viewers. This is so because; it is all in the knowledge of the viewers that character to that is the victim of the sarcasm, he is ignorant of it. There is no need for watching a movie if no sense of humor is being realized out of it.
Coincidence also as a genre has been employ in the movie. Coincidence ensures that always there is consistency in the pressure influence of the movie. A well framed movie in our case should be in a position to display some sense of pressure to the viewers. This is the main Reason as to why the author in the movie has employed the genre of coincidence. Coincidence of the events also keeps the viewer in the need to always keep- on awaiting what next. This ensures that the viewer is always entertained to the fullest. Emotional description on the other hand ensures that there is always vivid expression by the characters on their take on different actions in the movie. There is always a well expression of feeling among the characters. A movie would just be any other very normal kind of movie if the expression of the feelings was not employed. Emotional expressions within a movie ensure that the viewers are fed with humor.
Time and space can be heighten and influence a lot in the audience perception. Through shortening the time that a character is expected to achieve a certain obligation in the movie, this creates a desire to the audience to seek to know how finally things move. The audience becomes more attentive to see things unveil as the time span is too little as compared to the obligations to undertake. By heightening the time span when an audience is expected to undertake a certain obligation, the audience always develops the desire to know what the character has to use the extra time that he has. It is the obligation of the characters in action to ensure that he participates in a way that is not boring to the audience (Wickens 123).
One thing that will also keep the audience engaged is through balance of presentation. At times, it happens that no balance in the presentation by an actor. It is the mandate of the actor to ensure that he is direct to the point when acting. He or she should always be in a way such that those direct issues are advocated directly to the audience.
Audiences are the main target of every action. It’s mandate of the author or writer of the movie to ensure that characters in the movie are well organized. Every action is targeted to portray certain information. Characters are the main conveyors of the messages in a film.
There are other factors in a movie that play a very vital role. These are sounds. A sound in a movie guides the audience on the direction in which the action is taking. Without the employment of certain sounds in a movie, it would be very hard to follow the action in a film. Imagine a case where the only voice in a movie was that of actors sharing alone? There would be totally nothing to motivate the audience to view or watch a movie.
One key to keeping your audiences’ attention is to be unpredictable and exciting. This is also another genre that authors do employ in most of their works. No audience wants to hear what they already know because if they know what is coming next, then why bother listening? Brain does not pay attention to boring things, and I am as sick of boring presentations as you are. The extent to how unpredictability of the events in action keep the audience engaged cannot be underestimated at any stage.
In conclusion, the relationship between performance and psychology cannot be underestimating at any level. You always have to influence the psychology of the audience to win their mind and therefore articulate the theme of performance.
Works cited
Collins, Dave, Angela Abbott, and Hugh Richards. Psychology for physical performance. Edinburgh: Elsevier, 2011. Print.
Hays, Kate F.. Performance psychology in action: a casebook for working with athletes, performing artists, business leaders, and professionals in high-risk occupations. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2009. Print.
Kenny, Dianna T.. The psychology of music performance anxiety. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Wickens, Christopher D.. Engineering psychology and human performance. Columbus: Merrill, 1984. Print.
