Movie Review of Strictly Ballroom

It’s quite an impressive movie about dancing. I am amazed by the fact that most of the actors are not professional dancer, but I could see the enthusiasm and concentration.

There are three main components in Social Influence which are conformity, compliance, obedience. These three different types of social influence appear in different scenes. I will try to explain the presence of three theories in sequence.

Conformity

If we observe the ballroom dancing in another perspective, it is one kind of conformity. It has set rules asking people to follow. Obviously we know that most of the people follow the rules of the Australian Dance Federation. They want to win. They want to win so no one dare to be different. The settings and social norms make them conform. In the ballroom settings, social norms require dancer to dance “formally” and by rule. However, I think there’s still good in conformity. If everyone dance their own moves, how to compete with each other. We have to aware of the conformity, but the rules help us to be organized.

Conformity level is higher when there has confident confederate. In the first half of the movie, most of the people excluding Fran and Scott have no courage to dance in their own style, especially when the president Barry Fife is so confident and powerful.

Lastly, the scene of applause from his father Doug is a good example to show how minority could influence the majority. As a minority, his father shows great confidence and consistency in his applauses. They are loud, firm and clear.

Compliance

Normally there are three factors which are mood, reciprocity and giving reasons would develop compliance.

At first, Scott is not convinced under the authoritative influence of his mother. However, Barry presented in his mother’s ballroom. Mood and Giving Reasons factors are applied. Barry did not persuade Scott in the very beginning, but he told him a fake story to trigger his emotion. At the end of the story, he “beg” Scott to win the champion in order to help his own father to realize his dream. In this scene, Barry used foot in the door because story telling is a small request, but asking Scott to join the competition with Liz is a larger request. However, the technique was used in persuading Scott could be considered as door in the face. Most of the people got tough and required Scott to follow the rules and dance with Liz or Tina, but the atmosphere suddenly became soft and sentimental in this scene.

  

Obedience

There is one scene to show that Fran was threatened by Scott’s mother Shirley and others. It could be explained why Fran was influenced by three reasons which are proximity, group pressure and strength of the pressure.

In the famous Milgram’s electric shock experiment, we could know that physical presence and separate room could impact individual decision. In that scene, Fran and they are alone in the dressing room. Their physical presence gave Fran a huge pressure as well. It even involved touching when Shirley was dragging Fran into the room.

By considering the amount of people present, there are 3 versus 1. The strength of their orders was so determined and forceful as well.

Why do people dance?

There is a research found that dance is related to confidence, mate-selection and social bonding.

From a very practical point of view, dancing can help people to get in shape, express emotion and even establish relationship. However, if we look at dancing from the existential perspective, dancing might be a mirror that could reflect who you are. Scott is a passionate and open-minded person. We could describe his characteristics by only comparing the way his and others’ dance.

Sometimes words are insufficient. We look at the male lead Scott. Sometimes we might feel his words are less expressive than his dance. His dances were full of energy and emotion. For some people, dance is a better way to express themselves. 

Eat Drink Man Woman

The traffic scene actually means the complicated situation in the family. The traffic situation looks messy even though the traffic police try to control the traffic. It might also represent the feelings of Mr Chu. He is the traffic police who tries to control the situation. There has no traffic police in the first scene, but there is a traffic police in the second scene. It might mean that the traffic police is Mr Chu. The tension of the family started to be mediated.

This movie can be analyzed by the sequence of the family dinner. Based on family theory, this family could be viewed as a unit. The interaction between any daughter and father actually influence another relationship. In the second family dinner, the unexpected decision and announcement of the youngest daughter, Jia-Ning, actually influence the decision process of others. In the first meal, the family is restricted in a repressive atmosphere. After the changes of Jia-Ning in the second dinner, all the things are starting to change rapidly.

In this movie, apparently we could see that the Mr Chu cares about the Jia-Chien the most. However, Jia-Jen is the one who really contribute to the family and their father. In her world, there are only three places where are church, school and home she get used to. She envies why her father puts so much attention on Jia-Chien, but not her.

The death of the mother has an impact. After the death of the mother, Jia-Jen started trying to play the mother’s role. She takes care of her father. She also tries to control and discipline Jia-Chien and Jia-Ning because of the role of a mother. 

At the end, the separation eventually brings harmony to the family. They finally feel peaceful even though they are not together. They do not need to restrain anymore. 

Gandhi (1982)

Undeniably, Mahatma Gandhi is one of the greatest leaders of the world. In this 1982 film which was directed by Richard Attenborough, the Gandhi’s character was played by Ben Kingsley.

Most of the articles identify him as a transformational leader. Normally there are four characteristics of a transformational leader.

In the first place, transformational leader should be able to provide vision. They are conscious about the future. According to what we watch in the film, Mahatma Gandhi apparently developed a vision that they wanted to get back the indepence and sovereignty from the British Empire.

Secondly, it is being authentic. A leader who has the characteristic of authenticity is commonly perceived as someone who hold the humanistic worldview and beliefs, such as honesty, ethical as well as practical. Especially, he always put attention on ethics. He showed his anger on the Massacre of Amritsar. Besides, his main weapon of this indepence campaign is non-violence.

Third vital characteristic is to lead by example. For those followers and publics, he was a role model. One of the ways he led was to show people what he expected others did. Once he said that, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” For example, he advised Indian citizens to abandon all the British Empire’s products. Hence, he started to sew his own clothes. He transformed himself from a lawyer to be an Indian citizen.

At last, creativity is another characteristic of Mahatma Gandhi. Throughout his life, we can notice that he keeps innovating a new method to fight the British Empire.  For example, he encouraged people to make salt and their own clothes rather than using violence to fight.

Simon Sinek said that a great leader eats last. Throughout his life, we could realize that he was that kind of leader who could fast and sacrifice himself in order to gain the wellbeing of his people.

Running on Empty

8.5/10

The social background of this movie is in post-Vietnam War period. Hence, based on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological theory, we could notice that each of their systems keeps changing.

The impact of an unstable and changing systems worth discussing.

According to Murray Bowen, a family should be seen as a system or a unit rather than individuals. The interaction between any two family members are influenced by another family member as well. We can observe the interaction between the father, Arthur Pope (Judd Hirsch) and the eldest son, Danny (River Phoenix) is actually influenced by the mother Annie (Christine Lahti). Let's imagine, what if there're only the father and son in the family, is it possible that Arthur will let Danny go in the end of the movie?

There are eight concepts under Murray Bowen's family system theory. 

We can realize that Danny is developing his differentiation of the self in this movie. He started to realize that he wanted to be independent. He could be his own person. Triangles are happening in the relationship between his mother, his father and himself. The interaction between any two family members influence another one. 

Family Projection Process could be observed through the movie. Arthur feared of being caught by the FBI, so he also projects his fear on Danny.

I could feel the pain and struggles at the last scene of this movie. I could find the similarity between my father and Arthur. Both of them are sometimes lovely, but sometimes being authoritarian. He would let you go when you require to change and he thinks you need to. Leaving from the closest people is always painful, but they're just physically leaving, not emotionally detaching.