Archetype Writing Blog

There's an interesting article in this month's Premiere magazine (April 2007—Will Ferrel is on the cover) called Shock and Awful by Tom Roston.

Roston explores the "torture porn" movie genre that's developed in the wake of forerunner Saw's success, writing,

It's the same sort of thing that was said about previous generations of horror—that these movies are a projection of our collective unconscious. In the 1950s and 1960s, the fear of Communism could be seen in the monster and alien-invasion movies. In the '70s, particularly in the work of Wes Craven...the movies were about the breakdown of the family unit, as well as the Vietnam War.

Those responsible for these films argue that the demand for them is an attempt to "deflect and reflect" the evil of terrorism in the world now. "It's not that these movies cause torture or mayhem," Roston argues, "[but] they're still making terror palatable."

Albert Bandura did a classic study (1961) on what he called social learning theory (i.e. we learn to do what we see done) most often referred to by those in psychology as the "Bobo doll study."

He showed some children a video of a grownup beating up a Bobo doll (ie one of those person-sized punching bags that looks like a clown and has sand in the bottom so you can't knock it over) in a room with other toys in it. Another group of children didn't see the Bobo video. They children were then allowed to go into the room individually. The children who hadn't seen the grownup beating up Bobo weren't particularly interested in Bobo, but the children who had seen Bobo get beaten up started beating Bobo up in exactly the same way as the grownup they'd seen.

The pictures to the right are from this experiment; you can see the grownup at the top, and then a boy beating up Bobo, and then a girl. (That little girl looks like she is having way too good of a time in some of the pictures. She must have had some repressed anger...that, or she hates clowns.) You can see more pictures from the Bobo doll experiment by clicking on the images.

People have argued for years that what we see on television and in film doesn't change our behavior; Bandura proved that it does 50 years ago. And any parent can tell you that "do as I say, not as I do" is a nice concept, but "monkey see, monkey do" is more realistic.

So why do so many people continue to question the effects of television and movies? Because some of the stupidest, goriest, and scariest things make the most money. MTV's Jackass. Just about anything Quentin Tarantino. The first Saw film, which was made for about $1 million, made $100 million worldwide; each of the two low-cost sequels grossed $150 million worldwide.)

So the question becomes—is "torture porn" horror a projection of what's inside of us (and the collective unconscious) already, or is putting the extremely violent and gory visions of a few on big screens being taken in by the many, thereby altering the collective unconscious?

And must we be swept along in the bloody tide, or do we have choices about whether to behave differently in real life?

Free Will vs. Automaticity

So there are those who argue that these things don't affect our behaviors, and Bandura has proven they do. But then why don't all of us become serial killers? Because we have free will. Or at least that's how I see it.

At some point during clinical training you're faced with the question of whether human beings have free will or whether we're just the product of our environments (or genes). In classic horror films (think Psycho, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street), the villain is often doomed to be what he is—Michael Myers just seems to have been born evil; Freddy Kreuger is the "bastard son of 100 maniacs." You can argue that Saw's Jigsaw's behavior is a result of the inoperable brain cancer. In the Archetype site proper, I argue that this is because these explanations allow us to see villains as Other—utterly different from ourselves.

A friend of mine argues that we have little free will. To demonstrate, he'll yawn; most people will feel the need to yawn in response (and you may be having the same reaction just reading about it—I am while I'm writing it!). He says that we're all just responding automatically to the environment, which is a very Behaviorist view of the world.

Behaviorism says a particular stimulus will always lead to a particular response; therefore what we are today is the result of numerous responses to predictable stimuli. We're all a little different because we've all been exposed to slightly different stimuli; two people might respond differently to a car accident in the present due to different stimuli and associations from the past.

I have a far more Gestalt outlook. I believe that we have choices and that the willingness to take responsibility to make changes can make an enormous difference in one's psychological well-being. The past is done, we can't change it, and lingering in the past, blaming others for what you've become, serves no purpose. One of the purposes of therapy is to learn how to cope with what's happened in the past and develop new responses to the world ahead.

Of course, it's easier to keep doing the same old thing because we've been conditioned to respond to particular stimuli in particular ways (there's that behaviorism again), or to blame others, but what have all that gray and white brain matter if we're not going to use any of it?

I watched Saw. I was impressed by it. But I have absolutely no desire to see the second or third. The first one worked for me because it was different from everything that had come before; it was about intolerable choices and what that does to you psychologically. (And the writers went all the way through with what they'd set up in that bathroom at the beginning.) But seeing four more hours' worth of nightmarish ways to torture people...no thank you!

I believe that we're all trying to make sense of the world today. But, for myself at least, understanding is only the first step. Trying to make the world a better place is even more important.