How Films Reach Into Our Unconscious

Source: geralt/Pixabay

Recently, my husband and I saw Don’t Worry Darling, the movie with pre-release publicity that negatively affected its reception. Although ambivalent about investing our Sunday in an experience with mixed reviews, we were curious: Our 18-year-old granddaughter had seen it with her college friends and loved it. She described being “on the edge of my seat” through much of the viewing. In the spirit of cultural anthropology, we wanted to see the world through younger eyes and sensibilities as well as through our own.

Both of us reacted strongly to the film. I felt “deeply disturbed," “disgusted," and “confused." My husband found it “intense," “difficult," and “painful to watch." Our reactions reminded us of how we reacted in 1999 to “Eyes Wide Shut," the Nicole Kidman/Tom Cruise classic. After leaving the theater, we discovered our car, parked where a street fair had been rescheduled from the rainy day before, had been towed. Ironically, real-life inconvenience and expense helped dilute the negative impact of the movie. Home again, we both slept for over an hour, shaking off some of the negativity.

The next morning, I was struck by the roles that the film’s visuals and our own memories played in triggering our responses. Having studied imagery and its psychological impact since the 1970s, I decided to shine the light of seven levels of language on our experiences, examining ways in which our unconscious as well as our rational selves had been assaulted.

Source: Jo-B Fifties/Pixabay

Physics and chemistry. At the most basic level, imagery evokes sensorimotor associations. The feel of cracking empty eggs or the smell of full ones cooking with bacon in the film were as powerful as reactions to the sexual scenes designed to evoke arousal. Super-saturated colors, eliminating nuance, underscored the primitive nature of the focal setting, a world with no room for grey. Contrasting the colorful world portrayed in the 1950s idealized village with the one in which we might actually live underscored the disconnect, highlighting a distressing denial of truths and promotion of illusion. The film’s imagery constantly induced chemical and structural reactions in my body.

Organs. My brain, limbs, and heart reacted notably. Repetitive imagery sequences suggested brainwashing techniques that had been used, although only later in the movie did we witness surgical implantation of electrical devices, shock therapy, and chemical modification of neural processes through drugs. Scenes showed arms and legs trying to fight or flee or paralyzed by environmental restraints; there was no escape or effective response to trauma. My lungs mirrored the experience of a central actor, and I felt claustrophobic.

Biological systems. The film highlighted sexuality through scenes of seduction as well as those of rejection. A desire that initially coupled with commitment became divorced from it when a scantily clad dancer used the stage to literally separate men from their wives and sex from relationships. My digestive system was twisted and turned by messages of amplitude, a promise of no hunger, as well as disgust at the commercial manipulation of the villagers' food sources. Exaggerated presentations of “perfect” male or female bodies, using the imagery devices described by Erving Goffman in “Gender Advertisements” (e.g., relative height, superior male strength, status differentials—implied interpersonal and cultural levels of communication). Ways that “order” (for example, in the repetitive dance imagery) and “ultimate truth through nature” (flashes of scenery) were manipulated into peoples’ brains were compelling. Deviations from perfection and disobedience were labeled imperfections to be eradicated. Through modification, new scripts contaminated actual memories. The more central to their identity they became, the more characters bought into protecting their illusions.

Psychology. The film illustrated classical conditioning of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors when it used biology to evoke emotions and emotions to evoke beliefs, then beliefs to lead to actions, as I described in my last post. The “leader” of the artificial community controlled learning using linguistic and environmental mechanisms as well as biological ones, systematically gaslighting residents. In contrast, he initially appeared to address their concerns directly and respectfully. Deceit again.

Source: geralt/Pixabay

“Systematic desensitization” was an early clinical psychology technique based on Pavlovian classical conditioning and pioneered by Joseph Wolpe. In it, imagery progressions are used to expand a person's window of tolerance to their arousal during a potentially fearful situation. This early form of exposure therapy can also be used to create a positive image that one might want to move towards. (As Hazel Markus has shown, a “possible self” can be a powerful motivator.) Building on its effectiveness, imagery became essential in the evolution of applied behavioral analysis and cognitive behavioral therapies.

Interpersonal. The film relentlessly invokes the social psychological phenomena of emotional contagion, desires to conform to norms, and arousal of our affective needs for connection to others. Our attachment needs, formed by bonds that go beyond the transactional, can be uniquely enlisted for manipulation. The roles these social processes play in forcing individual perceptions and behaviors have been well documented since the studies of Asch, Festinger, and Milgram, more than 50 years ago.

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Cultural. The artificial environment created in Don’t Worry Darling contrasts dramatically with the flashback to a very real environment from which two central characters had come. The latter featured characters without makeup, without pretense, without denying important needs like competence, being able to make a difference, being truly helpful, and having physical comforts like food and sex with a consenting and involved partner. Photography is rich with grey tones and less "cultured" American accents startle.

Spiritual. Perhaps most disturbing to me were the images that evoked a false god. The head of the venture featured in the film, Frank, is the incarnate representative of evil. He represents the values of materialism and fulfilled physical needs (especially sex, shelter, food, and companionship), equating membership in the community as promising all, especially redemption from disappointments from the past.

These forays into meaning and the good life are explored in follow-ups from the Zimbardo prison experiments. They ask, why do good people do bad things? By promising happiness through the mechanisms of obedience, effort, and order, Frank identifies candidates; through physical, psychological, and cultural manipulation, he intends to expand his control. His paranoia is gradually exposed. Effectively disturbing? Yes. Your judgment depends on whether you see the movie as creative art or just entertainment. I am looking forward to discussing it with our granddaughter.

Copyright 2022 Roni Beth Tower