A Critique of Strictly Ballroom

   

  From the left: Scott Hastings, Fran

      Hello everyone! This week we are taking into a classic movie directed by Baz Luhrmann. As per usual, this film is divided into two segments, which is my personal reflection of the film and the psychological aspects that took part. Let's get started!

      In the beginning, this movie portrayed a dramatic and exaggerated introduction where the mother was in an interview setting talking about her son. She exclaimed, "Did I failed as a mother?". The audience was left to wonder for whatever reason that come after that caused the mother to feel that way. In this film, I related a lot to Scott as he was someone that wanted to try new things. I am also like Scott where I like to be spontaneous and try new things. Thus, when I chose Psychology as my degree, my mother had the same response as the movie. My father was silent and let me decide, kind of like Scott's father as well. The film also had an instance where the community (in the end, it was because of Barry Fife) thought that changing steps was a negative influence to dancing. If they change the way it has been done, they would end up like Scott's father.This is similar to choosing Psychology as well due to the negative stigma. In reality, it come down to a choice. You could do something that you love or you sacrifice to make them happy.

      In the psychological aspect, let's us take a moment to ponder what a wonderful persuader Barry Fife is. The Donald Trump wannabe has credibility and a gullible audience to complement him. One of the main sources of persuasion is the source himself. Barry is the President of the Dancing Federation in Australia and has done well to establish his expertise and trustworthiness on dancing. He also has a low self-monitoring audience that will listen to what he says. This is because they hardly evaluate the content that Barry Fife is spouting. This is what made him an excellent persuader in the movie.
     
     This film also portrayed many examples of social Influence. Social Influence can cause compliance, obedience and conformity.  Conformity is when you succumb to group pressure and copy the behavior of the person exerting the influence. In the movie, Scott's mother was one that conform to Barry Fife when Barry talked about her husband not able to win the Pan Pacific championships. Consequently, she dropped his husband and chose to dance with Barry instead. She was in a situation where the situation was uncertain and Barry was confident. The reason that she would want to conform is because she wants to win and avoid losing the Pan Pacifics championship
involved.

     Next, the film also portrayed compliance in the movie. Compliance is where you publicly agree to the demands of a person but you may or may not agree with the decision. For example, Scott was eager to dance his new moves with Fran at the Pan Pacifics but later comply with Barry's decision because of his father. He does not agree with it but he do so anyway and thus, he danced with the legendary Tina Sparkles instead.

     Lastly, the film also showed obedience, where a person show direct performance over an order. I believe that this film should be focused on disobedience instead. This is because the entire movie is about abiding by specific dancing traditions to win, but Scott and Fran kept on disobeying the entire social community to pursue their own dancing. The saddest moment in this film was the wonderful portrayal of the consequence of disobedience that caused the entire community to turn against him even his mother, brother and his teacher.

      This film explored aspects of persuasion and social influence, let us keep in touch for what is in store for us next week!