Psychological Describes the Thirteen Film - Essay Example

Adolescence as a psychological stage of development requires a lot of parental guidance. This is in order for the adolescents to conform and comply with the societal ways of life. Inappropriate parental guidance to adolescents such as Tracy would result in anomie by these individuals. At the age of adolescence in the Thirteen films (2003), Tracy is depicted as being the epitome of anomie.

Tracy is a smart and straight student. However, she is a little naïve. Her naivety makes her implicate her mom’s marriage by hurting Brandy, her mom’s boyfriend. Tracy has poorly structured parental care. Most likely, she was born out of wedlock, the father died or there was a divorce between her mom and dad. This ultimately affects her psychologically in her adolescent stage. She, therefore, resorts to smoking in order to alleviate the emotional pains she suffers from their wrecked home.

Peer influence catches up with Tracy when she befriends Evie. Evie, unlike Tracy, is a stronger personality and is subsequently the most beautiful and popular girl in school (“Thirteen”). Evie leads Tracy down into the path to sex, drugs and petty crimes like stealing money from stores and nurses. Psychologically, peer influence is one of the leading factors that may result in anomie by adolescents. This explains in this movie why Tracy’s life had changed after meeting her friends.

Parenting style and conformity are psychologically intertwined. Parenting style especially in primary socialization is one of the most important guidelines for conformity later in life. In Tracy’s case, her compliance to conformity is seemingly distorted due to poor parenting. Her mom lives with the boyfriend hence cannot fully control Tracy’s actions. Henceforth, for this adolescent girl to conform, her mother should firstly change her actions to match better upbringing parenting styles.

Psychologically, adolescents imitate a lot from their parents. Better parental guidance should, therefore, be an entity by the parenting. In conclusion, this movie is a perfect presentation of psychological attributes in relation to adolescence, conformity, parenting style and peer influence. Self-transformation and identity as done by Tracy in this motion picture is a representation of social identification by most adolescents. At this stage, an individual’s world becomes a boiling emotional caldron fuelled by simple means such as new tensions between an adolescent and friends or tension with those individuals close to you.

The psychological thematic settings of this movie beyond doubt may portray positive behavioural effects especially to those who have little knowledge of developmental psychology.