Adolescence and Cinema - Essay Example

? ADOLESCENCE AND CINEMA When discussing the characters of adolescence in the movies, Donnie Darko1 and Carrie2, the audience watching are able to determine that while being an adolescent, a character’s inner psyche can also be evaluated. This can be seen by the way they act, associate with other characters, how they respond to different situations, and how they can be compared to their peers. While they are both in high school and trying to determine a sense of self, both have intense psychological issues they are dealing with which made it more difficult for them to adapt than it is for their peers. While there are some similarities, there are also several differences in each character. This includes their development of personality and how well they are able to function in a high school setting. Being an adolescent can be difficult because it is a stage where a person is neither a child nor an adult and these films depicts some of the struggles of two adolescents who are already atypical. This illustration through cinema is only a partial representation of adolescents. In the cases of these films, both are an eccentric representations of how teenagers deal with growing up and how through character development and the plot, the audience is able to see these atypical psychological cases of these characters. This allows audience members to be able to relate to the character, predict the character’s actions, and get to know each character’s personality at this particular stage in life. It also allows an audience evaluate the developmental stages of behavior, thinking and social skills. The stories of Carrie and Donnie may also represent the time period during were growing up, with movies hitting the box office in 1976 and 2001, respectively. The way each adolescent responds to situations could correlate to how society and culture was different in the two different decades. This is an evaluation of how both Donnie and Carrie were portrayed in each motion picture by the writers and directors and it will discuss the situations as adolescents growing up, trying to identify a sense of self, and evaluating their cognitive thinking. This will discuss issues either character had growing up and moving beyond childhood into adulthood. This will also discuss challenges they had adapting into their environments along with their peers as based on some of the psychological theories presented by researchers who have developed theories based on growth and adolescence. The two lead characters both were on the odd side as compared to what most of their peers would consider normal. Donnie was more eccentric while Carrie was more quiet and shy. Donnie had friends and was able to fit in while Carrie had problems doing so. Donnie challenged adults and their thoughts and opinions while Carrie was too timid. Both were high school students, growing up during a time when they were going through puberty and trying to identify oneself. While both of these films are categorized in unique genres, one being more of a science fiction and the other being a horror film, they both offer visual and audio examples of what being a teenager was like as audiences spectate. To compare and contrast both movies includes discussing how the characters were similar in developing a sense of self and how the main characters, Jake Gylenhaal as Donnie Darko, and Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, were portrayed as adolescence. They were in situations in high school, where, according to society, should have fit in. They also differed in how they dealt with who they were and how both were so extremely emotionally troubled that making sense out of who they were was so different from other adolescents their age. This was a difficult concept for them to grasp, especially at a time in one’s life when a person wants to be accepted by their peers. Both had major life changing experiences that one might even label as tragic which they had to overcome because of their emotional inability to adapt to some of their social situations. One such case of psychoanalysis and how it pertains to the story of the character, Donnie Darko, according to D. W. Winnicott’s research, is to consider the emotional development of the person3. Donnie Darko was a person who had severe schizophrenia and had an imaginary friend that came to him and told him things to do prior to an airplane part falling into his room at his family’s home. As already discussed, he was willing to challenge adults and had several friends and one of the new girls at school even sat next to him as she was instructed to sit next to the cutest boy in English class. Since this movie about Donnie Darko was largely themed on the concept of time travel and it had a non-linear storyline that became evident at the end of the movie. Donnie’s personality can be described in essence, he was aware of situations that were going to happen. There were occasions when he could foresee the inevitable and saw that he could change things by the manipulation of time travel. This is because if the airplane part fell on him and killed him, it would have salvaged the rest of mankind. However, this is not revealed until the end of the story. Up until the end of the movie, we can evaluate his personal situation. In his historical past, he had been troubled and had set fire to a house. Following this, he became obsessed with his what his guide, Frank, a six foot bunny rabbit, was telling him through key messages. He spoke to a therapist and he was basically showing all signs of a personality disorder. According to research by Winnicott, we can think about the role his parents played. They were both loving and caring people and he appeared to get along well with his two sisters. The only people he ever defied were his teachers. He was a mature individual for his age, often thinking way ahead of himself, learning more about time travel through the teachings of a former instructor. This teacher who his friends referred to as ‘Dead Grandma’ was an old lady who appeared to be completely out of it, walking to her mailbox multiple times per day. He discovered that she was the one who had completed extensive research on time travel. Donnie had a sense of identity and where he lost himself was when he got caught up in Doomsday visions or when he found that he had awoken in a strange place such as on the golf course. It was then that he seemed to recluse, absorbing himself with thoughts about time travel and why he was having these visions. He was able to have a relationship with the girl from his English class, forming a true bond with her. He was able to tell his therapist things during hypnotherapy sessions and found himself either touching himself in an inappropriate way or hugging the therapist when she clapped her hands bringing him out of trance. It was the visions of the time travel warps that were shown through special effects that only he could see and these would lead him to items such as the pistol in his parents’ closet or would lead him to a message that talked about Frank going on a beer run during their Halloween party. The storyline’s separated tangents of reality showed how things would have been. His mother and sister would have been killed in a plane crash. His girlfriend would have died after being struck by a car driven by a big rabbit and he would have shot and killed the guy dressed up as a six foot bunny on Halloween if time had followed one tangent. Donnie was somehow able to recognize these scenarios and through the course of his dream state, he was able to see that his death was the only way that things could be carried out without other people being hurt in the other parallel universe. Other than the schizophrenia and the visions, Donnie fit in fairly well as a regular high school student in a private school. His traumatic experiences were those that existed in his conscious and his visions that predicted a Doomsday. These were how his adolescent experiences were significantly different than those of his peers. Carrie White had a much different story. She was a troubled student, who was shy, quiet and made little effort to fit in. According to Winnicott’s4 research, this can hinder the development of an adolescent. When she experienced her menstrual cycle in the gym locker room, she had never been told by her mother what it was and when she sensed the trickling of her menstruation down her body, she screamed for help while all of the other girls in the locker room just threw feminine napkins and products at her and laughed. Her gym teacher was her only saving grace, comforting her and encouraging her to go home for the day. As a female adolescent experiencing puberty for the first time, it was traumatic. To be humiliated in front of her peers, it was even more destructive to her self-confidence and then to be asked to go visit the principal to see if she would be allowed to go home early was even more horrifying. Here is where the role of her mother comes in. Her mother was a religious fanatic and when Carrie arrived home from school that particular day, her mother beat her with a Bible and asked her to pray since she was now a woman, would be subject to men, and that the men would now be able to smell the blood of a female. Carrie’s life was very sheltered and it was much to her mother’s own selfish overbearing nature to try to mask Carrie from anything that could ever be “sinful.” She made Carrie believe that it was a sin to have gotten her menstrual cycle, forcing her to pray in the closet. Carrie’s maturity level was not even close to that of her other peers. One severe emotional issue aside from being completely guarded by modern and contemporary society such as it was in the 1970s when the film was made, was that Carrie not only was immature for her age, but she always hanging her head and was forced to wear drab clothing that her mother had made. Carrie’s mother hindered much of Carrie’s personal growth and ability to adapt to society. Carrie also learned that she had the ability to use telekinesis, finding that she could use the forces of her mind to move things without ever touching them and it was a subject she researched. Though she had no friends, this was something she had to hide from her peers up until prom time. It was then where she was humiliated again by a school prank where she was crowned as queen with the popular Tommy, her date, as king and pig’s blood was dumped on her head. Her mother had convinced her that they were all going to laugh at her and had tried to prevent Carrie from going to the prom. Prior to that, Tommy turned out to have a wonderful time with her but it became an evening of doom. Carrie’s awful female peers, one in particular along with her boyfriend, had developed this prank rather than going to prom. The people all laughed at her and there was a portion of the movie in which the producer’s used an effect to make it appear as though they were laughing at her more than they really were, showing a kaleidoscope vision of people just absolutely laughing at her expense. Carrie used telekinesis to slam doors, hurt people by electrocuting teachers, and hosing people off with a fire hose that seemed to just float and turn on by itself. She was going to make them pay and as the school caught fire, she walked out. She was walking down the road when the two pranksters pulled up and were going to run her over when she used her telekinesis powers to flip their car over and burn. As she returned home, she bathed and then her mother tried to kill her. In protection of herself, Carrie used telekinesis yet again to shove knives into her mother’s body in a manner that resembled the statue of Christ in her prayer closet. This killed her mother and as Carrie tried to pull her mother into the prayer closet, the house began to come crashing down and it was consumed with flames. Carrie never was able to identify with a personal group. She never was a part of society and she never really adapted to nature. She was not allowed in social settings and the closest she ever got was being Tommy’s prom date. It was the single time she felt any self-confidence as he whirled her on the dance floor, kissed her and told her she was beautiful. It was the only happy moment that Carrie would ever really experience. Her gym teacher was the only other positive influence in Carrie’s concept of self. Both characters exhibit problems that can be psychoanalyzed. Their issues contribute to their inability to fit in with peers and society as well as create a negative self-concept that influences behavior. The audience never sees the childhood developments that researchers indicate help create a person to develop into a thriving adolescent. However, evidence of their past history such as Carrie’s lack of having a father and her mother being an erratic Bible enthusiast and giving her child a sheltered life, Carrie never fully developed how to love, play and work well with others. Research indicates these abilities that she never learned would help constitute a healthy environment for her to grow up in5 and thrive. Donnie was able to thrive yet hide his schizophrenia from his friends. His family and therapist were all very supportive. The childhood he had contributed to his growth. However, events were foreshadowed by the fact that sometime in his childhood he had set a fire before to destroy a home, which is something he also did to a famous local author he disagreed with. The voices in Donnie’s head, or the ones that came from Frank, the rabbit, were part of what directed him. His therapist had hinted that this was a new friend, indicating something that the writers of the movie did not tell the audience but they were supposed to catch that he had in fact had imaginary friends of some nature before. While the details were not directly exposed about either of the characters’ childhood and how it would have affected their psychological development, it was indirectly touched on in various parts of the films which gave the audience an inkling that both characters had struggled with a childhood that prevented them from thriving as adolescents. As pointed out by research, these negative experiences these two characters had as children greatly affected and influenced their processes in both the conscious and unconscious mind6. Donnie, while in therapy, appeared to have some issues with psychosexual behaviors as he was hypnotized, ready to unzip his pants and continued to talk about how he really wanted to be with other women and to do it like rabbits did in a sexual manner. This did not play a major role in his character development but there was an implication that during the Halloween party that he and his girlfriend, Gretchen, did have sexual relations. Carrie White, on the other hand, was never exposed to any sexual problems and seemed to turn her trust to her mother who focused on the words of the Bible than to expose Carrie to reality. According to a comparison made by researchers about Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson’s theories of development7, Carrie never seemed to have issues of development in the ages of birth to her current adolescent age where there was little focus on oral, anal, phallic or latency psychosexual fixations. Freud believed these contributed to the development of a person’s ego. Carrie followed more closely with Erikson’s theories of development that were based on psychosocial development. The terms used are basic trust versus mistrust where a child up to the age of a year old goes from trusting their mother to trusting others. Carrie never seemed trust anyone but her mother. Her gym teacher is the only one who saw Carrie’s naive attitudes toward social life and her self-perception and attempted to nurture those needs. From ages one year old to three years old, Erikson suggested was the time to develop autonomy versus shame or doubt. Carrie almost always felt shamed. It was obvious to the audience of the motion picture that she always felt as though she had to hide herself and had an inability to even think for herself. She always relied on her Mama. While she was able to develop cognitive skills, they were immature and though at the ages from seven to eleven she should have developed social skills at school, by the time she was a teenager, she had never made any social interactions or had friends. She was an atypical child and had never been given the tools that she needed in her environment to escape to a self-sufficient and self-loving psychosocial behavior and it limited her. Both of these characters were atypical in some way because Donnie had a mental disorder that affected his ability to thrive. Carrie not only was hindered by her environment but was plagued with realizing she was even more abnormal than her peers because of her telekinesis. Donnie had the environment in which to thrive and he was cognitively matured and self-sufficient. When he thought he was on medication for schizophrenia, he was on placebos. The movie writers wanted the audience to be aware that these teenagers were both troubled and this makes them similar. Donnie Darko did not lack the social skills that Carrie White did. The writers showed the loving family that the Darkos had and how they were supportive of one another. Carrie White’s social development relied on what she had learned at school and her mother had taught her so much about praying that she was even abusive about it, thinking everything that Carrie did was the work of the devil. Carrie was intimidated by her mother’s erratic behaviors, taking beatings just for having a menstrual cycle. When Carrie’s mother tried to kill her, she talked about being with a man like it was a sin she had committed and that she had liked it and so that Carrie was a product of the devil’s work. Carrie’s mother’s psychotic behaviors and Carrie’s reliance on her mother are what show the audience that Carrie had severe issues of how to process real life. Another concept to consider is one from Laurence Steinberg in which he discusses risk taking among adolescents. This discusses socioemotional psychological concepts that he believed resulted in an adolescent partaking in risky behavior8 and both actually did so. Donnie’s risky behavior resulted from being able to see the Doomsday visions and instead of following the tangent where others around him would be harmed, he lived the alternate reality where he was the one that was harmed. This was risky but not in the way of acting on impulse in order to be stimulated as Steinberg might suggest. Donnie believed he was helping others instead. Though they would mourn him and Gretchen would never actually meet him, he was able to see that someday others’ lives would be better or would be different without him. Carrie’s risky behavior was simply standing up to her mother. She never took it out on her peers but when it came to being asked to prom, she was defiant, and it was the first time that she actually did this. It was a form of reward-seeking. She wished to go to the prom and have a good time rather than listen to her mother. Though it ended up that she had an evening of extreme horror that would lead to her own death, it was a way to show that just a boost of self-esteem offered by a gym teacher and a good looking and popular boy asking her to prom could do a world of good for her and lead her on the path toward maturity. Through cinema, the writers and directors all told two strange storylines that could be labeled science fiction or horror. The adolescents that were the main characters were never intended on being labeled as normal compared to their peers. Though there was no extensive character development about their peers or the other characters, it was evident that since both of these movies were deliberately named after the main characters, that was exactly who the audience was supposed to focus on. It was to tell a story about Carrie White and a few decades later, tell another story about a boy named Donnie Darko. Both had extreme gifts; one character was able to have visions of the future and one had the power of telekinesis. However, one functioned well in society while the other did not. Ironically, these two movies both had tragic endings that put an absolute halt to further developing into adults because of their premature deaths. However, the writers of the motion pictures let the audience learn enough about the main characters to devise a story about their psychological being. Bibliography Carrie. Directed by Brian De Palma. 1976. Los Angeles, CA: MGM. Donnie Darko. Directed by Richard Kelly. 2001. Beverly Hills, CA: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. D.W. Winnicott. “Playing and Reality.” London: Tavistock Publications (1971): 1-150. Steele, Howard and Steele, Miriam. “Psychoanalytic Views about Development,” in David Messer and Stuart Millar (Eds). Exploring Developmental Psychology. London: Francis Arnold. (1999): 263-283. Steinberg, Laurence. “A Dual Systems Model of Adolescent Risk-Taking.” Developmental Psychology. Philadelphia: PA. (2009). Read More