Week 10: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

Ricky seems to face abandonment issues. He’s always been told that no one wants him and that he is a reject; his mother had left him and there’s no one who would want to adopt him. He seems to internalise it and believe it himself. He acts out through antisocial behaviour, such as “burning stuff, defacing stuff, hitting stuff.” Perhaps he is acting out because he is not the given the right attention that he needs. He is constantly looked at through a negative light. Ricky has been moved from place to place, often without considering what he wants. The child welfare officers believed that they knew what was best, even though it was making Ricky unhappy. They think that he can’t think for himself because he is young, and thus executes decisions based on their feelings, not Ricky’s. He may feel unheard and invisible because of this, and acting out is one of the ways that he may get attention.

Moreover, Ricky seems to have been labeled - and this label has stuck to him. He’s been considered a problematic child because of his inappropriate behaviour, and even considered dangerous. It seems as though he’s accepted this label and goes along with it. However, it is also important to remember that he is merely a twelve year old, and not everything he does has been done on purpose. For instance, he accidentally burned down Hector’s farm but was misinterprated as him doing it intentionally. When in fact, sometimes he just doesn’t know what he’s doing. Ricky can’t help that, but trouble seems to follow him wherever he goes.

Apart from that, the character development between Ricky and Hector has been one of the main elements in the film. They both started off being restrictive in their communication between each other, especially Hector, who tried to shut himself off from Ricky. However, they begin to open up and disclose personal information about each other. For example, Hector can't read and the adults tried to cover up the cause of Amber's death, Ricky's friend, from him. They began to develop a friendship over the course of time when they were in the bush. Bella was the reason for them coming together and meeting, and it was the reason that they had stayed together. They bonded over here despite her not being there physically.

Week 9: Experimenter (2015)

 “Life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards.”

1. Politics of academia and the experimental field of Psychology

The culture of political correctness has permeated in the psychology field, often under the guise of being ethical. Commentators, other psychologists, critics, mere consumers and observers of this phenomenon have shown worry towards the past participants of Milgram's study who exhibited characteristics of stress and nervousness that were experienced when the study was carried out. The same people believed that deception as a tool to reveal the participants' true behaviour was a form of manipulation, even insinuating that it is synonymous with a form of torture - as they were made to administer electric shocks to another person in the study - even though only 1.3% of participants indicated negative feelings after the experiment itself, and 74% learned something of personal importance through it.

Moreover, they believed that the participants were forced to administer these shocks, Milgram's character in response to this: "what happened between the command and outcome is up to the individual - their choice to obey or not." This encapsulates the idea that Milgram was originally trying to deliver, in which people have a choice to obey authority and to disobey it. But, real life situations often show that people follow the authority's instructions. Why is that?

During the debriefing sessions, past participants were called in and interviewed. They said they didn't understand the point of the experiment and could not seem to handle that they would be considered as bad people. People think everything a person does is due to the feelings and ideas within the person, but sometimes it is important to acknowledge that a person's actions depend on the situation that they are put in. Again, a major point that is often misinterpreted or looked past at. Not only did they feel upset over being deceived (i.e. the negative aspects that came from it, like feeling nervous, feeling bad for administering the shocks, etc) and possibly felt some sort of betrayment from their vulnerability during the experiment itself, but it also seemed that the participants shifted the blame towards Milgram because most of them were not able to face what they did (and of which they found horrific) - they couldn't accept that part of themselves. Instead of trying to understand why and seeing the underlying processes that may caused them to do such a thing, they chose the easier thing to do and blamed it on Milgram.

2. People can't think for themselves

After its publication, Milgram's study was talked about and discussed by a range of people - even being translated into eight other languages. It is no surprise that people would pick sides (either seeing it as a brilliant study that is a gate to more similar studies, or that it was unethical and vile) and see which side their opinions lined up with, rather than forming their own opinions about it and dissecting it to see what its original goals were. People seemed to be fixated on the 'electric shock' and 'deception' part of the experiment, forgetting the main idea of what it aimed to study in human behaviour - to understand the reasoning behind blind obedience towards authority even if its instructions included hurting another human to killing a mass amount of them.

A prime example was that scene where the blonde lady bumped into Milgram outside the university's building and said she saw him published on Times - even read his book reviews (but not the actual book) and thought the experiment was harsh. This goes to show that people will listen to what others say rather than forming their own opinion rather than analysing it themselves - it is the easier option anyway. As Milgram's character said it to be a totalitarian world, in which a government exercises its control over the freedom and thoughts of its people; not allowing them to have differing opinions. Once zoomed out and the bigger picture is laid out, there will always be people who look to the authority and do as they are told - obedience is something that is taught since we were young. We have internalised obedience through so many forms - in school, at home, at work, our cultures, our society as a whole. We look up to authorities and look past their bad character; we get punished if we sway out of the linear path shaped and readied for us; we follow and obey things we do not believe in because that is the right thing to do, or at least what we're told. The way we justify doing horrific acts is by blaming it on someone else - that authoritative figure. This is where the agentic state takes place. These are acts based on the direction that is given to us; we are the instruments carrying out the wishes of others, "I'm just following order", "I'm just doing my job", "It's the law."