Hey there, internet. In this edition of Dat Blog, I will share with you a paper I did for my general psychology class last year. It is an analysis of the pinnacle of film, Napoleon Dynamite, from a psychological perspective. Enjoy:
Napoleon
Dynamite
Social psychology
is the study of how social and cultural environment affect us and our behavior.
One can find several examples of this science in the film Napoleon Dynamite, in which a young man finds his way through
struggles with family and peers at school and at home. In this paper, we will
take a closer look at how the film includes different aspects of social
psychology, in big ways and in subtle ways.
The
story’s protagonist, an unconventional youth named Napoleon Dynamite, would be
classified as a stereotypical “geek.” He lacks in social skills and is
generally awkward. Throughout the film, the viewer may realize that he is truly
his own person and never truly conforms to his school society. For example, he
is a member of an interpretive dance club. Napoleon is unlike any other
prominent character in the film and he does not fit any social norms or fill
any social roles as we would think of them. The first scene of the film shows
Napoleon getting on the bus. As the bus begins to move, he takes an action
figure attached to a string and tosses it out the bus window, holding onto the
string as the figure bounces along the road.
Early
in the film, Napoleon’s grandmother leaves him and his brother Kip alone at
their house telling them that she’s “going to see some friends.” Later on the
viewer sees that Grandma Dynamite is more than meets the eye. The film shows a
scene in which the old woman is riding an ATV on sand dunes with a group of
people cheering her on. She speeds up a hill and flies off the ATV, presumably
to a nasty landing. Napoleon’s uncle Rico arrives at the Dynamites’ house to
watch Kip and Napoleon per Grandma’s request while she’s at the hospital, and
when Napoleon asks why his grandmother was at the dunes, Rico replies that “it
looks like there’s a lot you don’t know about her.” This is an example of the
fundamental attribution error, in which Napoleon and Kip only view their
grandmother based on what they see without looking into what goes on in her
life.
Later
on in the film, Napoleon makes friends with a new kid at his school, Pedro
Sanchez, a mustached Latino boy. Pedro shows Napoleon his bike, which proudly
sports a Mexican flag. Later, in scenes at Pedro’s home, the viewer may notice
statues and images of the Virgin Mary, which insinuates that the
Mexican-American Sanchez family is Catholic in accordance to the stereotype.
Further on in the film Pedro runs for school president, perhaps trying to
better establish his new social identity. As part of his campaign he holds a
piñata game using a piñata shaped like the opposing candidate, Summer Wheatley.
All these factors show that Pedro has a healthy ethnic identity.
One
group of antagonists in Napoleon Dynamite
is the “preppy” kid group at Napoleon’s school, mainly consisting Summer, the
opposing presidential candidate, and two others named Don and Trisha. These
youths hold a negative attitude towards Napoleon and Pedro. At one point in the
film when Pedro asks Summer to the school dance, she declines. Summer runs against
Pedro in the voting for school president so this may be part of the reason she
would be prejudiced. Because Don and Trisha are friends with her and she would
seem like an authority figure, they follow along with her explicit attitude
towards Napoleon and Pedro.
As
the story continues to unfold, Uncle Rico turns out to be Napoleon’s main
antagonist. He gets in verbal fights with Napoleon, building tension between
the two of them. Soon Rico severely embarrasses Napoleon and attempts to turn
one of his friends against him by saying to several people that Napoleon
suggested to him that they would be interested in the breast enhancement
program he’s selling (which eventually leads to him getting beaten up). This
leads to a physical confrontation between Napoleon and Rico.
The reason behind
Rico’s behavior can be inferred by listening to the things he says earlier in
the film. He had dreams of playing professional football and being rich and
living with his “soulmate” in a “big ol’ mansion somewhere.” These dreams were
dashed against the rocks when his football career never got off the ground and
his relationship with his girlfriend didn’t work out. Now a shell of his former
self, he appears to remain stuck in the year 1982, living in a big orange RV
and making videos of himself throwing a football, later showing the video to
Kip and Napoleon and boasting of his football skills. Perhaps he saw his visit
to the Dynamites’ house as an opportunity to reestablish himself and his social
identity, and perhaps also he experienced cognitive dissonance to such a degree
that he did things he normally do to his family.
We can also find
some interesting points about Napoleon’s brother Kip. Kip spends a lot of time
on the internet chatting with “LaFawnduh,” who he claims to be his girlfriend.
It seems as if nobody believes him until the woman comes to their town and
meets him. The African-American woman influences him in such a way that he
changes his image, wearing an outfit that fits the “hip-hop culture,” matching
her style, but drastically confusing Kip’s social identity.
At the climax of
the film, as Pedro finishes his class president candidate speech, the audience
realizes that Napoleon is not who everyone sees on the outside. He wows the
audience with a passionate, funky dance to the song “Canned Heat.” The people,
who had fallen into the fundamental attribution error, judging Napoleon by
dispositional attribution, rather than situational, come to see that he is
actually a young man with a great talent and perhaps more worthy of praise than
they previously thought.
Peter
Dat Blogger
Dat Blogger
sweet bro
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