Thoughts on The Hunt For The Wilderpeople

I can see why it is New Zealand's top grossing movie. The Hunt For The Wilderpeople is a cheeky, off-beat humor film, while at the same time, portrayed some strong characters and concepts. Julian Dennison played the role of a young rebellious adolescents well, and Sam Neil is a veteran actor by itself, so the chemistry between the two of them was enjoyable to see.

Ricky Baker is an orphan. The first concern that came to mind was the absence of his parents. In his case, he never knew his parents at all, since birth. All he had was a picture of his young mother. As such, he had no role model to look up to. Social learning theory builds around the concept of how we learn things by observing others. A key 'others' is our parents and family, since we normally spend the majority of our time with them in the early years of our life. However, this was not applicable to Ricky. He had to learn from somewhere else. That being said, it was highly likely that he mirrored the gangster lifestyle as a role model, or tried to. To illustrate, in the film, we can see how he involves himself in minor acts of gangsterism, such as vandalism, minor arson, and general misconduct. Also, Ricky likes to reference to gangster lingo and even chose Tupac Shakur as his idol.

A quiet and subtle theme of the movie is character of Hec. Although not explicitly described, Hec represent a minority group that is subtly frowned down upon and largely ignored. An ex-convict. Many people would easily distrust past offenders, with the mentality of 'he did it once, he can do it again'. In fact, there is rarely anything good associated with ex-convicts, as these perceptions are further strengthen by criminal movies and news of offenders with a convicted past. That may explain why Hec lived in isolation with his wife, Bella, and involves himself with lone tasks such as hunting or jungle trekking. As far as I know, this particular group of people are largely neglected and even stigmatized in many ways. We often hear of advocation for the right's of women, LGBT, immigrants and so forth. But in the case of ex-cons, no one seems interested. No one is keen to bring them out of the pit of stigma that they are thrown in. Of course, I understand the rationale behind it. Ex-cons are technically criminals after all, so they could be dangerous and avoiding would sound like a wise decision. But more often that not, there is more to the story of an ex-con, not just the official legal prosecutions. As an example, we could see how Hec's background was dug out and published in the newspapers when the two of them disappeared into the woods. The media unsubtly suggested that this fellow ex-con had most likely kipnapped this young boy, given his past. As such, Hec was targeted for capture very quickly, without actually digging further into the details of the story.

This movie, although light-hearted and cheeky in nature, showed a darker underlying theme. On one hand, you have orphans. On the other, you have ex-criminals. Both groups are people who undergo great difficulties in life, in terms of social, emotional or psychological issues. As such, it was good to be sharply reminded of the hardship that these folks suffer, unbeknownst to most. On the surface, they may be rebellious as a child or unfeeling as a old man, but they have gone through much that shaped them so. We have to learned to look beyond what is obvious, and see people for what they truly are, and not what we think they are.

Thoughts on Experimenter

It was quite an enlightening experience to finally watch the story of the scientist of one of the most controversial studies, whom I often heard but never knew before, in the movie, Experimenter. Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment is frequently presented along side Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiement, in terms of social psychology and ethical issues. Interestingly, both of them were also classmates in James Monroe High School in 1950. I also never knew about the other various experiments that Milgram developed, such as his lost letters experiments, his looking up experiment and his six-degrees of separation theory. But of course, it was the obedience test that garnered much attention, and is still largely debated decades later to this day.

The experiment was infamous for its ethical issues and concerns. Chief among them, were the deception and distress that the participants felt. In order to obtain true and authentic responses, Milgram had to deceive them from true nature of the experiment, by informing them that the experiment was to reinforce memory and learning. Furthermore, most, if not all, of the participants were emotionally and mentally distressed throughout the experiment, as they struggled to obeyed. Many people would claim that such methods are unethical and unjustifiable, and had no grounds to be carried out in the first place. Others would suggest that it opened the eyes of many to the true nature of humanity, as most researchers wrongly predicted that most would NOT obey all the way during that time.

Milgram uncover something dark and essential about human nature. When we are being told to obey a command, under certain conditions, more than half of us are likely to obey, even if the command is evil. As we can see in the movie, although the participants struggled and complained, they eventually went all the way until the maximum voltage. Despite the screams and later silence of the "learner", they obeyed the instruction from the authority figure of the assistant. Although most of us would like to think that we are good people without the capacity to harm others, the truth lies somewhere a little further from that. And this very fact troubles many, on a deep and dark level within ourselves. To illustrate, in the movie, we can see how uncomfortable the participants were in the follow-up debriefing. They were not traumatized, but rather, were disturbed by their very own actions. As such, we can see how they try to attribute the blame away, claiming that they had tried their best to resist but the circumstances did not allow so. One lady even mentioned how Milgram could have conducted the experiment on anyone else besides her, suggesting that she didn't want others, nor herself to know or see her nature.

Milgram's interest in the nature of obedience stem largely from the fact of his Jewish origins. The events of the Holocaust left an lasting impression on him, as well as tickled his curiosity. The mind of a scientist is driven by curiosity and the need to satisfy that curiousity. This drive can also applied others, in many other areas as well. If there is no motivation, there is no will to move forward. At the same time, we are not necessarily who we think we are. More often than not, we probably overestimated ourselves, or in my case and personal nature, underestimated myself. There is more inside of us than we realized, and it would be presumptuous to hold fast to what we think we know. We need to look further and deeper, and understand ourselves as a whole, including the darkest part. Only then, we can truly accept ourselves and be a little more rooted from within, and not run away from the truth, like how the lady in the debriefing session tried to did so in the movie, Experimenter.