Analysis Of Viva Zapata
With The Concepts Of Group Processes In Social Psychology
Viva Zapata (1952) is about a part of the life of Emiliano Zapata, one of the prominent leaders of the Mexican revolution. In addition to being a biographical film, it also highlights the difficulties experienced by the villagers, especially during the reign of Mexican President Dictator Diaz. Even though I was a little bored while watching the movie because it was an old production, I encountered scenes and dialogues that exemplified many social psychological concepts such as crowd psychology, majorities and minorities, and collective identity. In this essay, I will make personal inferences from the movie Viva Zapata within the framework of Group Processes concepts.
If I analyze from general to specific, I can start by saying that we watch the dynamics of majority and minority groups throughout the film. While Mexican President Diaz, other politicians and the rich constitute the majority group; the peasants who are treated unfairly constitute the minority group. In my opinion, the sentence we hear from the father of the woman Zapata wants to marry, “We may all be made of the same dough, but the jug and the vase are never the same” emphasizes the difference in status between the majority and minority groups. The fact that the villagers agreed to remain a minority against the government, that is, the majority group, for a long period of 34 years reminded me of Moscovici’s idea, “The majority group can bind the minority group to itself with the power, size and status it has.” Throughout the film, we watch the crowd action of the minority group.
In the first scene of the movie, we watch a group of farmers talking to President Diaz. Zapata asked, “Have you ever heard of a land case that the peasants won?” This sentence shows that the unjust and impoverishing policies of Dictator Diaz, who has been in power for 34 years, are behind the crowd actions that will take place in the later part of the film. This supports the idea that “crowd actions are shaped by ideology and social structure.”
It is also possible to see the leader who will direct the crowd actions on the same part: When dictator Diaz, who was indifferent to the problems of the farmers whose fields were confiscated, said, “Be patient,” Zapata, one of the farmers, reacted verbally, saying, “We make our bread from corn, not from patience.” In the next part, other villagers organized around Zapata and started a rebellion by cutting the wires around the fields. I think the reason Zapata was adopted as a leader was because he was helpful, fair and brave. Because the villagers, who had been living in an unfair system for years, now wanted justice. Zapata united the villagers around new norms against the inequality and injustice inflicted by the majority on the minority group. In this mass mobilization, villagers fought with the motivation to end injustice by emphasizing their social identity rather than their personal identity. Zapata became a successful leader, that is, an entrepreneur of identity, because he reflected this social identity well. The following sentences said by his enemy prove that Zapata is an identity entrepreneur: “He is not a man we are discussing. He is an idol and he is spreading. Killing thoughts is harder than killing a snake. How do you kill a thought?” I would like to point out that this dialogue is my favorite in the movie.
Finally, I would like to explain what I have said so far in terms of the EMSICA model. The villagers, who were under the rule of Dictator Diaz for 34 years, suffered an injustice when their fields were taken away from them. With their perception of injustice and their desire to change this perception of injustice, they defined themselves with a social identification that we can call anarchists or resisters. As a result, they joined the collective action. The missing leader figure in the EMSICA model is the film’s main character, Emiliano Zapata. When we look at the ESIM model, the villagers felt empowered when they helped Diaz leave the presidency and run away. When the new government came and did not first give the fields back to the villagers, their desire to continue the action continued.
To summarize, the reason I watched this movie and wrote the review was because it was my homework. Thanks to this homework, I improved what I learned and watched a good movie because Viva Zapata was a film from which inferences could be made regarding the concepts of group processes. I think this is because it is a story of revolution and resistance. In political events like this, many processes such as minority and majority groups, crowd actions, collective identity, leadership are observed. These were the issues that caught my attention in this movie. Maybe many more concepts that I missed were mentioned…
If the topic interests you…
Articles on the subject from my professor who taught the Group Processes course at university:
- Akfirat, S., Uysal, M., Bayrak, F., Ergiyen, T., Üzümçeker, E., Yurtbakan, T., & Özkan, Ö. S. (2020, June 15). Social Identification and Collective Action Participation in the Internet Age: A Meta-Analysis. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uqb7a
- Uysal, M. S., & AKFIRAT, S., (2022). Formation of an emergent protestor identity: Applying the EMSICA to the Gezi Park protests. GROUP PROCESSES & INTERGROUP RELATIONS , vol.25, no.2, 527–539.
