Silhouettes Speak: Cinema Through a New Lens
Movies are unique compared to other forms of media since they deliver information to us in the same way all first-hand accounts are created; by witnessing the event in all its glory. Their power as historical accounts has been invaluable to us, even though they have become an insight into a bygone era only in the past few decades. However, the analysis of movies for recreating history is completely detached from the classic methods of reviewing them.
Film analysis is a complex topic, more so when it comes to understanding the people of the time when the movie was created. But commercialized films offer a significantly more effective form of analysis than standard recordings of a particular event, through a wonderful method known as psycho-historical analysis.
The word itself sounds like something out of science fiction, and it actually is! It is from the famous book series known as The Foundation by Isaac Asimov, where it refers to a form of psychology which can be used to predict the future by using the simple analysis of mob mentality and similar events from the past.
This atypical form of analysis discusses the mentality of the people at the time when a form of commercialized media, such as books or films, was popular. This analysis is done on one simple assumption that may sound impossible when you consider people as individuals but works as an oddly accurate approximation.
When people are treated as groups with varying views, we reach a mean value that is approving of the media. While the method seems haphazard and impromptu in most cases, it takes a keen eye to analyse the films in a thorough manner without overdoing it and thus invalidates the analysis itself.
Let’s make it simpler by taking an example of a methodical approach of psycho-historical analysis on the fan-favourite Disney movie Zootopia:
Where do you find different animals living under the same roof? Zootopia! Wild, ferocious predators and their meek, sneaky counterparts live side by side in this city. The city is divided into five climatic regions resembling the different ecologies on Earth. Even in this ideal city, the hunters exercise a greater share of political power despite multiple provisions to increase the involvement of gatherers in society. This is a portrayal of a majority of real governments which dream of being fair to society but fail to execute it.
The protagonist is a bunny, Judy Hopps, who follows her dream of becoming a police officer and breaks stereotypes revolving around the weakness of prey animals and their inability to help for the greater good. The film tackles such racism and stereotypes in a very subtle manner with Judy’s story of earning unbiased respect in a society that claims to be inclusive of all species.
Judy and her counterpart, a fox named Nick Wilde share purely platonic affection reflecting the common nature of platonic love in modern society. Truth in today’s world is not absolute. It is rather flexible and each one has his own definition. These interpretations of truth which fall within moral and legal laws are showcased in Zootopia.
The diversity of animals sharing a city relates to cultural diversity in the world. In the past, animated films have avoided sensitive topics and Zootopia shows that it’s no longer necessary to avoid them. This speaks volumes on society being more open today than in the past.
The choice of analysis being Zootopia is a very ideal one with very clear cut borders, both the physical ones between the regions of the marvellous city and what we can derive from the story being told through the film. Let’s look at some shorter analyses to understand how psycho-history sets itself apart:
- Modern Times, the Charlie Chaplin classic, discusses the life of an industrial worker in the mid-1930s. The importance of the film cannot be understated, for people had just started watching films where they could they see themselves as the protagonist rather than just a perfect version of them. The Great Depression had shown to the layman that the harshness of life was more common than he had thought.
- Psycho is one of the most influential horror movies ever made, and for good reason. It set itself apart from the rest of the genre at the time, by showing something truly horrifying. The serial killers who we distinguish so clearly through our moral compass aren’t so different after all. The fact that your everyday Joe could be out to kill innocent people showed horror in a fundamentally scary way because society was just beginning to see mental illness as something that hurt even the best of us.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey set a goal that we are yet to achieve nearly two decades after the time set in the film. And what makes it even more astonishing is the fact that the Moon Landing would occur only a year after the release of this pop culture phenomenon. The film clearly aimed for this slot in time, a year before the Moon Landing occurred, to show potential in the future, no matter how pessimistic it ended up seeming. And the popularity of the film after 1969 proves to us that society was looking forward to our potential in space travel to create a bright future, one that they hoped to experience in their lifetime.
Psycho-historical analysis shows us that the era of movies has redefined the way we can learn about the past, by treating the film as the surface of a pond from which society looks at itself. We must not mistake the stars reflected in the pond for those in the night sky, but films can root themselves in reality and provide us with a silhouette of the human spirit in its most candid form.
We can look at the past through the magic crystal ball that movies truly are underneath, and that’s what movies are at their core. After all, psycho-history exploits a crucial part of human behaviour: The mind often creates memories where none exist.
This article was written in collaboration with Yin Rav, Murali Krishna, Daniel Sujay R, Abhishek Ramachandran and Antony Terence.
