Boyhood Movie Essay

Introduction

People are always learning and developing. It’s inevitable. It’s a process that continues throughout one’s life. One’s lifespan can be broken down into distinct stages, which includes childhood, adolescence and adulthood. A lot of growing, developing and influencing happens at each of these stages which can have an effect on how one grows up, their thoughts and their actions. The film Boyhood is a film that follows 12 years in the life of “Mason”, a fictional character, as he grows, develops and navigates the peskiness that is childhood and adolescence. The film features the same cast the whole way through, and is partly based on director Richard Linklater’s own life. The film has over a hundred scenes, each of which deals with a different event or moment, some of which are just the “lesser moments”, in Mason’s life during the 12 years that we see him

It’s when an individual explores options to work out who they are. Two theorists with lofty ideas on identity formation are Erik Erikson and James Marcia. Erikson is one of the most influential theorists on the topic. He developed a theory on psychosocial development. His fifth stage of identity vs role confusion is aimed at adolescence when a person is trying to work out their identity and who they are (Keitt, 2012). Marcia further researched Erikson’s theory with university students. As a result, he came up with a more complex look at identity formation (Drewery, Payne, & Claiborne, 2014). In the film Boyhood one scene to do with identity formation is when Jim is questioning Mason as to why he’s wearing nail after getting an earring. Almost as if he’s hinting at something. Samantha, his sister, tells Jim he’s only wearing it to be cool. Marcia would categorise wearing nail polish to seem “cool” as foreclosure, as he’s taking on the identity expected of him without exploring what he wants personally. He was assigned “cool” by his