Social psychology is the study of our thoughts, feelings, and behavior about other people and how other people influence our feelings. Social psychology is mainly based around stereotyping, discrimination, and prejudice. In the documentary The Mask You Live In, these three factors come into play in more lives than most people realize, and also have major effects to people’s lives. In our society, many schemas have been developed, which now result in discrimination if a person does not fit that schema. This will then cause many people to develop psychological issues. The documentary is mainly about the perception of what the definition of masculinity really is. Our society has developed schemas as to how men should express their emotions, which is practically not at all. Since we as a society have set these schemas for men, they have to constantly try to prove their masculinity over other men. Likewise, boys in this society also have to hide their softer feelings and …show more content…
If a man possesses the masculinity that society claims he should have, he may still experience many emotional issues within himself. After a man has been taught that domination is the key, they may develop a sense of aggression. Aggression may also follow the fact they men hold all of their feelings into to protect themselves from the schemas. Men have been seen to use violence in their past to solve their issues. In the documentary, one of the prisoners in the group session spoke about how he was in jail because all of his emotions that had been bottled up become uncontrollable in one instance. If a boy or a man does not contain the masculinity expected, he may become bullied and out-casted. The continuation of discrimination toward a boy may cause suicidal thoughts. On top of being bullied for not being a powerful man, he may still be trying to hold in his emotions to prove that he
This also leads into the fact that people interpret male violence and aggression as natural. They’ll pin it as something hardwired from ‘the hunter-gatherer days’. Often times they’ll also blame it on media violence, such as graphic video games, movies and TV shows. This is something much broader than that.
Observing masculinity: Masculinity affects the lives of these boys, from the expectation of violence. Youth Demographics: Neighborhood with high violent-crime rates and had sibling or friends who had been previously involved with crime. (Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys, PG 14&17) The purpose is for society to have a depth understanding to how these young boys try, so that there not punished as youth; rather create opportunity and understanding rather than constraining
It is clear that the film Prisoners of Silence holds many illustrations of concepts explained by Social Psychology. While the examples of belief perseverance and the confirmation bias are specifically pointed out here, one could find numerous others. This shows that one can examine situations and events occurring around and within one's own life and see Social Psychology at work.
We’re all familiar with the stereotypes and myths about what it means to “be a man.” The victorious leader gets what he wants using aggression and does not accept failure; he is smooth with the ladies, and he is often good with a gun. He is usually rich and in control, especially in control of women, like a father who loves his daughter dearly but will be damned if she’s going to go out dressed like that. The list could go on and on with the stereotypes. But the Coen Brothers’ cult-classic film, The Big Lebowsk (1998), with its hero “The Dude,” contradicts these notions of masculinity. The Coen brothers offer several familiar stereotypes of masculinity (the Vietnam vet, the successful capitalist, an oversexed bowler, some aggressive German nihilists), yet it is these characters that throughout the film are shown to be absurd, insecure, and even impotent. It is these stereotype men that the Coen brothers criticize. “Sometimes there’s a man,” says the narrator over and over again, pointing out the Dude’s non-stereotypical masculinity as the true representation of what it means to be a man. The brothers then illustrate that the men who give no thought to their identity, who ignore the pressure to conform to cultural expectations, are to be regarded as “real men.”
Boys think that they must put on a persona that they are tough and no one can hurt them. I agree with the author that the boys are forced to hide their emotions and fears that’s why men become insensitive. Because the most important factor of how boys become tough men is how adults treat and teach them differently from girls. The boys start hearing messages that they need to be strong and tough from adults since they are just babies. I think this is the main problem that causes men to be insensitive and emotionalist. However, it is their parents, society, and everyone around them who affect the boys to become the men that they should be. If people treat boys same as how they treat the girls, I guess men will act the same way as
This shows that the idea of being the most masculine is embedded deep inside and is almost like a disease whose symptoms can become domestic violence.
George Orwell quote, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” The documentary, “The Mask You Live In”, directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom shows different ages of males who struggle to be themselves while battling America’s limited meaning of manliness. George Orwell quote, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” Influenced by the media, among their age group, and the grown-ups in their lives, adolescents dissociate their emotions, disrespect women, and is aggressive. Society gender stereotypes affect young males to change to fit into the societal norm as they characterize “real” men.
The "others" do not want to demonize men, yet are not taking an active role in eliminating the occasional poison that masculine expectations inhibit. Hamblin 's opinion, as well as several respected experts in psychology, criminology, and sociology, believes that toxic masculinity is an accurate term that can further both discussion and action on how to stop the aggressive and destructive notions of
“Be a man”, is on of the most destructive phrases to tell boys and men. The Mask You Live In explains the struggles boys and men have growing up in a patriarchal society. I chose to watch this to understand how men feel oppressed. All year, I became aware of females and their struggles in the patriarchy. It is interesting to see that men are affected too. The documentary should have had more personal stories because it allows the audience to connect with and have empathy for men. On the other hand, the movie thoroughly demonstrated the inner conflict boys and men face in society. Men feel they must be strong and dominate. They feel they need to hide emotion and empathy in order to fit in. They must be manly in order to
Social psychology is a scientific study that studies how people think, feel, and how they behave under the influence of other people (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2013, p. 2). Thinking about what social influence really means, we tend to think of a person who tries to persuade another person to acting a certain way. It can be a form of peer pressure, like taking that first puff of a cigarette, or it can be conforming to popular societal views, such as obeying the law of the land. Fiction is a great way to learn about social psychological perspectives. Watching popular theatrical films is the perfect way to learn because it illustrates the application of many perceptions within the subject of social psychology.
Boys are influenced by many of their coaches in life; brothers and fathers telling them they must be tough and show no pain, teachers who expect them to work hard at everything they do, and in the back of their minds are their mothers who worry about them over extending and getting hurt. Kimmel asked a few men in their 20’s, “where do young men get these ideas” (the Guy Code), they all gave the same answers: their brothers, fathers, and coaches. One mentioned that his father would always be riding him, telling him that he must be tough to make it in this world, another said his brothers were always ragging on him, calling him a “pussy” because he didn’t want to go outside and play football with them. He just wanted to stay in and play Xbox. Yet another said that whenever he got hurt his coach would mock and make fun of him because he was showing his feelings. The world is a very competitive for men, they believe they must always prove themselves to other men. Men get pressured into doing things they don’t want to do. Men shouldn’t be pressured they should be able to do what they want to
In both the movie and the passage they explain how society has certain standards or expectations for men to follow or else they can no longer be men. Although they have different ways of portraying it they both have a serious tone about the way men are men. In both cases they believe that these strict guidelines should not be accounted for in life today. They also take into account that you have to do manly things to be manly, like be athletic or be big and bad. The documentary shows this with letting the men in prison talk about their experiences whereas the passage talks about the race he had. They both also talk about bragging about your success, whether it is with women, money or the top of the men statute. Guys themselves have grown to hide their feelings by showing everyone how “successful” they have become. This can cause a wide range of problems for
As a society, we oppress people by their social class, education, gender, race, ethnicity, and the culture. We have created men who think they are not allowed to show their feeling if they
...apons, men can easily kill each other off, but that is acting out of society's rules, which are set for the maintenance of order within a civilization. This can result in negative feelings such as unhappiness and anxiety for men, however. It evidently shows that bottling up one's instincts and drives is self-destructing, but going out and killing or sexually assaulting anybody is also very destructive. It is an ongoing internal battle.
Social Psychologist tend to ask questions when they want to answer a question about people’s behavior. Why do people do the things they do? Social psychologists want to explain this behavior. For example, the questions, “why do we hurt each other? Why does genocide happen?” can be answered by testing a hypothesis formed from their previous knowledge. To approach this question, social psychologist can use what they have observed to create an experiment. There are many influences on aggression, such as: the physical environment, wealth inequality, social rejection, culture, and media. Social psychologists use all this information to conduct their studies to explain why people hurt others and how people can even participate in genocide.