Observation Techniques- Film Analysis

Observation Techniques- Film Analysis

Attraction, intimacy, friendships, and altruism are human behaviors that are common in people when they engage in love. A better way to explain the presence of these behaviors in humans is through the movie, No Strings Attached, directed and produced by Ivan Reitman (Reitman, 2011). This movie talks about two friends, Emma and Adam, who met during a summer camp as teenagers and met for a second time when they were adults. They decide to have a relationship where they only have sex without emotional involvement. Adam becomes jealous and tries to push the connection to the next level. Emma, however, turns him down and breaks the relationship (Reitman, 2011). She then realizes that she cannot live without Adam and decides to ask Adam back into a relationship, only for Adam to turn her down. The story ends with these two together in a serious relationship.

The main characters to focus on in this movie are Adam and Emma. Adam is a production assistant for a popular television show. Emma, on the other hand, is a doctor in Los Angeles. These two are young and single (Reitman, 2011). The behaviors to watch out for are their attraction to each other. This attraction leads them to engage in sex, a sign of intimacy. It is also evident from the scenes in the movie that Emma cares about Adam even as a friend (Reitman, 2011). When he wakes up in the living room, Emma helps him deal with the embarrassment.

The scene that helps explain attraction, intimacy, friendships, and altruism is the five-minute scene that starts from the sitting room where Adam is awake and necked to the scene where they get intimate (Reitman, 2011). The connection between these two characters in the living room shows friendship and altruism. Emma is a friend to Adam and cares about him, which is why she helps him through this embarrassing moment (Reitman, 2011). In the bedroom, after dressing up, Adam and Emma clearly express their physical attraction to each other as they engage in romance and sex, which is intimacy.

Snir et al. (2020) state that friendship encompasses attraction and altruism. In this explanation, Snir et al. (2020) hold that friendship is accompanied by social support and interest. Therefore, one can argue that intimacy and altruism develop after friendship. Even though intimacy is believed to be manifested through sexual intercourse, the social-psychological understanding of intimacy is that it is the act of sharing private feelings, and it intensifies when these vulnerabilities are met or reciprocated (Snir et al., 2020). Altruism is an act of goodwill (Brethel-Haurwitz et al., 2018). In this case, it is manifested in the selfless act by Emma to help Adam in the embarrassing situation.

References

Brethel-Haurwitz, K. M., Cardinale, E. M., Vekaria, K. M., Robertson, E. L., Walitt, B., VanMeter, J. W., & Marsh, A. A. (2018). Extraordinary altruists exhibit enhanced self–other overlap in neural responses to distress. Psychological Science, 29(10), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618779590

Reitman, I. (2011). No strings attached. DreamWorks Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment. Retrieved From https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1411238/

Snir, S., Gavron, T., Maor, Y., Haim, N., & Sharabany, R. (2020). Friends’ closeness and intimacy from adolescence to adulthood: Art captures implicit relational representations in joint drawing: A longitudinal study. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/

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Observation Techniques: Film Analysis
This week, you will analyze a three- to five-minute segment of a movie or a television episode depicting attraction, intimacy, friendships, and/or altruism.

After watching the movie section, create a report on your analysis. In your report:

Mention the name of the movie.
Describe the setting and overall storyline of the movie.
Describe the main characters in the observed movie section.
Describe the situation in which you analyzed and interpret the action of the characters depicting attraction, intimacy, friendships, and altruism.
Draw conclusions based on social psychological concepts and theories.