Hello Dear Steemians;
It’s a good thing to be here again on my blog and this time better. I hope y’all enjoying your day.
Today, I’m going into psychology which is one part of science I do like though I am an engineering student.
Have you ever sat down to think of the advantages and disadvantages of watching movies?, I guess not. Do you know there is a reason why movies are being rated?. Y’all should have an idea on why they are being rated, but what I’m here to do is to educate you more on it.
There was a story I heard some years back about a boy squeezing himself in a compartment under an airplane hoping to fly with it, I know most of us heard that story then and we all were in agreement that he probably picked up that act from a movie he must have watched. Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to be discussing here today. The boy must have watched a movie rated maybe NC-17 or +18 and was unable to apprehend it and the must have affected his psychological being making him do what most adults won’t even dare to do.
THE BRAIN from Pixabay.com under CC0 License
WHY WRITE ON THIS PARTICULAR TOPIC?
Hmm, that’s a very good question and I’m going to tell you guys a little story of one of my experience that led me to writing on this topic.
Some months back, I kind of had a girl that I was interested in dating and I’m this kind of person that observes a lot, I don’t just jump into things without proper investigation. So, I had to start observing this girl’s every move and I saw she was a very aggressive person. Though, I’m also that kind of person that feels himself, so I decided to go on with my plans feeling that I’d be able to rectify the situation.
Did I mention I already obtained her contact?, oops, I must have forgotten to tell you that. Collecting a girl’s number is quite easy if you had one or to encounters back. Yeah, I did have one two encounters with the girl before all these happened which I’m not willing to talk about, pardon me for that. As I said earlier, I’m that kind of person that do observe a lot. Maybe through her whatsapp status updates or another thing I can remember now, I was able to depict that she loves watching Nollywood Movies, yes those ones with the Yoruba dialect. I don’t know if I’m the only one that thinks Nolllywood Yoruba movies kind of teaches aggressiveness unknowingly to the viewers, but what I know is that I know that’s the reason for her aggressiveness.
Yeah, I remember I invited her someday so I gave her my system to view some movies. The first thing she asked is that do I have Nollywood movies on my system and I replied NO. She was resistive at first has we watched the Baywatch movie that casted Priyanka Chopra, Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson but she later enjoyed it. All those times I started having my doubts. But I decided to ask her out one very day and she said I won’t be able to cope with her because she gets angry easily. Yeah she meant aggressiveness, so I had to change the topic to how I can help her not to be aggressive. And the first thing I advised as a “self-named professor” in “Neurocinematics” is that she should stop watching Nollywood movies as my observation proved that people who like viewing Nollywood movies tend to be aggressive.
WHAT DO I MEAN BY HOW MOVIES AFFECT YOUR PSYCHOLOGY?
MOVIES AND PSYCHOLOGY from pixabay.com under CC0 License
Have you ever seen a movie that made you burst into tears or feel pity for the act?, then you should have an idea of what my topic is all about.
If you have seen the “Drishyam 2015” movie that starred Ajay Devgan, you’ll know exactly what I mean by how movies affect your psychological being. If you can still remember the role Ajay Devgan portrayed in the movie, you’d remember that he’s role is a kind of person that gets into movies easily and he watches movies a lot and that had an impact in his psychological being. Later in the movie he brought out every skill he learnt from the movies he had watched to real life.
Some neuroscientists sometimes back performed some experiments on four individuals, to observe effect the viewing of movies can have on the human brain using 30 mins of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly movie (1966) and the result for all three cases which is the good, the bad and the ugly, brought out same result in all four individuals used as specimen. They reacted the same way to shock, sadness, happiness and the reaction in their brains proved the same too.
It is observed that the more tight the edition in movies the more the effect of the movie on the viewer’s brain. Therefore movies that are not properly edited has little effect on psychology.
So, I do believe that as time goes on, the effects of the movies viewed by a person that watches movies frequently will eventually manifest in the everyday life of the person.
WHY ARE MOVIES BEING RATED?
If movies do not affect the psychological being of the viewers, then why should it be rated?
If you ask me why movies are being rated, my answer will be that it is believed that psychology grows with age, and this gives reason for movies to be rated in accordance to age value. Due to the fact that some governing bodies know that certain movies cannot be comprehended by certain viewers due to their level of psychology, they had to bring about some rating scheme for movies in accordance to age value.
We have about five ratings slated by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) which is the body that is responsible for the rating of the Hollywood movies. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings are;
- G (General Audience): It’s that type of rating that allows the general audience to be allowed to watch some particular movies if rated under that category. That is, a 5-year old kid can view the movie as well as a 40-year old adult.
- PG (Parental Guidance): This kind of rating requires for the parent or guardian of the kid viewing the movie to be there with the kid to guide the kid to the right path. Though, may not contain drug and the use of vulgar languages like the F word.
- PG-13 (Parental Guidance 13): This rating strongly advise parents to be watchful and be ready to caution their kid under the age of 13 whenever they are about to show some contents that might not go well with the psychology of kids under the age of 13. Unlike PG, it is possible for the movie writer to use vulgar languages, violence depictions, introduce scenes portraying the use of drug and some other things like nudity though might not be the one that is sexually inclined.
- R (Restricted): This level of rating require viewers that are 17 and below to be with their parents or guardian while viewing these kinds of movies since the movie might include intense violence, drug abuse, sexually inclined nudity and a lot of vulgar languages might be used.
- NC-17 (No one under age 17): This is the rating level that deals with ages that are believed to be psychological balanced. The movies rated under this category are rated due to the fact that the movie might contain matured contents like drug abuse, pornography, intense violence and other strong contents that cannot be comprehended by the psychology of children under the age of 17.
THE EFFECTS OF THE SOUND EFFECTS IN MOVIES ON PSYCHOLOGY
SOUND EFFECT from pixabay.com under CC0 License
What I mean by the sound effects in movies are the sound effects that are used by the movie producers and directors to depict certain situations in the scenes of some movies. For instance, movie viewers should know by now the kind of sound to expect when a guy is about to kiss a girl and also the sound to expect when a guy is about to shoot another guy. Even sound effects are more useful in horror movies to make it scarier and get into the viewer’s psychology.
Those effects are used to prepare the mind of the viewers about what they are about to view next. A movie scene can be portrayed in the same way but the sound effects can be used to distinguish one from another. For instance, a guy might be walking down a street in a movie scene expressing on his face that look you get when looking for someone, then this is the exact time the introduction of the sound effect is necessary. You guys should know that the sound effect that will be used for a person looking for his/her lover will be different from the sound effect that will be used for a person going for a fight.
WHY DO HORROR MOVIES TERRIFY THE VIEWERS?
A PICTURE FROM A 1958 HORROR MOVIE from Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 3.0 License
Though some viewers like I am don’t get terrified when watching horror movies but a lot of inexperienced horror movies viewers get easily terrified when they watch horror movies.
Why do you think you get terrified when watching horror movies?, It’s as a result of the brilliance of the movie producer. The movie producers and directors get into the cuts of the movies and put in terrific effects in order to scare the viewers. You’d observe that even if nothing is about to happen in the next scene of the horror movie, you’d already be anticipating something terrific as a result of some effects the producer let in to toy with your psychology.
Some people don’t even have the mind of viewing horror movies due to the fear that they’ll experience some nightmare when they sleep at night. This all due to the fact that they let the movie get into their psychology and they are unable to overcome it. Mostly, female viewers fall into this category because their level of psychology is not as high of that of the male viewers. Though, some female viewers have no problem with viewing the horror movies.
CONCLUSION
I believe movies affect the viewer psychologically and this might affect their day to day activities if not properly managed. The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) had to rate movies to fit in various psychological levels so as to ensure smooth comprehension of the movie content by the viewers.
During my article I made mention of the way music effects are used by movies producers to translate some emotions, varying from happiness to fear, due to the fact that our psychology already recognises the information the sounds are meant to pass.
I also made mention of why horror movies scare most viewers, and this is due to the fact that the movie producer is just toying with the emotions of the viewers.
REFERENCES
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