Is the purpose of movies simply passive viewing to keep us entertained? The authors suggest that there is much more happening in our unconscious mind. In their post-secondary classrooms, they developed strategies using films to broaden students' perspectives on the human journey. While writing about movie characters, students shared the impact these stories had on themselves. The authors guided their interpretations through different theories on the human condition.
The authors hope that the readers, too, will gain perspectives on movies and psychology. With a blend of frameworks, first-person student reflections, and the teaching journeys of the authors themselves, Movies as Mirrors makes theories come to life. After reading this book, you may never watch movies the same way again!
Is the purpose of movies simply passive viewing to keep us entertained? The authors suggest that there is much more happening in our unconscious mind. In their post-secondary classrooms, they developed strategies using films to broaden students' perspectives on the human journey. While writing about movie characters, students shared the impact these stories had on themselves. The authors guided their interpretations through different theories on the human condition.
The authors hope that the readers, too, will gain perspectives on movies and psychology. With a blend of frameworks, first-person student reflections, and the teaching journeys of the authors themselves, Movies as Mirrors makes theories come to life. After reading this book, you may never watch movies the same way again!
(Sample available at https://www.amazon.ca/Movies-Mirrors-Nancy-Quinn-Dudley/dp/3964960179/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&asin=B0DGWRYPK6&revisionId=d57a8389&format=1&depth=1)
The two of us, Nancy and Monica, have long been drawn to movies and their interpretation as a significant part of our teaching in various aspects of psychology. We have also been travellers on our own paths of the human journey. Integral to this journey has been our personal interest in film stories as a road to self-understanding. As such, we could describe ourselves as armchair film interpreters, because we are among all who ponder the messages conveyed by this multifaceted medium. As film appreciators, we also draw from our own narratives of lived experience, our previous learning from books, our schooling, travel, and relationships, and our studies in education and science. In addition to lived experience, film interpretation draws heavily on the social sciences. This pertains especially to theorists who have engaged in research and writing in all of the arts, in psychology, and in history.
So, with personal experiences and combined with formal and informal learning, we each view movies with unique understandings derived from how we have constructed our worldviews.
This book, then, draws on our diverse backgrounds for interpreting films to aid others in their understanding: How can psychological theories and frameworks enrich the film viewing experience' In this way, we identify ourselves as "filmists," a term coined by Mary Gregerson (2010) as those who take an approach in which "the stimulus (movie) fades into the background, and their responses (appreciation) take center stage" (p. 1). Our centre stage for many years has been providing guides for students to learn about how psychological theories and frameworks are relevant to understanding personal lives, through examples enacted in lived experience and as shared in psychological practice. In our focus on learning about psychological concepts through interpreting human dramas in cinematic films, our "filmist" approach, then, embraces a purpose far beyond the entertainment effect of movie viewing.
Writing this book has been a long and circuitous journey as we explored many shifts in our thinking, travelled to numerous destinations for conference presentations, and engaged in unforgettable experiences of learning. When we first began work on this book project many years ago, we were both teaching full-time in university courses, Nancy in a counselling psychology graduate program and in an innovative teacher education program, and Monica in several undergraduate psychology courses. At that time, we each had additional facets to our careers. Monica was finishing a doctoral program in cognitive and developmental psychology, and Nancy was involved in a small counselling practice with women. In short, we were super-engaged in practice, leaving only small spaces in our lives for writing!
Our initial focus for writing this book was on sharing our unique ways to include cinematic films in teaching. We had both witnessed how student learning about psychological theories was enhanced and integrated through viewing true to life examples of the complexities of people's lives. Experiencing stories on screen, students were able to empathize with what the protagonists may have been thinking, sensing and feeling in their inner worlds, and in their relationships with personal others in the context of their life circumstances and the cultures in which they lived. To this end, we began tweaking our own methods of embedding films in our teaching, of exploring ways other educators had incorporated movies in their courses, and in conducting our own research. Monica drew on her PhD dissertation and Nancy collected student papers that addressed a film interpretation assignment in a course on adult development and learning. Once we had decided on the potential value of this project, we both began doing extensive library research and creating our own libraries on the value of film interpretation in many contexts, hence embarking on an intense learning process that continues to this day. Our working title at that time was, "Bringing Psychology to Life: Using Films in Teaching to Illuminate Theories and Themes of the Human Journey."
Time marched on, we kept writing, meeting, and presenting papers on the subject, and we kept inspiring each other to continue with our march! Our lives changed, our careers made many changes, and yet we kept writing. And, we kept researching potential ways of expanding our ideas. It occurred to us, that while this book idea had begun primarily as one for college and university teachers, we are all teachers in many other contexts, and we are all learners. Perhaps as we have changed and gravitated more to our ongoing learning--Nancy, now a part-time counsellor retired from university teaching, and Monica having achieved the PhD but gradually cutting back her teaching load--we have increasingly felt drawn toward our roles as learners and writers. We still love films, we still enjoy interpreting them, and we would still like to share our ideas with more than each other. As a result, we are now considering a focus more in harmony with this reality, along with re-working our title to reflect this: While we had many names in mind along the way, they all included a reference to our key idea: to bring life to psychology via interpreting movies. Our latest iteration honours our ongoing learning.
Because this book was conceived so many years ago, the films chosen by students and by us to exemplify theoretical concepts necessarily represent those popular in earlier times. Nevertheless, as the themes are timeless, we believe that the movies and their protagonists continue to speak to us about significant experiences and their meanings along life's path.
Movies as Mirrors: Bringing Life to Psychology by Nancy Dudley and Monica Baehr is an interesting exploration of how film is a beneficial teaching tool, specifically in regard to psychology, counseling, and adult development. Combining their areas of expertise, Dudley and Baehr share their research about movies as a pedagogical method, along with psychological lens and interpretive frameworks they’ve successfully applied in their classrooms.
The most noteworthy attribute of this book is that it reads like a dissertation, even down to the sections one would expect to find (literary analysis, explaining the experiment, interpreting the data, stating the findings, and conclusion). In fact, Baehr dedicates an entire chapter to explaining the qualitative research method regarding film as a psychological teaching tool, which was the focus of her PhD dissertation. As with any good thesis paper, the book is well-organized and methodical, but also feels like just a copy of the dissertation rather than a book that’s been refined into a nonfiction format. The contents would be more suited for an academic journal than a standalone book.
Thus, the academic style of the book comes across as the authors merely presenting research rather than putting forth topics to engage the reader personally. Sure, readers who are looking to learn more about this very specific psychology pedagogy might appreciate it, but otherwise it’s pretty niche for the general reader. Another limitation of the book is that it does not provide overall guidance about how others could potentially use film in their classroom; it’s much more focused on the movies and methods these two authors have used. In this way, I find it more of a case study than something written in a broad scope for others to modify and apply on their own.
Nevertheless, the book is a very interesting read. The authors do a wonderful job of explaining the application of different psychology lenses to their chosen movies. While not the most popular films, their summary of the plots is clear enough that readers get the general process of this teaching technique. Towards the end when both authors are reflecting upon their process during this research project, they share student feedback, which I found to be an illuminating additional perspective.
Overall, I’d recommend Movies as Mirrors for people overseeing psychology or counseling class in an academic setting. Be prepared to read a scholarly paper more than a work of nonfiction. I thought it would be more personally relevant since I have a background in psychology, but it’s really geared towards those who teach these subjects.