Movie Reflection - Strictly Ballroom

Strictly Ballroom is an old Australian dancing movie where it evolves around how a young man trying to dance his own steps in the ultimate competition. In this movie, there are a few social psychology themes that are included.

Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship is the ultimate competition in the dancing field where everyone would look up to the winners and take them as models. Each year, the Pan-Pacific authorities would make sure how the competition consist only ballroom dance and, in order to win, participants have to master and beautifully perform strictly only ballroom steps. Throughout the film, we can see everyone are trying so hard to master the ballroom style and been practicing the same moves for months. This is a great sign of compliance as everyone is following the rules strictly. Although compliance is similar to obedience, they differ from each other as in obedience includes an order to be made at first. This form of social influence is also demonstrated in the movie when Shirley would ask her students to do the cores in the dance studio every time the classes finish and they would obediently do it without any excuses.

The main issue in this movie is basically how Scott Hasting does not care about the rules of the Grand Prix competition and start dancing on his own moves. This act clearly shows that Scott is an non-conformist. Despite how everyone told him that dancing his own moves is wrong, he still sticks with his idea. He does not feel the social pressure or have any desire to fit into groups. Unlike Fran who has her own unique dancing movies, she does not show it out as she was afraid others would criticize her. This behavior shows that she is a conformist. However, in this movie it does not show clearly on this point.  At the beginning we can see Fran as a timid quiet dancer in the studio. Only when she saw how Scott was insisting in dancing his own steps, she approaches him and volunteered to be his partner as no one are willing to break the rules. When they are alone, she showed a bit of her Pasodoble steps to Scott. Hence, we can assume that she has been having these moves a long time but never really showed out as she was pressured to conform with the groups. One way to explain this conformity is that Fran has little knowledge in ballroom dancing. Adding in how everyone keeps telling her that she is a beginner dancer, she would look to the others for guidance. Deutsch and Gerrard (1955) would refer this as Informative Conformity.

As the movie goes on, we can see Scott and Fran eventually fall in love with each other. There are a few theories we can explain on their attractions. At the initial stage of rehearsing, there was one scene where Scott subtly hinted Fran that he was not into her. He told her how Ballroom dance is just a demonstration of love like how actors acted in the movie which is not real. However, as their dance practice progresses, Scott got to know more about Fran and her family. This shows exposure and familiarity where we tend to fall for people who we are more familiarize with. Not only so, as the days goes by, we can see Fran gains more self-confident and grows more attractive. Physical attractive is one of the most important factor in attraction which people would often desire and approach attractive people. This might be one reason why Scott was skeptical about Fran at first when she was not attractive. Another reason of their attraction could also be similarity. Although Fran and Scott seems like the total opposite which Scott comes from a well-known family and Frans's family lives in a small house beside the railway, both of them still do have similarity. In this film, we can see Fran and Scott are the left outs in the dance studio. No one noticed Fran as she was quiet and unattractive. As for Scott, even with all his charms and skills, everyone boycotts him as he choose to dance his own moves in the Grand Prix. Another similarity is that Fran and Scott both are not afraid to be different. They are willing to embrace the beauty of other style of dancing and would take the risk to show them out. Lastly, it was reciprocity liking that brings them both together. Reciprocity liking basically explains why individuals tend to favor people who like them first. Throughout the movie, we can see how Scott slowly reciprocates Fran's admiration. Although at the beginning Scott has shown no desire to Fran, a few days before the competition, we could see Scott kissing Fran before leaving.

During the Grand Prix, another talented and well-known dancer volunteered to be Scott's partner. After receiving the news, Scott's mother was so happy and excited about it. However, Scott refuses to be her partner and just wish to perform their unique dance with Fran. To get rid of Fran, Scott's mother is shown guilt tripping Fran telling how she would be the obstacle to Scott from winning the first prize. This technique is a form of emotional blackmailing. It is powerful manipulation in changing other's behaviors. As Shirley is a very experienced dancer and also Fran's dancing teacher, she uses her expertise as a defense and tell Fran how she knows they will not win if they dance their moves. She manipulated Fran by telling how if you love a person, you would want the best of him and how Fran would want to see Scott winning the first price. Not only so, she also injected guilt in Fran by saying how if she insisted to dance with Scott, she would be the reason why Scott fail.

Another example of emotional blackmail is when Barry Fife told Scott a fake story to make him drop his unique dance moves. As Barry was very close with his parents when they are young, Scott would believe in any story he told about the past. Hence, Barry uses the old incident that happened to the parents and twisted the truth. Lurking Scott into guilt of not fulfilling his parents dreams and how he is retracing his father's footstep, he managed to make Scott feels extremely selfish of himself and sorry for his parents. Therefore, after the talk, Scott decided to perform only Ballroom dancing.

Of all the movies we have watched in the Psychology of Film class, Strictly Ballroom is my favorite so far. At first I was not so keen of it as I find it a bit dramatic on the way the characters carried out themselves For example, how Liz makes a huge fuss and cries so loudly over Scott, drawing everyone's attention towards her.  However, as the movie goes by, I fell in love in how beautiful the story was told and what the message the movie was trying to convey.
 "A life lived in fear is a life half lived."  : "Vivir con miedo, es como vivir a medias"

This is such a good message to all of us especially those who are often restrained by rules, expectations of others and society pressure. In our culture, we are often bounded by all these things that make many of us to choose conformity. Given to be our career choices, dressing styles, freedom of speech or anything. How often do we get to do the things we truly desire ourselves? I've personally seen so many young and potential people dimming their future and sacrificing their ambition just to live a life that everyone said to be right. There are so many students gave up their dream to study a course which the parents want. So many people refraining themselves from voicing out their opinions just because they think their uniqueness are wrong in other's eyes.

If we are always living in fear of other's judgement, when are we going to be our true self?

P.S Here's a glimpse of my favorite part of Strictly Ballroom

ReferenceDeutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment.The journal of abnormal and social psychology, 51(3), 629.

*All pictures, gifs and videos do not belong to me. All found in Google and Youtube.