Grace is gone

Grace is hurt seriously…

She is… gone…

            No eye-catching computer graphics, no exaggerated acting, no mind-blowing storyline, no bombastic languages and no complex scientific materials were presented in the movie, but a calm yet saddening flow permeated throughout the whole movie, Grace is gone, which emphasized a lot on the experiencing of grief over death.

            Grace was a soldier who had died in a war, and the wife of Stanley. Due to her death, Stanley had been experiencing a series of mixed and complicated feelings, or intense grief. Interestingly, the ways he had gone through the grief was relatively similar to the five stages of grief model suggested by Kubler-Ross (1969) — Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

Denial is the first stage of the model; it is the initial reaction of one responds to the loss or death of a person means a lot to him or her; typically trying to deny the facts. It was obvious when Stanley was reacting in a huge shock after being informed by the officers about the death of Grace, and doing nothing for the whole day. Later, he stopped his daughters from eating the casserole; this was a sign of him denying the fact.

Stanley was very angry and behaved aggressively when his younger brother, John was trying to offer a sincere help; this could be explained by Anger. After the masking effect of denial wears off, the more direct and intense emotion will start to appear, and that it is anger, which is projected to innocent target that is not to be blamed rationally. Moving to the third stage, or Bargaining, Stanley started to feel vulnerable and helpless towards the loss of Grace; he was talking to himself in the phone call, and wishing that he was the one to be in the war and Grace was the one to stay, blaming himself for this.

Though the sequence of Depression happened before the second stage in this movie, as well as the absence of associated mourning, Stanley had still indeed showed a breakdown when he could not keep it to himself anymore; he cried in pain miserably. Lastly, the Acceptance where one has finally decided to face and accept the truth, understanding the loss can no longer be underdone. This could be told when Stanley had eventually told his daughter about the death of Grace after he had actually accepted the fact of the death of his wife.

Stanley was a strict father; he set rules for his daughters and wanted them to follow strictly until the death of Grace. He allowed them to pierce their ears before 13 years old, brought them to Enchanted Garden that they longed to go, and let them to sleep late. It was because Stanley had realized, realized that life is too fragile, things can be gone out of sudden, and leave with regret, and so, living a life with so many restrictions and rules was not for himself nor his daughters anymore as he did not want to filled with regret again.

It is life, something that one can never had a full control of. Life can be excellently good to one today, but leave one with grief the next day; it is unpredictable. Instead of keep on crying over the spilled milk or put the blame of everything to oneself, one should rather keep moving forward as long as one lives. Hence, it is important to live in the moment, and be appreciative of every possible second one can have; live a life of one wants, stop holding one’s own back with all the unnecessary worry and responsibility.

Death of the closed one is not the end of the world, but perhaps a grieving moment, which allow people to view the world more differently with opened mind, to have a thorough self-reflection, and live a better life.

Reference

Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying (1st ed.). Macmillan, New York: The Macmillan Company.

Experimenter

Had Milgram actually gone too far or...?

            Yes, most of the students were like “well, we have seen this and know about it already.” So, what exactly did this movie, Experimenter want to tell the audiences when most of the students have already learned and known about the Milgram’s Experiment?

            Milgram’s primary intention was pretty simple which was to test whether people would obey the instructions from an authority to perform acts that might hurt the others, but it has got a lot of negative criticism and bad feedback from the ethical review board due to the deception involved in his study that was likely to cause traumatic experience or potential psychological harm. Then, after carrying out the other variations of this study, he proposed several factors that possibly affected the decisions of people whether to give high voltage electric shock to the others including the presence of authority, the professional uniform of authority, and the application of electric shock on “teachers” themselves when they refused to give it to the “learners” (McLeod, 2007).

            Apparently, the main issue of Milgram’s experiment was revolved around the ethical concerns, but since when did these “ethical concerns” ever had to be something to put into considerations when ones are making decisions? It is hard to accurately trace back the actual invention, imposition or discovery of ethics to mankind, but it is commonly believed that the existence of ethics is to forbid human beings from conducting unjustified harm to the others. It is indeed true that the practice of these ethics has been providing the society to work in an organized manner, promising human beings a constant civilization. However, on the other hand, do this so-called authority and professional have always actually behaved well and never misused their powers, or are people giving too much respect and obey to them more than people actually should?        

Isn’t it obvious that the “elephant in the room” in this movie had symbolized the reality of people not voicing out when they see an issue or a problem, alongside the phenomenon of people following the instructions of the authority despite of themselves claiming that they were not “these kind” of obedient individuals afterwards. Personally, I suppose that people are being too afraid to disobey an authority’s instruction or voice out an issue, and most importantly, to not getting themselves into any possible trouble. However, at the same time, in my opinions, it is such an irony when those respects or titles of the authority should actually be earned compared to be given as granted, especially when the authorities are not even doing their jobs right. With this being said, people always do have their rights to stop from doing anything that goes against their will; obedience is not the only option.

Just trying to look back what kind of life human beings have had in the past; our ancestors used to practice the concept of “only the strong ones could survive”, but later it had all evolved to should human beings follow the rules and norms set by the authority and the society. Are not we as human beings have been living a life that has becoming with too many restrictions gradually?

If I were given the chance to conduct a social experiment without the restriction of money, resources and possibly ethical concerns, I would definitely want to find out that how people are going to respond to injustice in life because the current system of society does not really justify how things should work; laws and regulations no longer appear to be fair and square to everyone. And, most of the authorities or the wealthy ones tend to misuse their powers to gain themselves unjustified benefits, with the likelihood to harm the welfare or well-being of the others; therefore, I am interested to know whether the inner beast of human beings would do the work when people are in the situation to express their feelings of injustice towards the individuals who misuse their powers, as in physical punishment. For example, people who do corruption.

Reference

McLeod, S. A. (2007). The Milgram Experiment. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

Amadeus

Envy can help, but also kills;

Innocence is good, but also lethal.

            Let’s see, you have been spending almost all your life trying to be an expert of music composer, but someone can do it with minimum effort in one shot, and craft a masterpiece. And, you got responses like “You are doing good,” “she is just being talented,” and “You are good at your own.” How do you feel? Sad? Envy? Disappointed?

Without a doubt, most people can relate to sentences like these, but why? Are most of the people doing not good enough, or they are just being normal. Are certain people just born to be talented, or to be the love of God — uncompetable?

In this movie, Amadeus, Mozart and Salieri would certainly fit into this situation. Mozart was so young and innocent, yet a talented person in music; Salieri on the other hand, seemed to be on the opposite end. To be fair, Salieri was not totally bad or not talented in music, but he was just not as good as Mozart. Compared to Mozart, he perceived himself as a mediocre one, or the saint of mediocrities which he called himself as. Undeniably, Salieri did pay a lot of effort in his work, and kept on improving himself, but he just cannot be as good as Mozart. It was extremely ironic when Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was easily identifiable by a young priest who was not well trained in music in the movie compared to his own music.

Salieri was so angry and being so envious of Mozart’s talent, yet at the same time, he just cannot help himself because he truly appreciated and enjoyed every piece of Mozart’s music; he never missed Mozart’s performance. Salieri always compared himself to Mozart, questioning why Mozart was so good, to the extent that he had finally decided to identify Mozart as a love of God who was uncompetable. However, Salieri did not want to show his envy and hatred to Mozart, but choosing to help Mozart by time to time. It was cognitive dissonance, where Salieri’s attitudes and behaviors were contradicting to each other (Ciccarelli & White, 2015). Sadly, Salieri’s intense envy slowly engulfed his rationale, and eventually pushed Mozart to the boundary of death; whether had it come to his realization, his helps towards Mozart were more like stresses, severe stresses that killed Mozart.

Nevertheless, perhaps Salieri was not solely the one to blame. This was because Mozart himself on the other hand, was so playful, spending all his earnings on alcohols and leisure, and so innocent, believing Salieri was his genuine friend who was always being supportive and helpful to him all the times. Yes, if only if Mozart were to be more sensitive and cautious, realizing all the bad intentions from the others, and being more well-behaved, he could have saved himself from death. Pitiful, he did not. Well, at the very least, Mozart’s innocence had indeed granted him the sincerest happiness and gratification. His behaviors and attitudes maybe were less pleasing to the others, but his passion and confidence in this music was affirmatively something to learn. Despite of having doubts from the Majesty and the royal musicians towards his music, he was certain, certainly enough to tell that he was a vulgar man, but assuring that his music was not; it was his attitude towards music.

At the end of the day, perhaps it was all about perceptions. Rather than putting too much of emphasis on the wrong or true side, people might want to learn from the history, and reflect upon themselves. Everyone has indeed born to be different, different on the external side and internal side, or physical and mental. Just like Mozart, and many other people are born to be gifted or talented, but such giftedness and talents have caused some of them to be overwhelmed in their own worlds, disregarding themselves from the others and missing out the other essences of life and threats. On the other end, some might be born to be normal, but they are being appreciative and grateful of the life they have, treating everyone as equally well and putting the least defense on the others.

Civilization has surely provided human beings a better, modern and advanced life compared to the past, but sarcastically, people are still being hurt and harmed by each other due to their own mentalities. Taking envy and innocence as example; they are not absolutely a good or bad thing, but a subjective matter depends on how one would perceive and take it. Personally, to me, it is all about having to achieve the balance of everything, having an absolute and extreme idea on either endpoint does not guarantee how a thing would work. And, most importantly, live a life that you would find yourself to be at the utmost joy prior of not hurting the well-being of the others, period.

Reference

Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2015). Psychology (4th ed.). England: Pearson Education Limited.