Toying with Emotions
We all know that most movies aren’t real, yet we still react emotionally to the ones we
watch. Sometimes we cry during a movie, we leave feeling like we could rule the world, and
sometimes we end up being terrified of the dark for a week because we watched a particularly
terrifying horror movie. John Lasseter said that “I love movies that make me cry, because they’re
tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that?” Even
though we subconsciously realize that what we see on the movie screen is fictional, they still
have immense power to affect our emotions.
According the Washington University psychology professor Jeff Zacks, there are
multiple parts of our brains that cause us to react to the things that we see on the movie screen.
Luckily, we also have a defense system. The part of the brain that helps us distinguish reality
from fiction is called the prefrontal cortex. This is the same part of the brain that is associated
with self-control. Zacks commented that the people who have damage to this particular part of
the brain are much more likely to take movies as being real life rather than fiction. Kids are also
more affected by movies because this part of their brain is not fully developed yet. This
underdeveloped section of the brain is what makes them hide when they see something scary on
the screen. Little kids have a limited ability to realize when things are real and when they aren’t.
Another thing that causes us to react to movies is called the Mirror Rule, according to A.
Pawlowski. Basically this rule says that we tend to mimic the visual input we are seeing. So if we
see someone smiling on the TV screen, we smile back, and smiling triggers a positive emotional
reaction. On the opposite side, if we see someone crying on the screen, our natural instinct is for
our eyes to well up, and to feel sad.
Music also has a big affect on the way we feel at movies. Just add the right soundtrack to
an already good movie, and the viewers will be putty in the filmmaker’s hands. The size of the
screen does play a little bit of a part in your emotions. Pawlowski also says that you are more
likely to get emotional in a movie theater than watching something on your phone because of the
environment.
Movies have a huge amount of power to affect us, especially when it comes to our
emotions. Because movies have such an immense power over our emotions, they also have the
ability to change other things. Nicholas Cage said that “I may be alone in this, but I do sense the
power of film, in that movies have the ability to literally change people's minds. That's pretty
powerful stuff when you consider that.”