How a psychologist thinks about your favorite Film & TV characters.
Jane Campion’s chilling new film, The Power of the Dog, has much to say about that old adage: what we hate in others is what we can’t accept in ourselves. And, wow, does the character of Phil Burbank spell that axiom out in spades. Sure, he embodies everything there is about toxic masculinity. Yet, what …
The world is filled with too much hate. This piece is in honor of Black Lives Matter. Dedicated to those who’ve spent their lives, like Starr Carter in The Hate U Give, having to hide, needing to code-switch to play it safe (as discussed on NPR’s Code Switch). George Tillman, Jr’s compellingly forceful film offers …
Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), age 26, is Taxi Driver’s lonely, alienated “hero.” Yes, he’s a Vietnam War vet, ex-marine, and likely has his share of PTSD. But, his problems stem from something much deeper than war trauma. He must have suffered some kind of childhood trauma, to be sure. He wouldn’t be so troubled if …
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is a brilliant, terrifying, and timely treatise on hate. The film tells Ron Stallworth’s true early 1970’s story (played by John David Washington): a courageous, harrowing, but ultimately foiled effort to expose the KKK and its virulent racial hate. Fuel it’s fires and hate justifies violence. Then is now: 1970 is 2018. Hate …
The big question in Josh Kreigman and Elyse Steinberg’s documentary Weiner is: “What’s wrong with Anthony Weiner?” Why would a political official destroy his reputation and his career? Why would he humiliate his wife? Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s Last Word posed this million-dollar question to Weiner on national TV: “What is wrong with you…I mean …
The women of Litchfield Prison in Orange Is The New Black were robbed of their power long before they got there. Piper, with her courtyard pulpit plea for self-respect in Season 3 of OITNB, is the new inspirational speaker on women’s empowerment. Granted, she’s got a lot to gain monetarily from convincing her fellow inmates …
