Film Description
The limited universe of the Room is shown through the eyes of Jack. He is not too traumatized by everything he has experienced since he does not know another life. It is a film about the salvific power of solipsism, which, excluding a broad and understandable context for the viewer, helps the heroes escape from a hopeless situation. Superbly capacious image is Jack’s hair. Since there are no sharp or cutting objects in the Room, mother and son walk around unshorn – and the boy is convinced that his hair is as strong as Samson’s (his mother told about him; the second favorite hero of their bedtime stories is Edmond Dantes, the third is Carroll’s Alice). This conviction will help both of them not only get out but also overcome the hardest experience later.
Gender Roles and Abuse in Families: Psychodynamic and Social Factors
An essential topic of dysfunctional relationships between the child’s father and mother (and interpersonal relationships in general) is expressed in an exaggerated form of reproduction of patriarchal structures of violence. The category of power is key to understanding gender order. Discussion of inequality, control, discrimination, asymmetry of opportunity is a discussion of power relations. In feminist studies of the second wave, the problem of gender power is voiced in terms of patriarchy, which means the dominance of men over women, i.e., the system of gender relations, in which the man is the subject of power, and the woman is the object of oppression (DeKeseredy, 2020). Later, gender power is viewed as a multidimensional hierarchy of different types of masculinity and femininity, resulting from the intersection of several types of domination – according to the criteria of class, race, sexuality, and category of belonging by gender.
In these definitions of patriarchy, the exercise of power is understood primarily as oppression and exploitation, manifested in the mechanisms of coercion, violence, discrimination, and other forms of exclusion. In its classical form, the theory of patriarchy is based on the concept of power relations as a zero-sum interaction, in which all power is concentrated in the hands of dominant groups, and the oppressed are completely deprived of power (DeKeseredy, 2020). Thus, society is a dichotomy of dominant and subordinate, oppressor and oppressed, powerful and powerless. The complete dominance of men in society implies their responsibility for subordinates’ well-being (younger men and women). In a perverted form, this manifests itself in the dialog happening starting from the 18th minute:
- Nick: What is this smell?
- Ma: I just wasn’t thinking.
- Nick: Thinking is surely not your strength.
- Ma: I know.
- Nick: Maybe if you stopped complaining and be a little grateful!
- Ma: Thank you for everything.
- Nick: You just have no idea about the world of today.
- Ma: No.
- Nick: Who pays for power bill, who pays for everything?
- Ma: You.
- Nick: If you happened to worry your little head just once…
Therefore, power is presented as the ability to exercise control over social actions and interactions or the ability to implement decisions within the framework of given rules using available resources. Nick, Jack’s father, fully appropriates all the resources. By imprisoning Ma and Jack in the room, he prevents them from any access to resources and, thus, deprives them of the possibility of any access to control their actions. Nick ultimately sets the rules for interaction.
On the other hand, Ma and Jack oppose these rules of interaction “from below.” Differences in positions of power are reflected in the differences in strategies used to achieve goals. The strategies of dominant and oppressed strategies are fundamentally different. However, both are strategies of protection, i.e., chains of purposeful actions that contribute to preserving available resources and associated privileges and preventing access to these resources by other individuals or groups.
The power of subordinates is not strategic, but tactical in nature, is carried out in the reactive practices of adaptation to strategies; these practices are diffusely dispersed, their forms are changeable in time and space, and inventive (Jahantigh, 2019). However, they all have a similar shape; subordinates’ tactics are implemented through the manipulation mechanism, i.e., indirect and often individualized influence on those in power. The latter is manifested, for example, in the episode at the 22nd minute, when, in order to keep Nick away from the boy, the heroine calls the man to her bed. However, the range of resistance tactics is limited since the subordinates themselves are in the most limited physical space. Ma says to Jack: “There is not enough room… Space, there is not enough space for a dog” (4:00). Even the use of the word room is not available in the dire conditions in which a mother and child find themselves. So, according to Bourdieu, physical space is dictated by social relations.
Actress Brie Larson retired for a whole month and went on a strict diet to better understand her heroine’s psychological and physical condition (Hidayat & Indarujati, 2020). However, if physical abuse is easy to recognize, then psychological abuse is not so clearly manifested in the victim’s awareness and often leads to an inadequate assessment of what is happening.
Victims of violence tend to experience depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, persistent or recurrent feelings of anxiety and fear. A syndrome of emotional dependence, and an excessive need for love appears against the background of a feeling of self-doubt, neglect of one’s needs may arise.
Gaslighting is the highest form of psychological violence, when one person manipulates another, trying to convince him of his own inadequate perception of reality. Gaslighting is a frequent technique of abusers: it is a way to establish total control over another person, the desire to make their victim lose contact with the outside world. This is the main feature that distinguishes abusing from gaslighting.
The psychological portrait of the abuser is full of maladaptive personality traits: aggressiveness, irascibility, lust for power, cruelty, anger, and others. They determine a specific attitude and perception towards oneself, others, and a decrease in social adaptation. The abuser’s portrait also includes maladaptive behavior, that is, the refusal of the individual to submit to the power of external coercive circumstances (Hidayat & Indarujati, 2020). Strong, independent, and confident people are often the victims. Abusers are not interested in starting relationships with weak partners. This thesis is confirmed by the further course of the plot’s development when the heroine finally manages to escape from the oppression of the room.
The Family’s Structure and Socialization Issues
Proceeding from the fact that the family is a cultural-historical and socio-psychological phenomenon, today, there are many definitions, typologies, and models, with the help of which the family’s essence and structure are revealed. The most basic typology of the family structure and essence is the division into traditional and modern. It is believed that the modern family is distinguished by greater independence in relation to the society in which it is located and by sufficient freedom in relations within the family, in contrast to the traditional model, where patriarchy is clearly expressed, a rigid distribution of socio-gender roles and functions (Dinisman, 2017). However, despite the actual timing, the family shown in the film is distinguished by the artificially created structure and traditional family functions.
Throughout the film, we see the transformation of the “family” from dysfunctional to complete and incomplete and less dysfunctional. Thus, the “fullness” of the family is obviously not an unambiguously desirable factor for the healthy development of individuals within it, and especially of a child. Research shows that maternal feelings as the primary source of a child’s emotional well-being and psychological health do not depend in any way on whether the mother brings up the child alone or with the father (Dinisman, 2017). However, based on the plot of the film, it is difficult to conclude the future of the child because it is in the future, in adolescence, that mothers who have formed a stable bond with children find it most difficult to separate from them (Dinisman, 2017). Such a child-maternal attachment is formed even more exaggerated in the context of the heroes’ story because, for a long time, they were the only thing that each other had. If, for Jack, the new world turns out to be unknown, then for Ma, this world is known and represents a threat and danger.
The originality of the film lies in the fact that the world is portrayed through a small child’s eyes. At the same time, everything is accompanied by the kid’s thoughts, in which, as strange as it may sound, there is its own logic and common sense. Later, having gotten out of the room thanks to his mother’s cunning and ingenuity, Jack witnesses incredible miracles: he sees trees, people, animals, the sky. For the first time, he begins to realize that the life he saw on TV actually exists, that there is no space outside the room, as he had thought until now. There is the same world, which differs from its own in size and breadth of perception.
The film is divided into two parts: life in the room and outside. If for Joy, the world looks familiar, even if she was imprisoned for seven years and experienced some psychological problems after that, then for Jack, a new life represents joy, fear, and curiosity at the same time. At first, the boy withdraws into himself, is afraid of people, does not communicate with anyone except his mother. He is not used to a new habitat, although many toys are a loving grandmother. Jack misses his room, the locker in which he slept, hiding from “Big Nick.”
The parent-child relationship is characterized by vital emotional significance for both the child and the parent. In the relationship between parent and child, on the one hand, the parent must protect the child from the danger of interacting with the outside world, and on the other hand, give the experience of independence in interaction with the outside world. The parent should not only take care of the child but also teach him to take care of himself. The peculiarity of the parental attitude towards the child is that it should change depending on the child’s growing up.
References
DeKeseredy, W. S. (2020). Bringing feminist sociological analyses of patriarchy back to the forefront of the study of woman abuse. Violence Against Women. Web.
Dinisman, T., Andresen, S., Montserrat, C., Strózik, D., & Strózik, T. (2017). Family structure and family relationship from the child well-being perspective: Findings from comparative analysis. Children and Youth Services Review, 80, 105-115.
Hidayat, A., & Indarujati, I. (2020). An analysis of trauma of the main character in Room movie. EnNichi, 1(1), 55-67.
Jahantigh, H. (2019) Monarchy versus liberal democracy: A study of defense mechanisms in Shakespeare” s The Tempest and Lenny Abrahamson’s Room. Language & Translation, 6(2), 209-216.