captivity

Captivity

by Bob on June 13, 2007

There is apparently a new movie which is soon opening up. Its posters are all over Boston and in the train. It is called "Captivity". Seeing the posters all the time, which is the intent of psychological advertising, made me think of different kinds of captivity, apart from the upcoming film itself about which I know absolutely nothing.

There is the most obvious form of captivity where one is locked in a cage or cell or confined space by force. This is rather quite simple to envision, although the reasons behind it might be quite complicated to figure out.

Then there is another kind of captivity which is a psychological captivity. This is very complicated by nature and definition. This can be sometimes a case of overly-dependent people, or what is called "co-dependent", or even just a kind of psychological conditioning resulting in the captivity of the mind and soul, sometimes referred to as brainwashing, most succinctly evidenced in the 1962 film, "The Manchurian Candidate". There is also a "double bind" psychological phenomenon which was described by Gregory Bateson.

Another kind of captivity is socio-economic captivity. This can happen at any point in the monetary spectrum, but is usually associated with the poorer people who remain stuck in the quagmire of poverty from which very few rise out of and the reasons why they do or don't remain very complicated. But it can also happen to the very rich, and perhaps these days, especially to the seemingly evaporating middle class who must by definition become enslaved to buying the next year's model car, garden accessory, etc.

There are other kinds of captivity, of course.

What I would like to focus on is a kind of socio-psychological captivity. One in which a person becomes captive in the perceptions and mis-perceptions by other people of him despite the real objective situation and facts. This is very subtle and yet, paradoxically, very direct. And its a very hard, if not impossible emotional and intellectual prison to escape from.

We know of this kind of perceptual captivity in terms such as "he's a loser", or "she's always jealous", and the like.

The problem for the victim exists when the perception of the many becomes (a) a lynching party in a symbolic sense, where everyone just agrees that this is what the person is, and (b) the perception is not only wrong and incorrect but harmful to the victim's life and future and progress, let alone hurting their feelings.

Sometimes what the many, or even one person, thinks of someone can be just simply true but uncomfortable. Like if someone is continually untidy and unkept. Calling the person "dirty" or a "slob" or a "pig" is perhaps true but a bit too heavy-handed. But in this case it is founded in reality. However, the chosen words are calculatingly nasty. We could just as well have said "unkept" or "untidy" and left it at that.

Other times, it is just not true or accurate what the perceivers are perceiving and it's a cruel act to continue to call the person that name or perceive him as such. It becomes a veritable prison. "He wants it that way" or "he doesn't like new wave movies" or "he's stuck in the music of the 1960s", or "he can't learn anything new" --- these are all lynchings of a person using perceptions which are being forced to be functionally true and believed by many, despite the facts, and also, believing that people can change which is a good thing.

So, no matter what the victim does, he is perceived as a loser, or a nerd, or a wimp, or a mod, or rocker, etc. by the masses who have indoctrinated themselves to be frozen -- themselves -- in their perception of a fellow human being, which is not very kind.

So the perceived person is now entrapped in a prison of other people's perceptions.

That is the worst kind of trap and prison. It doesn't have physical bars or walls or metal keys to a lock.

Would that we would all clean our metaphorical eyeglasses occasionally, and see people from a new perspective and allow them to change and grow. Or even admit that we mis-perceived them unjustly.

One does wonder if such mis-perceptions are just errors, or more upsettingly, desires of the perceivers to keep a person in that prison of perception because someone is needed as the scapegoat or example so that they can all feel better about themselves.

This is indeed scary sociological material.

The idea of the Pharmakos was a bit more explicit in ancient Greece although perhaps just as humanistically insidious in the long run. But it did originally begin as a weighted and thought-out catharsis.

But human subtle and sneaky perceptions can be so dangerous, as sharks feeding in a frenzy, that even a famous actor or actress or person can be brought down from attained and deserved glory by a perceptual lynching based on false premises and reports. Maybe it's because people like to see the famous person taken down. Maybe that goes with fame and, as the cliche goes, is the price of fame.

Time to get out the 1975 David Bowie song "Fame". The words are very telling. For example Bowie writes and sings "Fame, (fame) puts you there where things are hollow".

Or Sting's 1985 song "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free".

If we wish to listen. I hope we do. And stay far away from the maddening crowds. And lynching perceptual mobs.

The late musician, Ricky Nelson, once wanted to play new material at a concert in New York City's Madison Square Garden. But the audience or crowd, didn't want to hear his new material, but rather his old hits over and over again. It so very much upset Rick that he wrote a song about it, released in 1972, called "Garden Party". He sings, "I learned my lesson well/You see, you can't please everyone/So you got to please yourself". Rick knew.

In the 1964 movie about the early Beatles successes, "A Hard Day's Night", which was a kind of weak cinema verite, but a brilliant film in its own right, a reporter asks Ringo Starr whether he's a mod or a rocker. Ringo simply and glibly answers, "I'm a mocker". I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.