Social Sciences
Use the movie – Lethal weapon
ANSWER
Psychological Theory on Lethal Weapon One with Mel Gibson
According to numerous psychological theories, human beings are more controlled by the influence of their emotions and thoughts (Schwarzer, 2014). Hence if someone commits illegal actions, they are affected by their thinking. When studying a person’s mind, physiological psychology, a major section of neuroscience, contains the neural system of behavior and control (Thompson & Robinson, 2019). Through studying by performing empirical and practical studies, psychologists can expose many facts about the behavior of human beings. This psychology consists more of the mind cells, structures, chemical communication, and parts of the mind that generate the deeds. In this section, the major connected areas are sleep, senses, memory knowledge, and reproductive. However, this psychology focuses more on giving a clear view of how the nervous systems work with other body systems to develop a particular behavior.
Lethal weapon is an exciting play that contains psychological actions that demonstrate the effects of love and loss. Through psychology, the director has managed to play through with characters hence portraying distinct scenes. Los Angeles police Martin Riggs also referred to as Mel Gibson, ends up being suicidal and reckless in his actions after his wife passes on. It is also seen that he is acting in full bitterness due to the death of his wife as even after he resigned, with another officer, he got in conflict with the elder officers. It is clear that when Lorna shoots a henchman while backing up rigs, Travis comes out of nowhere and shoots Lorna with his armor-piercing bullets, which affects Riggs. While Lorna was playing dead, although she was seriously injured, Riggs thought his wife was dead. He then turned back in anger to Travis. As a result of thinking that Travis had killed his wife; the actions of getting back to Travis with anger are triggered. This works along with the fact that human beings’ actions are all accompanied by thinking. If not for that, he thought his wife had been shot dead, he could not attack Travis.
Despite that the administration could not allow cops to date and even get married, Mel Gibson gets Lorna pregnant, and they plan on getting married. In the film, we get that Lorna and Mel Gibson and Lorna have gone through different things together as they find each other saving the other. Often, they tend to take care of each other as they develop ways in which they get out of attacks. It is also seen as they get attacked on the train by the Ku’s henchmen; Lorna shoots the car, and Riggs goes forward, making the assailants be hit by the train. They all collaborate towards escaping when they are attacked. After remembering these events, they see that they should marry as they have been through a lot together. In this case, the psychology theory is that they get married, and they even develop love from the fact that they have been through a lot together and have been through action that they have been able to save each other. This will also act as a retrieval signal, such that the two will be retrieval signals to each other. Retrieval signals are objects that, when exposed, come with self-conscious memory. In this manner, when Mel Gibson sees Lorna, he will remember the memories that they all had during their work time.
Later, Mel Gibson falls in love with Cole, they get a child together, but they do not consider getting married despite leaving together (Brand, 2018). When Mel Gibson is held captive by Travis’s thugs, and they come to capture Cole, they get a demonstration of the martial art skills that led to the successful dispatching of many of them. They then took off in the pickup to Cole’s place. Here they prepare to dress their wounds. They, however, have the go-ahead to undress so they can show each other the wounds they have gotten during the wars. In this instance, Mel Gibson continues to undress to show Cole the bullet gunshots he survived in South Africa. In the process, he ends up thinking that they are in love; he feels like there is something between the two, no matter the fact that earlier, he had not thought that they would be in love. This then led to him pulling Cole close and kissing her. If not for Mel Gibson thought that they shared some love, he would not have ended up kissing Cole; this then led to him extending the relationship with Cole (Brand, 2018). In this case, Mel Gibson fell in love with Cole due to the psychology that he thought that they shared love.
Due to the suicidal and bitter thoughts that he had developed since his wife was killed in a car crash (Brand, 2018). He no longer cares whether he lives or dies; due to these emotions that have developed, he often risks his life as he has nothing to lose. This is also seen when he is on the rooftop trying to think with a jumper. In this case, he has nearly tried to endanger himself due to the depression he developed, affecting the people around him. When he saves the man who wanted to jump on top of the roof, he also tries to show his bitterness. To a point, he tells him that he wishes to swallow a bullet. He doesn’t care if he dies. He even ends up tying himself to the man with cuffs and throws the keys away so that the man should jump so they can die together. All these are a result of the emotions that he developed after the death of his wife. He is bitter.
In conclusion, the director has used the emotions that he developed to develop the character as someone who does not care due to the loss that he encountered. His memories about his late wife make him act as reckless as he seems so desperate to lose his wife. To a point when he loves Lorna, he does not risk losing someone he loves; he goes to the extent of protecting her more. The director has used memories as a retrieval signal to the character such that he acts like a person who is full of guilt that he did not manage to protect his wife. Hence developing a story with an actor who tries to evoke emotions and also a story that shows how memories and what we think tends to impact the captions that we do, and also how the psychological, neural control system works with other body parts to perform actions that are affected by the thinking in our brains.
References
Brand, H. S. (2018). Lethal Weapon 4:[Review of R. Donner (1998) Lethal Weapon 4]. British Dental Journal, 224.
Schwarzer, R. (2014). Self-efficacy: Thought control of the action. Taylor & Francis.
Thompson, R. F., & Robinson, D. N. (2019). Physiological psychology (pp. 407-458). Routledge.
