Recipe for a Villain Movie Night Project Chapter 13: Personality What makes a

Recipe for a Villain
Movie Night Project
Chapter 13: Personality
What makes a villain? Pop some popcorn and get ready for a movie night! For this project, you will choose a movie with a clear villain. The villain must be a person or have human-like qualities which can be analyzed from a psychological perspective. Your goal will be to figure out why the villain became evil according to popular psychological theories. For example, in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) with Jim Carrey, we see the backstory of the Grinch being bullied as a child which led him to move out of Whoville to live alone in a garbage heap and try to ruin Christmas.
Make sure to choose a movie that shows background information about the villain so that you will have knowledge about them to analyze. If you aren’t sure if the movie you choose makes sense for this project, you can Google the synopsis of the movie to see if there is any backstory included. You’ll want to see the villain’s “downfall” and how they came to be who they are.
Steps to Completing the Project
Read through Chapter 13 (Personality) in your book.
Choose a movie and watch it with your laptop, or a notebook, handy so that you can take notes on your villain.
Choose two psychological theories to analyze your villain with. Table 13.4 (page 463) in your textbook has a table of the major personality theories. Please choose two of the following: Psychoanalytic, Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Trait, and/or Social-Cognitive. The table shows a brief comparison of these theories.
The question you are aiming to answer is: why did this villain become who they are? Use the major personality theories you’ve chosen to inform your answer. Review what you observed about the villain during the movie and make your argument.
Remember that the personality theories are ways to explain what shapes people into becoming who they are. They are not adjectives to describe someone with. For example, your villain isn’t “humanistic” or “trait”. Instead, you will apply these theories to the villain, such as in the brief example below:
Example Analysis
According to trait theory, some of our personality traits are stable and enduring through time. For many years, Grinch grew up alone and isolated, which caused him to feel grief and anger. At the end of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Grinch was finally able to have happy relationships with others, but still tended to have a short temper, for which he needed to apologize. This indicates that Grinch’s personality, even after he’s welcomed back to Who-Ville, includes being irritable.
Your Response
For full credit, you will write five paragraphs total. Please write at least five sentences per paragraph. You can write in a five paragraph essay format, or you can write five separate sections with headings if you prefer.
Paragraph One: Describe your villain’s behavior and characteristics
Paragraph Two: Describe the two perspectives or theories you’ll be analyzing your villain from (Psychologists involved, what the theory suggests, etc.)
Paragraph Three: Provide a detailed analysis about your villain using your first theory
Paragraph Four: Provide a detailed analysis about your villain using your second theory
Paragraph Five: Summarize your villain’s behavior, the two perspectives you chose to analyze your villain with, and how these theories provide insight into your villain’s behavior
Works Cited: At the end of your project, please cite any sources that you use, using APA format. You may use an online citation generator to do this. Please be sure to cite your book also.
Grading
You can earn up to 75 points for this project. The points that you earn will be based on your assessment of the villain’s behavior and how well you analyze it according to the two personality theories that you chose. Do not simply summarize what the villain does or what happens in the movie.
Submitting Your Project
When you are ready to complete the project, submit your writing as a post in the Chapter 13 discussion board thread. Do not submit an attachment. Attachments will not be accepted. If you want to type your project in a separate word document, that’s fine; just copy and paste into a discussion post when you’re ready.
You do not have to respond to anyone else’s posts in the discussion feed. I will only be looking for your individual post for points, but you’re welcome to comment on other people’s posts if you’d like to give them some encouragement or feedback.
This project is all that you will do for Chapter 13; there is not a quiz or general discussion post.
If you have trouble with this project, please message or email me and I’ll be glad to answer any of your questions!
If you want to use Joaquin Phoenix’s adaptation of Joker (2019) please look at the discussion board first. If more than two people have already posted an analysis of that character, please choose something else.