Strictly Ballroom

            Musical movie is always one type of the movie that capture my attention.  This is because musical movie had broken my stereotype toward the typical movie that only focus on the acting but it also emphasis on music elements.  High School Musical Series was the first time I started in be in touch with musical series movie.  Soon later, I started to fall in love into this similar type of movie.  I thought that the first musical movie that I had watched is the first release of the similar movie in the history.  This perception stays in my head until that day, I get the chance to watch Strictly Ballroom.  Then only I realize that musical movie had already started release in the 90 centuries. 

Summary

            Strictly Ballroom is a romantic comedy film that talks about how an Australian ballroom dancer, Scott struggles to establish his style of dance that he had invented to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship.  The style of dance that he had invented had not been recognized by anyone as the people think that he is against the rule that Australian Dancing Federation had set.  Only one of the girl, Fran, a beginner dancer who just start to learn dancing in Scott parents’ studio that support Scott decision and thinks that his style of dance is better than the normal step that everyone is following and had made an offer to dance with him.  However, Scott reject Fran’s offer to dance with her as he thinks that she did not have the qualification to dance with him as he started to dance since young and had become a professional dancer unlike Fran as a beginner.  After a lot of up and downs, Scott finally had taken on the chances to dance with Fran in the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix and forget about the winning the competition.  Lastly, the action that they done in the competition had grant them a lot of recognition from the people in the crowd that means a lot to Scott and Fran which are heavier than winning the competition. 

            In this movie, it had well demonstrated on how social influence had impact on people life.  There are three main components in social influence which are compliance, conformity, and obedience. 

Compliance

            Compliance is defining as change of one’s behaviours because of other people’s directing or asking for change.  The change may not involve a change in attitudes or beliefs of another person.  Compliance is developed by three factors which are mood, reciprocity, and reasons.  This is demonstrated in the film when the Liz complies to Scott with his new steps in taking part in a dancing competition.  This can be showed that Liz did not agree with Scott decision as she blames on Scott for being so disobedience and did not follow the rule that are set by the Australian Dancing Federation that lead to lose in the competition.  Liz are forced to complies to what Scott desired in as there are limited time left to decide on whether did she want to follow to Scott’s step and also there is rule that female dancing partner should follow the male dancing partner in dancing. 

            Besides that, Scott also comply to the rule in following the rule that are set by the authority.  At first, he was not convinced by the influence of authority, his mother as he believed that it was against his principles in dancing.  However, Barry, the presidents of Australian Dancing Federation told Scott the fake story to trigger his emotion to persuade him to dance with Liz with the official step.  At the end of the story, Barry even “beg” Scott to win the champion to help his father to make the dream come true that his father had lost the opportunity when he was young.  In the end, Scott comply to Barry as he thinks that by helping his father to realize the dream is more important than dancing on his own style.  This shows how mood, reciprocity, and reason become the factors that why Scott will comply to Barry’s instruction. 

Conformity

            Conformity is the tendency that people alter their behaviour because of group pressure.  People will change their own behaviour to match with the rest.  In the film, it shows that most of the dancer in the movie tends to conform to the rule if they want to stand a chance to win.  People will not against the rule and against the norm as it may result them to be the odd one and may lost the chance to win the competition.  In the worsen condition, it may also result in the dancer to lose their career life as a dancer. 

            Moreover, conformity level tends to increase when there has confident confederate.  This is shows when all the dancer tends to dance according to the rule except Scott and Fran as the appearance that Barry shown to the audience is so powerful and confident that cause the people to be afraid to go against him.  However, in the last scene of the movie, Scott’s father, Doug stand up and clapped for the performance for Scott and Fran had been performed in front of all the audience in the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix competition.  His action had influence all the audience stood up and clapped for Scott and Fran.  This conformity demonstrate on how the minority can influence on the majority with the criteria that the minority need to highlight a great confidence and consistency in his action. 

Obedience

            Obedience is an action that follow the authority by the an individual.  It is demonstrated in the movie when Fran was threatened by Scott’s mother, Shirley to go away and left Scott to dance with Tina or Liz so that he gets the chance to win the competition.  The appearance of Shirley had demonstrated obedience by Fran as Shirley is the authority that had the higher power in deciding things that forced people to believe in her. 

            Aside from that, Barry also tends to be the authority figure that portrays a powerful person that give instruction to the people.  With it, the people will then follow the instructions that are given by Barry blindly.  People will not investigate on the reason behind on why the authority figure had come to the decision in given these instructions to them. 

Why it is named Strictly Ballroom?

            The director decided to name the movie as Strictly Ballroom and dancing is the main elements in the movie.  This is because dancing is one the expressing art where people can showcase their state of minds freely; however, ballroom dancing is one type of dance that allows the dancer to dance freely with a certain condition.  Past research did found out that dance is associate to confidence, mate-selection and social bonding.  Strictly Ballroom might indicate that dancer who dance in the ballroom is being stereotype within a set of rules unlike street dancer who can express freely without any restriction. 

Impact

            In this movie, the main message that are being sent to the audience is how social influence had plays an important role in influence people.  As mentioned in the above, I did explain on how the social influence is playing the important role in the movie.  Aside from that, there is also one sentence that wake me up as an individual which is “A Life Lived In Fear Is A Life Half-Lived”.   This states that people who always have the fear in his or her heart will always stop him or her in stepping forward so it is no longer can be consider as living in a meaningful life.  This has reminded me that people should not be coward and should always tried our best to do anything that we intended to no matter what is the final outcomes of the actions.   There is always stereotype that people have toward us and have a lot of opinion that they have and hope that we can follow.  This might stop us from trying that may lead us to regret on not grabbing the chance to trying in the future. 

            This sentence also reminds me that once I have a friend said that “if we did not do it when we are still young, then when we will have the chance to do it later in life”.  This has encouraged me to do many things that I used not dare to do in the past and has resulted me who I am today.  Being an introvert, I always do not dare to step out from the comfort zone but with this encouragement, I started to stepped out from the comfort zone and know more people by joining club and society.  With this experience, this had help me to know a lot of precious friend that can help me and guide me when I was down.  I think that I would regret if and only if I did not dare to follow my heart in doing things that I want to. 

Conclusion

            In a conclusion, I think that people should never be afraid of making a change or simply being different than everybody else.  Conformity is not a must to be a bad social influence, but it is definitely not a wise choice in letting conformity to get in the way being an obstacle of achieving something which we believe in.