Weekend Wrap-up #04 - The passing of a Legend

My post for this week is a tribute to the veteran actor Dilip Kumar. Now while he was known to a lot of his fans as the Tragedy King, I will write more from my experience of his movies. 

Given the subject matter of this site, I am going to look at some of his most memorable characters and movies to me and explain their behaviour or plots through the lens of behavioural science.

The five movies I have chosen are:

1. Ram Aur Shyam

2. Shakti

3. Mashaal 

4. Karma 

5. Saudagar

Each a master piece in its own right and each with some stellar characters for us to analyse. 

Ram Aur Shyam

So for those who aren't aware - Ram Aur Shyam is the original movie to tell the story of identical twins separated at birth and then swapped in adulthood due to some sequence of events. We of course then saw Sita Aur Gita, Chalbaaz and Kishan Kanhaiya on more or less the same concept.  Take a look at this clip and have a nice laugh.

Now the characters of Ram and Shyam or more accurately the reactions of people to them gives a glimpse into some aspects of framing effect.

The framing effect is when our decisions are influenced by the way information is presented. Equivalent information can be more or less attractive depending on what features are highlighted.

Now while this may not be apparent in the context of decision making in this film but metaphorically we see how the universe around both Ram and Shyam completely changes when different personalities come to the fore. The clip above is just the start of the complete laugh riot that follows.

Shakti

Now I couldn't find the clip I wanted you too watch from this movie, but I will try to summarise it here. This is basis for what happens in the rest of the movie and in the lives of both our characters.

Dilip Kumar plays Ashwini Kumar, an inspector with a wife, Sheetal and son, Vijay. In his efforts to clean up the city, he comes up against JK Verma. When things come to a head, JK abducts Vijay in a bid to make Ashwini back down. 

Ashwini, who is renowned for his honesty and his principles, puts his duty above all else, even though he is also moving heaven and earth to recover his son. JK calls for a final answer, though, and tells him that if he doesn’t call off the investigation, Ashwini will be responsible for Vijay’s death.

Vijay, who overhears the conversation, is emotionally scarred by his father preferring to sacrifice him for his principles. This one incident makes him believe his father does not love him and we see through the movie how this one belief shapes all of his opinions in the years to come.

Once again a metaphor for the behavioural science concept of anchoring.

Anchoring bias is a cognitive bias that causes us to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we are given about a topic. We interpret newer information from the reference point of our anchor, instead of seeing it objectively. 

This is what happens to Vijay in the movie as he continues into a life of crime blinded by this perceived rejection by his father.

Mashaal 

The clip above is the turning point in the film. The movie is about Vinod Kumar (Dilip Kumar) who plays a respected, law-abiding citizen who turns to crime for exacting revenge. What we see here borrows from the concept of declinism

Declinism is often a feeling harbored about the overall state of a country, society, or institution, with the view that it is in decline or getting worse

In Mashaal, the protagonist is willing to let go of his morals and ethics only because he did not see a way out of it and had in fact given up on society.

Karma

Let us take a look at the storyline here... After Michael, a terrorist being held in a state prison, is broken out by his collaborators, he vows revenge on Vishwa (Dilip Kumar), the jailer who guarded him inside. Michael succeeds in killing Vishwa's grandchildren, and when the police can't stop him, Vishwa takes matters into his own hands. Starting a vigilante operation with three death row inmates he personally trains to become disciplined fugitive hunters, Vishwa sets out to avenge his family's slaughter.

The metamorphosis of these death row inmates shows us the results of the Pygmalion Effect.

The Pygmalion effect describes situations where someone’s high expectations improves our behavior and therefore our performance in a given area. It suggests that we do better when more is expected of us.

The song in the clip below shows us how the expectations of Vishwa make our three inmates rise to the occasion.

Saudagar

Growing up together, Veeru (Dilip Kumar) and Raju are lifelong friends until the devious Chuniya exploits their relationship for his own ends. Veeru and Raju become bitter rivals. The clip below explains the reason for their enmity.

Here we see shades of the fundamental attribution error (FAE).  FAE describes how, when making judgments about people’s behavior, we often overemphasize dispositional factors and downplay situational ones. In other words, we believe that people’s personality traits have more influence on their actions, compared to the other factors over which they don’t have control.

So in the above clip Raju, saw Veeru as someone who was a betrayer without any regard to the situation he was in. Though the suicide of his sister played a key role in his reaction, the fact that they were able to reconcile after years, only brings to light the bias that caused the break up in the first place.

I am sure if I dwell into the older films of Dilip Kumar, I would get many more behaviours to look at... but  these are movies that I have grown up with and thought it was best to write about them.

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I am sharing my posting schedule herewith... do look out for topics that might interest you:

Tuesday: Regular posts under Intriguing Insights and Inexplicable Influences

Thursday: To BE or not to BE - Behavioural Economic (BE) terms and their popular explanations or definitions.

Sunday: Weekend Wrap-up where I select an event or incident from the week that was and analyse some aspect of it.

Last Saturday of every month: My monthly post in the Intellectual Imprints section