Effect of Cinematic Portrayal of Death on Viewer’s Death Attitude

7 Pages • Essays / Projects • Year Uploaded: 2024

To humanity, death is inevitable. Regardless of our race, gender, class, social status, economic capability, intellectual prowess and personal achievement, we are all equal in the face of death. The permanence and irreversibility of death usually inflicts fear and anxiety upon human beings when they first realize their fate, clueless of and dreading what awaits after this life comes to a terminal end. Death anxiety is a quite normal sentiment. It exists in everyone somewhere deep down, yet the level of anxiety that calibrates normality has to be paid attention to. Certain aspects of one’s personality and temperament are found to be crucial determinants in people’s anxiety level towards death. In Gailliot, Schmeichel, and Baumeister’s studies, it was found that individuals who were less able to practice self-regulation were prone to higher death anxiety and more troubled by ideas of death than those who were better at self-control (52). In contrast, Niemiec’s comprehensive review of factors of anxiety demonstrated that people who have higher level of gratitude for life and perspective or understanding of death are more prone to be less stressed towards their own death. The issue of death anxiety has been a tricky territory for social scholars and scientists, but in recent years, cinema has emerged as a new tool for therapists and researchers who would like to know more about its potential to have an active, and preferably positive, impact on viewer’s psychological behavior, particularly with respect to death.

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