Strictly Ballroom

This is a movie depicts about people who looks dance in a other level of passion. Here, the story portrays about the challenges a ballroom dancer face. Scott Hastings a ballroom dancer from a family which has history of ballroom dancing and had been trained on ballroom dance since young. He struggles to win the Pan-Pacific Dancing Grand Prix championship because he introduces his own new steps which are not “Strictly Ballroom”. Even Scott’s dancing partner Liz Holt left him and joined with Scott’s rival Ken Railings. After these events he was devastated and was put in a situation where he needs to find another partner to dance with. Scott’s mother was also unhappy with her son’s situation because she worried that Scott will not make it as a champion.

One of the psychological aspects that can be seen in this movie was “Social Influence”. Social influence takes place when a person’s opinion, emotion and behaviours are affected by others. In this movie I could link this to conformity. This can be seen when Scott’s mother started to pressurised Scott to follow the strictly ballroom dancing steps to make sure he wins in the championship. She was also upset and broke down in a point when Scott’s partner Liz left him and joined his rival because Scott is not dancing with the old same step as everyone whereas Scott likes to explore and introduce new steps.  Scott’s mother was also upset because she was worried that he might not be able to follow her footstep and prove himself as a ballroom dancer. The mother also forced Scott to dance using the old ordinary steps and warned not to use his new steps. 

In another part Scott’s father Doug was shown as a person who ruined and failed in his dancing career after he started to introduce unorthodox new dance steps. This was done to make Scott from introducing new steps in the championship but actually it was a plot done by Barry Fife, the conniving president of the Australian Dancing Federation to make Scott to lose in the championship. However, Scott believed the fake story and conforms to the old step just to win in the competition. 
Another concept will be “Love and Attraction” between Scott and Fran a beginner dancer in his parents dance studio. Initially, Scott did not show any kind of attraction because Fran looked very ordinary. Scott started to get attracted to Fran after he found out that she could dance Pasodoble.

 As they started to rehearse together she saw Fran got more confident and she turned to be attractive for him. This can be seen in a scene clearly when Scott and Fran were walking together until they kissed each other. Here I could see that  women’s confidence could also attract a men and eventually will make him to fall in love.