Care Perspective In The Movie 'Running On Empty'

Running Head: CARE PERSPECTIVE OF ANNIE

Jay Patel
Care Perspective of Annie Pope
RPW 110: Rhetoric and Writing and Psychology 101
Professor Patricia Morelli and Professor Daniel McGrath
13 December 2013

Throughout Running on Empty, Annie Pope was represented as the maternal caring figure. As the film progresses, she struggled to make decisions, such as giving her son Danny away to her father. As the story unravels, Annie slowly starts to doubt the decisions she makes and tries to figure out what is not best for her, but her family. She realizes that she can’t help Danny as long she drags her family along while running away from the FBI. She talks to her husband, knowing that it is up to him to decide whether
Danny gets to pursue his dream or stick with the family for the rest of his life. Annie approaches her dilemmas with the care perspective. During the course of the story, Annie goes through the identity formation theory, moral development, and psychosocial stages of development. Annie represents care perspective in this film.
Care perspective is the “response to others in their terms a concern for the good of others or for the alleviations of their burdens, hurt, or suffering” (Lyons, 1983, p. 33). As we see the story unfold, she begins show how she is willing to sacrifice the wholeness of the “unit” so Danny could prosper and wouldn’t have to run. In the meeting with her father, she mentioned she will go as far as turning herself in, once it is time for Harry to become independent. She grasped the idea that she was being selfish throughout the past 15 years by denying their children the life they had when they were younger. The moral problem in the care perspective is failure to attend to need (Gilligan & Attanucci, p. 80). Annie’s decision to send Danny to her parents and letting him go to college was her way to attending to his needs. She knew he needed Julliard for him to thrive in his musical
future. At a young age, she decided to convey her opinions of the war and what the U.S. military was doing in Vietnam by blowing up a Napalm factory. According Erickson’s identity formation theory, some adolescents “may adopt the identity of a particular peer group” (Myers, 2013, p. 203). During the 1970s, the Vietnam War was very unpopular and anti-war movements became more common as the fighting continued. This could explain why Annie decided to take extreme measures as an adolescent to stop the fighting. Since the majority of the population disliked the fighting, she adopted the identity of the population. As Mara Rose wrote about, such a rash decision could be because her prefrontal cortex did not develop yet. This part of the brain helps differentiate between good and bad decisions (Williams, 2000). Being an adolescent, she did not have the ability to choose between what choice had the least amount of consequences and which one would hurt her most. Since the prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop, teens could get into deadly or even life threatening situations. At the time of the bombing, a janitor that she and her husband did not expect to be there showed up at the time of the explosion. When she finds out she paralyzed an innocent man, she realizes she cannot change the world through violent means. Being in this situation, it can be assumed that care focus is much more likely to occur in the moral dilemma of a woman (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969). Knowing what the U.S. was doing in Vietnam and what the victims were going through, she did what she thought was right and would stop the suffering of the Vietnamese.
At a young age, the brain goes through a pruning process in which it undergoes drastic changes. During this time, dopamine levels are kept low since other hormones are needed during development. “Dopamine is the chemical messenger that allows us to do constant triage in day-to-day life so we can figure out what to pay attention to and what is background noise” (Newman, 2010, p. 5). As a result, the brain cannot make adequate decisions that deal with each unique situation. Adolescent Annie thought that it was better to use more radical methods to show her anti-war opinions. While she was planning the bombing, she did not have the capacity to make smart decisions and think about the possible consequences or factors that could have gone wrong. Kohlberg defined different stages of moral development.
“Moral development is the thinking that occurs as we consider right or wrong” (Myers, 2013, p. 201). From the time Annie was an adolescent to an adult, her moral stage of thinking is at the post conventional level. At this level, there is a type of thinking that your actions portray what is right. By bombing the Napalm factory she thought she would slow the production of Napalm which was recklessly used against innocent people. Since Annie was anti-war, she saw that her actions were justified according to her and the majority of the population’s belief. This is not the only part of her life where she acted on what she thought was best. She deeply thought of what she was doing to Danny as he was becoming his own person and began to show his desires. Contrary to Arthur’s beliefs, she thought it would be best to ask her father to take in Danny so he could pursue his dream of going to Julliard and keep the relationship he formed. Knowing the possible consequences of seeing her father, Annie knew it was the right decision to approach him with such a
question. As an adult, Annie is still caring and does not seem to focus about justice for the most part. In the beginning of the movie, she makes sure she gives the kids new disguises as they move from area to area. Though it may seem like a lot of work, she wants to keep her family together for as long as possible. Not only was she was focused on her children, but Arthur too. He was the patriarch of the family and did not want to separate the kids from himself. Annie saw that and eventually she began to believe that whatever they wanted and whatever Danny wanted was completely different. She saw that it was only a matter of time that before Danny had to leave. Even after going through countless homes, she never thought of depriving her children of an education. She cared enough to risk being caught by authorities. She never thought about herself or anything else. Never did she want to hold him back in order to keep their identities hidden. Even though it was hard, she kept the family together and used whatever time they had to keep each other happy. Erik Erikson formed stages of psychosocial development that organizes the different mental periods throughout a person’s lifespan. Annie falls into the young adulthood phase. In this part of development, the issue is intimacy versus isolation. At this time, a person struggles to form any significant relationships and therefore they may feel socially isolated (Myers, 2013). Annie went through this at an early age when her ideas were clashing with her father’s. However, she overcame this when she realized how she was naïve about the outside world and how insignificant her actions were. After a while, she notices that Danny really wants to stay at their current location because of the relationship that he has formed with another girl and his audition for Julliard. This is when she begins to wonder what they have done to their children and how selfish she has been. Annie really begins to change after years of moving and always knew that she would eventually have to let Danny go. Annie’s uses the view of the care perspective to deal with various situations is deals with on a daily basis. As an adolescent, her identity was heavily influenced by peer-pressure and popular belief. As she matured, the image of herself became more solidified and less swayed by other’s. During the movie, it was shown that Annie was at the pinnacle of post-conventional molarity. In approaching her father with the idea of taking in Danny, Annie was distraught, but she knew what would be the most beneficial for Danny. Annie was faced with the issue of either developing relationships or isolation. She conquered this issue by keeping the strong relationships within the family.

References
Gilligan, C. & Attanucci, J (1988). Two moral orientations.
Lyons, N. (1983). Two perspectives: On self, relationship, and morality.
Myers, D. G. Psychology: Tenth edition in modules. Holland, Michigan: Worth Publishers.
Newman, J. (2010, November 28). Inside your teen’s head. Parade Magazine
Williams, M. (2000, September 25). Why teens act that way: It’s their brain. The Kansas City Star