Egocentrism In The Movie Boyhood

Boyhood, the film in which I will be covering in this paper, is a lengthy three-hour movie that takes the viewers through the up’s, down’s and ins and outs of the life of a boy, Mason Jr and his older sister, Samantha (Linklater, 2014). Mason and Samantha are growing up in a single parent family where their mother has chosen to raise them both on her own, due to their father’s unfortunate lifestyle choices. (Linklater, 2014) What makes this movie truly unique is the way in which they filmed it. Boyhood was filmed over the span of 12 years. They used the same actor and followed him as he took on the real life twists and turns and challenges of growing up. Although this method of filming is rare, it gave the film a true sense of authenticity
Egocentrism is the tendency for children to think the world entirely revolves around them and their thoughts and they only see situations from their own personal perspective and will often struggle to take others perspectives or thoughts into consideration (Berger & Chuang 2014). Egocentrism is a trait that children posse but they are very unaware that they hold this trait. The first time egocentrism was misrepresented in the film was when the mother informs Mason Jr and his older sister Samantha that they were too move to Houston, Mason’s reaction was fairly mild and his reaction lacked concern over himself (Linklater 2014). He did not react in such a way that a typical egocentric young boy would. His reaction did not involve solely himself. Although, the film missed the mark on the intensity and sincerity of egocentrism in that scene it was well portrayed by his older sister Samantha shortly after. Samantha’s egocentrism shinned through when she was on the phone with someone who she was clearly interested in speaking with. While on the phone, another call came through for Mason. She was very quick to tell them that Mason was not available and that he was moving away. (Linklater 2014) She was very quick to disregard Mason and his feelings, for the
Identity is often something many adolescences are unsure of. Often it is hard to learn exactly who you are. Identity is something that we develop over our life times, but may be a challenge for lots of people (Berger & Chuang, 2014). From being to worry about his dads own personal issues and how they may affect him, demonstrates Mason concern about his own identity (Linklater, 2014). To, trying out different personalities and having some moments of mistrust in him self over these different personalities, all demonstrate the complexity of identity within someone’s