Nonviolent Aggression In The Film Hurting The One You Love?

In the film, Enough directed by Michael Apted the life of Slim is portrayed, as a working- class waitress who works at a diner. After a costumer tries to charm her with his looks and flattering complements trying to convince her to go out with him. He is confronted by another man named Mitch who alerts Slim to stay away, that the man was only trying to win a bet. Soon after Mitch’s heroic act, they get married and have a child. Slim believes she has the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect home but most importantly she has the perfect husband. One day Slim discovers her “dream man” is having an affair with a woman. When Slim confronts him he becomes aggressive stating, “I am, and always will be, a person who gets what he wants” (Apted,

In the book, Hurting the One you Love by Irene Frieze explains, that there are many forms of nonviolent or indirect aggression. Nonviolent aggression include verbal hostility or taking property versus indirect include withdrawal or other forms of interactions which having a hostile intent. (Frieze, 2004, p. 4) In many instances aggression leads or might lead to violence. According to Dr. Shane Gomes a professor, violence is the exercise or an instance of physical force; harms usually effecting or intended to result in injuries or destruction. There are two types of violence physical and verbal; physical the actual act of physical force such as to hit, struck or attack someone. Versus verbal violence is the use of condescending language to belittle someone whether it is by insulting, yelling, or humiliating someone (Gomes,

One psychological theory that involves the “internal” cause for human behavior is the Social Learning Theory. In 1977 a theorist Albert Bandura, “stated that behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning” (McLeod, 2011). In other words, learning is based upon observation and modeling. Bandura believed that humans are selective about what they pay attention to and create a relationship between their behavior and the consequences. Observational learning can only come from the modeling process which consists of four steps attention, retention, production and motivation. First, attention, in order to learn something the person must pay attention to a certain situation or observe. Second, retention, memory plays an important role in this step because in order to fully understand something a person must be able to retrieve information they have learned. Third, production is when the person repeats or mimics the behavior shown by their model. Fourth, motivation, in order for a person to successfully learn through observation they must have the desire to learn it. (Fryling, M.,