Psychopathy In The Film Blow-Up

Psychopathy is one of the most well-known personality disorders, due to its frequent and often negative portrayal in the media. Because of this, many people know it is associated with a lack of emotion, a disinterest in personal intimacy, and a disregard for others. Throughout the film Blow-Up, Thomas displays these well-known symptoms of psychopathy, as evidenced by his misogynistic view of women and his seeming lack of any sort of moral code. One scene in the film in particular, the scene where Thomas goes to view the dead man’s body in the park at night, does an especially thorough job at exemplifying Thomas’s tendency toward psychopathy. Within the film, director Michelangelo Antonioni emphasizes Thomas’s psychopathy in order to call attention to the increasingly common exploitation of other people for one’s self gain.
Throughout the film, Thomas seems to care little about much of anything except himself, but one of the primary instances of this can be witnessed when Thomas first discovers the dead man in the photographs. His initial response to this discovery is curiosity, not fear or horror. He does not call the police, but instead decides to take a trip to the park to check whether or not

Directors often incorporate non-diegetic music into their films in order to convey emotion or to stir up emotions within the audience. However, music is not played in this scene, nor is it played in any other important scenes within Blow-Up. In doing this, Antonioni places the audience in the mind of Thomas, a psychopath, someone who does not experience emotion as other people do. Thomas does not believe that the fact that this man is dead will affect him in any way, other than offering him the perfect photograph, which is a self-serving purpose. The lack of non-diegetic sound highlights Thomas’s desire to exploit the misfortune of others for