Swallow: Products of Our Environment
Swallow (2019), image provided by tube
“Are you happy, or are you pretending to be happy?”
- Katherine Conrad, Swallow
I don’t know how I missed this movie, but I’m glad that Amazon Prime brought it to my attention. Not only was the cinematography breathtaking, but the plot is also refreshing. Hunter Conrad is a retail salesman turned kept housewife. She develops pica, an eating disorder, in a desperate attempt to digest her new life.
When you think about eating disorders, on the big screen, you usually picture anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating. Pica rarely comes to mind. Pica is an addiction to eating objects that have no nutritional value (i.e. a marble or a tack). Some addictions are circumstantial and some are situational, like Hunter’s. In 1973, the Sanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was conducted by Zimbardo and his colleagues. It featured 21 male participants. 10 participants were randomly assigned as prisoners, and 11 participants were randomly assigned as guards. The prisoners were treated accordingly. They were arrested at their homes without warning, taken to their local police stations, and fingerprinted. The basement of the Sanford University psychology building acted as a prison. Upon their arrival, the prisoners were stripped of their clothing and personal belongings and then confined to their cells. The prisoners were referred to by their numbers only, in an attempt to provoke feelings of inferiority. Guards had the autonomy to maintain law and order, except for the use of physical violence. Within hours, the guards grew accustomed to harassing the prisoners. They would wake the prisoners up at 2:30 am for a “count,” a way to familiarize the prisoners with their numbers. It also served as a reminder, to the prisoners, that they were inferior to the guards. The prisoners were berated with insults and assigned frivolous tasks, and push-ups were used as physical punishment. It wasn’t long before the prisoners reluctantly embraced their environment. As a result, several poisoners experienced breakdowns. The experiment was scheduled to commence for two weeks but ended after six days. The experiment revealed how willingly and quickly people will conform to social roles; the behavior of the participants was exacerbated by their environment (situational). Hunter feels like a prisoner in her new home, with her husband and mother-in-law acting as guards. Pica gives Hunter a similar feeling a prisoner has when he or she is socializing in the “yard.” They feel free.
The human mind is so complex and fragile. Something as simple as our environment can alter the course of our reality, for better or for worse. We are products of our environment. When you think about it that way, the world seems much more colorful, each of us offering a unique shade to this crayon box we call life. If you’re looking for something different to watch, this movie is it. It’s worth all the marbles.
