CA.4 Analyzing Percy from No Hard Feelings by Lewis King

Synopsis

lewisking1 — 2023-11-03 19:36:41 UTC

In No Hard Feelings Set in the current time of 2023 in Montauk, New York. Maddie Barker, desperate to keep her childhood home, finds an interesting Job offer online where helicopter parents are looking for someone to date their socially awkward and introverted 19-year-old son Percy Becker in order to break him out of his shell before college. By the end of the story, the two build a strong friendship not made up of romantic feelings, only after going through many different adventures and experiences, that teach Percy how to be more self-confident. and bold. This story tackles the feeling of being stuck and not being able to do something.

cites used: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15671028/

https://filmcolossus.com/movie-explanations/no-hard-feelings

Vygotsky's Theory

lewisking1 — 2023-11-03 19:38:14 UTC

Vygotsky's theory states that adults or a more knowledgeable person foster cognitive development in children. He believed that there were 3 different stages in learning which are cognitive involving thinking about concepts and ideas, motoric involving doing things, and sociocultural involving interacting with others. According to the My Psychology textbook by Andrew M. Pomerantz, Vygotsky's theory heavily revolves around the idea of scaffolding: "a process by which a person learns new words, ideas, and ways of thinking by interacting with a more advanced person who provides decreasing levels of help"(Pomerantz). Another key idea in Vygotsky's theory is the Zone of Proximal development, which is a zone where at the center is what the child can do alone, the next zone encircling the last one is what the child can do with assistance, and the last zone encircling all the rest is what the child can't do. A critique some say on Vygotsky's theory is that scaffolding may be difficult to implement in classrooms because the teacher must learn each student's individual ZPD to effectively apply scaffolding.

cites used: Pomerantz, A. M. (2022). My Psychology (3rd ed.). Macmillan Higher Education. https://macmillan.vitalsource.com/books/9781319449636

https://www.structural-learning.com/post/vygotskys-theory

Vygotsky's Life

lewisking1 — 2023-11-03 19:38:44 UTC

Lev Vygotsky was born on November 17, 1896, in Orsha, Belarus, and died on June 11, 1934, in Moscow, Russia. He was a Russian psychologist and is recognized as a key figure in Soviet Psychology. He studied children and also developed his own theories about how learning occurs.

cite used: https://www.structural-learning.com/post/vygotskys-theory

Percy Becker

lewisking1 — 2023-11-03 19:40:50 UTC

Percy Becker is a very socially awkward, and introverted 19-year-old boy. caused by his helicopter parents coddling him, not teaching him certain things about the world, and keeping him from learning things for himself. Which resulted in his lack of self-confidence and the no desire to want to explore the world.

Percy's evaluation through Vygotsky's Theory

lewisking1 — 2023-11-04 00:59:20 UTC

Percy experiences development in the sociocultural part of the cognitive abilities. This development is taught by his more knowledgeable person Maddie. Although Maddie does not teach him directly how to be more social and confident, he learns from the things they experience and the way Maddie handles the situation. From the way Percy's character is set, the viewer can tell that Percy developed his cognitive and motoric stages, but his sociocultural development never happened. This is due to his parents being helicopter parents and over-coddling him when it came to social situations. This suggests his parents left him in the can-do part of the ZPD and never tried to scaffold knowledge to him that would allow him to expand what he could and couldn't do. However, when Percy meets Maddie they go through many experiences and adventures that allow Percy to become more self-confident and grow into his newfound adulthood.

How well did Vygotsky's Theory capture Percy's character?

lewisking1 — 2023-11-04 02:35:09 UTC

Vygotsky's theory did fine at explaining Percy's development. However, because this theory is more tailored for children it was harder to display Percy's learning from scaffolding due to the fact that Percy's character is 19 and the other characters in the movie don't directly teach him this way. Due to the same reasons as before Vygotsky's theory was a bit hard to use to explain all the experiences Percy had. Vygotsky's theory was a good way to assess Percy's Psycho-development. This theory is good use even considering Percy's character identity because Vygotsky's theory does not involve taking culture into the picture. To conclude, Vygotsky's theory was a pretty good theory to use for Percy's character development, even though it was only an ok fit for some parts of the analysis. The theory was still a good fit when assessing Percy's Psycho-development.

Situtations allowing Percy's devolpment

lewisking1 — 2023-11-04 02:45:05 UTC

One situation in a part of the movie where the two are skinny dipping in the ocean a group of teenagers attempt to steal their clothes. Percy is hesitant and confused about what to do because he has never had to deal with confirmation before, but Maddie then tells Percy that they have to do something about it and stand up for themselves, she then confronts the teens showing Percy the importance of having the confidence to not be afraid of confrontation. There is another part of the movie, where Maddie convinces Percy to play the piano in front of a restaurant filled with people. This is another moment where Maddie teaches Percy to have confidence, and this moment leads to Percy being invited to his first party. This is a big step because Percy now has the confidence and desire to go to the party. One final example is when Percy finds out that Maddie only started to date him because his parents were giving Maddie a car as compensation. Once he learns this he confronts his partner for the first time about their helicopter parenting and over-coddling. Although Maddie's and Percy's relationship started on fabricated feelings it ended with them gaining a real friendship, and without Maddie entering Percy's life Percy would have never been able to develop his sociocultural abilities.