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8 Mile Plot: This movie is about a young, white man named Jimmy Smith, Jr. who longs to be a rapper. His nickname is Bunny Rabbit. Not only is he from a poor, low class family, but he lives in a predominately black neighborhood in Detroit. He lives in a trailer with is mom and little sister. Everyday is a struggle for him to keep his hope alive. The film is framed by two rap battles. In the first, Bunny Rabbit is still trying to win respect from the audience and gain confidence in himself. But when he gets up in front of a chanting, all black audience and hears the insults of this opponent’s rap, he falls silent and cannot speak. The climax of 8 mile is the second rap battle, a week later, with Bunny Rabbit now rapping in the championship battle against his enemy Papa Doc. In his 1 ½ minute rap, Bunny Rabbit takes all the criticisms that he knows are going to be leveled at him, and levels them at himself, and says that despite them all he’s still there and still fighting. Then he goes on to down Papa Doc, who Jimmy happens to know as Clarence, a privileged, middle class black kid who went to private school. This causes the tables to turn because his opponent freezes up the same as he had done the first time. Main Ideas and Theoretical Constructs Psychoanalysis is a type of therapy that seeks to cure mental disorders by getting patients to talk freely and bring repressed feelings into the conscious mind instead of remaining hidden within the unconscious. This practice is based on Freud's theories of how the mind, instincts, and sexuality work. Freud's work was based on the belief that the unconscious is the part of the mind beyond consciousness and that it influences how people act. His goal was to strengthen the ego or 'I' self - the conscious mind - by bringing repressed thoughts or feelings into consciousness through psychoanalysis. By bringing such repressed memories or emotions into the conscious mind the ego/conscious and the id/unconscious would be closer to some sort of reconciliation. Freud, in short, wanted to make people more conscious of certain things that were previously repressed. Freud also studied sexual development, and posited that sexuality actually begins in infancy and travels through several stages of the libido or energy drive associated with sexual desire. These stages are the oral, anal, phallic, and genital. Freud claimed that all human beings are born with certain instincts, i.e. with a natural tendency to satisfy their biologically determined needs for food, shelter and warmth. The satisfaction of these needs is both practical and a source of pleasure which Freud refers to as "sexual". Jung believed that there were fears, behaviors, and thoughts that children and adults exhibit that are remarkably similar across time and culture. He believed that this was more than coincidence and represented what he called the collective unconscious. He said that it was made up of what he termed archetypes which are primordial images inherited from our ancestors. As support for such a theory, he spoke of the immediate attachment infants have for their mother, the inevitable fear of the dark seen in young children, and how images such as the sun, moon, wise old man, angels, and evil all seem to be predominate themes throughout history.
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