You do what you have to do

Is it a coincidence that the theme of many recent movies centers on man’s coping mechanisms? Or is it because the world has gotten overly complicated so that the struggle to survive takes over our lives?

The first of several movies I watched in the recent run-up to the Oscars was American Hustle, whose plot is built around a web of manipulation and scheming. Focusing on Irving Rosenfeld (played by Christian Bale), a businessman with a chain of dry cleaners who sells forged and stolen art on the side, we learn that, like all con men, Irving has a skewed understanding of deception: most people, he thinks, will believe what they want to believe. Though essentially a scam artist, he is not a terrible man. He wants things to work out for other people and this is what makes him sympathetic.  When he meets Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a stripper who is smart and determined to make something of herself, they begin an affair that becomes a business partnership: she joins him in his scams until they are caught by an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper), who wants to use them to set up sting operations and net other con artists.

At the climax of the movie, in a heated confrontation between the lead characters, Sydney shouts, “We do what we have to to survive.” This line is repeated in another dramatic scene just before the story’s denouement. The characters engage in what they are best at — the art of deception — to save themselves.

In All Is Lost, Robert Redford is a one-man show, clinging to his sinking yacht somewhere in the Indian Ocean, lost in a damaged boat after a collision with a shipping container. He is a resourceful sailor, so he scrambles to patch up his boat after the hull is ripped open, only to be ravaged by violent storms. This is a stoic role: Redford’s character takes on disaster after disaster as the elements challenge his resolve to stay alive. All through it, he keeps doing what he must — physically and against the most treacherous of elements — to sustain himself, to endure. How does he do it all alone in the middle of the ocean? He uses the most powerful tool the human body possesses: his mind — and his conviction to survive.

Meanwhile, in Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom, a biopic based on South African president Nelson Mandela’s memoir, we follow his early life, education and 27 years spent in prison before leading his country and working to rebuild its once segregated society.

Mandela described his prison life in his memoir: “I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life.  There is no end and no beginning: there is only one’s own mind, which can begin to play tricks. But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one’s spirits strong even when one’s body is being tested.  Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation.”

This is exactly what Mandela did. “To survive prison, one must develop ways to take satisfaction in one’s daily life,” he writes.  “One can feel fulfilled by washing one’s clothes so that they are particularly clean, by sweeping a hallway so that it is empty of dust, by organizing one’s cell to conserve as much space as possible. The same pride one takes in more consequential tasks outside of prison one can find in doing small things inside prison.”

 Thus this one-time practicing lawyer and a world-renowned freedom fighter had to sweep hallways and wash clothes in prison — small tasks that may have helped keep him sane. Mandela’s triumph was his attitude. He empowered himself by reprogramming his mind to make the most out of a desperate situation.

 In a 2000 study in Psychological Review of the American Psychological Association, UCLA’s Dr. Shelley Taylor noted a major difference in the way men and women respond to stress. This difference may explain why men are more likely to suffer from stress-related disorders.

 Until this study, psychological research maintained that both men and women have a similar “fight-or-flight” reaction to stress: they either react with aggressive behavior or withdraw from the stressful situation. According to Dr. Taylor, women often have another kind of reaction called “tend and befriend.” They often react to stressful conditions by busying themselves nurturing their young and turning to friends and family — especially other females — for support.

 In other words, women are more likely to seek social contact when stressed, diffusing the anxiety that tends to build up under such circumstances. Men, on the other hand, prefer to be left alone. Often, they console themselves by smoking or drinking excessively, spending a lot of time in front of the TV or computer, or overeating. The repressed tension is released in frequent outbursts of anger and aggression like picking fights, or being harsh on the children and office workers.  They become accident prone because the may start driving aggressively or become more careless in their daily activities.

 Dr. Taylor suggests that men turn to sport and music to de-stress or anything else that gives them personal pleasure like an old hobby abandoned due to time constraints. She emphasizes that such activities should not be self-destructive, like smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or womanizing.

(She did not specifically mention how to cope with FBI sting operations, being set adrift in a life raft, or spending years in solitary confinement, however. Your mileage may vary.)

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