Tsotsi is a 2005 South African film directed by Gavin Hood. The novel, written by Athol Fugard, was adapted into a movie with the same name. The subject of the movie, which was shot in Johannesburg, South Africa, takes place in this city. It received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2005, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.
'Living in Johannesburg and Tsotsi, who commits minor crimes, one day shoots a man during a robbery and while trying to escape, he also shoots a woman whose car he wanted to take, but he encounters a baby in the backseat. The life of Tsotsi, who takes the baby and runs away, will change. It is possible to look at it from many perspectives, such as the negative living conditions that children are exposed to and their tendency towards crime as a result. In this study, a brief evaluation will be made by looking at the film in terms of attachment theories, separation-individuation processes and the psychology of juvenile delinquents.
In human life, the process starting from infancy is a concentrated and dynamic process of all relationships. As its source, it is carried and experienced in a repetitive manner in every period of life. 'The question of how early events have such a significant impact on almost everything that follows them' is one of the fundamental questions not only of psychology and neurobiology but of all sciences. ‘How is it that early experiences, especially affective experiences with other people, determine and organize patterns of structural development that result from the ever-increasing functional capacities of a developing individual?’ (Schore, 2012: 1)
Early life It is now known that attachment styles and emotional experiences are effective in the development of emotion repertoire, especially in the right brain and limbic system. (Goleman, 1996: 37, 38; Bowlby, 2012: 158; Kernberg, 2014: 233) Schore expresses this as follows; 'our personalities are in the right brain, not the left brain.' (Schore, 2012: 97)
The main character of the movie is Tsotsi (tramp in South African language). He escaped from the chain of events in which he was traumatized by turning into a criminal, but then the baby he found in the car he stole and the emotional experience he experienced due to the baby's care took him back to the past and he experienced a cure by confronting his early childhood. What draws our attention is that the theme that is effective in Tsotsi's process is the emotional bond he has with his mother - as Bowlby said, 'the bond between mother and child is always present and almost unchanging' - and the mother's approach to him. (Bowlby, 2012: 102) Although this situation was shaken and broken by the violence of the father, the child always carried this bond and interaction (implicitly) within him, and this intense experience became the dominant factor that one day caused him to find the meaning of his life again and get rid of the negative situation he was in. There has been an impact. The experience with the mother, which occupies a central place in emotional memory, not only has positive effects, but also seems to cause escape and crime, which can be considered as an expression of anger, as a reaction to the father's interruption of this emotional interaction.
The concept of 'attachment' has been the subject of scientific research for many years. In addition to numerous experimental studies, it is also one of the most basic behaviors that can be observed between 'mother and her offspring' in many living things. According to object relations theorists, this first relationality is reflected in our other relationships as a lifelong model. 'Attachment behavior is any form of behavior that results in a person achieving or maintaining closeness to another well-known individual who is perceived to be better able to cope with the world.' (Bowlby, 2012: 34)
The impact and healthiness of attachment behavior on development makes separation or dissociation equally important. But apart from these, the fact that this separation is not separation but is experienced as rupture, inspired by the movie, causes other pathological disorders. It is known that the sudden loss or separation from a loved one, especially the separation of a young child from his beloved mother figure, often sets the stage for a pathological mourning process. (Bowlby, 2012: 66)
Tsotsi, what he found in the car Together with the baby, he/she enters a process of repair and restoration by exploring his/her arrested developmental self. He pays attention to the details in life and tries to recognize and understand his emotions, relationships and most importantly, himself. Just as Jeffrey Magnavita says that if there is unsuccessful maturation, it is necessary to grow, Tsotsi also goes through this experience and process with the baby he found. For example, when the lady she takes the baby to feed asks the baby's name, she tells him her own name, which no one other than the mother has used until that day.
Tsotsi explains her own bonding process through the baby and simultaneously bonding to the baby. lives (by reflecting). This comes to the fore very much towards the end of the film. By killing his friend who tried to kill the baby's father, Tsotsi actually makes a reference to and forgiveness for his conflict with his father. Tsotsi, who left his mother and home in the face of his father's violence, also struggles to compensate for the guilt of this and the lost childhood and the loss of the mother and cat bond.
'..conscious guilt, whether normal , whether neurotic; It is associated with remorse. This is usually the appearance of aggressive behavior in the form of regret in consciousness, caused by actions towards the lost object, neglect or abandonment. Regret is the driving force that creates repair; It is the impulse that reverses real or imagined aggression towards the lost object in an effort to compensate for or eliminate it. However, beyond compensation, there may also be a growing drive towards purification by paying a price through personal change, constructive action, and the effort to become a “better person” from now on. Regret and guilt, as Melanie Klein suggests, are the source of the reparative impulse. (Kernberg, 2014: 287)
At the end of the movie, our hero completes his separation and individuation processes and delivers the baby to his family. This also means taking responsibility and accepting it, because now he has taken an attitude towards becoming a social individual and has surrendered to the law. As Mahler mentioned, 'The process of separation-individuation; to achieve a definitive and, in some respects, lifelong individuality, and to attain a certain degree of object permanence'. It is loaded with a task. Tsotsi also completed this task in his own story, showing 'clear signs of the internalization of the parent's demands, indicating, in terms of the self, a comprehensive restructuring of the ego and the beginnings of the formation of superego premises'. (Mahler, Pine and Bergman, 2012: 140)
Finally, to say a few things in the context of a suggestion; First of all, to increase personal awareness; We can consider paying attention to education and assistance/support activities in order to strengthen the ability to empathize and to be able to properly take responsibility for individual development.
If love; If it is not drowned under resentment, complaint and anger and is firmly established in the mind, trust in other people and belief in one's own goodness will be like a rock that withstands the blows from the environment. A person whose development has followed such a line will be able to keep those good parents within himself, whose love will be a reliable helper for him in his unhappiness, when unhappiness arises later, and he will be able to find people in the outside world who can represent them in his mind. Thanks to the ability to reverse situations in fantasy and the ability to identify with others, which is an important feature of the human mind, a person can give others the help and love he or she needs. In this way, he can provide himself with peace and satisfaction. (Klein, 2012: 256)
Individuals who have reached this satisfaction can produce, do and achieve many beneficial things for themselves, their social environment and the individuals / jobs / options for which they are responsible.
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