Strictly Ballroom

“Strictly Ballroom” is a movie that talks about social influences and courage. It displays how a talented young man builds his courage and determination to challenge the norms that have been passed down and followed for long period of time. It also portrays how powerful social influences are in affecting the society. 

Conformity, which is a type of social influence that explains how people being implicitly influenced by social groups, has been shown in the movie. It is being portrayed by the group of people who learned ballroom dance in the movie. All of them have been taught that following traditional dance steps and moves is the right thing to follow, and new dancing styles should not be allowed as they are not the “correct” way to dance. Therefore, the dancers learn ballroom dance by following the traditional steps and do not dare to create their personal styles, except the main character, Scott Hostings. Being a talented ballroom dancer, Scott has his personal ideas on establishing his dance. He does not want to follow the old steps, instead he wants to dance in his own way. However, his new way of thinking has been objected by other dancers, especially the authorities in ballroom dance as they think that he could not win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship by using the “weird” and incorrect dancing steps. Therefore, suppressing his inner thoughts, Scott complies and obeys others’ requests, and decides to dance in traditional way in the final competition. This has shown that how influential compliance and obedience are in manipulating people’s behaviours in order to fit themselves into the group and please the authorities, although cognitively they disagree with the rules. In the end, Scott finally realizes the importance of being himself. With the encouragement of his father who has same thoughts with him but being neglected, he manages to express his real feelings in his dance with his love one, Fran, and shows to the world that dancing should be a happy way in expressing one’s thoughts, not rigidly following the rules. This has conveyed a message that it is important to be yourself and be courage enough to voice out your thoughts and ideas. Although there will be disagreement and failures, perseverance and courage will be the keys that lead to the success. 

Besides, the movie also discusses the right attitude towards learning. Learning should be a non-stop process and everyone should be open-minded to accept new things. There are contrasting examples shown in the movie. Scott is willing to learn new style of dancing although he has been trained as the professional dancer since he was young. However, Barry Fife, who is the president of Australian Dancing Federation, does not allow any new things that could challenge his believes. Therefore, he would try his best in stopping and banning any new things that he thinks are “weird” and nontraditional. From these two characters, we can see two different ways in learning, also displays that willingness to change and accept new things should be the right attitudes towards learning, and are more likely to lead someone to success.