The Napoleon Dynamite in All of Us

By: Hunter Doiron

The movie Napoleon Dynamite shows the difficult social life of Napoleon, a socially awkward character. His high school life consists of bullies, making up socially desirable stories, and an attempt to form a social group.

His social awkwardness leads to him being bullied. One scene shows him unknowingly being bullied as he answers questions from more popular guys laughing at his made-up responses. Baier et al. (2019) looked at how bullying affects the mental health of victims because they recognized the different ways bullying occurs that can all still be harmful. 10,638 students participated in their cross-sectional study at a German high school where they were surveyed on different ways they experienced bullying (physical or psychological, from classmates or teachers, cyberbullying, etc.). Their results showed psychological bullying was the most harmful form of bullying on an adolescent’s mental health. Even though the bullies were not physically harassing Napoleon, this study shows how their sarcasm can hurt Napoleon’s mental health.

There is another scene where Napoleon claims he is the best person he knows at drawing. A different study looked at how adolescents responding in socially desirable ways correlates with their narcissism. They defined social desirability as leading to what they call “self-deceptive enhancement” (Barry et al., 2017). Napoleon’s false stories play into enhancing how he views himself and how he thinks others see him. From the 161 adolescents who answered questionnaires to gage their socially desirable responses along with narcissism, the researchers found there was not a correlation between narcissism and socially desirable responses. Despite no evidence why there was a lack of correlation, they suggested that narcissistic adolescents may not feel compelled to portray themselves positively to others as they already see themselves highly. For Napoleon, his socially desirable stories are not a result of his narcissism but rather some other motive.

Napoleon’s true motive may be to find his social identity according to another group of researchers. They said social identity refers to a social group offering “meaning and belonging” (Koni et al., 2019). Two separate studies were done which consisted of 136 and then 91 adolescents broken into small groups on a sailing voyage where they learned to interact with new people in each study. The researchers were interested to see if new social groups could still promote a healthy sense of social identity which they found to be true in both studies. Napoleon finds two new friends, Pedro and Deb, and he still responds in socially desirable manners with them. It seems that Napoleon’s responses are his attempt to strengthen his social identity in his new social group.

Napoleon Dynamite is typically seen as a comical movie with no plot, but it shows the struggles that so many adolescents go through: bullying, making up desirable stories, and forming new social groups. We can all relate to Napoleon in some way which should encourage us to better empathize with adolescents and attempt to help them as they work through the same struggles we all went through.

References

Baier, D., Hong, J. S., Kliem, S., & Bergmann, M. C. (2019). Consequences of Bullying on

Adolescents’ Mental Health in Germany: Comparing Face-to-Face Bullying and           Cyberbullying. Journal of Child & Family Studies, 28(9), 2347–2357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1181-6

Barry, C. T., Lui, J. H. L., & Anderson, A. C. (2017). Adolescent Narcissism, Aggression, and

Prosocial Behavior: The Relevance of Socially Desirable Responding. Journal of Personality Assessment, 99(1), 46–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2016.1193812

Koni, E., Moradi, S., Arahanga-Doyle, H., Neha, T., Hayhurst, J. G., Boyes, M., Cruwys, T.,

Hunter, J. A., & Scarf, D. (2019). Promoting resilience in adolescents: A new social identity benefits those who need it most. PLoS ONE, 14(01), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210521

For Image:

Fabrizio, Doug. “Napoleon Dynamite: The Film With All The Great Skills.” RadioWest,              radiowest.kuer.org/post/napoleon-dynamite-film-all-great-skills.