George Cukor's Use Of Manipulation In The Movie Gaslight

Domestic violence is not just physical abuse; it also includes actions of emotional and psychological abuse and so forth. Gaslighting is not gender specific and is one deplorable type of mental manipulation that causes a victim to question their memory, perceptions, and sanity due to the covert psychological manipulation of a perpetrator. Director George Cukor depicts an intentional type of abusive manipulation which he characterizes in the Oscar-nominated Best Picture film “Gaslight” (Cukor, 1944). Cukor describes Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) as a debonair and charming manipulator who uses aggressive tactics, including a coercive control to try to drive his wife, Paula (Ingrid Bergman) to question her rationality. Gregory begins to move …show more content…
Paula tries to rationalize the irrational as he relentlessly lies and uses psychological and emotional abuse tactics (Gaslighting). What is problematic is that in domestic and intimate partner violence, the more aggressive and confident the abuser becomes the more they escalate. Also, abusers may alienate a victim from friends, neighbors, and family to gain complete power and control. Additionally, the abuser may continue to tell their victim that they have a mental disorder and heighten in the manipulation of an individual’s environment to make the victim doubt their cognition. Other tactics a perpetrator may use is to convince their victim that they are “crazy,” and that they lost items that are purposely hidden further convincing the victim that the abuser's reality is correct in comparison to actual reality. Therefore, the victim’s misperception grows with the ambient abusive psychological and emotional torture, which should be a consideration of intimate terrorism. Interestingly, Paula and a detective figure out what Gregory is doing to his wife, which leads to Gregory’s arrest. In fact, a Gaslighter is not held accountable and blames the