Exploring Cultural Assumptions of Worldviews Using Movie Personae

To better understand assumptions in our culture, this article places four disparate movie characters from two movies, The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire, in the counseling chair, presents the dialogue with the counselor, and discusses the results: the Joker, who defies all conventions; Harvey Dent, who is “two-faced” in more than one way; and Batman, who rigidly holds onto his values. The person and perspective that seems missing in this Western metropolis is supplied from the East in the characters of Jamal and Latika from Slumdog Millionaire. These characters and movies serve as particularly enlightening vehicles to help counselors understand the difficulties that inevitably arise when clients’ cultural perspectives clash with counseling’s traditionally Western approach. A four- quadrant, heuristic model is utilized to construe the interactions. Were the counselor to recognize the conflicting worldviews, more time could be spent attempting to understand the client’s phenomenology and adapting to some of the underlying beliefs. Through first understanding the client’s worldview, the counselor can at least explore the client’s assumptions, and if the relationship develops enough, at some point possibly challenge some of the underlying beliefs.