Introduction:
- We will discuss how our favorite characters reflect us as a society in three different ways
- Topic 1: One method to analyze social changes is to look at dialogue length and readability combined to give us a clue into our attention span.
- Topic 2: Another one is about how our attitudes have shifted
- Topic 3: Specifically, why do we like our favorite characters? What themes or areas of life do they represent?
We found the top 3 highest grossing franchises, which we continue to analyze in the rest of the article.
Topic 1: Movies reflect changes in our attention span
Introducing topic 1:
So we’ve all heard that short form content is ruining people's attention span – specifically TikTok, Reels, Shorts! Many experts seem to think so. Dr. Gloria Mark of UC Irvine, conducted research that shows that the average attention span has decreased from about 2½ minutes in 2004 to approximately 47 seconds in recent years. But are the social media trends seeping into our movies as well? We’ve decided to analyze this using our top grossing franchises:
Here we show the average dialog length over time. We graphed the number of average words a character says in a single line of dialogue (Y-axis) versus Years (X-axis). We see that as the franchises make more movies, the characters say less. The MCU had characters say 14 words down to 10 words! With dialogue explored, we can move on to readability. What is that anyway?
In recent years, the colors get darker, which indicates that the readability score gets closer to 100. Things are becoming easier to read, guess that is good for our attention span.
Topic 2: Positive and intrigue around the word “know”
Introducing topic 2:
Dialogue and readability tell us the general trends but we can look closer at what the individual words are. The meaning, or semantics, can show how characters think or behave. A good way to look at this is by analyzing the most common words across franchises. Keep scrolling to find out!
The fifth most common word is (‘right’, ‘get’, ‘see’)
The fourth most common word is (‘one’, ‘right’, ‘right’)
The third most common word is (‘got’, ‘going’, ‘think’)
The second most common word is (‘get’, ‘know’, ‘one’)
The first most common word is (‘know’, ‘master’, ‘know’)
Interestingly, the word ‘know’ is the most common word for Avengers and Harry Potter and the second most common word for ‘Star Wars’. What could this mean? There are many ways to use the word ‘know’ in context. Is it an ‘I know’, “don’t know”, ‘do you know?’. We don’t know! ;) But let's find out!
We look at bigrams including the word 'know’ to see the contexts that “know” is used in. These are the top birgrams of “know”:
“I know” has a more positive connotation – implying a state of holding competence and understanding rather than “don’t know” which has a more negative connotation – implying uncertainty and incompetency.
Topic 3: Topic Analysis of Characters
Introducing topic 3:
So we have looked at the readability and the sentiment of know, in order to understand the characters better. Another way to do this is to look at what characters talk about, in order words, what general topics do they care about - Authority, Family, Resilience? And are there any common themes across all main characters? The way we looked at topic analysis was using a package to group similar words that each character said most often. Then, we went through the list and picked the best word that encourages its meaning. With that out of the way, let's begin!
Each color in the dot chart corresponds to a topic category. Looking at Star Wars the prominent themes of the main characters are leadership, communication, and teamwork.
As you go outwards from the center, the higher the number of lines that character said about that topic. Unsurprisingly, the characters in Harry Potter discuss friendship the most. The magical story, at its core, it’s about 3 friends navigating their relationship in order to defeat monsters.
Since Avengers is a movie packed with action and adventure, it comes at no shock that action is the top theme for the 6 avengers.
Conclusion:
We set out to investigate how our favorite characters reflect us and we have finally arrived at the grand conclusion! From investigating readability and dialogue, we found that as our attention span decreased, so did length of dialogue. Then, we analyzed the word “know” and found that the character spoke positivity and had a can-do attitude ready to take on challenges. This trend continued when looking at the topics for each character. There was an overall theme of urgency - whatever that is manifest in the form of action, friendship, or leadership. So maybe that’s why we are drawn to these characters more, we see that they can change the environment around them with a good attitude, which can be aspirational for many. And with that, this analysis comes to an end. Thanks for reading!