Self Concept

Disney’s The Kid
Mini Film Evaluation Essay

If you could talk to the kid you used to be, what advice would you give him? This very exact question is the basis of this blast from the past story that one man named Russ, has to face head on, to come to terms with his traumatic childhood past.   Russ Duritz is an extremely wealthy L.A. image consultant, who has made a career out of telling people how to present themselves. But while he's a success in business, he's a failure in life; he's cynical, dogless, girlfriendless, estranged from his father, and he has no memories of his past childhood. One night he surprises an intruder, who turns out to be an 8 year old kid named Rusty, who Russ realizes is himself at that age who came here from the past to the future. “The boy's identity sparks a journey into Russ's past that the two of them take, to find the key moment that has defined who Russ is. Two long-suffering women look on with disbelief: Russ's secretary, Janet, and his assistant, the lovely Amy, to whom Rusty takes a shine” (imdb.com).   What and who is at the end of this journey of self discovery?
Watching this movie you could determine that it was rather difficult for Rusty to change his self concept. A self concept is the “relatively set of perceptions you hold of yourself” (Adler 66).   If Rusty were to look in a mirror he would see a lonely, selfish, anti social, rude, individualistic, materialistic, dogless and girlfriendless man.   When it comes to identifying someone’s self concept, self esteem comes into the picture because they both go hand in hand with each other and can adversely affect the other in positive or negative ways. Growing up, Rusty was your typical kid to be picked on at school due to his chubby physique and speech problems he was a target for bullies and endured daily beat downs and routine name calling of being a loser. As if he didn’t already know he was a loser at school, the last thing Rusty needed for his self esteem was to come... [continues]

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