disregard acts to spiritual and temporal duties. It may lead into sins of indifference, laziness, and carelessness Aspenleiter, 1959: 211.
C. Theoretical Framework
The first problem in this study is to understand the characteristics of John Doe by seeing descriptions in the screenplay. The theory of character and
characterization is used to know John Doe‟s characteristics through the
devices of characterization. In the next step, the characteristics of John Doe bring the writer to
analyze the second problem which is characteristics of psychopathic behavior and how his psychopathic behavior is related to seven deadly sins. In order to
be able to analyze the second question, the writer employs the concept of psychopath to find the detailed specifications of the characteristics of John
Doe which reveal the characteristics of psychopath. The writer uses theory of psychoanalysis and the concept of seven
deadly sins to uncover the dynamic of the unconscious of Doe motivating him to use seven deadly sins as the motivation of murder. The result for using
those theories and concepts to reveal the psychopathic behavior of John Doe which is related to seven deadly sins as formulated in chapter I.
26
CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
The object of this study is a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker entitled Seven. The screenplay was printed in 1994. Seven consists of 122
pages. It is written by Andrew Kevin Walker who is a screenwriter that specializes
in “violent
and dark
noir- type
screenwriting” http:pabook.libraries.psu.edupalitmapbiosWalker__Andrew_Kevin.html.
Seven is his first screenplay. In order to finish Seven, it took several years for
Walker to complete the story. This film is described as a dark film which is showing a serial killer kills people based on the seven deadly sins.
Seven had won 15 awards in 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1999. In 1995,
Seven won Society of Texas Film Critic Award, New York Film Critics Circle
Award, and National Board of Review, USA as Best Supporting Actor, Kevin
Spacey as John Doe. In 1996, Seven was successed to win Universe Reader’s Choice Award as Best Horror Film; MTV Movie Awards as Best
Movie, Best Villain Kevin Spacey, and Most Desireable Male, Brad Pitt as Mills; Hochi Film Award as Best Foreign Language Film, David Fincher as
the Director; International Fantasy Film Awards as Best Film David Fincher and Best Screenplay Andrew Kevin Walker; Chicago Film Critics
Association Award as Best Cinematography Darius Khondji; Saturn Awards
as Best Make-up and Best Writing Andrew Kevin Walker; and the last one,
ASCAP Award as Top Box Office Films. Then, Seven also won several awards
in 1997, they were Blue Ribbon Award as Best Foreign Language Film, Empire Award
in UK as Best Actor, Morgan Freeman as Somerset and Best Film, ALFS Award as Actor of the Year Morgan Freeman, and Audience
Award as Best Foreign Film Mejor Película Extranjera by David Fincher.
Another award was in 1999, Seven won Golden Trainer Award as Best of the Decade http:www.imdb.comtitlett0114369awards.
Seven is a story which tells about two main characters, the detectives
who want to discover the homicide case which is perpetrated by a psychopath named John Doe. John Doe takes the seven deadly sins as his motivation for
killing people. Seven is a good work to analyze the characteristics of psychopathic behavior as seen in John Doe which is related to seven deadly
sins as the motivation of murder.
B. Approach of the Study
To analyze the psychopathic behavior of John Doe and its relation to seven deadly sins in Seven, the approach that is used is psychoanalytic
approach since it helps to give explanation on “the hows and whys of human
actions” Bressler, 1999: 148. Barry also mentions in Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
that psychoanalytic approach is the criticism of literature that applies psychoanalysis methods to interpret the
literature works 2002: 96. Psychoanalysis itself is a method to cure mental disorder through an investigation between the interaction of unconscious and
conscious mind Barry, 2002: 96.
Hence, the psychoanalytic approach is appropriate to analyze Seven to understand the characteristics of a psychopathic behavior as one of mental
disorders. Also, it is helpful to analyze the hidden motivation of John Doe using seven deadly sins to murder people by observing the thoughts and
actions of John Doe through his unconscious mind.
C. Method of the Study
The writer used a library research for analyzing Seven screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker. The references used in this study were divided into
two parts; primary and secondary references. The primary one was the screenplay itself, Seven and the secondary one involved some books of theory,
such as, Abrams and Ha rpham’s A Glossary of Literary Terms, Reaske’s How
to Analyze Drama , Zanjani
’s Screenplay: Movie Script or Literature?, Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity, Coleman and Broen’s Abnormal Psychology
and Modern Life , VanderVeldt and Odenwald’s Psychiatry and Catholicism,
Lahey’s and Ciminero’s Maladaptive Behavior: An Introduction to Abnormal Psychology
, Feist’s Theories of Personality, Barry’s Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
, Easthope’s The Unconscious,
Gemes’ Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation, Vergote’s Ethics and Sublimation
, and Aspenleiter’s God’s Plan.
In order to finish this study, the writer took some steps in analyzing the screenplay. The first step was to read the screenplay for several times to get
understandings of the idea of the story, and then specified systematically the problems of the study. The second step was to find the studies which were
