At the opening of the film we see Erin struggling: as a single mother, as a human being with potential, courage and individuality, and as a sexual being as well. Erin is a St. Joan of the white underclass, a Green Guerrilla, Mother Jones and Madonna all rolled into one. Unlike the image of second wave feminism which distanced itself from any robust sexuality it felt to be reductive at best or degrading at worst, Brockovich's iconic status is post-"third wave" feminist, that is, eroticized, as it borrows heavily from underground Grrrl culture, aware of being both a body and a mind, and utilizing both to their fullest. When we see her at the beginning of the film, she is filmed against a city using the imagery of 1970s U.S. realist cinema, and the explicitly socialist poetics of Ken Loach or the early Mike Leigh in the UK. Erin's allegedly outspoken comments express what many (women) in the audience feel, and her quips act as so many asides in the Brechtian sense.
Throughout the film Erin explains how Capital functions. She needs to eat and take care of her children, and she wants to contribute to society. Unlike the characters in many a milquetoast Liberal film, she is a rather static character. She is not radicalized and her consciousness is not raised. She starts the film off as a radical. Her radicalness comes from her unique synthesis of theory and practice in a Leninist sense; her practice is her real, material situation; and her theory is her ability to translate that situation in ways that connect her to the victims of toxic industrial polluting as she organizes them.
Everything Erin says onscreen from beginning to end is true, although a bit hyperbolic, which gives the film its distinctive, epigramatic wit. The one time...
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...pital's usage and coopting of a newly emergent and naively compliant (to be fair, for reasons of survival, not to mention dignity) woman's movement to accomplish the job. Erin Brockovich uses a surface narrative of battling the polluters in order to coyly get at its real subject, which is class. In other words, money and the lack of it.
This is Erin's story, and money is, after all, what she needs. The rest is up to the audience if they will be so moved by a didactic film to organize amongst themselves. That possibility remains to be fulfilled. Meanwhile, the victims' health hangs in a life or death balance. Erin Brockovich is a rare film that shows how our lives are as much at stake here as those of the characters. It is a guiding light towards critical thinking, not only about what precisely is at stake, but how the state of affairs was produced to rig the stakes.
Making a Murderer is a documentary-drama, like successful similar ones found on cable, including Dateline, 48 Hours Mysteries, and Cold Case Files. Many people are fascinated with authentic crime stories. However, unlike these other shows, Making a Murderer explores how the criminal justice system fails Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, instead of showing the prosecution, the defendant, and both of their witnesses’ sides of the story. By introducing the facts of the case and then showing only one viewpoint or side, Netflix prods viewers to feel sorry for one side and angry with the other. Whereas in other crime-dramas, mystery and suspense are what drive viewers to watch. In an interview discussing the popularity of Dateline with The New York Times, NBC News executive David Corvo says, “It’s got good guys, bad guys, conflict over something that matters, suspense and then resolution — the classic elements of drama and great storytelling.” In their improved crime docudrama model, Netflix removes the resolution and leaves viewers infuriated with the results of innocent men still in jail and hungry for more. Unfortunately, there is no more information after the 10 hour-long episodes. But unlike the shows on cable that have their ending where the truth is uncovered and justice is served, Making a Murderer viewers have the power to band together and demand of their government that the criminal
Gibbons uses this to show the reader how Ellen is an average girl who enjoys all of the things normal children relish and to contrast the naive lucidity of the sentences to the depth of the conceptions which Ellen has such a simplistic way of explaining. Gibbons’ and Ellen’s harrowing past is related to the novel through. Ellen’s inner thoughts and the dialogue between the characters. However, when Ellen converses with other characters, Gibbons chose not to use quotation marks. or any of the formal methods of documenting dialogue between characters.
The majority of families were once considered perfect. The father went to work everyday, while the mother stayed at home and cared for her two children, “Henry” and “Sue”. The children never fought and the parents were involved in all the community events. Our society has grown to accept that there is no such thing as a perfect family. Eleven-year-old Ellen from the book Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons, grows up in a household where her father is an abusive alcoholic and her mother is too sick to complete everyday tasks. By using her positive assets, and learning from her negative assets, Ellen was able to overcome a lot of challenges throughout the book.
In the story Ellen Foster, Ellen was a great example of a dynamic character. Ellen had a very tough life. Ellen’s life was like a rollercoaster going up and down dramatically not knowing what was going to happen next. Ellen was a racist child at the beginning but changes her opinion after going through many challenges throughout the story.
The film focused on young women who were fighting for the right of future generations of womens to vote and run for political office. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were the two main women who started the Congressional Union; they put their lives in danger, sacrificing their health to help American women have the right to vote and take office. These two women held peaceful, nonviolent protests in order to revolutionize the women’s suffrage movement. Some of the women involved in the non-violent protests against Woodrow Wilson ended up being imprisoned. They were force-fed and treated poorly. In the end, most of the women were able to see the results of the hard work that they put into the women’s suffrage
In the book, The Awakening, Kate Chopin addresses a common struggles woman face in society through the main character Edna Pontellier during the 1800s. Edna Pontellier is an American woman infused with charm and grace. Edna’s charm could not escape her. She moved gracefully among the crowds and appeared self-contained. Edna learned to master her feeling by not showing outward and spoken feelings of affections, either in herself or in others. This type of behavior appears common in society and understood within Edna’s the marriage relationship with her husband. However, one summer while vacationing at the Grand Isle, the reserved manner Edna always enveloped began to loosen a little and her soul began to awaken.
When her husband and children are gone, she moves out of the house and purses her own ambitions. She starts painting and feeling happier. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day” (Chopin 69). Her sacrifice greatly contributed to her disobedient actions. Since she wanted to be free from a societal rule of a mother-woman that she never wanted to be in, she emphasizes her need for expression of her own passions. Her needs reflect the meaning of the work and other women too. The character of Edna conveys that women are also people who have dreams and desires they want to accomplish and not be pinned down by a stereotype.
In the late 1800s, a crusade began that campaigned for the rights of women across America: the Feminist Movement. Using this movement as inspiration, Kate Chopin bewitches her primarily female readers with a writing style that emphasizes the importance of emotion and encourages the independence of women in a world dominated by men. In her novel, The Awakening, Chopin flawlessly illustrates the radical yet alluring character transformation of her protagonist, Edna Pontellier, as she struggles to surmount marital and societal conflict in the hopes of being reborn.
The film we watched was a Frontline documentary about the tragic case of Ralph Tortorici called A Case of Insanity. On December 14, 1994 Ralph went into a lecture hall with a rifle and a hunting knife taking the whole classroom hostage. He demanded to speak to President Clinton, and threatened to kill the hostages if they did not comply with his demands. Ralph was calm towards the students held hostage and demanded people from outside to gather food for them. 19-year-old Jason McEnaney attempted to wrestle the rifle out of Ralph’s hands, but this caused the to go off and he was shot in the genital area. Several students attacked Ralph and held him until the police came in and arrested him. Ralph was taken to jail with 14 counts of aggravated assault. His trial was held on Jan 3rd, 1996 and Ralph announced that he would not be present at his trial. It was stated that he had paranoia schizophrenia and he had also traces of cocaine in his system. Even though Ralph’s prosecutors indicated to the 12 jurors that Ralph was delusional, he suffered from mental illness.
Center stage in Kaye Gibbons’ inspiring bildungsroman, Ellen Foster, is the spunky heroine Ellen Foster. At the start of the novel, Ellen is a fiery nine-year old girl. Her whole life, especially the three years depicted in Ellen Foster, Ellen is exposed to death, neglect, hunger and emotional and physical abuse. Despite the atrocities surrounding her, Ellen asks for nothing more than to find a “new mama” to love her. She avoids facing the harsh reality of strangers and her own family’s cruelty towards her by using different forms of escapism. Thrice Ellen is exposed to death (Gibbons 27). Each time, Ellen has a conversation with a magician to cope with the trauma (Gibbons 22-145). Many times Ellen’s actions and words cause it to be difficult to tell that she is still a child. However, in order to distract herself, Ellen will play meaningful games (Gibbons 26). These games become a fulcrum for Ellen’s inner child to express itself. Frequently, Ellen will lapse into a daydream (Gibbons 67). Usually, these daydreams are meant to protect herself from the harsh reality around her. Ellen Foster’s unique use of escapism resounds as the theme of Kaye Gibbon’s Ellen Foster.
...tionship she had until she was left with literally no reason to live. Throughout the novella, she breaks social conventions, which damages her reputation and her relationships with her friends, husband, and children. Through Edna’s thoughts and actions, numerous gender issues and expectations are displayed within The Awakening because she serves as a direct representation of feminist ideals, social changes, and a revolution to come.
...urassic Park exemplifies the fact that the female gender is the epitome of feminist qualities. Though the gender politics demonstrates a woman’s passivity against the heroic male, the film proves that the female gender is associated with nature. Through a comparison of Ellie and the natural surroundings of the park, it illustrates that women are contrasted to nature as a means of procreation and at the same time, the female gender is associated with the monstrous. So perhaps the film is right. Maybe women are an entirely different species.
In a famous 20th century novel –The Awakening by Kate Chopin– Edna, the protagonist of the novel, exemplifies the domestic identity of women. She is forced to stay home with her two children, but when she decides to relieve herself of her domestic responsibility, she is frowned upon by society. She is suffocated by society’s belief of women and averts to the philosophy of rebellion. Edna breaks the bond of loyalty that she and her husband had by cheating and fantasizing of other situations where she was not married. She rarely experiences regret and often emphasizes the motif of freedom through a pigeon house; which allows the reader to symbolize her freedom through the thought of birds. Kate Chopin uses The Awakening to express society’s feministic views on women; she explains the burden that women are forced to carry. Edna is later overwhelmed by the pressure society has on her, this causes her to unintentionally commit suicide, “Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him—but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone” (Chopin, 126).
There are ten different types of feminism in our society, but there are three forms of feminism that were brought up in class: Liberal, Radical, and Post-Modern. Liberal feminism is where individuals focus on women’s ability to keep equality through their own actions and choices. Liberals argue that society believe that women are less capable than men intellectually and physically by nature. I believe that Ellen James (the original) was a form of a liberal feminist. She did not want the Ellen James (group) to self-mutilate themselves in her name. She sent Jenny Fields a picture of herself begging Jenny to have the Ellen James group to stop their protest. I believe that Helen falls within this type of feminist rather than a post-modern feminist. Helen was not the typical housewife; she worked, but did not cook or clean. In the movie, Garp did most of the
“Sometimes we say context is what determines meaning: to know what this particular utterance means, you have to look at the circumstances or the historical context in which it figures.” (Culler 65). Someone who read the novel The Awakening that did not know when it was written or in what time period it was written would have interpreted the text completely different than someone who did know. The reading of a work is not interpreted through the authors point but instead, the readers. During the time it was written, The United States was undergoing critical changes. The urbanization and Industrialization that followed the Civil war brought Americans into a new social identity. More importantly, woman’s rights had begun to be explored. Before this time woman had been fighting for equal rights. This new idea of women was called ‘New Woman’. This new woman “was intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent and self-supporting” (Diniejko). In the novel The Awakening, Edna portrays this image of a New Woman almost perfectly. Edna represented what these women had been striving to be for years. We can see that this act of bravery was far from normal during that time. Edna is a character that completely went against what society expected of her. This allows the reader to gather a better understanding of why this text was written and what it meant for Edna to do what she did. Anyone who completely goes against what society expects of them is frowned upon. Edna was going through a constant battle to do what she wanted and to do what society wanted her to