A League of Morons: An Analysis of Burn After Reading As Burn After Reading (2008, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) begins, the camera slowly pans across the United States from outer space before zooming in to the CIA headquarters in Washington DC, establishing an epic scale for the story to come. But once the characters start talking, these seemingly important intellectuals are revealed to be egotistical idiots. The world of Burn After Reading revolves around vanity; three characters of different classes clash in their attempts for prestige and pride. Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is a proud Princeton alum who has been disavowed from the CIA because of a drinking problem. Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) is a personal trainer who believes only losers …show more content…
When he is fired from the CIA, he tells his wife (Tilda Swinton) that “independent thought is not valued there. They resist it; they fight it.” This superiority drives him to promote his memoirs of his work in the CIA, even though nobody cares about them. His delusions to escape insignificance are exemplified by a scene where he attends a Princeton reunion. Cox sings with his former classmates, all of them also aging white men. The messy meeting of intoxicated elders provides a visual notation that their intelligence is obsolete. The self-congratulatory graduates cheer for their legacy, but the prominence of liquor implies that these men rely on alcohol to maintain a sense of …show more content…
After being fired, an offer of a job “in state” falls on deaf ears, as Cox fixates on and retaliates against an accusation of a drinking problem. He believes to be above dependency. Yet, after his wife leaves him, he frantically chants at an exercise tape “I’m bigger than ever. I’m back... You fuckers, I’m back” while an empty whiskey bottle sits beside him. After he loses career and marriage, Cox becomes a man driven by a pursuit of prestige and a fear of rejection. His sense of self-importance climaxes when he shoots Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins), a man he’s only seen once, in a poorly conceived, drunken act of rage against the world that has isolated him: what he calls a “league of morons.” Linda Litzke also demands significance, though not from intelligence. Instead, Litzke is fueled by physical appearance. Her first scene in the movie focuses on a doctor drawing up plans for liposuction. The camera focuses on individual body parts from the neck down, cutting from shoulder to buttock to gut, establishing Litzke’s self-obsession with her body and its flaws. We have yet to see her face. Based on the camera’s focus on individual body parts, we understand from our first encounter that Litzke prioritizes physical
“It was a pleasure to burn,”(3) that was the idea Ray Bradbury was trying to get across in the novel Fahrenheit 451. This novel takes place in the future, where governments only law is to burn books. In this novel, you will see how Bradbury explains the life of Guy Montag, a fireman who burns houses for a living. However one day he burns a house with a woman in who is willing to die for her books, this made Montag have the urge to steal a book. The stealing of the book is what lead him to believe society is lead by censorship. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury shows us a world in the future, in which free thought is controlled through censorship, which leads to an ignorant, insensitive, and non independent society.
In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a fireman named Guy Montag is hired to burn books and the houses that encase them. He happily does his job until his new seventeen-year-old neighbor named Clarisse McClellan talks of a past where people fought fires instead of starting them, she sparks the start of a self-discovery that is completed by an English professor named Faber and an intellectual book-memorizing group lead by a man named Granger. Montag is persecuted for his actions when his wife, Mildred, reports him to the fire station, and must run away. After he finally escapes, Montag watches the city go down in flames from air strikes. Mildred is a negative influence to Montag, and Clarisse is a positive influence.
In the 1950 novel Fahrenheit 451, AUTHOR Ray Bradbury presents the now familiar images of mind controlING worlds. People now live in a world where they are blinded from the truth of the present and the past. The novel is set in the, perhaps near, future where the world is AT war, and firemen set fires instead of putting them out. Books and written knowledge ARE banned from the people, and it is the firemen's job to burn books. Firemen are the policemen of THE FUTURE. Some people have rebelled by hiding books, but have not been very successful. Most people have conformed to THE FUTURE world. Guy Montag, a fireman, is a part of the majority who have conformed. BUT throughout the novel Montag goes through a transformation, where he changes from a Conformist to a Revolutionary.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by author Ray Bradbury we are taken into a place of the future where books have become outlawed, technology is at its prime, life is fast, and human interaction is scarce. The novel is seen through the eyes of middle aged man Guy Montag. A firefighter, Ray Bradbury portrays the common firefighter as a personal who creates the fire rather than extinguishing them in order to accomplish the complete annihilation of books. Throughout the book we get to understand that Montag is a fire hungry man that takes pleasure in the destruction of books. It’s not until interacting with three individuals that open Montag’s eyes helping him realize the errors of his ways. Leading Montag to change his opinion about books, and more over to a new direction in life with a mission to preserve and bring back the life once sought out in books. These three individual characters Clarisse McClellan, Faber, and Granger transformed Montag through the methods of questioning, revealing, and teaching.
Fahrenheit 451 Montag, a fireman who ignites books into glowing embers that fall into ashes as black as night. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a message in which society has opened its doors to mass devastation. Guy Montag, a “fireman”, burns houses that have anything to do with books instead of putting fires out like the job of a real fireman. In Montag’s society, books are considered taboo, and owning books can lead to dire consequences. Ray Bradbury portrays a society in which humans have suffered a loss of self, humanity, and a powerful control from the government resulting in a fraudulent society.
“It was a pleasure to burn” Bradbury (1) Is the first line of Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451, the line itself is thought by the book's main protagonist Guy Montag. Although from that line alone he wound not exactly seem like the ideal protagonist of a science fiction novel. Throughout the story Montag has some life altering experiences that change him; he starts out as a fireman (the kind that burn books, as opposed to saving lives) and ends up belonging to group of intellectuals who memorize books in order to someday write them down again. Ever since he met a young girl named Clarisse he had been consumed with thoughts, thoughts of what things looked like, thoughts of what things smelled like and even thoughts of why things were the way they are. Guy Montag goes through many changes in a fairly brief period in the story. Throughout his journey he has three mentors: Clarisse, Faber and Granger. Clarisse is the first, the one who opens Montag’s eyes to the world around him, Faber gives him wisdom and helps him shape what he is now thinking and feeling, and Granger helps him establish his own identity.
In today's day and age, it's rare to see famous historical events and societal disasters not be picked apart by film directors and then transformed into a box office hit. What these films do is put a visual perspective on these events, sometimes leaving viewers speculating if whatever was depicted is in fact entirely true. I have never felt that feeling more than after I finished watching Oliver Stone’s JFK.
Through her emotional breakdowns and extensive grief, Ruth Fowler provokes her husband into committing homicide in order to appease her. During the weeks after the death of their son, Matt Fowler sees the pain and torment his wife goes through dealing with the fact that their son’s killer still walked the streets not persecuted for his crime. When talking to his friend Willis Trottier about his family after a night of poker, Matt Fowlers affirms, “She can’t even go out for cigarettes and aspirin. It’s killing her. […] Every day since he got out. I didn’t think about bail. I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about him for years. She sees him all the time. It makes her cry” (Dubus 2). In Matt Fowler’s recount, he describes his wife as being perpetually afflicted by the presence of their son’s killer, and he even goes further to claim that Richard Strout’s existence is resulting in the deterioration of Ruth Fowler’s health and wellbeing. Although it is too late for Matt Fowler to protect his own son, he feels obligated to guard his wife from the suffering inflicted by presence of their son’s murderer. Because of this marital responsibility brought about by Ruth Fowler’s teary performances, Matt Fowler kills Richard Strout in an effort to end his wife’s emo...
The plot of this movie is about the struggle between the farmers and the cowboys. The farmers all want to start up crops, but the cowboys want to run their cattle through the open space so they can feed. Obviously, the two sides don’t agree. The cowboys end up attempting to use strong-arm tactics to get their way. They even try to scare the farmers off the land by burning down one of the homes of the farmers. Eventually, Shane, a former gunfight, realizes what he must do. He rides into town and kills all of the cowboys, including Wilson, the hired gun.
Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, is based in a futuristic time where technology rules our everyday lives and books are viewed as a bad thing because it brews free thought. Although today’s technological advances haven’t caught up with Bradbury’s F451, there is a very real danger that society might end up relying on technology at the price of intellectual development. Fahrenheit 451 is based in a futuristic time period and takes place in a large American City on the Eastern Coast. The futuristic world in which Bradbury describes is chilling, a future where all known books are burned by so called "firemen." Our main character in Fahrenheit 451 is a fireman known as Guy Montag, he has the visual characteristics of the average fireman, he is tall and dark-haired, but there is one thing which separates him from the rest of his colleagues. He secretly loves books.
The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman, but his job is to start fires, not put them out. On a job Montag is supposed to start the fire “He flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black” (1) In this society, reading books, or even having them in possession is against the law. Firemen, like Montag find these people and burn the books they have. This is because
Burns is a post-apocalyptic story when survivors need being again and link together to create a new society. The greatest common cultural icon used is the popular episode “Cape Feare” from the Simpsons. This gloomy comedy pushes us nearly a century, following a new society tripping into the future. “In Mr. Burns the episode from The Simpsons becomes the dominant character. Most plays are about people who experience challenges, and who develop towards the end of the play changing by the events that have taken place. Saying that, its not hard to believe a story can experience great challenges too. “Stories unite us, reminds us who we are and who we want to be. Stories keep our past alive” Mr. Burns delivers us with a brilliant opportunity to think about things that keep us human, in the extreme wisdom of the word, as we move forward into a progressively erratic future (Mr. Burns pamphlet Lab
Another way these characters avoid living their life is by drinking continuously, in a way to make the time pass by faster and forget. ?Haven?t you had enough? She loses count after 10 cocktails,? (pg.11) proving to the audience her own self denial, and how she wastes every day. Unfortunately, there are many, who in society today, do the same thing to get out of a situation they?re trying to hide or a difficult time they?re going through. This relates back to their affair which they?re obviously hiding and trying to get through this time in their life.
...e thing. Mark Renton learns that the life he once thought of as boring is actually preferable to a life of addiction. From this one can learn not to, similar to the gangster world, romanticize drug culture and the drug world.
Fahrenheit 451 involves such characters as Guy Montag, Mildred Montag, Captain Beatty, and Clarisse McClellan. Fahrenheit presents the firemen as the tools of censorship and illegal books. Since books rarely exist in their society they look not to things of intellectual worth, but to things with physical and non-thinking pleasure. As the people become zombies to television and the "four walls," which is a form of television in their society they become resistant to change. They like everything to happen neatly and predictably, just like the television shows. Mildred, Montag's wife, becomes totally dependent upon the "four walls" to not only bring her entertainment throughout the day, but to be a source of consistency. The programs on the television are extremely unintelligent and Montag's question why Mi...