1. “All About Eve”, a complex film with multiple overlapping themes, illustrates the societal standards and the rising tension between Broadway and Hollywood through a show business’ lens. Thematically, it explores and draws conclusions of many rising issues of the time, such as femininity vs. aging, society’s definition of success vs. traditional gender roles, and norms of tradition vs. liberal thinking (for the time). However, the tensions within the story line are built around two main topics: sexuality and politics. For example, the film portrays Margo and Bill’s relationship as nurturing, thus subtly crediting heterosexual relationships as being fulfilling and “moral”. Contradictorily, the film highlights the predatory and sterile ambition …show more content…
As opposed to tackling many layers of divergences within a societal context through the perspective of a whole industry, Night of the Hunter takes a more personal approach using an individual to explain the progression of the underlying ideas. In this instance, John is used to convey the journey of which a child loses its innocence, and how perspectives differ between those of adults and children. For me, the scene that solidified this thematic intention was when John was given the burden and responsibility of keeping stolen $10,000 hidden. After that, his …show more content…
For me, the most fascinating technique he used was how he overlapped different angles, shots and auditory aspects through strategic editing to create a desired effect. As discussed in class, he was known to innovate the concept of “deep focus” (allowing both the background and foreground to focus), which was a noteworthy contribution to cinematography. Through this method, he maximized the utility of the whole space of the frame while overlapping the acting with the physical space, thus keeping the viewer engaged. For example, one of the most memorable scenes was the close- up of the medicine bottle in the foreground while Kane enters Susan’s room after her suicide attempt. The use of high-contrast lighting also enhances the desired effects. Using this and different camera angle, Welles was particularly effective in generating power distance between the characters. For example, during the scene after Susan’s failed opera debut, she is sprawled on the floor with Kane towering over her. This clearly showed her vulnerability
In the short story “The Hunter” the author Richard Stark introduces Parker, the main character of this book. The main character is a rough man, he’s a criminal, a murderer, and even an escaped convict. He’s described as crude and rugged and though women are frightened by him, they want him. Parker is not the classic criminal, but rather he’s intelligent, hard, and cunning. In this story the author carefully appeals to his audience by making a loathsome criminal into a hero, or rather, an anti-hero. The author, Richard Stark uses ethical appeal to make his audience like Parker through the use of phronesis, arête, altruism and lastly the ethos of his audience.
In Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the interconnection of people and events, that might ordinarily be viewed as disconnected or unrelated, is implicitly presented in the characters section. Dual roles are implemented by a playwright that has one actor portraying the roles of two or more characters, with or without thematic intentions. The use of “dual roles” in several scenes of this play can be viewed as a demonstration of Kushner’s effort in maintaining the interconnectedness between characters, communities (i.e. queer, heterosexual, AIDS and political communities) and events to which they are relative. This essay will argue that Kushner’s use of dual role’s effectively interconnects characters, events and their communities that may be seen as usually unrelated. Analysis of four specific characters, Antarctica, Oceania, Australia and Europa, in Act Five, Scene Five of “Perestroika”, will demonstrate the connection of each Act Five, Scene Five character, to the actors main character based on the implicit evidence presented in the actors “primary” and “secondary” roles, the scenes dialogue and the character interactions. As one will see, by implementing dual roles, Kushner is able to expand or preserve the concept of a major character while the actor portrays another character, keeping the audience from having to completely renegotiate their knowledge between what they physically see of new characters and actually use the new context to view triumphs and struggles for a major character.
According to Sherrie A. Inness, “The Captive was hauled by critics as the first play on the American stage to deal openly with what one reviewer called a “repulsive abnormality.” Ten years prior, God of Vengeance was scorned for offending rabbis, Jewish men and women’s religion and abusing the significance of the Torah. Critics and reviews failed to deliver their remarks on the intimate lesbian love, but in The Captive, the lesbian undertones are concealed and carried out in a strategic fashion, yet these moments were censored and triggered. Due to these moments where the acts of lesbianism were not apparent, it was deemed with obscurity, causing the play to fall short overall. Similar to God of Vengeance, The Captive was confronted with “obscenity charges in the United States, and after a run of less than five months, the play was raided and closed down by police” (Inness 304). With this framework in mind, my case study is not diminished by the greater public opinion, rather Edouard Bourdet’s strategic approach to lesbianism and the way in which is portrayed in society juxtaposed the emergence of lesbianism in the United States in the early part of the twentieth
It is not a normal world when men,women, and children were getting slaughtered persistently. However, such a world can exist when unhumanity is allowed to grow. The memoir Night also
Released in 1994, 14 years into the AIDS epidemic, the film had a phenomenal response around the world and in Australia. Travelling from Sydney, the three main characters, played by Hugo Weaving, Guy Peirce and Terrance Stamp, travel to Alice Springs for a cabaret show hosted by Mitzi’s wife. The audience is positioned to sympathise with the main characters during their hardships, and good times. The movie confronts different types of masculinity in an extreme environment. The film presents the stereotypical behavior of gay men that is evident in our society.
A large portion of contemporary film and theatre has been lacking in substance. More often than not, we are presented with a “been there, seen that” scenario. One such exception to this rule is Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a film by John Cameron Mitchell that was released in 2001. Set primarily in post-Cold War America, Hedwig is a film that characteristically breaks convention. Our story follows Hedwig, a forgotten and confused homo…trans…well, human being. Growing up in East Berlin during the Cold War, Hansel Schmidt (John Cameron Mitchell) lives what I would call a horrible childhood in the bleak landscape of communist occupied Germany. He falls in love with an American soldier, and undergoes a sex change in order to marry him and leave East Berlin. The operation is botched, leaving him/her as a physical contradiction. Not quite a man, but not yet a woman, Hansel (now Hedwig) has what she describes as an “angry inch.” When describing it in lighter terms, she calls it a “Barbie doll crotch.” Upon arriving in America, the soldier leaves her the same day the Berlin wall comes down. Destroyed, Hedwig spends some time discovering her new self and eventually finds a soul mate in a young boy named Tommy Speck (Michael Pitt). They collaborate musically and romantically, but upon discovering Hedwig’s secret he leaves with all of their music. He becomes a huge rock star, living Hedwig’s dream while simultaneously leaving her in the dust. From then on, Hedwig and her band “The Angry Inch” follow Tommy as he tours the nation while Hedwig tries desperately to gain the notoriety she deserves for her music. Viewing this film through the lens of a feminist gender perspective, I find that Hedwig is a pioneer on the forefront of changing the gende...
Through the actions of the male hegemony and the mother figure, both plays show the different perspectives both sexes have towards homosexuality. The patriarchal figures, show an intolerant and abusive perspective whereas the mother figures show a more understanding way of coping with the identities of their sons. By seeing the reactions of both males and females, it is to say that the maternal figures of the play show a more comprehensive attitude towards the struggles that the male protagonist undergo. Both plays are related to today´s society, because there are still families in which homosexuality is not accepted. People are still
Despite the fact that the character of Phyllis as the “tough as nails” perpetual, intentional aggressor is a valid attempt to obliterate the image of women as the oppressed, one interpretation of this role is that she ultimately seems to misrepresent herself, and females in cinema, anyway. Janet Todd, author of Women and Film, states that, “Women do not exist in American film. Instead we find another creation, made by men, growing out of their ideological imperatives”(130). Though these “power girl”characters are strong examples of anything but submissive and sexual females,the...
In the novel, Night, a journey of a young boy who teetered between life and death for so long is told. The struggle he faced, the strive to survive, and the desire to remain by his father’s side are all difficulties he encountered. The holocaust was a horrifying time- millions were murdered because they were considered a subspecies slowing down the evolutionary processA time of misery and fear for people of the Jewish religion, Wiesel shares his experience during this petrifying time.
Throughout this paper the word 'queer ' will be used as an umbrella catch all term for any individual who is not heterosexual or cisgender, and anyone in the LGBTQ spectrum. Queer will also be used as part of the methodology, it will represent "a moment of fissure when that which is normal is thrown into question...[and] set out the notion of queer as a way of denormalizing gendered heterosexuality." ( Li-Vollmer and LaPointe 92) Using queer examination of film, this paper will discuss and explore the struggle between normalcy and deviance. Queer coding occurs when a character is given common traits associated with queer people, whether that is stereotypical or not depends on the character and the creator themselves. This paper will explore
Welles prominently portrays his figures with a specific amount of light or darkness, stunningly affecting whole scenes stylistically. The scene at Xanadu establishes Mr. Kane as an overbearing, controlling character. Throughout the scene, Kane is shadowed with darkness upon his face, emphasizing how ‘dark’ he is. Conversely, oftentimes light is directly on Susan, portraying her innocence and how ‘light’ of a character she is. Within this scene, Welles shows Susan wearing white and Mr. Kane wearing a dark colored suit, an overt portrayal of light versus darkness. Susan wearing a white, light colored ensemble portrays her as the submissive one with a lighter, happy-hearted spirit. Wearing a dark suit, Charles Kane is depicted as an overbearing and controlling person....
The film The Three Faces of Eve is based on a real-life story of Chris Costner, who was a victim of Dissociate Identity Disorder. She arguably developed this mental disorder following three different grisly accidents that she witnessed. Joanne Woodward acted the role of Costner and depicted the three personalities resulting from the psychological upset. The three characters are; Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane. Three Faces of Eve is a 1957 film that presents a case of a woman 's psychological problems and eventual treatment (Goodman 1996). The woman who acts as Eve White in the film is shown as mentally upright, reserved, and motherly at the initial episodes of the movie. In a startling twist of events, a new character of Eve White, Eve Black emerges. Eve Black is fun loving and antisocial. This character change comes as a surprise to her husband. In the later episodes of the film, a third character of Eve White, Jane emerges. Jane provides a resolution to the already fragmented film show. In the movie play, there are dramatic episodes. For instance, Eve 's husband is attracted to her due to his ignorance of her illness but a later manifestation of the mental disorder drives her to conspire killing
Even in today’s society, sexism is still prevalent and inhibits the people who are affected by it. For the purpose of this essay, sexism will be defined as any action that consciously contributes to a gender stereotyping society. In her essay, Marilyn Frye notes this definition of sexism stating that “making decisions on the basis of sex reinforces the patterns that make it relevant” (846). Therefore, any decision that contributes to the gender binary and its framework is considered sexist. The musical Gypsy has instances in which the main character, Rose, can be considered both going against and contributing to the “patterns that make sex relevant.” In one scene, Rose can be seen subjecting her children to gender roles which feeds in to sexism,
In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in Africa; the second act takes place in 1979 London, but only twenty-five years have passed for the family. The choice to contrast the Victorian and Modern era becomes vitally important when analyzing this text from a materialist feminist view; materialist feminism relies heavily on history. Cloud Nine is a materialist feminist play; within it one can find examples that support all the tenets of materialist feminism as outlined in the Feminism handout (Bryant-Bertail, 1).
Culkin, Nigel & Randle, Keith 2003, Facing the Digital Future: The Implications of Digital Technology for the Film Industry, University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire.