“Life is not like a drama, life is drama” (Griffin 293). Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism says that life is drama. Most everything can be evaluated by using the tools of Burke’s dramatism theory. The movie that I chose to watch and analyze was Miracle. This movie is based on the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. This movie was released in 2004 to celebrate the team’s miracle. This movie portrays the drama of life perfectly. The movie is about Coach Herb Brooks, his U.S. hockey team, and their journey to the Olympics in 1980. Coach Brooks wanted to do things a little differently than they had done in the past. He didn’t want a team of All-stars to play for him in the Olympics. He wanted a team that could work together and …show more content…
win a gold medal. This wasn’t a popular decision and it didn’t come without its struggles. It took a long time and a lot of hard work to win the gold. The biggest challenge that the U.S. faced was playing the Soviet Union. They were the greatest hockey team in the world and had consistently held that title for many years. The U.S. wasn’t even on the radar for a medal, let alone winning the gold. This movie tells their story. There are many aspects of dramatism that can be used to analyze the movie, but I am going to use the pentad.
The dramatistic pentad is, “a tool critics can use to discern the motives of a speaker or writer by labeling five key elements of the human drama; act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose” (Griffin 294). I think the pentad is a great tool to analyze the movie Miracle. The act is the action that is taking place in the situation. The act that I have chosen is a speech before the upcoming game against the Soviet Union. The speech is an attempt to get the players motivated to play their hardest during the big game. The scene is the context, the when, and the where the action takes place. In the movie the speech is given at Lake Placid in the locker room before the first game of the medal round at the thirteenth Olympics. The agent is the person who performs the act or action. In this scene the agent is Coach Herb Brooks. He is the one giving the speech and trying to encourage the players that “this is their time.” The agency is the means, method, or how the agent carries out the act. Coach Brooks speaks with passion and the belief that his team can beat the greatest hockey team in the world. He fires up the team by encouraging them that this is “their time,” it is their turn to be the best team in the world. The purpose is the goal or the why the action is taking place. The purpose in this scenario is to get the team ready to go play the game of their lives …show more content…
and win. It all comes back to the game and playing the hardest they can to win one of the biggest games of their lives. Each of the five elements are key to analyzing a work, but the ratio between the five elements is most important.
The ratio is, “the relative importance of any two terms of the pentad as determined by their relationship” (Griffin 296). I believe that the two most important elements of the pentad are the act and the agency. This would be a act-agency ratio, meaning that the agency is portrayed and carried out a certain way because of the act that is taking place. Without these two elements the exact way they occurred the whole picture would be drastically different. The act to me is the most important because it is crucial for this action to happen. The act is the speech given right before the upcoming game. It is a stressful time and everyone is tense and trying to psych themselves up for the game. The agency is the means and method of how the action takes place. Coach Brooks is passionate and determined in his speech. He speaks with a fire that spreads throughout the team. The act and the agency are fundamental to this moment. If the speech didn’t happen, what would have the team psyched up and ready to play their all? Without the speech the game could have turned out differently. The act of giving the speech to the team was absolutely critical for the rest of the pentad to work. Regarding the agency, if Coach Brooks spoke in a monotone, none caring manner this would have had a huge effect on the team. They would have felt as if he didn’t care about them or
the game they were going to play. The agency had to be a passionate, fiery speech to carry the team to their victory. These two are the most important because they work together to make the speech what it was. If either of these two aspects changed in the least, the whole thing would have been drastically different. The act-agency ratio is the most important because these two elements of the pentad were the most important. The dramatistic pentad is a very useful tool when evaluating a movie or play. For the movie Miracle the pentad was a good way for me to analyze certain aspects of the film and to determine which elements were the most important in different situations. The ratio between two elements of the pentad was, again, helpful in determining the most important of the five elements. I determined that out of the scene that I chose to analyze the act-agency ratio was the most important out of the five elements because if either of these had been different or occurred any other way the whole scene would have been drastically different.
Glory is an American War film produced in 1989. The movie is about the first all-African-American regiment to be a part of the Union Army during the American Civil War. It is based upon letters written by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who was the commanding officer in charge of the first African America regiment. The regiment was known as the 54th Massachusetts, and it is famous for the heroic actions that took place during the Battle of Fort Wagner, where Colonel Shaw volunteered his men to lead the charge. Although there were many casualties and the battle was not successful, the 54th Massachusetts’ bravery led the Union to accept thousands of African American men into their ranks which helped the Union win the war. In many parts of the film,
The play, “Riley Valentine and the Occupation of Fort Svalbard”, by Julia- Rose Lewis is an exploration of the resilience of teenagers. The play is heavily symbolic and supports the dramatic meaning of the show. Throughout the Queensland Theatre Company’s interpretation of this play, the director, Travis Dowley, expresses forms of dramatic elements to articulate three types of manipulations. These manipulations include the manipulation of body and voice, space and the creation and manipulation of dramatic mood. Through these types of manipulations, it portrays the dramatic meaning towards the performance. Although, the use of space throughout Travis’s performance allows the audience to identify this dramatic meaning.
Eugenio Derbez is a Mexican actor, director, producer, and writer. He started his acting career at 12 years old and continues in the same career. He is well known for his outstanding personality and great acting. He is “one of the most influential creative forces in Latin America.” Eugenio’s TV shows and movies are not only popular in Mexico, but also in the United Stated through Univision. For over twenty years, he has won thousands of people’s hearts.
Being a United States History major, the choice for this movie review was simply a no brainer. For this paper I have chosen to review the Civil War based movie named Glory. The movie was released in 1989, just after the centennial of the Civil War ending. Glory was innovative, due to the fact that not many movies portrayed how the blacks were important to the North winning the war against the South. The movie had an all-star cast that consisted of Matthew Broderick as Col. Robert Shaw, Denzel Washington as Pvt Trip, and Morgan Freeman as Sgt Major John Rawlins (IMDB.com). Before critically reviewing this wonderful movie, I only watched the movie for the significance of it being about our nation’s history and war. As I critically watched
The play that we read for this unit is Too Much Punch For Judy, by Mark Wheeller. It is a form of Verbatim Theatre, meaning that it is based on the spoken words of real people. This play is about the story of a young woman who kills her sister in an alcohol related accident. When I first read the play I couldn’t empathize with the story as I haven’t experienced such a shocking event before. In this essay I will describe, analyse and evaluate both my work and the work of other actors in my group, focusing on the mediums, elements and explorative strategies of Drama.
This paper will include the analysis of the movie Hope Floats. It will start with a short summary of the movie describing the characters and the plot. It will then discuss the family dynamics that are shown in the movie based on the class discussions and the readings. It will also include a variety of issues that are shown throughout the movie. This paper will discuss three key family system’s issues that includes the family concepts, assessing one from Bowen’s concepts, one from Minuchin’s concepts, and one from General Systems Theory/Anderson and Sabatelli concepts. There are many different scenes and examples in this movie that will give a better understanding of the many different family dynamics, family issues, and family system concepts.
For the second movie we had to watch, I chose The Good Lie. The Good Lie is the story of the thousands of Sudanese children who were left orphaned and displaced by a civil war in the 1980s. The Good Lie tells a story of six of these kids that made it to America who suffered atrocities, watching as rebel soldiers ravage and burn down their village and seeing their parents get murdered. In addition to these awful events, they survived extreme physical hardships, walking barefoot, escaping from gun fire for about 800 miles to safety in the Kenyan refugee camps. The movie opens with the grueling journey undertaken by these five boys and girl. They fend off dangerous wild animals, dehydration and soldiers during their trek, and one boy passes away and another is taken off by soldiers. When the remaining quartet reaches safety, they band together ever closer.
Where do we draw the line between freedom and safety? The film The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise, broaches this question from a unique perspective and displays many of the pros and cons that must be taken into consideration in order to answer this question. Earth is faced with the question: should humanity give up violence, or maintain its freedom to bear arms? While the decision was ultimately left up to the audience in this movie, the movie intended to convey that it is in the better interest of humankind to give up a portion of freedom to bear arms in favor of the safety of billions.
Where do babies come from? The Birds and Bees, the stork, and the “talk”, at one point in time, we’ve all heard versions of where babies come from. In the film, Life’s Greatest Miracle, the question of where babies come from is answered in much more detail than many of us knew when we heard our own versions. In this essay, I will discuss the pattern of development, aspects of the movie, and the hindrances of successful conception, how sensitivity to food smells could protect the developing fetus, lastly address concerns in the movie that the mother and father had about childbirth.
Movies have different genres. They range from documentaries to science fiction films. Some may be make believe with a very enticing theme, or they consist of straight facts that may or may not bore the audience depending on what the particular individual finds interesting. A particular movie depicts an event that occurs in 1986 where a small town's elementary school became the target to a genius lunatic. What is a miracle? Well, The Cokeville Miracle has a lasting impression on anyone who views it because it is based on a real event, the "coincidences", and the background music.
In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, many of christian values were shown. Loving thy neighbor was displayed in several scenes. Also, the angel helping George Bailey relates to christians in so many ways. Plus, christian values were revealed when was praying to God. It’s a Wonderful Life has so many other ways christian values are exhibited , but those are the three main ones.
In 1944, Jorge Luis Borges published “The Secret Miracle”, a short story describing Jaromir Hladik, a Jew living in the Second World War. Jaromir Hladik is taken away by the Germans to a jail by the Germans to be executed shortly after. While in jail, he ponders on all the ways he could be killed and later realizes that he still has yet to finish his play “The Enemies”. He prays to God, begging for a year to be granted to him so that he can complete his last masterpiece. In a dream, he is granted that year. When the Germans pull the trigger, the world freezes for a full year so he can finish his play. At a first glance, “The Secret Miracle” appears to be merely a fictioness story. However, Borges included so much of his own life in the character of Jaromir Hladik that the story no longer seems to be so made up. “Borges writing was impelled and shaped by experience” (Williamson 296). Borges grew up loving books from the very start of his life. His father was always a reader, so he had a room set up like a library that housed hundreds of books. Borges also grew up in a family with colorful war history, which allowed him to be introduced to interesting stories early on. At the age of 56, he was completely blind, causing him to see literature in a different way. He no longer thought literature was a reality. For instance, he believed that although an apple is called an “apple”, it may not actually have that name. Yet he continues to write in this unreality for he feels that it is a writer’s duty to speak out against Juan Peron through literature. In spite of Borges’ belief that literature is not reality, there is evidence of Borges’ life embedded in it which clearly shape the issues and concerns of his work.
(2012, 12). Outline and Discuss Erving Goffman's Theory of Dramaturgy.. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 12, 2012, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Outline-And-Discuss-Erving-Goffman%27s-Theory-1280254.html
“Everybody knows,” she said with a smile, “that heroes are not to be believed. They all tend to exaggerate their achievements.” (The Neverending Story, page 99) It is no exaggeration that The Neverending Story by Michael Ende is a classic. In fact, this timeless tale has become so iconic that throughout the years adaptations have been made, with various versions created to satisfy fans. One adaptation in particular includes READ magazine’s play adapted by David S. Craig with illustrations by David Ho. The differences can be noticeable by simply observing the characters and style of both the book and play, and yet, the overall story remains the same.
In the movie Transcendence, the Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is a scientist and prominent researcher in the field of artificial intelligence. He and his group of scientist want to create the first machine with a conscience and all human knowledge. His researcher makes him famous but at the same time he becomes the target of extremists technophobes who will do everything to stop him. When the extremist group shoots Will with a bullet laced with radiation, he is given no more than a month to live. Desperate, his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) decides to upload the consciousness of her dying husband in the machine he created. It was without counting on the ability of the machine to take precedence over the man. Everything turns into a nightmare