Comparing Ron Howard's How the Grinch Stole Christmas to Dr. Seuss' Grinch
Whether or not you consider Ron Howard's version of Dr Seuss's classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas comical, yet disgraceful, there's no ignoring the little green monster's reign over the box office. The movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas starring Jim Carrey, was released in November of 2000, reaching a gross high of over $200 million in the U.S alone (The Numbers). However, I feel that this version has over exaggerated the original story, and I will back this up by showing many examples of how Dr. Seuss’s classic turned into a marketing, franchise frenzy.
Dr. Seuss's original fable is a simple story told with a great moral that criticizes the commercialization of Christmas. The original story features an “Ebenezer Scrooge” type creature that lives up the mountains outside "Whoville." The Grinch indulges himself in the annual ritual of spoiling everyone's festivities with a series of nasty pranks. This particular year however he plans to sabotage the holiday season by dressing as Santa Claus, clim...
Seuss, The Grinch is the main protagonist in this tale, but not much background is given on this green fellow. In the story, The Grinch is accompanied by his dog, Max, throughout most of the movie. Max acts as a sidekick that helps the Grinch, but is somewhat of an underdog. But puns aside, Max wasn’t treated the best by the Grinch in most of the movie. The Grinch made him pull an entire sleigh which held the Grinch and all of the Whos’ Christmas food, gifts, and decorations. While Max is pulling the sleigh, The Grinch is continuously yelling at him to make him move faster despite the extremely heavy weight on his shoulders, and expects him to carry all of it on his lonesome. To add onto that, The Grinch makes Max help, treating Max almost like a slave, which is extremely unethical and should never be done. But The Grinch doesn’t really even treat Max like a worker, Max just does what he’s told, and doesn’t get much out of the things he’s done for the
With her justification, of the Whoville law, that all Whos should be able to attend not because of their outer appearance. As the mayor, Maywho objectifies the crowd believes in what Cindy Lou says. However, the mayor does not want that to happen as argues if he is not here I will accept the award. Cindy Lou was able to break the law of not speaking about or to the Grinch as well as have the people in the town agree to invite him to the celebration. When the Grinch goes mad because of the razor gift he received Cindy Lou and her family were all shamed and looked down upon by everyone in Whoville for what they did and it was their fault for breaking the norm (not inviting the Grinch). Later on, because the Grinch took all the presents the people in the town were able to see the true meaning of Christmas and that is family so in an indirect way the Grinch also broke the norm of just accepting gifts on that day. The Grinch proved that although his appearance and personality were he truly knew what the Charismas spirit was and it wasn’t all about the gifts, lights, or celebrations but family was the key part in it
The following paper compares a popular short films character, The Grinch, of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The reason such a comparison seems apt is that the Grinch seems to have all a “man” could want, but is nonetheless unhappy and miserable. Although his material needs have been met, he lacks a sense of belonging, does not have true self-esteem, and has never come close to Maslow’s descriptions of self-actualization. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” shows the evolution of the Grinch from a miser and robber to a being of generosity and empathy. Using Maslow’s theory allows us to see the Grinch’s structure and development of personality, the psychopathology, therapeutic techniques, and the limitations
Charles dickens classic novella “A Christmas Carol” endorses the notion that “Generosity involves more than the giving of money, it’s also about the giving of one's goodwill, compassion, sympathy, empathy and kindness. By taking his seemingly irredeemable protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge on a supernatural journey, Dickens’ intends to convey to all of society the importance of generosity. He proclaims that generosity of the spirit defines Christmas, and goes a large way towards defining true humanity for him as well.
In 1966, while heading up the animation division at MGM Studios, Jones directed one of the most memorable holiday television specials ever produced, “Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” First aired on Sunday, December 18, 1966, the half-hour special was met with glowing reviews from newspapers across the country and has since become one of the most beloved holiday programs on television.
The Grinch is an individual, who is bitter and lives in a cave on the snowy Mount Crumpits, which is 10,000 feet tall and north of Whoville town. The Grinch age is unknown, however looks to be about in his mid-40s and is unemployed. Thus, results in him spending a lot of time alone in his cave with his dog, Max, as his social companion. At any rate, the Grinch faced many issues when he was younger, causing his current behavior, where he was abandoned as a child, and made fun of because of his look and horrendous appearance at school and as a way to cope he decided to run away. The Grinch behavior shows signs of depression, aggression, and irritation though out a large sum of the movie. In that case, the kid that use to make fun of
During stage seven, the Grinch is battling problems of generativity vs. stagnation. Generativity is giving optimism about humanity to the next generation(where all of Whoville is terrified and this is great if he gives it to them). Stagnation refers to the failure to find a way to contribute. The Grinch has always felt uninvolved with their community because he isn’t a Who. Throughout his life, the Grinch was curious with the concept of Christmas. He would watch all of Whoville celebrate. When there was a 99% Christmas sale going on, the Grinch wore a cloak and a mask so people wouldn’t try to distinguish him. He told his dog Max “The city is a dangerous place” as they explored. As an adult, he is feeling worthless and bored living in a cave with his dog. He talks to the walls and listens to their echos. He scares teenagers away when they arrive to the door because social interaction is all new to him. He yells who he hates from the phonebook one by one. Yet, deep down he has a heart. The goal is to value others and ensure future generations. Whoville is scared that a genocide is going to happen. He ensures them peace when he carves the roast-beast. Therefore, he has success by becoming involved with their
...pporting details. At the conclusion of the article, the authors share their thoughts on how it might be virtually impossible to determine when a memory is true or false. I also like their willingness to continue the investigations despite how difficult it might be to obtain concrete answers.
The four films in theme four are all different types of movies, however, they all somehow presented one same theme: over-consumption, and the main message that all those four films tried to deliver is that because human-beings over-consumed the limited resources just in order to live more comfortably, they produced a large amount of trash on earth and then drop them carelessly. If we continued doing that and make no attempt to correct their own mistakes, we will eventually destroy our homeland and pay for that. The over-consumption and be reflected in different forms, for example, in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, people in town buy similar gifts over and over again, and then abandoned them on the mountain when they were still useful; in Wall-E, the earth was out of resources and green plants, and it was already covered by trash; and in The Lorax, people cutting down all the trees just in order to produce a material called Thneeds. The environment in these movies were already being destroyed, usually the planet is
actors and actresses to portray the characters. In this version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, director, Ron Howard explained how the Grinch arrived in Whoville and explained why the Grinch disliked Christmas as much as he did. That was not explained in the original version, which caused confusion. The best part about this movie is the message they are trying to deliver. Lou Lou Who (Bill Irwin) said it best, “you can’t hurt Christmas, Mr. Mayor because Christmas is not about the gifts, the contests, or the fancy lights.” We tend to forget the true meaning of Christmas and do not fully understand what it really is about. It is not about the gifts and the extravagant lights. It’s about being with
Memory is the mental process of retaining and retrieving information such as facts, events, and experiences. Memory is not always accurate (Hunt, 2004). Memory errors are common and natural; they are the result of normal cognitive processes of comprehension and perception, which can cause interference about incoming information. There are two errors of remembering; forgetting an event that occurred and remember an event that never occurred or remembering it in a way different from how it occurred. Memories can be distorted, and one may have no awareness that the memory is distorted. This is false memory (Roediger, 2002).
The story of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” by Dr. Seuss at first glance is nothing more than a story about a grinch and his plan for Christmas, but if you criticize it under a different school of thought like Marxism this story's theme is very different. One way the theme of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” changes when criticized though marxism is the seeing of a class system in the different characters. In this story the Grinch is hated by all the Whos and is seen as the lowest class while the Whos are the upper class ruling over the Grinch. In marxism it’s believed that there will always be conflict between the social class and the oppressed will revolt eventually, and this is exactly what happened with the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.
Memory is an important part of our lives. It fills us with comfort, warmth, and happiness when recalling a joyous event; it may also illicit feelings of anger, sadness, or discontent. Unfortunately, our memory is not as perfect as we may think. In fact, our memory is extremely malleable. Most people think memory acts as a tape recorder; you experience an event, and like a video tape, you can replay the event over and over in exact detail as it happened. This belief could not be further from the truth. In fact, our memory is constantly being shaped by external factors. It is reconstructed in the way we want to remember it. Memory does not act as a tape recorder; rather it is constructed by us and warped by time, emotions, and external forces. Such forces can include the input of family members and friends who want “get the facts straight” with their recollection of the event. This falsification effect can have severely damaging consequences, not only for the person undergoing the recollection, but also for those under attack for these recovered memories.
Spiers, H., & Bendor, D. (2014). Enhance, Delete, Incept: Manipulating hippocampus-dependent memories. Brain Research Bulletin,
A false memory is a type of memory that someone may remember but it did not happen. There has been evidence to show that under certain circumstances, younger children are not as susceptible to false memories as other children or adults; this concept is known as developmental reversals (McGuire, 2015). In this paper I plan to discuss what false memories are, how they may occur, and also I will discuss two studies surrounding false memories. I hope to educate the reader in learning more about false memories, a study that they have used, and how this can help further research in the future.