Determinants In 'Blood Brothers'

ONCE WERE WARRIORS

The 3 determinants that had the most impact and influence on Jake’s life throughout the film would have had to be the addiction to drinking, his early life and becoming unemployed at the beginning of the movie.

It shows Jake at the fish store at the opening of the film as we continue we find out that he gets let go which is terrible as he still has a family to feed and a rent to pay.
He applies for the dole but with that income he mostly uses it to feed his addiction, he is a regular drinker. He would spend hours drinking and wasting money on drinks and when he drank he became violent and abusive which was most likely from his early life and coming from a long line of slaves which he still classifies/views himself as and

had a lot of built anger from and used violence to let it out

The determinants that impacted on Beth’s life included not having much of a support network from the friends and family around her, an addiction to alcohol even though she wasn’t as bad as Jake and gender roles.

Beth is a strong, confident character at the beginning of the film but doesn’t have much support from the people around her, near the start of the film she beaten up by her husband Jake. After Jake has beaten Beth up, the next morning she tells Mavis that “ it’s the same old story,” suggesting that this has happened before, the advice Mavis gives Beth supports that are nothing out of the ordinary and is even quite funny to her, saying “you know the rules, keep your mouth shut and your legs open”. However, she does tell Beth to make Jake wake his ideas up but doesn’t suggest that she should leave Jake. This shows that even though all her friends know that the marriage is terrible they are not trying to support her to get out of it.

As we know Jake and Beth were initially alcoholics throughout the beginning and middle of the movie we would constantly see Beth drinking and smoking, she didn't care for her way of life of liquor abuse and she made plans to stop. She chose to spare the cash and help her family to change. This didn't keep going for long in light of the fact that she went right back to liquor addiction. But when under the influence Beth seemed to be more confident and she showed her true feelings, spoke up and stood up to her husband even though that did have severe outcomes it actually showed us how strong she was.

Beth’s family was forced to live a low social status life because since Jake did not work.

He chose to be a heavy drinker at the expense of his family’s welfare and waste money on drinks instead of saving up for their own house like Beth mentioned at the beginning of the movie. When Beth was telling him about going to visit Boogie as a family he was willing to put the money in but in the long run, it didn’t do her much good as they never even made it to the boys

The determinants that impacted on Nig would have had to be his support network, early life, and the environment he was around.

Nig is the oldest, his angry and rebellious. He joins a gang named TOA AOTEAROA who sport traditional Maori facial tattoos and consider themselves warriors. In any case, they appear to have forgotten the traditional way of Maori warriors and are really just a gang of violent thugs. Nig would rather be with them than his own biological family, which seems to be because of how his early life involved Jake beating up Beth and made him despise Jake and didn’t want to be in that sort of

environment.

Manhood and gender roles seemed to be two themes I noticed throughout the movie; all the male characters show a different side of their manhood.

They each took it in a different approach. Jake's manhood was his muscles and his dominance to whoever tried to cross him. His first son Nig decided to join a gang and tattoo himself as a way of showing his manhood and Boogie was put in a boys home where he learned that his manhood came from the inner strength he had.
The gender roles are portrayed throughout the entire film; men are expected to be "manly", to act tough, and to display their strength through violence providing a warning, earning the respect of others. Beth is portrayed as property and is told to "just do what she is told!" its as if she is not meant to speak her thoughts and if she was she would get beaten. Nig After the night Beth had gotten beaten by Jake, while grace was cleaning up the next morning Nig tells her she should get used to tidying up after men like that’s the main thing that’s expected of her once again references gender

roles.
The character I sympathize most with would have to be Grace; she mirrors positive thinking and hope even on the family's cloudiest days, she is open hearted and strong willed even though Grace is only 13 years old, she is an intelligent girl and very mature for her age but that was due to her having to take on the mother role when Beth is unable to. But once she is sexually abused by uncle bully, grace becomes distant and shut off not knowing who she can speak so she writes what had happened in her journal. She goes to see her friend toot the next day, who tried to kiss her even though there were no bad intentions behind it so, that night she committed suicide.