Examples Of Escapism In The Purple Rose Of Cairo

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A Rose, A Rouse, A Republic
Philosophy, like the film The Purple Rose of Cairo, is eludes the confines of black and white; there are rarely clear answers to the simple questions that man has been asking himself since the times of Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, the fictitious black and white Tom Baxter jumps off the big screen and into the real world of color, carrying with him endless connections to the philosophy of Plato as he is affronted with criticism from both his peers and creators and is provided with a chance at true love. The Purple Rose of Cairo offers numerous examples of Plato’s “The state is the individual writ large” as well as Divided Line concepts from Plato’s The Republic.
In The Purple Rose of Cairo, each of the central characters including Cecilia, the actor Gil Shepherd and his doppelganger Tom Baxter portray archetypal characteristics of the society and time that they were a part of. Cecilia represents the part of society that was faced with desperation, poverty, and disillusionment during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cecilia, like the society around her, has difficulty in keeping and finding jobs. Cecilia struggles as many others struggled in her time, to make enough just to live off of. Her society was one of tremendous stress and required an outlet and means of escapism. Cecilia and her husband Monk offer up two examples of escapism that were extremely prevalent during the Great Depression; Cecilia frequents the cinema to escape into the fantasies and hopeful stories of Hollywood while Monk gambles and drinks excessively. Just as Cecilia and Monk express characteristics of a huge part of society, Gil Shepherd exposes within himself the cruel, greedy, and corrupt...

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... portrayed him and is the perfect manifestation of the idea of Tom Baxter. Through Tom Baxter, the object half of Plato’s Divided Line is demonstrated in The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Throughout the course of The Purple Rose of Cairo, Tom Baxter crosses from the realm of black-and-white into the realm of reality and color and then back again, while also ascending the ladder of Plato’s divided line. Baxter also, along with Cecilia and her husband, and Gil Shepherd offers examples of Plato’s “the state is the individual writ large” by reflecting the world around them. Plato’s ideas from The Republic, as shown by The Purple Rose of Cairo, are universal concepts, which easily manifest themselves in this world (especially within an essay about a movie, which in turn is about a movie where every tendril of being ties into the ancient Greek philosopher’s model of reality).

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