Semiotic Analysis – Mary and Max (2009) Mary and Max is a 2009 clay animated film written and directed by Adam Elliot. It is a story of a pen pal friendship between Mary Dinkle, a lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Australia, and Max Horowitz, an obese forty-four year old man living with Asperger Syndrome in America. Elliot’s animation is aimed towards older audiences, as the underlying themes in the film are dark and upsetting. It touches on topics such as depression, isolation, childhood neglect and autism. Claymation is used in the film as a childish parody of the reality that Mary and Max live in. The monochrome tones, brown colour palette in Mary Dinkle’s Australia and harsh greys and blacks in Max’s New York, creates a melancholy mood relaxed by hints of bright red, such as Vera’s red lipstick and Mary’s red clip. These specks of bright red indicate hope or happiness, as we only see small aspects of it throughout the film, it shows that it is there, but it doesn’t overtake. Brown is often associated as a down-to-earth, friendly and approachable colour, but can also identify with …show more content…
a need of security and belonging, whereas grey is a very unemotional and detached colour, often linked with sadness, isolation and loneliness. Both these colours, brown for Mary and grey for Max, reflect the characters personality. In the opening montage of the iconic images of suburban Australia, we learn that “Mary’s mood ring, which she’d found in a cereal box, was grey” and also that “Her favourite tea bag was Earl Grey. She loved saying ‘Early Grey’.” The fact that there is an emphasis on the colour “Grey” could possibly be foreshadowing her future friendship with Max, or an inner longing for stability, calmness and composure, or perhaps her sadness and loneliness. The use of a narrator allows the audience to understand who the characters are and how they are feeling. Although the narration is voiced in third person, the point of view still comes from the character, for instance when the narrator remarks “How could someone be an accident?” it is clearly from Mary’s point of view, and “He noted to himself it was the sixth fly he caught this evening” speaking from Max’s perspective. By doing this it allows the audience to connect with the characters even more, as we are able to sympathise with what they are going through, but also allows us to keep a distance from the characters so we can enjoy the humour and wit. The soundtrack in Mary and Max is contrasted throughout the film. It goes from a light and bouncy theme, to mournful sounds of strings to enhance the hardships suffered by Mary and Max, although the more playful tunes are heard in Mary’s world, whereas the sad sounds of the strings are heard in Max’s world. Mary and Max are both outcast characters and this is shown through their surroundings.
Both Mary and Max’s rooms are empty, such as the shot where it shows Mary’s hand-made collection of The Noblets. We typically associate a children’s bedroom to be filled with lots of toys, to be very colourful and warm, however by showing these isolated figures that are the same colour as the rest of the room, brown, on the shelf, it reinforces how alone Mary is. It is also seen in Max’s world where he also has an isolated shelf with the figurines of The Noblets, the Jar of Flies, and the ticking clock. All these items are isolated by themselves. By showing how empty their rooms are, could also be a metaphor to suggest that their lives are also empty. We can see from their outside surroundings that it is very busy; however inside it is detached and confined from the outside
world. Although the worlds of Mary and Max are different from each other, they share many aspects that are the same, and against the odds are able to help each other, to some extent, escape their loneliness.
One of the first few instances where the color red is portrayed negatively is when Doodle is just a small infant, and is trying to learn to sit up. Here, we see Doodle trying to be normal, trying to push himself beyond his limits, and turning red in color. This is seen in the quote, “Trembling, he’d push himself up, turning first red, the as soft purple, and finally collapse back onto the bed like a worn out doll” (Hurst 464). This scene uses the color red to symbolize that it takes every last bit of Doodle’s energy to accomplish everyday tasks. Him turning red, signals danger and possible early childhood death, because of Doodle pushing himself. This scene, however, is trivial in comparison to the ones later in the story. Once Brother believes that his not fully
Racism is more than just blatant comments and police brutality. It is also found in the subtle things, like the lack of opportunities in education. Graduation by Maya Angelou and I Just Wanna Be Average by Mike Rose both address this issue of opportunities and race. In St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Angelou went to an all-black school during the 1930s and 40s, while Mike Rose is a second generation Italian immigrant in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Both wrote about their experiences with systemic racism in education. Both authors are given low expectations and have no power over their futures, which shows how systemic racism sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy of underachievement.
In the iconic book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a story about a wealthy man chasing the fantasy of being with his former love, colors expressed more than what was on the page. Over the course of events narrated by Nick Carraway, one could easily identify that colors meant more than they appeared. Colors like red indicated emotions like anger and others like yellow indicated multiple concepts, one of them being danger. In The Great Gatsby, the name “Daisy” and her character’s personality/actions can be interpreted as the colors and structure of a daisy flower to shed the dynamics of her character.
The spacious, sunlit room has yellow wallpaper with a hideous, chaotic pattern that is stripped in multiple places. The bed is bolted to the ground and the windows are closed. Jane despises the space and its wallpaper, but John refuses to change rooms, arguing that the nursery is best-suited for her recovery. Because the two characters, Emily and Jane, are forced to become isolated, they turn for the worst. Isolation made the two become psychotic.
The bedroom is an overvalued fetish object that nevertheless threatens to reveal what it covers over. John's time is spent formulating the bedroom in a way that conceals his associations of anxiety and desire with the female body, but also re-introduces them. The bedroom's exterior, its surface, and its outer system of locks, mask a hidden interior that presumably contains a mystery--and a dangerous one. The bedroom in "The Yellow Wallpaper" generates this tension between the desire to know and the fear of knowing: on one hand, the enigma of the bedroom invites curiosity and beckons us towards discovery; on the other hand, its over- determined organization is seated within a firm resolution to build up the bedroom, so that what it hides remains unrealized. Mulvey writes, "Out of this series of turning away, of covering over, not the eyes but understanding, of looking fixidly at any object that holds the gaze, female sexuality is bound to remain a mystery" ("Pandora" 70).
The house Sylvie attempts to "keep" must accommodate change including the peace and threat implied by nothingness. "A house should be built to float cloud high, if need be...A house should have a compass and a keel" (184). Rather than being seduced by the ultimate and final separation of nothingness, Ruth learns (as a transient) that housekeeping can be an expansive and inclusive method of engaging and interpreting the world.
This male dominance led the narrator from “The Yellow Wallpaper” into loneliness and eventually to a place of no return. The alienation is shown in terms of the setting, "The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. " The house that the couple rented for three months represents the woman’s physical imprisonment and symbolizes her isolation. Moreover, the nursery that John recommends his wife to live in includes many confining elements.
From the very beginning the room that is called a nursery brings to mind that of a prison cell or torture chamber. First we learn that outside the house there are locking gates, and the room itself contains barred windows and rings on the walls. The paper is stripped off all around the bed, as far as is reachable, almost as if someone had been tied to the bed with nothing else to do. A jail-like yellow is the color of the walls, which brings to mind a basement full of convicts rather than a vacation house. I think that this image of the nursery as a holding cell is first an analogy for the narrator's feelings of being imprisoned and hidden away by her husband. When she repeatedly asks John to take her away, he refuses with different excuses every time. Either their lease will almost be up, or the other room does not have enough space, etc. Even the simple request to have the paper changed is ignored: “He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and the...
The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind. While she is in the mental institute she blends reality with her subconscious, forming this story from events that are happening all around here in the real world.
To the color red can be attributed diverse meanings that accurately portray the mood of the movie. Red signifies passion and desire. We see these allusions represented in different objects: the flower in Irene's desk, the curtains in her office, and the lamp in Benjamin's room. Most of Benjamin and Irene's scenes together, in fact, include the slight appearance of that color. The purpose for this setup, is to allow the viewer to use it as context clues; to interpret, from the beginning, the passion that both have for each other. This passion remain...
The room becomes the woman’s world because he cannot leave. The yellow wallpaper represents her fear of being trapped. It also is the very thing causing her imprisonment inside the room. The narrator says “At the night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamp light, and worst of all by moon light it becomes bars!” (Gilman 662). Every night she lies awake and looks at her cell of a room as her eyes roam around the wallpaper. At the beginning she hates the wallpaper but becomes infatuated with it as the woman continues to try to get out. “ ‘nobody could climb through that pattern it strangles so…strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white’… If this can be seen as a metaphor of women’s oppression and death in the limited domestic space” (Fanghui). The woman could end up feeling useless, “suffocated” (Fanghui), and so closed off and commit suicide. The restraints used against her could be her downfall. She has become “possessive about the wallpaper” (Rao) because she feels “it is here property” (Rao). She no longer feels the need to leave because she has not found a way out yet. Once the narrator “freed the woman in the wallpaper” (Rao) she became insane (Rao). She says “I wonder if they all came out of the wallpaper, as I did?” (Gilman 665). She no longer sees the trapped behind the wallpaper as someone else but herself. She has been alone in for weeks trapped in the room with
Oppression has impacted society throughout history. Several great works of literature have highlighted the degrading effects of systematic oppression. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, new mental hospital admission Randle McMurphy challenges the domineering rule of Nurse Ratched. In George Orwell’s 1984 focuses on Winston Smith--a man trapped in the totalitarian reign of Big Brother. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1984 both convey themes of manipulation and rebellion through the depiction of oppressive institutions.
Concerning the contextualization of A Rose of Family as a sign of the times of women at that point, where cultural norms of women lead to a life in domestication. The recognition of the rose here as it is carefully placed in the title of the piece as well bears significance to the physical rose and what it meant to the young women in the South during the 1800s (Kurtz 40). Roses are generally given as tokens of love and affection by males to females. There are even remnants of it today where young lads also profess their love to women with roses; women still see it as an act of endearment towards them.
In Trifles by Susan Glaspell, the men ignore key signifiers that Mrs. Wright is guilty, yet the two women present are able to see these clues. The men shrug these off as mere “trifles, which sets up the story to be a social commentary because the women are able to solve the crime while the men are laughing at their observations. The men first comment on the women worrying over “trifles” when Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discuss the preserves being ruined (747). The women understand that this is a relevant concern because it symbolizes disrupt in the household, as well as Mrs. Wright’s lack of concern for her husband’s death. This intimation brought upon by the women in the house edifies the fact that they solely understand the motives Mrs. Wright might have for killing her husband.
Her withdrawal from the world is also presented in this passage. She chooses to move into the white room, now no longer decorated by the previous inhabitant. White can be a very cold, sterile color, and it serves to illustrate her lack of attachment to the room or to her own home.