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Relevance Of The Study Of Adolescence
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Society has long fought to keep a balance, an organized harmony that keeps it running. A rigid structure ensures that those who do bad are punished and those who do good are rewarded with the ability to carry on with their lives, uninterrupted by chaos. It is when that balance, harmony, and structure are broken that the chaos descends. In the film The 400 Blows directed by François Truffaut, society is represented through the interactions between a troublemaking child and his school, home, police, and eventual incarceration at a juvenile reformation center. The film forces the audience to question societal traditions and comprehend them through the eyes of a disruptive child. The film follows the Parisian life of a young boy, Antoine Doinel …show more content…
(Jean-Pierre Léaud), as he struggles with being stereotyped as a troublemaker by the adults around him; his stereotyped image is a misunderstanding, a disconnection, between youths and adults. Rather, as the audience gains leverage into his personal life, Antoine is beginning to be seen as a hopeful and imaginative child, one with the love of Balzac and the hopes of one day seeing the sea. Rather, society it can be argued, has failed this child as everywhere he turns, he is unwanted. Antoine struggles in school and at home, a private society, before he must eventually face a greater society, one everyone must follow: the law, a public society. In the school, Antoine is instantly labeled as a troublemaker, having received a pin-up photograph of a girl and drawing a moustache on it, the teacher (Guy Decomble) immediately revokes his recess. In retaliation of his “unjust punishment” he writes in pen on the wall, further triggering his teacher. While the rest of the students copy the text the teacher is reciting, Antoine is left cleaning and once again is yelled at by his teacher for failing at his cleaning task. Antoine is continually failing at his tasks and seems to be also continuously disrupting his classroom, breaking the rigid structure of listening and copying. Yet, the disruption of the pin-up girl photo is only expanded as the teacher gives him his punishment. Society has projected a simple joke and expanded it into the worst behavior. Should the teacher have simply taken the photo and continued, the rest of the situation would ceased to have happened. Society is at fault for overreacting to a small, innocent joke between adolescent boys and expanding it into a disproportionate crime. Society, rather than providing encouragement and praise for the work he has done, seeks to visualize the worst of what he’s done (the bad deeds that disrupt its balance) causing chaos, making him unwanted. At home, Antoine fails to do much better than school.
His mother (Clair Maurier) is distant and cold, while his father (Albert Rémy) is more child-like, showing a lighthearted attitude, but lacking the guidance Antoine needs. This private society, rather than shining light on the worst of his behavior, chooses to ignore him completely. Antoine is forced to carry out chores while his parents discuss their upcoming racing event. His home isn’t a home that he is welcome at; he sleeps in an entryway with a sleeping bag and ripped pajamas and his parents senselessly leave him alone to attend a racing club. His innocence is shown through his shrine to Balzac, but even that is tarnished as the candle he lights sets the curtain on fire. Antoine’s parents lack the support he needs of leading by example. His parents, adults who have been confined to society’s traditions and experienced years of following the rules, lack the motivation to teach their son what to do, but instead get upset at what he does do. His mother complains that she doesn’t know how to fix is erratic, transgressive behavior, but does nothing in attempt to actually stop it. Society is giving expectations, but not teaching …show more content…
expectations. When society fails to teach its expectations and rather just enforces them, it is then that society falls apart completely.
When Antoine is thrust into the public society facing the police and a juvenile reformation center he finds it harder to cope with the new life than his old life where he was constantly yelled at and forgotten. The police put all their attention on him for stealing a typewriter and the juvenile reformation center focuses on changing his behavior. Antoine is no used to the societal norms and while he knows stealing the typewriter is wrong, hence why he tries to return it, he is not accustomed to sharing a cell with various vagrants. This sudden change in his environment forces him to the center where he once again, is unwanted. The center questions why he steals, why he lies, why his dislikes his mother and Antoine’s answers are all easily given. He has always struggled to find a life where he is wanted as his Grandmother didn’t want his mother to have an abortion, but lost the money needed to raise him. Since no one will believe him he lies and because of his mother disliking him, not wanting him having once spoken of getting an abortion, he sees her resentment and reflect it himself, back to her. Every society he has ever been a part of, has found him useless and
unwanted. It is in the end that the one dream Antoine has throughout the film, to see the sea, is finally gifted to him. In a long take and wide angle, we see various shots of Antoine running towards the sea, finally stepping into its waves as he looks directly at the camera. This end is an accumulation of everything society isn’t; the sea, la mer in French, is welcoming him, embracing him like the mother he never had, ma mere. Antoine is in his innocence, able to embrace a land where society doesn’t reign, nature does. It is a break from society, but in this break and in the final still image of Antoine, the audience realizes what society is. Society is the cloud that is always over citizen’s heads. Antoine may have broken free momentarily, but he is caught between land and sea, between society and freedom. He cannot live in the sea, he cannot live in a complete freedom, rule less environment; eventually he will be forced to return to the world that so coldly rejects him and face it head on, but it is in that idea that new hope is born. Antoine can conquer the rules society inflicts, he can live a good life and every now and then he can break free to his true home, the sea.
The film starts with an uprising after a white storeowner kills a black teenager. This incident Highlights Prejudices. The teenager was labeled a thief because of the color of his skin and the unjustifiable murder causes racial tensions that exist as a result of the integration of the high schools.
This film tries to show that these young people are under influents of American movies and culture. They don’t really obey their parents, because they’re blaming their parents for anything that happened during the world wars. But at the same time the movie doesn’t try to blame everything on them. It wants to show that with pushing the young kid too far, nothing is going to get fix.
In his discussion with a psychiatrist many of Antoine’s mishaps and offences are revealed, including the fact that he stole money from his grandmother and visited a prostitute. Antione’s interest in women is explored in this scene. It is also revealed that Antione had been sent to live with a wet nurse and then his grandmother because his mother did not want him around. Through her actions and words, Antione was able to notice that his mother never really cared for him, leading to a rift to be formed between them. As he explains how he found out his mother wanted to abort him, he looks down, nervously moves his fingers, and speaks in a quieter tone demonstrating that the topic of his mother is one that causes him pain and sadness; this is a contrast to when he speaks indifferently about stealing his grandmother’s money. Antione explains that the reason he stole money from her is because she is “old” and “going to die soon.” Antione’s noticeable indifference towards his grandmother, and his need to steal from her regardless of her kindness demonstrates that for Antione she does not satisfy the role of the maternal figure he desires. For Antione, his grandmother cannot take the role of his mother because she is “old” and “going to die.” His grandmother’s advanced age is a threat because in the event of her death, he will
The first topic that is found in the movie that was taught in class is conflict. Conflict is expressed disagreement over perceived incompatible goals. Although it may seem it, conflict is not always a negative thing. Conflict is needed and can help growth of relationships. Many conflicts are started because people have different conversational styles. In class, we learned that there are guidelines that one should follow in order to help prevent conflict or help solve it. The guidelines include clarifying goals, helping others save face, using constructive criticism skills, using empathic listening skills, monitoring nonverbal be...
...le contradicts the pleasant ambience of the town. When the foreshadowing job reaches its goal, it leads to the climatic point of the story. Through this climax, the reader sees the cruelty of the residents and how they undervalue life for this particular ritual.
Breathless is in many ways the antithesis of the classical Hollywood cinema; the changes have a direct effect on the relationship the film has with the viewer. Classical Hollywood cinema includes standards such as continuity editing, highly motivated, character-driven stories and a coherent narrative structure. Breathless defies these elements of traditional filmmaking, instead defining what we know as French New Wave.
This demonstrates to us that no matter how much your legal or moral laws are violated, what matters is how you as an individual react to the situation, justly or unjustly. This movie is centered around the notion that if you are a person of ethnic background, that alone is reason for others to forsake your rights, although in the long run justice will prevail
In the experimental novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, he explores the concept of existentialism and the idea that humans are born into nothing and descend into nothingness after death. The novel takes place in the French colony of Algiers where the French-Algerians working-class colonists live in an urban setting where simple life pleasures are of the upmost importance in the lives of working class people like the protagonist of the novel Meursault. What is fascinating about this novel is that it opens up with a scene of perpetual misfortune for him through the death of his mother although he seems to express otherwise. The reader perceives this nonchalance as a lack of care. Maman’s death and its impact on Meursault appear in both the very beginning and very end of the two-part novel, suggesting a cyclical pattern in the structure. This cyclical pattern suggests not a change in the moral beliefs of Meursault but rather his registering society’s systems and beliefs and craft meaning in his own life despite the fact that he meets his demise in the end. Camus uses Maman’s funeral to characterise both Meursault and the society and customs created by the society Meursault lives in in order to contrast the two while at the same time reveal how while society changes, Meursault does not. Rather, Maman’s funeral becomes of unprecedented importance in Meursault’s life and allows him to find that nothing means anything in his meaningless world at the time of his death. He finds peace in that.
The seriousness is enough to make you lose faith in humanity for a second, but catch your attention and evoke deep and reflection thought into the truth that goes on in the part of society that is unknowingly ignored by the population because it gets constantly overshadowed by media and the government. More importantly, the film reminds us that progress will move forward only when those at the top of authority realize they need to relate with and answer to the people who want change, answer to the voices of people those broken, traumatized, who truly need
Although there were many concepts that were present within the movie, I choose to focus on two that I thought to be most important. The first is the realistic conflict theory. Our textbook defines this as, “the view that prejudice...
Several boys pass around a erotic picture of a woman through an all boys classroom, and Antoine is the one who gets caught with it. This is where Antoine’s descent into the vicious cycle begins, nothing more than a strike of bad luck. This is where cause and effect come into play. Because Antoine gets caught with the picture, he is punished by his teacher, because he is punished by his teacher, he skips school, since he skips school, he lies to get out of another punishment, when he is caught lying about his mother’s death, he runs away. In the entire film Antoine makes actions in attempts to dodge the consequences of previous actions, and it is because of his immature handling of responsibility that he lands himself into this vicious cycle of adolescence. Truffaut brilliantly weaves together this cause and effect relationship in Antoine’s life with a specific style of film-making. Each scene becomes its own episode every single one independent from the last. It is because of this cause and effect relationship that we can piece these individual scenes together to form a very linear
As, I began watching the movie my whole opinion had changed and I ended up being wrongs , she started out by breaking the kids up into two groups , the blue-eyed people , and the brown-eyed people. On the first day of the experiment which was on a Tuesday, she told the blue-eyed people they were smarter, better, and they had more advantages than the brown eyed people. When it was lunch time Ms. Elliot told the blue-eyed people they could go back for seconds and instantly you can see the brown-eyed people were upset. At recess two particular children name Russell and John had been best friends but one had called the other “brown-eye”. The little boy ended up hitting his best friend because he felt like he was calling him stupid and when they were discussing it in class , one of the students said “that’s like calling black people niggers”. After, that Ms. Elliot started asking him questions like “Did it help by hitting him? Do you feel better now? Did it make you feel better inside?” and the little boy responded “no” to all the questions. With this being said, the kids automatically started putting two and two together and realized that violence wasn’t the right answer, violence doesn’t solve anything, and that you shouldn’t call people names. The second day she ended up switching the roles, now
The movie shows how the traditional classroom setting is flawed, and seems to be at a standstill not allowing for growth or a true learning experience. As states in School and Society: “This concern is not hypothetical. Many of the specific tests being used to generate speeches and articles about the ...
“We fight each other for territory; we kill each other over race, pride, and respect. We fight for what is ours. They think they’re winning by jumping me now, but soon they’re all going down, war has been declared.” Abuse, Pain, Violence, Racism and Hate fill the streets of Long Beach, California. Asians, Blacks, Whites and Hispanics filled Wilson High School; these students from different ethnic backgrounds faced gang problems from day to night. This movie contains five messages: people shouldn’t be judgmental because being open-minded allows people to know others, having compassion for a person can help people change their views in life, being a racist can only create hate, having the power of the human will/goodness to benefit humanity will cause a person to succeed at any cost and becoming educated helps bring out the intelligence of people.
This film really focuses on the characters. Their thoughts, anger, distress, and mistakes become part of your mistakes. This deals with a father’s s priority and how he will achieve that priority by using unethical ways like torturing an innocent man. Bringing up child abduction and torture are