Anyone who has ever seen the 1967 classic movie, Cool Hand Luke, can agree that the main theme of the movie would be about nonconformity. The movie takes place in a southern prison, where the prisoners must participate in the intense labor of a chain gang and work everyday in the sweltering heat while serving their time. The inmates must follow the strict rules that are set, or they are punished in an almost cruel and unusual fashion. The outcast, war hero and true nonconformist is the main character, Lucas Jackson. After vandalizing parking meters, Jackson must spend two years in the penitentiary. While serving his short amount of time in the prison, the audience discovers that Mr. Jackson will do almost anything and everything in his power …show more content…
Because of Mr. Jackson 's rebellious attitude, the movie parallels the 1960’s and the nonconformist ideology popular during that time.
The 1960’s were a time of going against the norm, breaking the rules, acting against authority. Kenneth Walsh describes the decade as “a decade of extremes, of transformational change and bizarre contrasts: flower children and assassins, idealism and alienation, rebellion and backlash.”(Walsh) Rebelling against conformity was exactly how the character of Lucas Jackson is portrayed.“The film 's protagonist is not a recognizable figure of the era 's counterculture; he 's no free-love hippie or dedicated anti-war activist, yet younger audiences were drawn to his rebellious nature” (Nixon). Although Luke is far from a hippie, he still relates to the way the hippies were in the 1960’s. “The hippies” primary tenet was that life was about being happy, not about what others told them they should be. Their “if it feels good, do it” attitudes included little forethought nor concern for the consequences of their actions” (Haddock). Luke relates
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The movie used many representations, such as when Luke ate all of 50 of the eggs. The eggs represented all 50 prisoners, and after he ate the eggs he laid in a cross position. After Luke was beaten by the officers, and he goes back inside with all the other prisoners, he was eschewed just as Christ was when he was sacrificed. Luke’s prison number was 38, in the Bible, Luke 38:1 states that “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Retrospect Realm) Religion was one of the main key points that defined the 1960’s. In Joanne Beckmann 's article, “Religion in Post-World War II America” she discusses religion, and how it was changed dramatically in America during the 1960’s and 1970’s. She basically goes on to say how in the later in the 1960’s people were leaving the church and going for “new alternative religions.” Therefore, it was a dispute between religions and whether or not people should be leaving the church.The movie was made in 1967, which was right around the time all of the religious movements were occurring. The director, Stuart Rosenberg, used Luke’s character as a way to bring in God, but in an underlining way. This was important that the movie relates back to Christ, because Christ did not conform to the ideas and rules of the priests and pharisees who were the authority figures of the Jewish faith. As a
Mahatmas Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the South Africans all have used disobedience in order to change an unjust norm or law(s). The most common form of disobedience which have been used in history is to simply not obey the officials of higher authority and protest in order to get the point across. These protests have been successful because of the mass numbers of supporters but also because they set out to change an unjust rule or norms. In the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke featuring Paul Newman, Lucas (Luke) has been sent to jail for "beheading" parking meters while intoxicated. During his time in jail, he disobeys both the de facto inmate leader and the wardens simply because he did not like to conform to their rules. Luke's, unlike the aforementioned disobedience leaders, lack of just cause for disobeying authority ultimately leads to his unhappiness and demise.
In Cool Hand Luke, the movie begins with the word, VIOLATION, across the screen. The word is from a parking meter and sets the tone for the entire movie. Luke Jackson, the title character, is arrested for cutting off the heads of the town’s parking meters while drunk, or in legal terms, for destroying municipal property while under the influence of alcohol. When asked why he cut the heads off the parking meters, Luke answers, “You could say I was settling an old score.” While it leaves the viewers believing that he probably received a parking ticket at some time in the past, no clues are given to what the old score may have been.
My reception of this film was so positive because of my knowledge, experiences and values. I have always enjoyed learning about the 1960’s and admired the political activism and change that occurred in that time period. I grew up in a very liberal home, where we were freely able to discuss controversial topics and form our own opinions.
Being a prisoner has more restrictions than one may believe. Prisoners are told when they should participate in daily activities and what they are allowed to say or do on a daily basis. This is not a life anyone is determined to experience during any period of time. However, all though for most prison life is just a depiction in a movie or on television, it is a reality for many. Their crimes and behaviors brought them into a world of being stripped of their freedom. Those who oversee the prisoners must control order within the brick walls. An article discussing the duties of a prison officer, defines it as one who “...has responsibility for the security, supervision, training and rehabilitation of people committed to prison by the courts”
...ile the 1950’s aspect of the film forms a sense of nostalgia for the past. This nostalgia is consistent with Reagan’s 1980s political outlook. Reagan had a 1950s conservative rhetoric, as he promoted gender roles and traditional values. However, 1950s Lorraine rebels against these ideals by being assertive, smoking, and drinking. People of that time rebelled against Reaganite politics by referring to the rebelliousness parts of 1980s teen movies. Thus producing a visualization of American rebelliousness challenging authority and power. Overall, the movie prefers to promote newness and youngness. For example, the school dance is a critical part of the movie where Marty has to make his parent fall in love. Americans prefer to collaborate themselves with those ideas. The movie demonstrates America as a place of renewal by putting teen culture right in the spotlight.
American society and culture experienced an awakening during the 1960s as a result of the diverse civil rights, economic, and political issues it was faced with. At the center of this revolution was the American hippie, the most peculiar and highly influential figure of the time period. Hippies were vital to the American counterculture, fueling a movement to expand awareness and stretch accepted values. The hippies’ solutions to the problems of institutionalized American society were to either participate in mass protests with their alternative lifestyles and radical beliefs or drop out of society completely.
The 1950 and 60s were a time of the “red scare/communism”, anything which sounded like opposition to the government or frowned upon anything which basically sounded "out of the ordinary/ unusual" was branded communist and this was shown in this movie. One would think that film writers would not be under much scrutiny, but many were called communists for their portrayals of what was
In this essay I will be looking at the topic of the countercultural movement of the 1960’s through counterculture film. The 1960’s were an extremely interesting time in history not only in the United States but all over the western world, as we saw the rise of the counterculture generation. The counter was a group of movements focused on achieving personal and cultural liberation and was embraced in many different ways by the decade’s young people. I have chosen this topic as the 60’s stand out for me as a revolutionary and often misrepresented period in history. The films I have chosen to look at are The Baader Meinhof Complex from director Uli Edel, Woodstock from Michael Wadleigh, Pirate Radio from Richard Curtis, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from director Terry Gilliam. I chose to analyse these films as I believe they clearly demonstrate the social and political issues of the 1960’s and societies response to them.
When Shirley Jackson published this story, the audience responded with negative feedback; it terrified the readers to read about such cruelty and inhumanity. Jackson wrote this story to show the reality of corrupt society and the underlying secrets of wickedness hidden in human nature. Through this story, people can see the truth and value of reality and realize that the world is full of immoral practices and beliefs. Jackson creates a parallel society that could be compared to the world and represented by certain events.
Although, it is proven difficult to completely change your point of view from the society you are brought up in. The characters in this film go through a lot of self-reevaluation to find their place in society, as well as a reevaluation of their initial prejudicial
...d Jackson attacks conformity and mindlessness by providing a scenario where social conformity has gotten so out of hand that the people can easily commit a murder, even though they are unsure of why they are doing it. Their minds have been changed so much by mob mentality that they really don’t know right from wrong. No matter how wrong the tradition seems from the outside looking in, on the inside they are simply following tradition, and tradition is never wrong to those who follow it. In other words, the tradition continued simply because they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong.
In the movie Cool Hand Luke, the main character is arrested in the first five minutes of the movie for beheads all of the parking meters along a street. He is being forced to abide by the rules in prison and at first, does not get a warm welcome by his fellow prisoners because he refuses to abide ...
Cool Hand Luke was based on the experiences of Lucas Jackson, a war hero who returned to the United States. Lucas is sentenced to prison after he is caught drunkenly cutting the heads off of parking meters for no apparent reason. For this offense, Lucas is given a sentence of two years at a notorious Florida prison camp run by a hard-core warden. Initially, Lucas is not well liked by either the guards or inmates due to the fact that he sees himself as an independent and ignores the pecking order in the prison. The reputation of Lucas begins to change when he shows resilience in a boxing match with Dragline, the alpha male inmate. His reputation is cemented when he bluffs at poker with a losing hand, earning him the name “Cool Hand Luke”. From this point forward Luke is revered by the other inmates and looked at as a leader and role model.
This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined. These families were very different, yet so much alike, they both portrayed what to me the whole ‘message’ of the movie was. Although everyone was so different they all faced such drastic decisions and issues that affected everyone in so many different ways. It wasn’t like one person’s pain was easier to handle than another is that’s like saying Vietnam was harder on those men than on the men that stood for black rights or vice versa, everyone faced these equally hard issues. So it seemed everyone was very emotionally involved. In fact our whole country was very involved in president elections and campaigns against the war, it seemed everyone really cared.
The first example of comparison between the movie and the current times would be the Ku Klux Klan. The group called the KKK was a main threat to the African American population in the early 1960s (Hart). Currently, the Ku Klux Klan still makes threats to African Americans and other ethnicities, based purely on race. This group is found in the Southern States to this day, which makes us question on how far evolved some people’s minds have come since the 1960’s. In the movie, Mississippi Burning, we can see how the KKK is violent towards African Americans for simply being of color. One example from the movie is when a white man sat next to a colored, which resulted in the African American getting hurt.