Lars and the Real Girl is a poignant film that captures the essence of love, death, and loneliness. Quirky and tender, Lars seems to prefer spending time alone and curious about human relationships as he stares through the glass window from his house in the beginning of the film. Deeper into film, Lars is diagnosed with delusional disorder, believing Bianca, a life-sized sex doll, as a real woman. Lars has created Bianca to seek true and eternal love and to cope with his emotions from a significant change in his life. With the help of his delusion and the support of the community members, he becomes more “normal” and integrated into the society.
Lars is a withdrawn man. He has a solitary and a sheltered lifestyle and refuses have intimate
Class, gender, race, and ethnicity play important roles in the film “Real Women Have Curves” by Patricia Cardoso. Ana is the main character and is portrayed as a Hispanic/Latino teenager finishing her senior year of high school. Having grown up in a Roman Catholic house hold, her family expects her to stay home and take care of the family and eventually get married and start a family of her own soon. However, Ana has different plans for herself and does not want to follow traditions and beliefs that her mother tries to force against her.
In Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll House, Ibsen tells a story of a wife and mother who not only has been wronged by society, but by her beloved father and husband because of her gender. Nora left her father’s house as a naïve daughter only to be passed to the hands of her husband forcing her to be naïve wife and mother, or so her husband thinks. When Nora’s husband, Torvald becomes deathly ill, she takes matters into her own hands and illegally is granted a loan that will give her the means to save her husband’s life. Her well guarded secret is later is used against her, to exort Torvald, who was clueless that his wife was or could be anything more than he made her. However, Nora has many unrecognized dimensions “Besides being lovable, Nora is selfish, frivolous, seductive, unprincipled, and deceitful” (Rosenberg and Templeton 894). Nora is a dynamic character because her father and her husband treat her as a child and do not allow her to have her own thoughts and opinions, as the play progresses she breaks free from the chains of her gender expectation to explore the world around her.
The wonderful movie, Lars and the Real Girl, explores the nature of Lars’ mental condition by analyzing his mental state, the causes of his actions, and factors that promote his healing. Lars, cripplingly shy young man, lives in the converted garage of a house that had belonged to his father. Throughout the film, Lars awkwardly tries to avoid any moment of connection or contact with the compassionate and good-hearted people in his minuscule Wisconsin town. With this in mind, Lars could be diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. Moreover, from analyzing Lars’ mental condition, many red flags appear in his mental state, the causes of his actions, and the factors that lead to his healing.
feels people aren’t listening to him. He is also very lonely. He states that when one of
In the Disney movie Life-Size, actress Tyra Banks plays the role of Eve, a Barbie-like doll, who is "perfect in every way," come to life. Later in the movie, the once-very popular Eve doll's sales decrease dramatically, and the company stops the production of the Eve doll not realizing what they are doing wrong. Distressed, Banks, the "life-size" Eve doll, turns to her owner Casey and learns two valuable lessons—that perfection is boring and unrealistic, and it is okay to make mistakes. Casey tells the life-size Eve that the Eve doll is too "goody-goody" to be real, and girls need more realistic role models—heroes—with personality, inner struggles, and mistakes. Almost everyone likes heroes from Spiderman to firefighters to Dad who inspire the young and keep them motivated; however when the heroes' lives and beliefs are fabricated to fit a stereotype, these humans regress into nothing more than a boring ideal. Heroification with cognitive dissonance blind students to the reality of this world and limit their ability to view controversies objectively.
learns to disconnect himself from his feelings. He feels he can't tell anyone about his
Nora has been a doll all of her life, fortunately, she has an awakening that kindles her passion for freedom. Torvald restricts her freedom. Torvald adorns Nora to his wishes and desires and basically strips Nora of her identity. Nora wants a happy marriage; hence, she appeases Torvald. When she is being blackmailed, she believes that Torvald will be her savior. However, Torvald’s selfish reaction to the news is Nora’s auspicious awakening. She knows that her marriage is a sham and that she does not know who she is. Nora leaves Torvald so that she can have the liberty to gain knowledge of the world and herself. Nora’s awakening has provided her with the freedom to fulfill her life.
He is also a man withe many secrets and facades and this is a contributing factor to his untimely
middle age adult who only thinks about himself and his desires. Erikson’s psychosocial theory of
...tionship and further shapes his character into a state of self-isolation as he will even push his closest family out of his life.
This story is about a young man by the name of Kevin Wendell Crumb who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. It is believed that some people with this disorder are able to take on the physical attributes of each personality they have. Kevin has 23 personalities and sees a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Fletcher [Betty Buckley], who realizes that one of his personalities is more dominant and throughout the film begins to takes over the others. One day Kevin is compelled to abduct three teenage girls. He then keeps the girls captive and confused as each time he visits them he comes back as someone new, sometimes a 7 year old boy and others as a woman. As the girls fight to escape, Kevin fights himself as he loses the ability to control who he is.
Lars and the Real Girl is a film that illustrates a variety of Catholic Social Teachings. The teaching of human dignity is evident because although Lars has a distant relationship with the community treats him just as important as the others. Lars is socially awkward and consumed with isolated behaviors, however, the community does not treat him as an outsider or disregard his presence. Lars has difficulty maintaining a close relationship with his family and co-workers because he rarely takes the time out of his day to communicate to them, however they continue to invite him to gatherings and dinners. Human dignity towards Lars also is present, although the community is in shock that his girlfriend is a sex doll. The community takes the
Viktor seems to be quite content in isolation. His passion for his work causes him to revert to isolation. He mentions that “no youth could have passed more happily than mine” (Shelley 67). Furthermore, his parents emphasize to him that it will cause them great distress if he doesn’t stay in touch with them. Despite their pleading and past kindness to him, Viktor still
In Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”, characters are constantly changing their identity. Nora opens up the play by presenting her childish mind to Torvald. Always being in control, Torvald see’s Nora only as a child and not ever being serious. Her father and Torvald brainwashed her mind to act like a cute puppet to them. She pretends to be vulnerable to him to receive attention and money. Nora’s true self is hidden deep underneath herself waiting to appear. Because of unfortunate events in the play, Nora will stop at nothing to receive what is rightfully hers as her sense shifts from Torvald’s joking wife, into a self-empowering, prepared woman.
The first thing that the reader will notice regarding gender is the title of the play “A Doll’s House”. This reveals to the reader, Nora’s and possible Torvald’s status within the play. Nora is unable to be herself as she is not seen as an equal in her marriage. Instead, she is something to be admired and flaunted. This need for her to be something that Torvald can show off. Both Nora and Torvald are living lives based on illusion. Torvald has made Nora his perfect little doll so that he can look good. She thinks that he is a person with incredible strength, she becomes disillusioned with him at the end of the play when he exposes himself as just a man. This paper will look at the way that society’s expectations of gender roles are perceived