Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction is a movie directed by Marc Forster.  This is a movie about a man named Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, whose world was turned upside down when he finds out his life was being written.  He is going about his everyday business when he suddenly hears the voice of a narrator, played by Emma Thompson, telling his life as a story while it is happening.  

This movie is very postmodern because the style and storyline were very different from what was being done at the time.  The way it was introduced as a story about literature and what might really happen as someone is writing a book.  For example, what if as an author is writing a book it is unexpectedly happening to a real person.  That is exactly what takes place in this movie and it was unknown to both the storywriter and her main character.  Once Harold heard the narrator’s voice and tries to get help, people think he’s crazy.  It wasn’t until he sought help from a university literature professor, played by Dustin Hoffman, that they came to recognize the voice and identify her.  It is at this point in the movie that the viewer begins to think is this all real or being written and what if life may be like this?

 I think this is more of a story about stories because the movie is a story and it’s about a story written.  It just so happens that while the story within the story is being written it is also being lived out through the main character.  He realizes that the all of her writings end in tragedy and the hero/main character’s death.  She worries that all of her books may have tragically ended the life of a real person.  This causes her to think twice about the ending to this story.  The viewer is lead to think about stories and how’d they are played out. 

The movie was very cleverly portrayed.  The way it jumped back and forth between the narrator and the main character and how it brought them together.  It is very interesting to think about if life really worked this way.  How would your story be written?  What twists and plots do they have in mind for you?  Would you try to change the ending of your story if you knew what was ahead or is it better to just live life day to day and to live for the unexpected.

            

Fight Club

This movie, The Fight Club, was directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter.  The main character is an unnamed narrator played by Norton and the story is about his fight with himself.  He suffers from insomnia and is stuck in a white-collar job that doesn’t make him happy.  He befriends a soap salesman, Tyler Durden, on a flight home from a business trip.  When Norton’s apartment is destroyed, he calls Tyler and they soon become good friends.  They form a fight club as a form of release, but Tyler starts to take it too far and is doing things that Norton isn’t too comfortable with.  Tyler slowly builds a cult type gang that has them believing that violence and destruction will solve their problems.  

The message of the film is about the mind, self control, and the struggle people face with themselves all of the time.  Norton was a loner who hated his job and was on the verge of a breakdown.  Without knowing it, he created a person in his mind who did things that Norton couldn’t see himself doing.  However, as things became more violent, Norton realized that his friend, Tyler, was a mental projection of himself and he didn’t really exist.  I think the message of the film may be overshadowed by the violence depending upon the viewer.  If you are the type of person who focuses on the violence or watches a particular movie for the violence you could easily miss the message.  If you view this movie with an open mind and are the type of person who looks for a deeper meaning in general you will easily see the message.

This movie is all about the mind.  The id and the ego in an internal battle.  The id does what it wants to get what it wants.  It doesn’t think any broader than that and just lives to satisfy an immediate need.  In this movie the id is symbolized by Tyler.  Tyler has a constant need to be satisfied instantly and does whatever is needed to achieve that.  When he wants something done he does it in anyway he sees fit and he just does it without any second thought.  The ego is symbolized by the unnamed narrator played by Norton.  The ego is the opposite of the id and slightly less powerful.  He does things in a normal fashion and adheres to the rules of society.  He’s more of a normal type person who wants to fit in and not upset the balance of things.  Not to be too crazy.  The conflict in this movie between the id and the ego is that it’s easier to go along with the id because it’s easier to just do what you want when you want with no fear of consequence.  It’s much harder to be the ego and to do things in the correct way.  Being the ego means working harder to achieve what you want. It is always more of a struggle to do things the right way instead of just following your instincts to do what you want.  
The conflict in this movie is resolved when Norton realizes that Tyler is a mental projection of himself and isn’t real.  He realizes that he has control over Tyler and the bad decisions that were being made.  He then puts an end to the violence that Tyler has created by shutting out the id and taking full control.  

Do the Right Thing

The film Do the Right Thing is a movie about love and hate.  It is great in showing racism from all different views and races.  The movie was written, produced and directed by Spike Lee, who also stars as the lead character, Mookie.  The movie takes place in the summer, during a heatwave in Brooklyn, New York.  The neighborhood consists mostly of Black, but is mixed in with some White, Italian, Asian and Hispanic.  It shows how nobody gets anything from it and everyone loses. 

I think this movie speaks volumes about racism in America.  Racism has been ingrained in our society for so long when people get angry the insults seem to go directly to skin color.  The movie shows how people’s anger can escalate quickly.  It may begin with any slight agitation, but when a mixed group of races is involved it can quickly turn into a race issue.  Each race acting out against the others.  This all causes more accusations, which causes more tension and escalates to heated anger.  In making this movie, Spike Lee didn’t focus on the perspective of one race.  He showed how hurtful it could be to all.  As Roger Ebert said in his review of the movie, “he made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants.” 

I think Spike Lee did a good job of showing how easily hate can escalate to racism.  He showed that it didn’t benefit anyone and only caused pain and sadness.  One character, Sal, played by Danny Aiello, is an Italian pizza shop owner who has been in this neighborhood for about twenty five years.  It’s a popular place for people to gather and Mookie also works here.  Sal has even said Mookie was like a son to him.  On this day however another character, Buggin Out, played by Giancarlo Esposito, had been giving Sal a hard time about not having any black people on his wall of fame.  Buggin later recruits Radio, played by Bill Nunn, to get Sal because he thought he was being prejudice.  This escalates to a riotous mob crowd who destroys Sal’s restaurant and in the end Radio is killed at the hands of the white cops.  I think that Mookie’s action of throwing a trash can through the window of Sal’s shop at the end of the movie was a very important move.  Although it may have seemed a very strange move because you may have thought this is what caused the destruction of the shop, I think Spike Lee had Mookie do this to take the crowd off of Sal, who he thought they were going to kill, and redirect it at the shop instead.  Also as stated in Roger Ebert’s review, “there are no heroes or villains in the film.”

Spike Lee shows just how stupid racism is throughout America and even within small communities.  Since he showed it from many viewpoints it was clear that no one benefits.  It really makes you see how much better things could be if people would communicate with each other better.  The movie didn’t even really start out from a racist point of view, but from hate and anger.  Stress and tension from the heat from what people perceived as racism grew and exploded into an all out race war.   

Boyz N the Hood

            In the movie “Boyz N the Hood” there were two characters that put on a tough guise including the main character, Tre, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. and another character Doughboy, played by Ice Cube.  The movie is about a gang of boys growing up in a bad part of town who had to adapt to certain standards for living in that neighborhood. 

            Tre lived with his mother until he was ten.  She was concerned at problems he was having in school so she sent him to live with his father to hopefully learn some life lessons.  Throughout Tre’s time living with his father he saw things that bothered him.  Shootings and death seemed to be an everyday occurrence in this neighborhood.  It occasionally brought Tre to tears as he confessed to his girlfriend, Brandi, played by Nia Long, that he couldn’t stand it and didn’t want to be there.  However living in this neighborhood these were the things that caused him to have to act tough.  It was strictly for survival.  He wouldn’t be able to show his face with the other boys if he didn’t conform and go along with everything that was happening.  Tre struggled everyday with decisions that he knew could possibly change his future forever. 

            Unlike Tre, Doughboy found it easier to put on the tough guise.  He had grown up in this neighborhood his entire life.  He was more aware of shutting out emotion and putting up walls to seemingly not care.  He was well aware that this was his only way for survival.  There were small parts throughout the move that lead the viewer to believe that Doughboy wanted differently.  However, it was the end of the movie, after Doughboy killed three people in revenge for his half brother Ricky’s murder that you really know that Doughboy was putting on the tough guise.  He understood about decisions that Tre had made with regard to the retaliation.  He understood that his action would have consequences but feeling as though he had no brothers left he no longer cared. 

            One big difference between Tre and Doughboy was that Tre had a good male role model.  His father, Furious, played by Laurence Fishburne had often given him advise and tried to guide him in the right direction.  For both characters, I feel that putting on a tough guise was a detriment.  In Tre’s situation it was a detriment because he was never able to live up to his full potential.  He skipped a lot of school, he wasn’t able to just be himself, and he constantly had to make hard decisions on a daily basis.  This put a strain on him and his feelings and emotions were constantly bottled up inside him.  For Doughboy this life took away all his emotions and because of that he was cold and hard.  It took away his future and then took away his life.  

Tootsie

            The movie Tootsie is about an actor named Michael who is highly assertive.  He has a hard time getting hired because people don’t like him.  He wants to produce a play but he doesn’t have the money.  When he learns of an opening in a soap opera he decides to apply, even if the part is meant for a woman.  He decides to transform himself into a woman without anyone knowing.  He lives most of each day in the role of a woman.  He’s learned that women have it harder then he’d thought.  In some cases the movie challenged stereotypes and gender roles and in other cases it reinforced them. 

            In the movie, the director was stereotyped as at typical man who thought women were beneath him.  He would continually degrade Dorothy, the character that Michael would dress up as.  He didn’t know why Dorothy didn’t really like him and found it interesting that she challenged his authority.  In these scenes I think it reinforced the stereotypes and gender roles of men.  In one of the final scenes when the director finds out Dorothy is really Michael it seems to set his world right again.  Dorothy had turned his world upside down by blending the roles of genders, but once he knew that Dorothy was really a man he just figured oh, that’s why.  She was really a he. 

            There were also many ways that Michael challenged stereotypes and gender roles of women while he was in the character of Dorothy.   He proved to others that just because you are a woman doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t stand up for yourself.  He didn’t expect for all of this to happen.  He never really gave thought to women being treated differently until he became one.  Once he was being treated differently because he was a woman he still only knew how he would have handled it as a man.  He couldn’t do it differently.  Standing up to the men was just how he was personality wise.  People were shocked at how he was behaving as a woman and this was challenging stereotypes.  People began to see that it wasn’t such a bad thing. 

            It was very interesting how the movie both challenged and reinforced stereotypes.  One minute it was very clear that the men were men and the women were women.  Then the character of Dorothy would come forward to shatter, or challenge those theories.  It clearly showed people are just people and they should all be treated with respect.

Feminism in Film: Thelma and Louise

            In the movie Thelma and Louse it begins with the men having the dominant roles and the woman being the weaker sex.  It starts with Thelma being over powered and afraid of her husband.  Louise seemed stronger and more independent.  It was early on that you knew Louise wanted Thelma to take control of the way she was being treated.

            The two decided to go on a road trip and Thelma didn’t tell her husband out of fear, yet the first night when they stopped she became friendly with a man who almost attacked her.  This forced Louise to stand up for her friend and she shot and killed the man.  This set off a chain of events with them running from the law.  As the movie progresses they encounter many men who seem to think these two women are pushovers and can be easily be taken because they are women.  This causes the women to gain courage almost as though they have nothing left to lose.  It is at this point the balance of dominant roles shifts.

            Between the thoughts of getting caught and being killed the two women seemed to be happier.  Almost as though they had been set free and had a new found bravery.  Throughout the movie there was one man who genuinely wanted to help them, but because of their past and what they’d been through and how they’d been treated, they wouldn’t let him.  They couldn’t let themselves trust him.
           In this move there are three main male characters.  Thelma's husband, Darryl, one of the detectives, Hal Slocomb, and a man they meet on the road, J.D. Darryl was completely overbearing and controlling.  Thelma was afraid of him and lived her life with him doing as she was told and how she felt she should behave.  J.D. seemed caring and concerned and she instantly seemed to fall for him and to trust him, but he ended up using her and stealing all of their money.  Hal was genuinely concerned and really wanted to help the women.  However, they had both been so used and taken by the time he'd come along they wouldn't allow themselves to trust him.  Although the ending seemed tragic the two women had made a joint decision which they both felt empowered them.