Movies have changed dramatically since the 1960’s. The one difference that didn’t go unnoticed while taking this class is technology and meaning. After watching the different movies from this class I’ve seen more be about money than meaning. As the years got further into the present I noticed that the movies were becoming more about meaning. Although the movies did make a nice amount of money the meaning of movies started to become more important. The four movies I am going to be discussing in this essay will be; Fear Eats The Soul, Avatar, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Carrie. You may see these options and think these are all completely different movies but they are all quite similar. You may not know this, but these movies all contain issues that are social, political and more, There are issues that are brought to us in subtle ways and in other movies they are more pronounced. I enjoy movies like these because it speaks on issues that some are afraid to speak on and people who may deal with these issues on a daily basis. Although, there are many people who wish to see movies more for entertainment and don’t want to see the ugly in the world, I like to see both. I want to see the ugly in the world and the good because I know there is good in the world we just don’t see it because we naturally look for the bad before we look for the good.
I chose this picture because it was one of the moments where Ali and Emmi did not care about anything else other than their love for each other. All of the bad just floated away and you can see this in this scene and similar scenes to this one.
For the first movie I chose was Fear Eats The Soul directed by Fassbinder. After watching this movie for the first time I thought this movie would be boring since it was a movie from 1974. When the movie ended I was moved emotionally because of the meaning behind the movie was based on racial and exclusion issues. Before taking this class I watched movies for the entertainment but now I am more interested in the true meaning of a movie. Fassbinder created this movie in 14 days and created a true masterpiece when it comes to racial issues. The one scene that made me fall in love was one of the ending scenes. Emmi was excluded majority of the movie by her coworkers and people in general due to the person she chose to love. At the end of the movie a new hire at her job was getting paid less and Emmi and her coworkers excluded her due to different pay rate and the scene was poisonous because it showed one of general issues of the movie. Filmmaker, Todd Haynes interviewed on camera and said the movie shows how society is cycling on exclusion of some kind, or any kind at all. This spoke to be because it is a real problem in our everyday lives. There is so many reason for exclusion from race, gender, religion and even hair color.
The second movie I want to include is Carrie which was directed by Brian De Palma in 1976. A movie more than a girl getting bullied by her classmates and this was a movie about women and their menstrual s. As weird as this may sound everything in this movie is surrounded by the color red and rage of a menstrual. In the beginning of the movie Carrie gets her menstrual in the girls locker room. and as afraid as Carrie was, she was bullied by everyone in that locker room and she got sent home. Her mother sees the blood as something that comes from the devil she also said, “After the blood comes the boys”. After all of the reviews I read from Antol Bitel and Serefina Batrick I chose these two because Anton said what he took from the movie was that women cannot gather as a community. I did not take this lightly and it sounded like an assumption that woman cannot work together as a community. I read Serefina’s review and she made sense of the movie being about a woman’s period. She made a point to make it noticeable that a lot of the movie is based on the color red. Throughout the movie Carrie gets thrown into situations where she is trying to be her normal self and be accepted but Chris had it out for her and wanted to ruin her life by embarrassing her. The ending is saddening because there was possibility this could have been stopped but fate occurred and everyone died except Sue. this movie is filled with so many issues and one specifically is gender and bullying. I loved this movie but when I found out this was about menstrual it did upset me that someone could look out our natural process and think of a horror movie. Stephen King has such a extraordinary mind and I love it because he can literally take anything and make a movie out of it. He brought out the issues that some people may go through, such as the mother whom it obsessed by religion and thinks Carrie’s menstrual came from sinning.
I chose both of these photos because it is the original Carrie movie and the new version of the movie. I wanted to compare to show the difference in technology and how much more focused the new movie is rather than the original.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is a greatly choreographed movie with tons of meaning towards gender issues. Jen who is one of the main characters wants to be a sword fighter just like Master Li but never perused her want due to the issue that women were looked at as a waste of time to train because of gender. I loved her persistence to over come the biased view of only men being a master of sword fighting. Before we found out her identity in the movie Master Li thought she was Jade Fox. Jade Fox was a woman who would kill master’s due to her experience’s with masters being inappropriate with the women, including herself. Ang Lee did also did an amazing job with the story line and created an illusion of truth behind how powerful women can truly be and how women are always looked at as though they can’t be as great and powerful as a man. Jen is full of power but also distrust and she wants to trust Master Li but Jade has filled her head with all kinds of negativity about gender issues. Imagine someone telling you that you will never be good enough because you are a woman or a man. That statement cuts very deep and makes you want to prevail and prove everyone wrong, which I believe this is what Jen was trying to prove. Jen made it known that she was great and she would always be great. The end of the movie ended in hope and happiness. You can see Jen wants Master Li is to come back and even though no words are spoke as to what wish she desire she just smiles and jumps. This movie has one the best endings I have ever seen. It leaves you wanting more but at the same time you are ok that is was the ending.
I chose this photo because this was a perfect picture of when Jen looked free and happy. She was full of love and hate was not in her soul.
The final movie I chose was Avatar which was directed by James Cameron. Technology in this movie is breathtaking and unbelievable. A movie about a new world known as Pandora. A made up world that we still hope till this day that it can be real. This movie had creative ways to showcase global and military issues. This movie had no apologies which is another reason why I chose this movie so that I can be able to point out the true meaning of it. Neytiri is such ana mazing character and she is the main person who shows how much she loves the nature of her world. As Jake comes into her world we see how much of a difference in thinking we have in our own minds. We can see in the movie that the military’s only worries are about obtaining the sources that are underneath he natives sacred tree. They don’t care about the meaning or what it means to the people, they are shown in the movie as selfish. We can see the anti-war message is sent through showing how selfish the military can be and how they will destroy anything that comes into the way of something they want. Although, this is a huge anti-war movie we can’t forget that Neytiri and Jake fell in love but I believe Jake falls in love with more than Neytiri, he falls in love with the people and their world. He learned to appreciate the world as it is and seen how there doesn’t need to be violence. A beautiful movie about anti-war and global problems.
This picture speaks for itself. It shows the way they made the character without having the actress be in makeup for hours. Amazing work and I do love the ears she had to wear while acting.
I chose these movies out of all the movies I watched because these stuck out to me the most on issues that concerned me. We don’t realize how many issues we have in our world today because we are so distracted by social media and T.V. We also tend to believe what we want to believe. We see a post on Instagram about certain species in danger, or a person being called racial slurs due to the color of their skin, or how the world revolves around money and banks and government who truly do not care about out well being. All of this came from watching these movies and my teacher opening my eyes to the real meaning of movies. We forget to notice that these directors are trying to put out a message and they aren’t apologizing for how ugly it may look. This is how I feel movies have changed since the 1960’s. Although technology has changed tremendously I see more of the meaning behind movies changing. The one important thing I learned in this class is about the conventional movies and unconventional movies. The one thing that stuck out was that I learned I like unconventional movies more because they show the ugly in certain issues and they don’t try to sugar coat it and are not apologetic for what they put out. We want movies that are truthful about how the world is or even how our own society is here in the United States.
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC14folder/Carrie.html#top
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-2000
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/avatar-2009
You must be logged in to post a comment.