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Repercussions of child abuse
Child abuse and its effects
Child abuse in negative impact
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You would think a movie about a rampaging feral boy and David Carradine in drag would be an amazing experience in cinema history, but for some reason, Sonny Boy is an experience in torture. It's an insane, terribly written foray into strange happenings and not once can I say I enjoyed it. In fact, I don't know how anyone can enjoy this movie, but if you can explain to me, please comment below. For now, though, let's continue on with this review...
PRODUCT INFORMATION
PLOT SUMMARY
A shattering, unforgettable performance from David Carradine (Kill Bill) powers this wickedly off-beat tale of family love gone berserk. Paul L. Smith (Midnight Express, Crimewave) and Brad Dourif (Child's Play, The Exorcist III) are also featured in powerfully moving supporting roles.
In a remote desert town, a psychopathic petty crook (Smith) and his transvestite girlfriend (Carradine) kidnap an orphaned infant, cage it like an animal, and train it to steal and kill on their command. Years later, when the half-wild Sonny Boy escapes and embarks on a bloody rampage, the couple's monstrous attempt at "child development" provokes the local populace into vengeful retaliation.
Unlike any film you've ever seen, Sonny Boy is an unsettling, wildly bizarre allegory on the devastating effects of child abuse and the violent
Smith; and transvestite David Carradine, kidnap a baby and decide to raise it. Raising the child consists of cutting it's tongue out, dragging it behind a car when he is 12, setting a fire close to him to harden his skin when he is 17 and finally, sending him out on a murder missions. The local town, which is scared of this family and they don't want to cross paths with them, decide they have had enough and begin to rip off the closing moments of Frankenstein. I think that's what the movie was about, but I could be wrong, as I was so bored, I started to fade in and
The older brother, the narrator, finds himself struggling at the beginning of the story. While riding the subway, he reads in the paper that Sonny has been arrested for possession of drugs. During his day of teaching, he reflects on prior years with Sonny and their past adventures as young boys. He remembers Sonny's "wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy." The narrator sees his brother as a good boy, not "hard or evil or disrespectful." He wonders how many of his algebra students are similar to Sonny in appearance and personality along with his drug habits. This comparison allows the older brother to conclude that Sonny was probably not arrested on his initial use of drugs. It also allows the narrator is see that Sonny may be like most of the other young boys in Harlem.
Sonny has troubles in his life, but music keeps him sane as he tries to communicate his troubles through the piano, and his art invokes emotion to those who hear it. Sonny has had to deal with many troubles in life, and he turns to drugs for release, but this is just another one of his problems. Sonny is not very old when his
James Baldwin portrays the narrator and Sonny as the significance of having a strong relationship with family and the ability to succeed the battle of your personal demons fighting with your beliefs. The narrator or ‘big brother’ is a responsible
As "Sonny's Blues" opens, the narrator tells of his discovery that his younger brother has been arrested for selling and using heroin. Both brothers grew up in Harlem, a neighborhood rife with poverty and despair. Though the narrator teaches school in Harlem, he distances himself emotionally from the people who live there and their struggles and is somewhat judgmental and superior. He loves his brother but is distanced from him as well and judgmental of his life and decisions. Though Sonny needs for his brother to understand what he is trying to communicate to him and why he makes the choices he makes, the narrator cannot or will not hear what Sonny is trying to convey. In distancing himself from the pain of upbringing and his surroundings, he has insulated himself from the ability to develop an understanding of his brother's motivations and instead, his disapproval of Sonny's choice to become a musician and his choices regarding the direction of his life in general is apparent. Before her death, his mother spoke with him regarding his responsibilities to Sonny, telling him, "You got to hold on to your brother...and don't let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you get with him...you may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you're there" (87) His unwillingness to really hear and understand what his brother is trying to tell him is an example of a character failing to act in good faith.
According to his brother, who narrates "Sonny's Blues," Sonny was a bright-eyed young man full of gentleness and privacy. "When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he'd had wonderfully direct brown eyes, a great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now" (Baldwin 272). Something happened to Sonny, as it did to most of the young people growing up in Harlem. His physical journey growing up in the streets caused a great deal of inner turmoil about whom he was and what kind of life he was to have. One thing for sure, by the time his mother died, Sonny was ready to get out of Harlem. " 'I ain't learning nothing in school,' he said. 'Even when I go.' He turned away from me and opened the window and threw his cigarette out into the narrow alley. I watched his back. 'At least, I ain't learning nothing you'd want me to learn.' He slammed the window so hard I thought the glass would fly out, and turned back to me. 'And I'm sick of the stink of these garbage cans!' " (Baldwin 285).
...cape. He truly sees his brother for the first time. Sonny played music to escape and remove himself from the life that Harlem had to offer. It is a powerful ending to a story for brothers who have had such turbulent relationship.
With the narrator having a responsibility to take care of his brother, he consistently forces the fact that he wants his brother to be well off and not care about his passion in music. The older they got, the more they drove away from each other because of the fact the narrator becomes overly protective with Sonny, and uses a “tough love” strategy though it does not making any positive effect. After they took some time apart, they both realized they cannot emotionally make it in this world without one
Conflict is opposition between two forces, and it may be external or internal,” (Barker). There are two styles of external conflict that can be examined within the plot of “Sonny’s Blues”. The first of these is character versus society. This is the outer layer of the external conflict observed between Sonny and the society, which his life is out casted from. The meat and potatoes of the external conflict however, is character versus character. Sonny lives a lifestyle that his brother seems to be incapable of understanding. The internal conflict lies within the narrator. It is his struggle to understand his brother that drives the plot. The climax occurs when Sonny and the narrator argue in the apartment. The argument stems from the narrators complete inability to understand Sonny’s drug usage and life as a musician, and Sonny’s feeling of abandonment and inability to make his brother understand him. This conflict appears to come to a resolve at the resolution as the narrator orders Sonny a drink following hearing Sonny perform for the first time. It appears as though this is the moment when the narrator begins to understand, perhaps for the first time, his brother the
John Singleton’s view of social problems in South Central Los Angeles happens in a tale of three friends growing up together. Doughboy and Ricky Baker are half-brothers and have opposite personalities. Ricky is a football player who hopes to win a scholarship and spends most of his time playing football. On the other hand, Doughboy is a young man who looks upon his environment for guidance. He is involved in violence, abusing drugs, and participates in violence. In between is their friend Tre, who actually has a father to teach him what is right from wrong. Furious Styles, who is Tre’s father in the film does everything in his strength to keep his son from becoming another startling statistic. As you can see, it is always important for parents to be a part of their child’s life because it can make a big difference not only in their life but also their child’s future.
Several passages found throughout "Sonny's Blues" indicate that as a whole, the neighborhood of Harlem is in the turmoil of a battle between good and evil. The narrator describes Sonny's close encounters with the evil manifested in drugs and crime, as well as his assertive attempts at distancing himself from the darker side. The streets and communities of Harlem are described as being a harsh environment which claims the lives of many who have struggled against the constant enticement of emotional escape through drugs, and financial escape through crime. Sonny's parents, just like the others in Harlem, have attempted to distance their children from the dark sides of their community, but inevitably, they are all aware that one day each child will face a decisionb for the first time. Each child will eventually join the ranks of all the other members of society fighting a war against evil at the personal level so cleanly brought to life by James Baldwin. Amongst all the chaos, the reader is introduced to Sonny's special secret weapon against the pressures of life: Jazz. Baldwin presents jazz as being a two-edged sword capable of expressing emotions like no other method, but also a presenting grave danger to each individual who bears it. Throughout the the story, the reader follows Sonny's past and present skirmishes with evil, his triumphs, and his defeats. By using metaphorical factors such as drugs and jazz in a war-symbolizing setting, Baldwin has put the focus of good and evil to work at the heart of "Sonny's Blues."
The story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin is a story about people’s actions and the effect that they have on the environment and the people around them. The Narrator is the older brother and the keeper of Sonny after his mother passes away. It is his duty to watch over his younger brother and to help guide him through life and to make the correct decisions. This caused great distress for him because he was never able to control Sonny and the life that he chooses to live. Sonny is The Narrators brother and is a dynamic character who decides early on what he wants to do with his life. This creates a constant tug of war with his brother which ends with him denouncing his brother and they also ceased talking for a long time. Sonny is also addicted
In conclusion, “Sonny’s Blues” is the story of Sonny told through his brother’s perspective. It is shown that the narrator tries to block out the past and lead a good “clean” life. However, this shortly changes when Sonny is arrested for the use and possession of heroin. When the narrator starts talking to his brother again, after years of no communication, he disapproves of his brother’s decisions. However, after the death of his daughter, he slowly starts to transform into a dynamic character. Through the narrator’s change from a static to a dynamic character, readers were able to experience a remarkable growth in the narrator.
"Sonny's Blues" is filled with examples of music and how it makes things better. The schoolboy, the barmaid, the mother, the brother, the uncle, the street revivalists, all use music to create a moment when life isn't so ugly, even though the world still waits outside and trouble stretches above. Music and the tale it tells provide hope and joy; instead of being the instrument of Sonny's destruction, introducing him to the world of drugs, music is his way out of some of the ugliness. For Sonny and the other characters in this story, music is a bastion against the despair that pervades stunted lives; it is the light that guides them from the darkness without hope.
Instead of providing a safe and loving environment for her daughter, she built up anger towards her and eventually lashed out, physically and emotionally abusing her. Mary carries resentment towards Precious because Carl preferred having sex with Precious rather than Mary. The resentment continued and progressively became more aggressive as the movie went on. Child abuse is a major social issue in not only the United States but all over the world. Cases of child abuse and neglect that involve black children are reported and are approximately twice that of the cases that involve white children. This film sheds light on negative social issues that occur in young African- American children lives, and how these characters within this movie gained power and ultimately decide to peruse a positive life for themselves. Out of the 7.4 billion people in this world, forty million children are abused each year; that is only the amount of reported cases and does not include unreported cases. In the United States, a child is abused every ten seconds. Abuse typically leads to an unsuccessful life, despite your race or ethnicity. Statically speaking, child abuse victims have a 38% increase arrest rate for violent crimes; and 84% of all prison inmates had been abused as a child. As her mother beats her; Precious dreams of a better life and eventually takes the necessary steps to achieve that dreamed about life. The director
The movie revolves around Maddie (Seigel) who at age 13 developed bacterial meningitis and as a result developed vocal paralysis and became Deaf. The movie explores the situation behind her being under attack by an unknown serial killer. When the killer sees her he believes that she will be easy prey. Critics assist this theory by calling the movie a “suspenseful cat & mouse thriller” ().