Jerry and Gaear being persecuted for their crimes shows the Coen brothers traditional view of morality. The Coen brothers believe in the good, this is why they created Marge as a character. Understanding the philosophy that is behind each of the character’s actions clarifies the need for each of their roles. In order to understand the purpose of morality to the Coen brothers, one must break down the thought process that goes into each of the characters. The Coen brothers are quite diverse in their filmmaking, basing all of their scripts on film noir and screwball comedy. Therefore, they allow themselves to explore multiple genres and test the limits of standard filmmaking. For example, in their 1996 film Fargo, the Coen brothers push the boundaries …show more content…
Marge Gunderson is representative of centered morality. As a police officer, she understands the difference between right and wrong, and refuses to obstruct justice even if it means she has to be rude, and rudeness goes against the ‘Minnesota nice’ stereotype reinforced by the Coen brothers. Since Midwestern America comes with the stereotype of hospitality and politeness, morality is challenged in Fargo because the immoral characters stand out against the stereotype. Fargo shows how the crimes that occur and how the immoral acts that follow contrast so well with the Midwestern setting. By using Aristotle’s theory of shame, I will place the characters of Fargo on a spectrum of emotional morality. Through this spectrum I will prove Fargo is the Coen brother’s study of …show more content…
In Fargo, Gaear is known for his lack of lines and for killing five people over the course of the film. Gaear kills with disturbing indifference. His reasoning for killing Jean is, “She started shrieking, you know” (Fargo). Gaear is self-indulgent and according to Aristotle the self-indulgent man “craves for all pleasant things or those that are most pleasant” (Hanrahan and Stearns 97). This means that Gaear wanted silence so badly, he was willing to take Jean’s life. Gaear’s neutrality continues throughout the film, especially with his partner Carl. The scene right after Carl shoots Wade Gustafson is an example of this. In this scene, Carl returns to their cabin covered in blood with a bullet wound to his face. Gaear is silent during Carl’s return, displaying no emotion on his face. Gaear expresses his only concern is how they are going to split the ransom money. Carl becomes enraged and begins to leave with the money. Gaear responds in the most logical way he knows how: hitting Carl with an axe then putting his body through a wood chipper. Consequently, after he puts Carl through the wood chipper, Marge finds Gaear. Even though Marge announces herself multiple times, Gaear cannot hear her over the wood chipper. The law, as well as society’s norms for behaving, is not able to make itself known to Gaear until Marge stops him with a single shot in his leg. Once he is handcuffed in the back seat of her
The foils of everyday life make for surprisingly quality entertainment. This concept may appear quite counterintuitive, but it is constantly proven true in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film Fargo. Beyond the film’s oddball subject matter lies a surplus of middle class misfortunes and simpleton fodder. These seemingly extraneous components of the film are actually extremely crucial to the atmosphere the Coen brothers created. Despite having such a lack of regard for human life, the film still is extremely relatable to the common man and blue collar USA. This is exactly what Joel and Ethan Coen were aiming for with this film. They were trying to create as relatable and real of an atmosphere as possible. This persistence to creating a believable
In the true crime/sociology story, “Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry” the author, Robert Sam Anson had provided an immense amount of information from reportings about Edmund Perry’s death and life before he died. Anson has developed Edmund’s character and experiences through reporting that I have related and connected to. Information reported by Anson has helped me find a deep connection towards Edmund Perry’s home environment, junior high experiences, and personality at Philips Exeter. Themes such as hopes and dreams, loyalty and betrayal, journey, and family ties are intertwined in the story and becomes blatant. The congruences between our lives have better my understanding of the story and Edmund’s life.
The first word that comes to mind when thinking about Do the Right Thing is HOT. Everything about this movie was hot, from the weather down to the themes and issues it brought up. It’s interesting too watch this movie while living with a heat wave in NYC. There’s plenty of room for debate as to whether or not anyone did the right thing in this script, in my opinion most of the characters did the wrong thing. What’s interesting to me is to think about what Spike Lee considered the right and wrong thing to do in this screenplay. It’s not just his words as an actor playing a role, he also wrote, directed, and produced the vehicle for those words and actions to come to life. So it’s hard to separate Spike from Mookie, and I don’t think Spike would even want us to. I also wonder about some changes from the screenplay and the film, and the effect the have on the overall message of the film.
Relations between sympathy-empathy expressiveness and fiction have become a significant issue in the debate on the emotional responses to the film fiction. Due to their complexity many scholars found it useful to diagram them. With his essay, “Empathy and (Film) Fiction”, Alex Neill tries to develop new theory for analyzing the fiction and, especially, the emotional responses from the audience on it. The project of this essay is represented with an aim to show the audience the significant value of the emotional responses to the film fiction. From my point of view in the thesis of his project he asks a simple question: “Why does the (film) fiction evoke any emotions in the audience?”, further building the project in a very plain and clever way. Tracing the origins of this issue, he distinguishes between two types of emotional responses, sympathy and empathy, as separate concepts in order to understand the influence of both types of emotional responses to fiction. However, relying mostly on this unsupported discrepancy between two concepts and the influence of the “identification” concept, Neill finds himself unable to trace sympathy as a valuable response to fiction. This difficulty makes Neill argue throughout the better part of the text that empathy is the key emotional factor in the reaction to (film) fiction and that it is a more valuable type of emotional response for the audience.
Joel and Ethan Cohen’s sixth film “Fargo” first released in 1996 has not only been able to stand the test of time, but can now be watched as a period piece of sorts as a snapshot into a period of time that was not so long ago, but in retrospect shows us how much has changed in twenty years.
In Harry Mulisch’s novel The Assault, the author not only informs society of the variance in perception of good and evil, but also provides evidence on how important it is for an innocent person experiencing guilt to come to terms with their personal past. First, Mulisch uses the characters Takes, Coster, and Ploeg to express the differences in perspective on the night of the assault. Then he uses Anton to express how one cannot hide from the past because of their guilt. Both of these lessons are important to Mulisch and worth sharing with his readers.
By having a concept of what is considered normal, the community is able to ostracize individuals who do not fit into said idea, therefore reinforcing the standards and requirements of society. The relationship shown in Good Country People between Mrs. Hopewell and her daughter, Joy/Hulga, is a good example of how societal norms cause people to isolate others. The introduction of this relationship shows how the optimistic, pleasant Mrs. Hopewell thought, “that every year she[Joy/Hulga] grew less like other people and more like herself - bloated, rude, and squinty-eyed,” (O’Connor 3). Mrs. Hopewell is model of what a well-received member of society looks like, while her daughter is crabby, antisocial, and hard for other people to understand.
Picture this, an island divided into two sides, one good and one bad, and there is a conflict amongst them all. On one side you have a civilized, rationalized man named Ralph who represents the good in man. On the other savage, animalistic side you have Roger, a cruel and ruthless individual, who represents the bad in man. Both Ralph and Roger have basic human traits, however, there are many differences in their lifestyle, actions towards others, and appearance in this book. One of the most significant things that define an individual to be “good” or “bad” lies in how they go through their daily routine.
Her husband must take on the role of mediator to weigh her selfish desires against laws and morals that condemn stealing. This role represents the ego, which regulates the selfish id and the strict moral superego to reach a decision (Guerin 130). He decides that his wife's urgent need for the rampion outweighs the moral ...
O Brother, Where Art Thou? was phenomenal, and I found myself laughing an abundance of times throughout the movie. After viewing the film and the video essays, I agree that part of the reason why this story is truly successful is because Joel and Ethan Coen play with morality and in some ways, punish the characters repeatedly. Every time that something good occurred for a character, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the next bad thing to follow. I feel that their constant play on morality kept the audience 's attention and left them wanting more. It also added a more humorous aspect, as Everett, Pete, and Delmar would grow confident and let their "seven deadly sins" (i.e. Everett struggled with pride) arise once again when they
Burke, Daniel. "RNS Feature: "The Coen Brothers' Complicated Gospel"" Religion News Service. 28 Sept. 2009. Web. 01 Mar. 2010. .
In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, O’Connor introduces the reader to a family representative of the old and new Southern culture. The grandmother represents the old South by the way in which she focuses on her appearnace, manners, and gentile ladylike behavior. O’Connor writes “her collars and cuffs were organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”(O’Connor 118). In this short story, “the wild diproportion of the terms, the vapid composure that summons up the ultimate violence only to treat it as a rare social opportuinty, and the cool irony with which O’Connor presents the sentence makes it both fearful and ludicrous”(Asals 132). The irony that O’Connor uses points out the appalling characteristics of the grandmother’s self-deception that her clothes make her a lady and turns it into a comic matter. Flannery O’Connor goes to great length to give the reader insight into the characters by describing their clothes and attitudes. The fact that the grandmother took so much time in preparing herself for the trip exemplifies the old Southern tradition of self-presentation and self-pride. The grandmother takes pride in the way she presents herself because she wants everyone to know that she is a “lady”.
In her well-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor skillfully describes the difficulty of finding a morally upright human being, whether it is a man or a woman. No one is perfect, everyone has inadequacies and shortcomings, and she presents this cleverly in her story. She is able to support this view of mankind through her characters. They are self-centered, egotistical human beings who can be judged by their words and actions. This is especially true of the protagonist (the grandmother) and the antagonist (the Misfit). The grandmother tries to portray herself as a virtuous woman, but in the end O’Connor shows that her actions are always self-serving and that morally, she is not that different from the Misfit.
The sociological perspective examines the hidden reasons for one’s actions and identities that people have. It stressed how they are influenced by their society and most of all their social location. Social location predetermines all aspects of one’s life and there are rules that come with social location, and with rules come social control mechanisms and social stratification that keep people in line. With social location also come institutions that provide roles which form one’s identity. In the movie, “Good Will Hunting,” the main character Will Hunting is a young deviant what grows up in a rough neighbourhood and has the intellect of a genius. Role theory and other concepts from the sociological perspective explain Will Hunting’s actions and identity.
In Flannery O 'Connor 's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, the theme of good vs. evil unravels throughout the series of tragic events. The Grandmother’s epiphany introduces the idea of morality and the validity is left to the interpretation of the reader. By questioning the characteristics of right and wrong, morality and religion become subjective to personal reality and the idea of what makes individuals character good or bad becomes less defined.