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The importance of comedy in society
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One of the main themes of Annie Hall is the idea of desire versus reality. Allen’s use of comedy can be seen as his way of distinguishing desire vs. reality. He uses Alvy’s emotional landscape and tries to transform it into the viewers as well. Some of the emblems that he uses show a weird sense of humor and show the reality of Alvy Singer. Alvy Singer is very narcissistic and self centered meaning that he has all of tho desire to control everyone and control all of the situations when in reality not everyone is going to be pleased with that idea. For example when Alvy wanted to have sex with Annie, she was about to smoke marijuana because it helps her perform better. But Alvy did not want her to do the marijuana. Annie ended up not doing it
American Dream is the belief in individualism, power to change and affect the world. American dream is depicted in Hitchcock’s films through the physical style of architectural greatness itself. Thus in North by Northwest (1959), with the opening credit, image of a glassy green facade on Madison Avenue, or with Mondrianesque composition looking down from the top of the United Nations Secretariat, the view of the twilight of Vandamm’s sumptuous mountain aerie, at the top of Mount Rushmore monument are presented vividly. In The Wrong Man (1956), misted twilight towers of the great George Washington Bride, stands out as the monument to engineering and the age of steel. Vertigo (1958) is another film showing the engineering triumph of the Golden
Tennessee Williams used his life experiences to write many successful plays. One of his most successful plays is A Streetcar Named Desire. In this play Williams relates the characters closely to his father, mother, and sister. William’s father was a gambler, a drunk, and very aggressive. Williams’s mother was a Southern Bell and looked down upon people that were not like her, and his sister was suffering from psychological disorders. Stanley is like William’s father, Blanche is like William’s mother and sister, and Allan, Blanche’s dead husband, is like Tennessee Williams. Suchitra Choudhury says that “Tennessee Williams’ plays are acknowledged to be substantially constituted of violence and victimization. . . . Williams’s plays very often end in what seems to be victimization.” The play A Streetcar Named Desire is a classic example of violence and victimization. Stanley is very violent and Blanche is the victim, her past haunting her in the present. Throughout the play we see how Blanche evolves into what seems to be a psychotic breakdown at the end. We see how the need for intimacy ultimately causes her to become psychotic. Blanche struggles with the death of her husband Allan, and as a result she is constantly trying to create a reality of what she believes life should be like. How does the past affect Blanche in the present?
Symbolism, Imagery and Allegory in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire
The Value of a Dream in Death of a Salesman and A Raisin in the Sun
In the book “The Great Gatsby”, Gatsby, begins by allowing his mind to believe that he can repeat the past. He starts to fanaticize about Daisy, a girl he met before war. Towards the end of the book his dream is crushed due to Daisy leaving and eventually giving him the fall for Myrtle’s death. The American dream is a time in history in which riches mattered and money bought everything even happiness. Fantasy was all about imagining something that isn’t necessarily possible. Gatsby tends to stick to the ideal of the American dream throughout the story. For example, the green light. This symbolizes the open door to new dreams that lead to never ending imagination. Therefore, everything Gatsby allowed himself to believe was reality, came to be a thought that was
told Allan "I saw, I know, you disgust me…"( p.96). To Allan, Blanche seemed to
The American dream is something often very unique for each individual person. For some the dream may be one of simply owning a two-story house occupied by a large group of loving children while for others it may be as specific as excelling in a career you genuinely enjoy. The blatant differences between these dreams are also indicated in the classic novels, The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men. Jay Gatsby’s desperation for an extravagant life with Daisy greatly contrasts with George and Lennie’s desperation for a simple farmer’s life. Aspects of each story relate to my life as well. My American dreams shares its central goals of extravagance, the morbid problems I continuously run into, and I suspect I shall face a similar fate to the protagonists
From the beginning of the film until the end Annie is struggling to find her own self, often she is experiencing the negative cycle of the self-concept. Contributors to the self-concept include; self-esteem, reflected appraisal and social comparison, and all of this can be subjective, flexible and resistant to change. In the first parts of the movie it really showcases that
I did hear about this move for long time (past 16 years), and I remember when I went to a conference in Chicago that one of the participants when we went to eat I ask for and Stella and he just started screaming Stella….. And most of the people laughed, but I didn’t have any idea of why they did, now I know why.
Americans live in constant pursuit of what they want more than anything, the American Dream. The perception of the American Dream varies from person to person, depending on what they hope to accomplish. In The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men the American Dream manifests in various extravagant and corrupt forms. The lives of these characters revolve around achieving their version of the American Dream.
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces” (Sigmund Freud). Illusion can be a part of our lives; however, if taken to the extreme, it can lead one to forget reality. Every individual has problems in life that must be faced with reality and not with illusion, even though it might throw one into flames of fires. Tennessee Williams' play of a family reveals the strength of resistance between reality and desire, judgment and imagination, and between male and female. The idea of reality versus illusion is demonstrated throughout the play. Blanche's world of delusion and fantastical philosophy is categorized by her playful relationships, attempts to revive her youth, and her unawareness in the direction of reality of life. In Tennessee William’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, through the study of character and tropology, fantasy and illusion allow one to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is.
Reality is the state of things as they exist. It 's what you hear, see and experience. The idea of illusion/fantasy vs. reality seems to bring on the idea that these characters wants to somehow "escape" the world they live in. Williams achieves this juxtaposition of reality against illusion through his use of language, stage directions in the play and other dramatic techniques to emphasize Blanche 's mental state. She is purposeful in her attempts to create illusion and states, “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman 's charm is fifty percent illusion.” (scene two) These factors cumulate and shape her tragic flaw, which is giving in to desire and by doing so, creates a breach between her “reality” and society’s reality. She allows her
The struggle for financial security and success has always been prominent in the American culture. The idea of the American dream captures the hearts of so many, yet leaves almost all of them enslaved in the endless economic struggle to achieve high status, wealth, and a house with a white picket fence. In Arthur Miller's, Death of a Salesman, we see how difficult it is for Willy Loman and his sons to achieve this so called American dream. In Lorraine Hansberry's, A Raisin in the Sun, she examines an African-American family's struggle to break out of the poverty that is preventing them from achieving some sort of financial stability, or in other words the American dream. Both plays explore the desire for wealth, driving forces that encourage the continued struggle for dreams, and how those dreams can lead to the patriarchal figure’s downfall. However, the plays contain minor differences, which have a common underlying factor, that leads A Raisin in the Sun to have a much more positive outcome than Death of a Salesman.
A Dream Deferred in A Raisin in the Sun and Harlem In Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun, the author reveals a hard-working, honest African-American family struggling to make their dreams come true. Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem," illustrates what could happen if those dreams never came to fruition. Together, both Hansberry and Hughes show the effects on human beings when a long-awaited dream is thwarted by economic and social hardships. Each of the characters in A Raisin in the Sun has a dream for which they base their whole happiness and livelihood on attaining. However, the character of Lena Younger, or Mama, differs from the other members of her family.
In the final act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Honey apologetically and drunkenly explains that she has peeled the label off her brandy bottle. To this, George replies, "We all peel labels, sweetie: and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs, and get down to bone, you still haven't got all the way, yet. There's something inside the bone… the marrow… and that's what you gotta get at." In a play blending realism and absurdism, Edward Albee peels off the institutions and values that Americans held and hold dear, such as family, beauty, marriage, success, religion, and education. With blackly humorous ridicule and through critical analysis, Albee suggests that these institutions, traditionally comprising the "American dream," have been desperately created to escape reality. Ultimately, however, he shows us that reality continues to pervasively lurk not far beneath the surface that we have slapped over it, almost as if threatening to eat up the very thing with which we suppress it.