To help my peers and I become a more culturally competent we chose to watch the movie “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” in hopes to become more aware and knowledgeable about the differences of values and beliefs in our society. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; a film produced in 1993, address many issues everyday people face in society such as socioeconomic struggle and mental or physical discrimination. Plot The film takes place in the small town not filled with much but the local businesses and towns people. The film focuses on an interesting relationship between two brothers, Gilbert and Arnie Grape. Gilbert is a hardworking kid taking care of his mentally challenged brother, Arnie, who can be a handful at times. The boys live in a rundown house …show more content…
The film gives its viewer the opportunity to see how obese individuals are treated and viewed in today’s society. Bonnie is a very obese woman who rarely moves from the couch. She hasn’t made it to her bed upstairs in years, the children have to set a dinner table up next to her to eat a family meal, and she hasn’t left the house in seven years. She is so embarrassed of herself and refuses to have anyone but family around her. The film shows children sneaking to the window making fun of her and taking pictures of her on the couch. Gilbert even refers to her as a “beached wale.” One day Arnie gets into a little trouble and ends up in the police station. Bonnie is beyond disbelief and demands to be taken to the station. With great bravery and strength she walks her way into the station to save her beloved son. A crowd gathered at the station as they whisper to one another and took pictures during one of Bonnies most courage’s moments. At this point Gilbert started to have faith in his mother, seeing the true strength and love she has for her family. We live in a society that has sets standards and defines how our lives are supposed be, what we are supposed to look like, and what we are supposed to do with our lives. The film shows us the character Bonnie that by modern standards is viewed as grotesque. As the film strips away her outer appearance you see strong loving person she is on the inside. It’s important …show more content…
Being in a lower socioeconomic status puts a lot of stress on the caretakers of the family. The film shows the struggles Gilbert has taking care of his family while trying to be a normal boy. Compared to a normal boy Gilberts age, he is put under an immense amount of stress and responsibility. Other families that are wealthy in the film aren’t struggling or working as hard as Gilbert is to support his family. The film gives the viewer an opportunity to see how life is for the underprivileged families trying to get by. Gilberts life is stressful and complicated but yet he still finds meaning and happiness in what he has. It goes back the theme of the film, don’t judge a book by its cover. You don’t know what someone’s gone through or what they have done to get where they are today, its best to approach new people empathy and the desire to understand
The film reflects the class difference from beginning through the end, especially between Annie and Helen. Annie is a single woman in her late 30s without saving or boyfriend. She had a terrible failure in her bakery shop, which leads her to work as a sale clerk in a jewelry store. When Annie arrived Lillian’s engagement party,
The short story is set in the period of The Great Depression, and lower classes especially struggled in this hard time. The Great Depression attacked the nation by society class. The lower levels struggled even more than usual. Lizbeth lived in a small rural town with a few members of her family. Her father and mother worked all day and Lizbeth and her brother, Joey, would hang out with other teenagers in their community to waste the daylight. The community always helped each other out but there was this one woman, Miss Lottie who played an important role in young Lizbeth’s
The film’s brilliance lies in the choice to show three distinct familial units with varying and different responses to their disadvantaged circumstances. The three boys who are the main subject of this film each experience a set of challenges and disadvantages associated with growing up in poverty. Appachey lives with his mother and younger siblings and has little to no adult supervision because his single mother must work long hours to support the family. Harley lives with his grandmother because his mother is incarcerated for attempting to kill the man who sexually abused her son. Harley suffers from anger and personality disorders and has a difficult time fitting in at school. Andrew lives with his father, mother and sister but is subject to repeated and frequent moves due his father’s inability to secure stable employment. His mother also suffers from significant mental illness and bouts of manic
Coping with situations within FRIED GREEN TOMATOES Human Nature, it’s our instinct, our reaction, our thoughts, and our ability to make decisions. It has been examined from every conceivable angle. It has been scrutinized, interrogated, glorified and even corrupted by every medium in the world, but none so extensively as the written word. Literature has explored every component of human nature, from pride to envy and insecurity to depression. Fannie Flagg’s novel FRIED GREEN
The author brings in the mental health aspect and talks about the ridicule that is a part of a heavy person’s life regularly. She notes that people will make rude comments, or comment about what they have in their grocery cart at the store. She states that people are not that into getting medical help by reason of a doctor almost always attributing health issues to the fact a person is fat. She talks about how she has tried so many times to lose weight, but she realized that she needed to just make peace with her body. Spake and Worley disagree on how people should handle their addiction.
What’s eating Gilbert Grape is a very simple yet meaningful movie. There is no clear cut
The main protagonist of the film, Scotty Smalls, is introduced as a straight-A, friendless young boy who has just moved into a new neighborhood in new state. While
Living in a society where the fulfillment of dreams is based upon material wealth, the Younger family strives to overcome their hardships as they search for happiness. As money has never been a way of life for the family, the insurance check's arrival brings each person to see the chance that their own dreams can become reality. Whether in taking a risk through buying a "little liquor store" as Walter wishes to do or in -"[wanting] to cure" as Beneatha dreams, the desires of the family depend upon the fate of Mama's check. In the mind of Walter Lee Younger, the check is the pinnacle of all, dominating his thoughts, as he does not wait a second before "asking about money "without" a Christian greeting." He cannot see beyond the fact that he "[wants] so many things" and that only their recently acquired money can bring them about. The idea of money and being able to hold it "in [his] hands" blinds him from the evils of society, as he cannot see that the Willy Harris's of the world will steal a person's "life" without a word to anyone. When money becomes nothing but an illusion, Walter is forced to rethink his values and his family's future, realizing that there is more to living that possessing material riches.
This Analysis Paper is an analysis of social problems an issues presented in the film. The film under analysis in this paper is "What 's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993). The topics used as a lens for analysis are family, social roles, deviance, and social groups. This paper will present numerous examples of these social issue topics as they are displayed in the film.
Having a good income liberates some extra stress from people’s lives. In the film, the narrator compares people with different income status, the narrator interviews these two different families in order to observe how income can influence people’s health. According to the narrator, “In some areas, people die twice, and five, even ten years sooner than in others. Cancer and heart disease are almost twice the rate in some areas as in others.” (Page 2) Unnatural Cause-the narrator observes two districts in Louisiana; one area is populated of low income working class, and the other one the contrary. The narrator is interviewing Jim Taylor a sixty year old man who is CEO of a hospital. During the interview Taylor opinions about the benefits of living in a community of effluents. Such as, having less stress, being able to exercise without being afraid of being assaulted. In contrast, to a person who lives in working class community is harder to have a healthy lifestyle because of the lack of time, security and desires. Pertaining to desire, working class people have to work long hours in factory to earn at least 20,000.00 per year, so they end their days extremely tired. Furthermore, wealthy peoples can afford a better quality of nutrition. Thus, people with a low income prefer to buy foods according to the quantity instead of quality. In fact, social stress is the more common
Lareau’s main argument in the text is that when children grow up in certain environments, parents are more likely to use specific methods of child rearing that may be different from other families in different social classes. In the text, Lareau describes how she went into the home of the McAllisters and the Williams, two black families leading completely different lives. Ms. McAllister lives in a low income apartment complex where she takes care of her two children as well as other nieces and nephews. Ms. McAllister never married the father of her two children and she relies on public assistance for income. She considers herself to be a woman highly capable of caring for all the children yet she still struggles to deal with the stress of everyday financial issues. The Williams on the other hand live in a wealthier neighborhood and only have one child. Mr. W...
His position in life can be regarded as symbolic of every black male struggling to provide for his family by any means necessary. Although Walter has a job, it seems inadequate for his survival. As a result, he has become frustrated and lacks good judgement. Throughout this play, Walter searches for the key ingredient that will make his life blissful. His frustrations stem from him not being able to act as a man and provide for his family and grasp hold of his ideals to watch them manifest into a positive situation.
What's eating Gilbert Grape was the movie that I chose to correlate with my media project. The movie was enjoyable and had a very unique perspective to the family system. It wasn't the average Caucasian family that most media outlets portray but instead a highly dysfunctional family. I wanted to do a different approach to the media project and break it down by family members(characters) and then combine the family aspects. Every member of the family has a unique personality and feeds into every aspect of the family system. I will first discuss the movie premise before going into the details of each family member. Then towards the end I will look at the family as a whole unit with various parts.
The attitude towards women has changed dramatically since 1990, the year that this film came out; you will however, find a few men who still have the attitude that women were put on this earth for their enjoyment. In the early nineties, women were hyper-sexualized and viewed as pawns in a game. MTV showed music videos with scantily clad women, which were seen as extremely scandalous at the time. The nineties was also an era of growth, liberalization and sexual discoveries that carried over from the eighties.... ...
The film is portrayed in the past and present scenario setting. It is based on a young couple’s love and passion for one another, but are unexpectedly separated due to the disapproval of the teen girl parents and the social differences in their life. At the start of the movie, it displays a nursing home style setting with an elderly man named Duke (James Garner), reading to an elderly woman named Mrs. Hamilton (Gena Rowlands), whose memory is inevitably deteriorating. The story he reads to her is a love story about two teenagers named Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling), that met in the 1940’s at a carnival in Seabrook Island, South Carolina. The two teens are from different cultural lifestyles,