Walker Percy's The Moviegoer
Walker Percy is the author of The Moviegoer, which is written about a young man named John Binkerson Bolling otherwise known as Binx. He is the main character who grows up in New Orleans. He is a moviegoer who is on a search but the object of his search is not clear. The people he encounters help him along the way, especially his stepbrother Lonnie and an African American man. The Moviegoer takes place during Mardi Gras when Binx discovers that something more is needed in his life.
The story begins with Binx receiving a letter from his Aunt Emily saying that they need to have a talk. This talk is about his cousin Kate who Aunt Emily is worried about. She has been “moping around the house” ever since her fiancé’s death and Aunt Emily wants Binx to cheer her up (28). She wants him to treat Kate as he did before and joke around with her to make her laugh and smile. She has been staying inside and has not interacted with people in a while.
On Binx’s way to his aunt’s house, “the idea of a search occurs to” him (13). “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something” (13). But what exactly is Binx onto? Binx doesn’t know and doesn’t reveal the purpose of his search because he fears “exposing (his) own ignorance” (14). Is this search about God? Binx “hesitates to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting himself a goal which everyone else has reached – and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2% are atheists and agnostics – which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker” (13, 14).
Binx’s search continues through his attraction to the movies that “are onto the search, but throw him further from the truth. The search always ends in despair” (13). The movies are a way for him to fill the emptiness in his life. They give him incite into others lives and into his own life. “Before I see a movie it is necessary for me to learn about something about the theater or the people who operate it, to touch base before going inside” (74). This helps him learn more about how others live and lear...
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... wants with his life. He does not need to be as religious as Lonnie but he has choices. Lonnie is willing to fast even though he is very sick and this gives Binx faith that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Even on Lonnie’s deathbed, he is content. After his “half-brother Lonnie Smith died of a massive virus infection which was never positively identified,” he is asked what will happen to Lonnie (237). The children ask Binx, “When Our Lord raises us up on the last day, will Lonnie still be in a wheelchair or will he be like us?” and he responds with, “he’ll be like you” (240). This he may not act in a religious way but at least he does not deny the Lord. So even though he is not all religious, he has taken the faith of Lonnie and directed it into his life. Lonnie’s belief in the long run affects Binx and helps him so many times in his search.
He started as a moviegoer, living his life through the movies and now he realizes he can live his life through his actions. He was inspired by one he knew very well and by others everyday actions. He was inspired for the better and hopefully his new profession and wife will fill the void that he’s been feeling for so long.
Her big brother Gavin is in jail because he was court shoplifting. Every week Bridget recieves a letter from Gavin most of the time she is crying because she misses him so much. she also finds a boy called Menzies which helps her through the tough time and Bridget helps Menzies through his tough time.
[2] Missing is a rather confusing film to follow at first. Admittedly, I had to view it a few times to understand what was happening. Perhaps the initial feeling after seeing this film is confusion. However, after having watched it a second, fourth, eighth time, what I really felt was anger. Each time I watched the film, the anger and disgust would grow, so much so that it pained me to watch it again. However, in identifying the cause of my anger, I began to realize many things.
Through out his waiting and searching for Eddy he changes dramatically. He feels the need for his live to be fulfilled, and he strives for it by doing new things. He acquires a new load of friends and things from swapping, but he was sad for those who did not have what he could have and for other reasons.
Chris’s characteristics radically change, he srays far from the path randomly in his college years; when he realized the self centered life money had created for him. Chris began to fill himself with solitude which was very far fetched from his personality. “And it was obvious he had changed. He seemed more introverted, almost cold.” (Krakauer,120) It was a huge contrast to his personality: Tracy Burres, a dear friend of Chris recalls,”he was no recluse: ‘he had a good time when he was around people, a real good time...he’d talk and talk to everybody who came by.”(Krakauer, 44) WIle in college, Chris McCandless became enraged with his parents and society for setting money on such a high pedestal .”Chris’s relations with his parents,which had been unusually courteous since his graduation from high school,deteriorated significantly that summer, and Walt and Billie had no idea why,” (Krakauer 121) For these reasons, Chris made a swift decision that even his parents didn 't see coming and couldn’t understand why. He put up with his parents at first then radically decided to change things.”He seemed mad at us more withdrawn-no that 's not the right word.Chris wasn’t ever withdrawn. But he wouldn’t tell us what was on his mind and spent more of his time by himself.” (Krakauer, 121) Chris whent from a
Movies distort reality by creating an ideal conflictual ambience, from which all the subtle human emotions and the characters arise. Humans might appear as consensus beings, seeking conformation and avoiding alienation by “society”. However, referring back to Aristotle’s saying, “human beings are by nature political animals” (1999), humans continually strive for power and control inasmuch as they strive for pure oxygen to breathe. Movies unleash these “socially unacceptable” political animals, exposing the hidden moral corruption embedded within most humans. Movies accomplish such a task by distorting reality, by reshaping the truth into a collection of video shots, taken from different angles, creating different meanings to content; the true meaning. The three genres of literature – narratives, poetry and drama – establish the key to revealing the distortion, thus providing humans with the ultimate method of deciphering our reality through the eyes of a glass lens. In the movie Do the Right Thing, these genres come together to paint a “picture” of us.
John “Binx” Bolling is a 1960s version of Dante, a man awoken in the middle of his life beginning a desperate and philosophical search for meaning. Like The Inferno, The Moviegoer is set in a Catholic liturgically important time and spans the length of a week. The reader meets Binx on Mardi Gras, the last day of Epiphany season, and on Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance and reassessment in Catholicism, he begins his search. The meaning of Binx’s search is questioned from the onset of the book. He addresses the reader by saying, “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.” Binx’s search
Film could be considered to be the most significant cultural text of the decade. Each of these three films directed by Peter Weir have significance and importance, as they almost force society to look itself in the mirror and get a shock. I encourage readers to watch these films, and think about the importance of their messages.
Sluyter, Dean 1st ed., ‘Cinema nirvana enlightenment lessons from the movies’ (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005).
They know their friend is out there, and they continue to pursue him even when the pursuit is dangerous and damaging, even as friends ridicule them, even as parents and teachers advocate muter, more reasonable courses of action. Their main challenge isn’t whether to go on believing, but how to do it, what manner of ritual-like conduct would bring them closest to a plane of consciousness they can’t quite grasp yet but intimately know exists side by side with their own. That has always been the believer’s challenge and reward: seeing one more layer to reality than the rest of us do.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
The irony comes into play when the truth starts to unravel and Jack finds out what really happened to him as a child and why he does not know his parents. After some coincidental events, all the main characters end up in the same room. When Lady Bracknell hears Ms. Prism’s (the woman Jack hired as his nieces governess) name she immediately asks to see her. She continues to say that Ms. Prism had wandered off with a baby years ago and asks what came about of that. Ms. Prism continues the dialog to explain how she misplaced a baby that was in her bag at a train station. Jack, thinking he might have been that very baby, retrieves the bag he was found in as an infant in which Ms. Prism identifies by some distinguishing marks to have been her own. Jack realized the woman that had been teaching his niece was his mother. But then Lady Bracknell explained that she was not but Lady Bracknell’s poor sister Mrs. Moncrieff was.
Charles, T. (n.d.). A Response to HJ McCloskey’s “On Being An Atheist”. Retrieved from Carry your cross: http://charlestinsley.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/a-response-to-hj-mccloskeys-on-being-an-atheist/
Lehman, Peter and Luhr, William. Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
Ever since the advent of celluloid films, horror movies have always held a fascination for viewers. Just why do people pay good money to be scared out of their wits? Apart from its entertainment value, the horror movie satisfies certain primordial needs in man. Through the horror movies, one is able to come to grips with one's personal demons, fear of death and other irrational phobias and in the process achieve a catharsis. Far from being morbid, such movies actually affirm life for the movie-goer, for he is able to emerge from the dark into the light, both literally and figuratively, having explored the world beyond our normal perception as well as the deep recesses of the human soul and say, "It's good to be alive."
Movies take us inside the skin of people quite different from ourselves and to places different from our routine surroundings. As humans, we always seek enlargement of our being and wanted to be more than ourselves. Each one of us, by nature, sees the world with a perspective and selectivity different from others. But, we want to see the world through other’s eyes; imagine with other’s imaginations; feel with other’s hearts, at a same time as with our own. Movies offer us a window onto the wider world, broadening our perspective and opening our eyes to new wonders.