(Response paper) Lets get Knocked Up!

Alison Scott

Eng. 313 T, TH

12/13/10  

Lets get knocked up!

         “Of or pertaining to the root or origin; reaching to the center, to the foundation, to the ultimate sources, to the principles, or the like; original; fundamental; thorough-going; unsparing; extreme;” (Webster dictionary online), is the way Webster dictionary defines Radical. Taking that definition and adding the word romance to it, is an interesting mix yet it can be done. Going from radical and knowing that you’re taking right from the core and not making it soft, its going to be rough. Once adding the romance to the end of that you are going to get a very hard and strong romance. Now putting that together with a text to entertain someone equals a sensational outcome. Some examples of this are movies such as American Psycho, Knocked Up some books include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sula, and many more. There are different kinds of radical romance that are discussed about; some may be sex comedy, radical comedy, and screwball comedy. According to Tamar McDonald sex comedy is defined as, “sex comedy pits woman against man in an elemental battle of wits, in which the goal of both is sex. Only the timing and legitimacy of this differs from gender to gender, with women wanting sex after, and men before or without, marriage (Romantic comedy, pg.39).” On the other hand screwball comedy makes man and women clash to make sparks and then McDonald describes radical romantic comedy as, ”radical comedy is often willing to abandon the emphasis on making sure the couples end up together, regardless of likelihood instead striving to interrogate the ideology of romance (romantic comedy, pg.59).” Society is excepting all of theses and more to its collection of texts, these brands help open doors for thing that will gather attention of many that may or may not want to say out loud yet are able to see it all happen before their eyes. While watching these movies or reading these books, you cant help but laugh or turn your head, the facts that come out into the text are based of real life, just the author is not afraid to offend anyone, and this leads to a very interesting and yet exciting outcome. Taking one piece of radical romance and dissecting it gives you a lot more meaning behind the madness, there truly is a lot of work put behind each word, scene and quotes, you see. Dissecting a film like Knocked up, was a challenge and at the same time very interesting to see a film from that point of view. After trying to understand the reason for the way the film was written and played out I truly have a new respect for this screwball comedy film. Parts of the film that may seem, by some as taking it just a little to far, I can know see and understand why it plays out the way it dose.

         Going into the movie understanding a little bit about why things are the way they are is a lot more helpful when it comes to understanding all the aspects that are put into the film to make it complete. First going right in to the film talking about the main married couple, Pete and Debbie. Pete is a very passive father, has a hard time talking about how he truly feels and just in a way tries to make things go smoothly so then he doesn’t have to deal with and confrontation. Then there is Debbie who is the exact opposite of Pete. Debbie is played off as a crazy over dramatic, extremely vocal mother or two. Together they some how work yet throughout the film they are always having issues and trying to make it work. It was interesting that the first things you want to react to are the behaviors of the wife because she's a bad wife in a really aggressive, loud, and exaggerated way. The husband comes off as good because he's passive and doesn't get insanely angry and emotional like she does. The problem with that is that he goes in the opposite direction to the extreme. He doesn't get angry like the wife, but instead he chooses to basically have no emotional reaction to anything whatsoever. He's withdrawn from his own wife in an extreme way that doesn't help their marriage at all, so this is when he starts to be just as much of a bad guy as she is. He sneaks out and goes to movies or to hang out with friends without her knowing, but he doesn't really think it's wrong even though it is because he's essentially trying to get away from his life rather than try to fix the things he's having problems with. He runs away from it all, unlike his wife who aggressively points out every single issue there can possibly be and the husband tries so hard to not make an issue out of anything but both types of behavior always just make things worse. ,  Pete is not stepping forward as his role in life as the leader, and the provider for the family, in a way he is running away form his responsibilities.

Both Debbie and Pete have roles in their marriage and according to Barker Debbie’s roles consist of her being a “housewife or sexy bodies alone, reducing her to those categories” (Cultural studies, pg.10), however Debbie is so much more then that, she has her life together and has a family. The Barker book talks about how the image of a women is portrayed in the representation on television as a “good” women and she should be, “submissive, sensitive and domesticated, while ’bad’ women are rebellious, independent and selfish” this gives Debbie and identification of what kind of women she is according to Barker. Along with that Barker talks about how women always need reassurance on their self, whether it be about their marriage, beauty, or youth, all these things Debbie struggles with throughout the film, she is a true example of a women (Cultural studies, pg300-307). There are some aspects of her life that she is trying to hold at a higher level and class when in all actuality she is just as normal as everyone else. Barker always talks about high and low classes and when it comes to the higher class they seem to be all put together and have nothing going wrong, but we all know in reality behind the scene it is all falling apart. Debbie tries to play off this when she is in kitchen with her kids talking about her sisters new boyfriend and also about how babies are made. Debbie tells her kids “"yeah he came from his house... he drove over from his house to our house because he thought it would be fun to have breakfast", she makes it seem so innocent about having Ben over she can’t even tell her children that her sister had her boyfriend sleep over. Another remark Debbie makes is when she says, "but they should be because they love each other and people who love each other get married and have babies...yes they love each other because that’s what you do... you get married and have a baby", here Debbie is telling her kids why people have babies, and that Ben and Alison do love each other even though at this point in the film they were not there yet in their relationship. Towards the end of the movie Pete reveals that he married Debbie when he got her pregnant. Why is it that Debbie feels that she has to uphold the illusion of the wholesome family to her children and encourage them to follow in a path that she didn't? Is she trying to live by what she thinks is politically correct? Barker talks about identity and we try to live by what people say and how people want us to be (Cultural studies, Ch. 1). Debbie is trying to uphold the wants of everyone else other then just accepting who she is. In a way she could not be happy with the way her life turned out and that makes her want to try and only teach her kids in one way so that they only know the “good” way to go about life, and she is hoping they turn out better then she did. Barker says something about “value” Cultural studies, pg.48) and in Debbie’s eyes if you are not happy with your life then maybe the value of it will decrease, all she wants is her children’s life to have value and purpose. People may say she is just being a good parent and teaching them the right way of life, yet the ones that are saying that are the ones that have had this happen to them in this order, people that have taken a different path are just trying to figure out what was right and what could be wrong in the teaching of correct and not ways to fulfill your life.

This in a way goes hand and hand with when Barker brings up the higher and lower classes again when he states that “a variant of the high-low cultural boundary is that which decries commodity-based culture as inauthentic, manipulative and unsatisfying.” (Cultural studies, pg.49) A good example of this is when in the film when Alison is going to her mother about the baby that she is now having, and when Ben is talking to his friends about the situation. Alison is talking to her mother and her mother tells her that she can just get it “taken care of”, which we all know means to get an abortion. This is a good example of what Barker is talking about because here the higher class is Alison’s family, and with the higher class the first thing to do when there is a baby problem is to get rid of it. Another example is when Alison’s mother doesn’t even use the real word, abortion she has to say, “take care of it”, this shows that in the higher class world if you just act like its not there, and don’t speak of it then its not real and no one will know when its gone that there was anything wrong in the first place. Alison’s mother is trying to keep the hard, everything is perfect because we are the better class exterior to the world when deep down she is dying.

Knocked Up’s Thoughtful Abortion Debate from Judd Apatow

There is another scene in the film where Ben is talking with his friends about the situation with Alison, and some of Ben’s friends are excited and tell him to keep the child, when the rest of them are telling him to also get an abortion. However like the scene with Alison and her mother, Ben’s friend also dose not use the word abortion, he first says “take care of it”, and then he makes up his own word and calls the act of getting rid of the baby a “smuchsmortion”. This is the “lower” classes way of saying abortion. Its ironic to see that both upper and lower class have the same outlook on a few things, they even think the same, in the way of not using the correct terminology then it doesn’t make it real. This is also a good example of language, and how when Barker talks about language by saying, “language is action and a guide to action. Language, in the context of social usage can be temporarily stabilized for particular purpose”(Cultural studies pg.100, Ch.3) this shows that no matter what social class you are in, higher or lower we all communicate by using the same language and without even knowing it we are all using the same language when it comes to life. We use language to understand each other, such as the way both Alison’s mother, and Ben’s friend both use the same term “take care of it”, even though they are from two different social classes they are using the same language to express the same feelings.

The other main couple in the film is Alison and Ben; Alison is a higher class hard working women with a great job, she lives with her sister Debbie and husband Pete while she is saving up for her exciting life. She ends up going out and with the liquid courage she meets a guy (Ben) and they end up having sex, which leads to her unwanted pregnancy. Ben is a very laid back, slacker, who loves to just get “blown” or wasted on weed. He has a made up job where he looks at naked people all day and has no income other then what he has left from a law suit he won from getting hit by a car. These two people would have never made it out in the real world if they were not in the predicament that they were in. Alison from the start is wondering if she should keep this unborn child of theirs and was not happy with it, and was just going to let Ben be on his way and he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Of course that is not how things work out, she ends up deciding to keep the baby, and later lets Ben play a bigger role in her life, and also a potential father for the baby. On the other hand Ben at first was thrown off by the announcement of the pregnancy but in the end he was the one that wanted the baby the whole time; he was never on the fence of whether or not to “get rid of it” or not. Ben is what Barker would call a typical male role, he hold the main characteristics of the typical man and a women film. “Boy likes girl, boy pursues girl, and boy gets girl” (Cultural Studies Ch.3), this is the outline of a typical romance movie, where the man and women end up together however they try and throw us off by making them break up, for what we thought was for good, until Ben did what a man should do and stepped up to the plate and took responsibilities for himself and the unborn baby, and took ownership of his life. In a radical romance you don’t always have the “happy ever after” ending, but when they do end like that you know it had a very long journey before that, which makes it so radical.

         This film was a take on life and real events that a lot of people try not to talk about, but it addresses a lot of facts that happen in everyday living. The film was a radical take on life, and unplanned events that may occur. Adding up all the characters, Pete, the passive yet self destroying one, Debbie, the vocal high strung one, and then Alison, the girl that just wants it all even though she has to work hard and things are definitely not working out the way she had planned, and last but not least we have Ben the man that no one would want to be with, but some how makes himself worth something, just for the love of someone; makes for a very entertaining and very realistic, and relatable film. Radical romance films don’t have to fallow the typical romantic scheme when it comes to a film. It holds its own twist on a love that may or may not be, and at the same time you don’t really know how you feel, do you want it to work out or not. In the end you can see that even a film such as Knocked Up, can be broken down and understood for the madness that it acts out. In the Cultural studies book by Chris Barker, he covers all aspects of life, film, and text. All the aspects that help you see that there are different ways to view scenes, and not just in black and white, there are always other colors in the box that you can pick from that you might like a little more, and just might help make sense of it all. Next time you watch a film, read a text or even act out a script, think about it the way Barker dose and see if maybe what you are reading, acting out, or watching could be a radical romance in your mist, and you don’t even know it.

Work cited

"Radical - Definition of Radical by Webster Dictionary." Webster Dictionary. 2009. Web. 10 Dec. 2010. <http://www.webster-dictionary.net/definition/Radical>.

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008. Print.

McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. London: Wallflower, 2007. Print.

Knocked Up-Debbie&Pete fighting:)

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Knocked Up - Marriage is LIke Everybody Loves Raymond

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farewell to radical romance

This class was a lot of fun, i enjoyed the way it was laid out, the open discussion was great, it was so much easier to understand and relate the reading to ones life. the teacher was great and very passionate about this topic. it was very fun to see how other people had a take on things. the blogs are fun to see how other people express themselves. im not very vocal but i have an opinion, just might not be as strong as others. and im ok with that. :) the blogs will help us when it comes to maybe going further with this topic in life. its open to the world to see and that is such an interesting concept to me. i love that this class shows us how to do that, so now even though english is not my major, i can use this blog for may different things that might help me more towards my future.

im sad this class is ending but i think i got a good grasp on everything that we learned. so im excited to take my knowledge with me as i go. thank you for this semester and hope all goes well for you, all of you!

:) i enjoyed sharing this class with you all. and i hope you all enjoyed it as much as me, wish you all the very best in all you do.

Myspace..later known as Facebook

ok so the topic of Myspace is a love hate relationship for most, we all had it at one point so no one can say they didnt, it was a helpful way to keep people in touch, however people tend to take it just a little to fare, and of course there are people out there that are taking advantage of it and using it to hurt others. such as sex offenders and pedifiles. the way i see it, why would you talk to someone that you dont know when the site was made for friends to keep in touch. not make new friends all around the world.

years later..

now myspace has faded out and a new social network is up and its the exact same thing only it was favored for college kids to get to know people, get jobs, groups that you join in school, and keep in touch with friends that are now away at school as well. soon this also was used by all not just college kids. and yet this site has been a lot more beneficial then myspace, there has been many encounters where family members found long lost other family members and now they are closer then ever. i see this site as a great thing for people to keep in touch and keep the world as we know it at the tip of our finger.

im not saying that soon it wont get used for bad things, yet its done such good things so far, im just hoping that it stays strong and helpful. its funny too now myspace is still up and running yet its slowly adding so much to it, that its making itself its own version of facebook, its just trying to compete with the challenger and its funny to watch each of them grow but in my opinion i like facebook, and i say its a great helpful, and useful source for people to use for so many things.

huh? whats going on here..

Today we talked about Television Culture, and with that came the 4 main aspects, which are: 1. social, 2. technical, 3. conventional representational, and 4. ideological.
with all this the show or movie will make sense to the viewer, this helps make the language in the text very known.

to me i tend to turn away from a movie if its a little different, like if I dont really know everything that is going on, if i get lost i tend to just say i didnt like it and not go over it again and again, an example of this is the movie called "Slumdog Millionaire", i honestly was lost from the first couple minutes of the movie. i didnt understand it at all and i just got turned off from it. i dont know why everyone else is in love with it, and how i won so many awards, but again im just one person that just didnt understand it. so its very important to have the 4 core aspects of television culture in the text, it will really help us understand.

short i know but just not much to say sorry. not feeling to well.

Seinfeld VS real life

the Seinfeld group went today and they did a very good job they deff. knew their material. however i though it was funny when they talked about how Seinfeld is based on real life or is real life based on Seinfeld, iv never watched the show yet in class everyone talked about in Seinfeld how they had terminology that they started to use that now we use in everyday living. i have no idea what they were talking about but, the way i see it is that life now is a lot more liberal and open with things then it used to be. and Seinfeld show was out earlier in life and thats when people didn't talk about sex or talk about things that girls talk about with their girl friends or guy talk about in the locker room, so i think the show was ahead of its time in that aspect, however now in life i don't think people saw the show and said "we should be like that and be more open with things" NO! thats not what happen. i think the show was taking a chance and decided to talk about things that people don't talk about and show people that its not a bad thing, its just a thing that is always pushed under the run, when in all reality it would be the main talk on the top of the rug.

i love being open and i don't hid things, i love to talk about everything, i was raised that way my family and i are so open we know everything about everyone in our family,and i mean everything, and i wouldn't have it any other way. i know to many people that cant go to their parents with issues and feelings that they have and its hard on them because they need to let it out and it needs to be ok with the parents so that the kids are being able to fully express themselves.

but again its all just my opinion.

Dating rules..well for some

ok so in class we talked about how men and women act on dates and how men should or should not pick up the check, im not at all an old fashion kind of girl, and in my opinion when it comes to the bill i say if you want to pay for yourself say so, or if you want to pay for both say so. i wont say no if a guy offers yet at the same time i wont wait till its time to go and see if he just pulls out his wallet, in my relationship with my boyfriend i tend to pay. he pays too, and some times we split, its really just whoever gets to it first, and now that we are used to going out together its kind of like "ok so you, me, split?" thats just kind of how we go about dealing with it.

Another funny thing that i know that came to my mind while we were talking is my roommate has this book, and its called "the rules" in this book it has all the rules that a women should do to get "the guy" and she lives by it, however i don't do that but i still found it very interesting. some examples that the book gives are things such as: if a guy asks you out before Wednesday then its ok to say yes your free for Saturday, however if he asks you out after Wednesday you have to say no, because then he things you are busy and not a loser. Another example is you have to hang up first, don't let the guy know at all that you are interested and in a way seem busy so you cant always talk. this last one is one of my favorites, it makes me laugh every time i hear it: when i guy comes to pick you up at your front door let his wait a bit and then when you go to answer it come to the door a little winded and out of breath and say sorry you forgot and your just getting ready you have been busy all day. so it seems like you haven't been sitting around the house all day waiting for this one date!

i find it funny when girls play games to get a guy to be interested, if he likes you then you will know and if no and you cant tell then he's not worth it in my opinion.

Knocked up group work!

For me the group all seemed to wait till the last minute to do anything, however once we all stated to get together and try and get things done we all did so good. a few of us took the leader rolls and the rest seemed to be okay with that. i believe that everyone did their part once they were told what to do. i had e-mailed everyone and only 2 people ever e-mailed me back, most of the group waited till the end of the day before to start e-mailing me so it was a little stressful however it turned out pretty good. i think once everyone get the fire going under them they did a very good job. everyone did what they were told to do, and we all came prepared with the materials that we had planed, so that made me happy.

one thing that i was not too happy with was the way our group had their presentation, one of our members decided that he was going to be the main speaker and in a way didn't let anyone else do what they had planed to talk about. we tried yet he over powered the rest of the group. i didn't like this and in a way took offence to it, i had been working hard with the group and he didn't even e-mail me back, yet he made it seem like he was the leader in the group and knew everything when he just felt like if he could talk enough then maybe it would make up for it. but i talked to the rest of the group and they all agree that he just took over and no one was able to even talk about what they wanted and he didn't even do his part before that. so its just a little frustrating.

other then that i was pleased with the way the discussion went. i had a lot to say and i got most of it in. i quoted barker a few times and i know that we related the movie back to the class at hand, and i enjoyed that class participation very much. i think we all did very well.

yay for group Knocked up! :)

Response paper (essay #2)

Alison Scott
Eng. 313
Oct. 14, 2010

Revolutionary Road

One might say that being in a relationship is always going to make it a radical one, for that there is never such a thing as a normal kind of relationship. Dictionary.com defines radical as, “Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions”. To me this is stating that radical is making something out of the ordinary and changing the ordinary way of one thing to make it seem like something different, and yet in all reality its all the same. A radical romance is a kind that stands out in the crowed and yet they are just like everyone else on the earth in a relationship trying to make it work. In the film Revolutionary Road it portrays a perfect example of how radical romance can still be considered a normal day to day relationship.
In Revolutionary Road the main two characters are in a relationship that seems to be always going down the wrong path. They first fall in love, and then yet they are now stuck in a life that is never the least bit fulfilling to either of them. They finally choose to change their way of life and go forward and pursue their dreams and no longer fallow what is “ordinary” and “normal”. Yet in order to move forward they might end up breaking apart and losing each other. This relationship they have at the beginning shows the normal kind of boy girl actions. Boy makes girl laugh, girl falls for him. Boy tells girl his dreams and how he can make them all come true, and how he is going somewhere in life, so girl goes with him to that dream that they will always just fall short of reaching. Once trapped in a lifeless marriage with a family it’s hard to leave, even more so when you are living in the suburban lifestyle in Connecticut in the 1950’s. April (Kate Winslet) is trying to fit in to role of a perfect house wife for her husband, when in all reality all she wants is to go away and get out of the ordinary lifestyle they are living. She “wanted in”, as she says in the film, there was more out there and they are dreamers. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) after a minute to think about it agrees with his wife April and decides to go to Paris, and live out the dream they had always talked about. Once a lifeless marriage now had hope and passion for the unknown, before that everything until then was planned out in black and white just like it was for everyone else. The way they had their life was as Barker likes to call it Social Identity. This means “the expectations and opinions that others have of us”(Barker, ch.7 pg.215). April and Frank were living their lives the way others in the community were and the way they had to in order to be “normal”. People that knew them in the film always said they were special and different, they were always held to that expectation, it was almost like they had a label put on them and they had to live by that label or they were not part of the norm. They even acted as though they were still madly in love with one another, and yet Frank is hooking up with the new girl at work, and April is sleeping with the neighbor. They played the parts well when deep down there was much going wrong.
Derriida (talked about in class discussion) says; the is “always already, always depends on another” from this I pulled that April was always already, a little bit too much of a dreamer and that she let her mind get the best of her. Her sorrow for herself drew her to go “crazy”. Which later Frank defines as “someone that can not relate to another and is incapable of love”. Frank is the one that always depends on another along with the rest of their neighborhood. Without everyone looking the same direction they would not know which way is right. In the film once Frank and April have decided to leave and they are telling their friends, the only person that truly understood them was John the son of the older lady and her husband that sold April and Frank their house when they first moved in, and yet John was in a mental hospital, he was considered crazy, and yet he was the only one that agreed with them on why they wanted to leave. The relationship between Frank and April started to become magical again once they had their dreams back into play, and no longer had to fallow to the rules of the custom of their way of life. As this happens for many relationships after a hard time once a few things start to go your way you feel like there was never a problem and that everything is fixed. Yet in all honesty that was just a blindfold for your true issues to come out and affect the relationship.
Once the dream of moving away from this ordinary, boring, cookie cutter way of living was taken away from the happy couple things started to take a turn for the worse. Their dreams were shattered by an unexpected pregnancy and an amazing job offer that will as they say always help fix anything. Once April had the picture of her new life, she could not let it go; she no longer cared for anything or anyone but her dream. She could see herself away from this world and nothing would stand in her way of getting there. This then lead her to her final death, she had convinced herself that she was no longer in need of anyone or anything to help her and hold her hand, she was “always already” going forward with herself; ever looking back.
The relationship that April and Frank had is relatable to many, they fell in love fast, talked about big dreams, soon fell short of the dreams and become comfortable living the lifestyle they never wanted yet knew they could deal with. They took out their un-happiness on each other, and always had a reason for why they never fallowed their dreams, like getting pregnant, a job offer, these are reasons couples use even today. The way the film went about things on Aprils part becoming so “crazy” and erotic, yet I know many men will say we are like that. She sheds a whole new light on that statement, and with that makes their relationship so radical. Once all that is said and done the relationship is held together like most of the normal relationships that are going on today. Love and hope, you have to work hard, and yes there are things you have to deal with about partner, but that’s what makes them who you fell in love with in the first place. Even though the relationship that Frank and April shared was a hard one and most people will say they don’t relate to them, once you break it down and understand where they are coming from you can see that they are just like everyone else, they are just trying to make it through this life the best way they know how, and some may see them as radical and yet deep down April and Frank are you and me.
















Work cited page
Cultural studies, By Chris Barker, 3rd edition, published 2008
Revolutionary Road, Director: Sam Mendes, Writer: Justin Haythe, Released: January 23, 2009
Dictionary.com, LLC. Copyright © 2010, http://dictionar

Trouble with my Blog

OK! well first of all i have been having a hard time working with my blog website it wasn't existing for a while but i have been writing my blogs down in a journal and i will up date my blog soon. im so sorry i had no idea how to fix it. but for now i will upload my essay, sorry again! hope you all your essays came out great!

Cat on a hot tin roof

we talked about how the relationships between some characters were a little more blurred then the rest. such as big daddy and Brik, its shown that they don't care for each other yet if Big daddy had to pick between Brik and Gubb he would pick Brik. it shows that all Brik wanted was for Big daddy to love him and show him how he felt and not just try and get and do everything they wanted. he would get things to make people happy, own a company to make people happy, yet never once uttered the words i love you. The relationships between Skip and Brik no one can really know about. a classmate said that this is a play and depending how the director wants the play to go is really the only way one can tell on if he is or is not gay. that i will have to agree with it. we keep thinking its a book yet its a play and a great one at that, and its really in the eyes of the beholder, and how they please to portray it.

Ideology/Identity

   In class we started to talk about how in different societies people act different. here in LA people are saying that people don't even get off their phones to order their food. i currently live here in Northridge however i come from a small town in Northern California where everyone knows everyone. In class the topic of why that it is so different from where i come from compared it to LA. i was asked why i believe it is so different in the two areas, and at the time i could not think of why, but after thinking a little more the only thing that came to mind was that here in LA there is always a very apparent difference between people that have money compared to people that are not as fortunate. The main motive in a city of LA is the power and money. however in my home town the people that have the most money are just normal people that interact with everyone in that city. we have a former famous music artist and he goes out to dinner like everyone else, iv had many conversations with him before. His children went to school with me and were in my class. the "higher up" people in our city are just like us. we are so small that you normally always know who is helping you out at the store or restaurant. everyone is on a personal level, and even if you don't know them, you tent to act as if you do. Its a lot more laid back and easy going atmosphere.


     The identity topic came up during our talk about the movie American Psycho, the main character right from the start is acting one way but you can tell thats not the real him. Then he tells us that there is no real "name" i cant remember his name. This can mean so much, i believe that when he says that is that he has to do so much to become who everyone wants him to be. that there is no real him left over from everything that is has to do. people change for the people they are with, people identify themselves by different things such as family, friends, religion, society, and even their career. the movie itself is a perfect example, the main character is changing his identity for every aspect possible, and because of that there is nothing left for the original him to come out.

Ch. 1 "The Politics of Culture"

Im going to go off of what we talked about in class more so then the handout itself.

   The thought about having a higher and a lower in many cultures is normal and common. There is always some one better, higher, in more power than you, and on the other hand there is always someone that can be below you or worse off than you. You can always see it, weather you like to admit it or not, its there. Now going back to the clip we saw in class of the two movies and more so focussing on the scene in Fatal Attraction, when the Wife shot the crazy mistress, and how that shows her monster in her. Now in the culture of the scene taking place the Wife is the typical "happy housewife" a house wife holds a lot of responsibilities for for person they have to keep the family in order and always seem to be well maintained and in doing so keeping her husband happy and satisfied. In the film the typical role for the happy house wife was have a lot of ripples being made. This lead to the Wife doing only what she knows best and that is to keep the family together and happy, despite all other facts, she was trying to put everything back together again and trying to make her happy life come back so things can go back to the way they are meant to be. And that is why her monster has to come out and do what needs to be done, and that is why she shot the crazy mistress.

Heads up this may give away some information about a movie you haven't seen, just warning you all now, sorry!

  This in a way brings me back to the movie Revolutionary Road, and how Kat Winslet, was the perfect house wife. did everything she was meant to do. but then she started to go a little crazy her monster inside of her was to much to hold in and it began to come out. In the movie her husband, Leonardo DiCaprio also cheats on her, just as in Fatal Attraction. However the monster in Kat, and that she is stuck in this life of lies that no one is perfect and wants to get out and see the world. she knew that would never happen with the new baby she was pregnant with so she aborted the baby herself, and leading to that she made herself believe that the life she was living was a lie and there was no way out. which eventually lead to her final death.

   This shows that Kat is right, the "happy house wife" that in culture is known for, is all lies and no one family or person could ever maintain such perfection. every human being has a monster inside and if you suppress it long enough it will soon break out and in both examples they did. They prove that the innocence is not bliss and that it comes with great heart and strength, and even then so its not always achieved, and culture should not put as much pressure on making people better then others and just focus on the account that we all have problems that need to be tamed and well planed out because if not, you might just end up like Kat Winslet in Revolutionary Road.

I already posted a clip of the movie Revolutionary Road, it shows the background of the movie, and shows how things will and can go wrong. Please go watch it, it helps show what im talking about.

Revolutionary Road (15) *****