The manhood of Fruitvale Station Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station (2013) is a biographical drama film based on Oscar Grant’s tragedy. This film intends to empathize with Oscar Grant and for his life to still hold validity as a Black man. This is regardless of if he bore children or belonged to anyone regarding his manhood via editing and character dialogue. As a dark-skinned man, he falls victim to the trope of black men’s weaponization; he does not have the privilege to be treated as gently as white men but is cast aside and labeled as ‘dangerous.’ By referring to his manhood throughout the film, Oscar becomes more humane. His life is more tangible to the audience, as it should’ve never been stolen from him. Twenty-two-year-old father, …show more content…
Because Coogler doesn’t want this lovely couple to suffer on Judgement Day, there are no images. This is because it is easy to pass judgment when you watch someone speaking about their unattainable resolutions when it is real and true to them. This shared auditory conversation is intimate to the couple and the audience. This is because it is vulnerable to expressing how you feel and intend to act on it. To keep her commitment, Sophina explains to him that “It only takes 30 days to form a habit and then it becomes second nature,”. When Oscar tells Sophina that he devoted himself to not selling drugs, her quote was used in his defense to establish his legitimacy when he dumped them in the …show more content…
The camera follows Oscar to greet his boss ‘Good morning,’ to which a two-shot is performed to achieve shared intimacy between the two characters. Emmy, his boss, turns around briefly, acknowledging him before returning to taking inventory of the grocery items on the shelves. Oscar clues him on his list for his mother’s birthday, to which his boss tells him that he hopes he finds everything he needs. In light of his boss’ kind demeanor, he takes this opportunity to win him over for a reconsideration of his employment status. A dolly shot for the pair as Oscar anxiously follows his boss; his boss is positioned in front of Oscar, taking inventory. In the background, the audience sees Oscar, anxious and frantic, with uncertainty in his voice as he brings up the topic of his career. He clutches his black beanie in his hands. His eyebrows are knitted, which are tell-tale signs of nervousness and apprehension. Oscar’s eyes grow wide in adornment to his boss as he listens to him. The opinion of his boss matters to him much like his mother’s. It is connoted by the film (and audience) that Emmy took a risk on hiring Oscar given his past incarceration, thus adding to his desire to be ‘good’ and regarded as so. The two-shot and dolly shot to aid in the understanding of Oscar as a character of his intention to revert to his unholiness of drug
When Oscar is struggling to appear masculine, Yunior looks better in comparison. Yunior explains how “after the suicide drama nobody in Demarest wanted to room with [Oscar]... Me, a guy who could bench 340 pounds… put in my application for the writing section and by the beginning of September, there we were, me and Oscar. Together.” (169-70) Yunior had used Oscar to look heroic.
Growing up Oscar had a personality that was outgoing and talkative. He had a way with being able to talk to girls and even at one point was dating two girls at the same time. However, when Oscar became a teenager, his life took a different direction. He only had two friends that would hang out behind his back with girls, and so he kept to himself most of the time and he could not talk to girls like he used to. Senior year of high school, he met Ana at an SAT prep and fell for her.
Oscar wanted to end the curse on his family, he thought that by him dying their family curse
Once Oscar graduates from college, he gets a job at his previous high school, which he later decides for the first time in years to join his family by visiting La Inca back in Santo Domingo (Diaz 263). While on his trip, he meets this woman, Ybon, in which he deeply falls in love with her but he quickly learns that she has another partner (Diaz 281). Ybon reveals that she is now married and encourages Oscar to leave before her husband finds out, but he is too late. Oscar is sent out to the field and gets beaten close to death, which leads him to having déjà vu as his mother was in this exact situation as him. Time passes and Oscar returns to the states but is eager to return to the Dominican so he asks Yunior for “rent” money but then uses it to buy a flight to visit Ybon (Diaz 289).
In the book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, we were brought into a different type of storytelling. It is just like lasagna; as we read along the book and reflect upon the story being presented, we uncover the different layers hidden in this book. First, we think it as the author, Junot Diaz portrayed the story to us. Then as we get into the fourth chapter, we understood that the book was actually written by one of characters in the book who is close friend to Oscar’s family. As we finishing the book, we came to a different understanding.
The tension between artistic vision and commercial success is a recurring theme throughout the film, as the characters navigate the changing landscape of the industry. Don, in particular, struggles with the idea of sacrificing his art for the sake of a lucrative career, but ultimately realizes the value of making a film that he can be proud
Moreover, Kubrick’s reliance on unconventional camera angles and his cryptic employment of literary and mythic allusions have enriched the layered intricacies of A Clockwork Orange, hence preventing it’s evolution into a “work too didactic to be artistic”.1 Figs 1.7-1.19. A seventeen year old Alexander Delarge exercises violent delinquency along with his “droogs” by indulging in physical and sexual violence. Figs 1.10-1.12 Alex’s love for Beethoven is used against him when he is subjected to the Ludovico reform treatment, the failure of which leads to attempted suicide. In the end, Alex ironically muses, “I was cured after
He is brought there by two police, but while they are attacking him, “Oscar was sure that he was being beaten by three men, not two, that the faceless man from in front of the colmado was joining them” (299). The third person is hidden from everyone there and symbolizes loss of identity as he attacks Oscar. Being a “faceless man,” he has no distinct features and is just another asset that the police use. Since Oscar did not know that there was a third person there, he symbolizes the hidden truths of the regime. Everything in the regime is hidden, so no one knows the truth about what happens.
In the film Sunset Boulevard many character struggled with wishes, lies and dreams of fame and fortune. The film states the corruption in hollywood and that people will do anything to get ahead. With hope and delusion each character tries to gain happiness, while only being self-destructive and isolating themselves. The characters ultimately deny their problems and confuse those around them. One character in the film who struggles with her wishes, lies and dreams is, Norma Desmond, a washed up actress.
He interacts with his family and he is seen as a good father, friend, and son. Oscar is a person people can relate to and is someone that you see be loyal and a good person, regardless of his race, which he was identified by and then brutally, attacked for. The use of mise-en-scene in the opening clip of the film with the actual footage of what happened at the Fruitvale Station foreshadows how the film is going to end. This creates your feelings to grow as that the end of the film approaches that makes you not want Oscar to go to the train station because you know how it is going to end. The film started how it was going to end, but starting with the actual footage of the situation makes you pay more attention throughout the movie on why Oscar is more than just the stereotype that follows his race, and you don’t want him to have to go through that scenario because you have seen Oscar be more than what was assumed of him by the police.
“A vague chill had descended on him and his head had seemed to swell... Then something had given away inside him. It descended on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in, that night after killing Ikemefuna”(Achebe 62). In the book, Things Fall Apart, author Chinua Achebe describes Okonkwo a man who lives in Umofia, where hard work is the building block of a good life in the village with marriage being an important factor in the tribe as well. In Umuofia, having several wives and several children is very common and a sign that a man has made it financially as there is a bride price to pay when there is a desire to get married.
Emilio Estevez’s purpose in creating this film was to show how different types of people with different backgrounds can mesh together and motivate each other. In The Way, Emilio Estevez uses the literary devices such as characterization and conflict to get
Yunior woke up Oscar every day at 5 AM to go running in the mornings. He did it for a few days, then “Dude was not into it at all. As soon as we were through he’d be back at his desk in no time flat. Almost clinging to it. Tried everything he could to weasel out of our rooms.
In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is self made, powerful, and violent. Contrary to his external masculinity, the man’s life is dictated by internal fear. Okonkwo is emotionally damaged by his father’s life. Consequently, he acts in the opposite manner of his father in fear of becoming like him one day. Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was gentle and peaceful, causing endless anger in Okonkwo and violence towards every person in his life.
Men have always been masculine and have been driven to be this way by society. Yet this can sadly lead to suffering, as it has happened to many men. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, we see traditional African culture through the Umuofian villager Okonkwo. Toughness is valued in Umuofia. Yet this toughness can lead to actions which are condemned by Umuofians, as seen in Okonkwo’s story.