1. Boys dont cry
I chose to do my response paper on the movie Boys Don't Cry. I spent a lot of time thinking of what I could do that would be interesting to both you and me when this movie came on TV. I recorded it and watched it three times over the next two days. This movie makes many bold statements about gender vs. sex and poses a lot of questions for the viewer to think on long after the credits roll. The comfortable boundaries of gender and sex are pushed to their limits. Watching this movie, you can feel yourself in each characters shoes, even when you don't agree with anything that character stands for.
I"d like to give a brief overview while avoiding going into details quite yet. I"ll fill in more details and opinions following this summary. This movie is based on the true story of Teena Brandon. Teena, a lonely girl who would rather be a boy, cuts her hair and sticks a sock down her jeans. She then moves away from everyone who knows him. He meets another group of young men and women who would probably be described as "trailer trash". Teena Brandon is now Brandon Teena. Brandon tried to learn how to be a man from his friends John and Tom and begins to date Lana. He tries to fit in by getting into fights, drinking too much and running from the cops through an open sand field. He wants to be masculine, to have a different gender than the sex he was born with.
No one gives any indication that they know Brandon is really a girl until he is finally found out because of previous criminal charges that have caught up to him. Lana has been given hints which are shown in the movie, but she chooses not to think about it, she doesn't want to see it. This may be part of how Lana is somewhat accepting of Brandon's real identity; she really had an idea already. John and Tom on the other hand rape and severely beat Brandon. When Brandon speaks with the local law enforcement, his case was not handled properly, and Brandon was not given the protection he should have been given.
I dont know. ... I dont want to talk to him about it; I dont want to talk to him at all. ... I dont know what he thinks he's doing. ... I dont want to make a fuss, because I dont want to get involved. ... What was odd, however, was that he seemed to expect me to be upset and cry when...
"I DONT WANT YOU TO COME HERE." ... When the two boys met each other for the first time, Kingshaw was lied to by Hooper about the bed he slept in. ... He did not dare to look at the dead things in the room and became so helpless that he actually started to "cry with frustration." ... The two boys discussed about death and we learnt that Hooper believed that "humans are only animals". ... Apart from the two boys who are both victims in different ways, the two adults are also victims of their societal, family and personal expectations, under certain circumstances. ...
God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy's The Road Erik J. Wielenberg Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is, among other things, a meditation on morality, what makes human life meaningful, and the relationship between these things and God. While the novel is rife with religious imagery and ideas, it suggests a conception of morality and meaning that is secular in nature. In this paper I show that while the existence of God remains ambiguous throughout the novel, The Road contains both a clear moral code and a view about what makes life meaningful. I describe this moral code and e...
