1. Boys dont cry
The film, Boys Don't Cry, is based on a true story and raises numerous real-world issues in its story of a murder case in middle America in which the victim was a girl who successfully passed herself off as a boy. The film delves into gender issues, questions of identity, and the ethics of interpersonal relationships. First, the viewer asks why so many people were fooled for such a long time by this masquerade. Second, the viewer wants to understand why this girl undertook the deception in the first place. Third, the viewer will ask another important question about what it is about gender that could generate such anger and hatred to cause young people to commit murder. The film dramatizes these issues so that even if we do not get complete answers to our questions, we do believe that the characters were also tormented by these questions and acted from deep-seated fears, obsessions, desires, and anger. All of this unfolds in a context that analyzes how we identify gender and how we differentiate between the masculine and the feminine.
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The central character is Teena Brandon, who dresses as a male and uses the name Brandon Teena. On one level, Teena becomes Brandon by dressing as a male, but there is much more to her impersonation than this. She also consciously acts as she believes a boy would act and does a good job of finding the right attitude,the right gesture, the right stance to convince others that she is a male. Teena cuts her hair, dresses in jeans and a leather jacket, and then "acts" the part of a male. When she takes a drink in a bar, she imitates males she has seen on screen and tosses the whiskey back in one movement. In a way, her ability to fool so many people stems from the fact that what we identify as male and female actually involves only a relative few visual and aural cues. Teena as a male swears more freely, for instance. This alone would not identify her as a man, but this combined with her mode of dress and her general attitude toward other males and toward women makes it much easier for those around her to believe that she is male.
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...
