Film Analysis of American Beauty and the Graduate Essay

Jessica Burns 309164 Jmbf6b@mail.missouri.edu Film Studies 1800 Sequence Analysis/ Assignment No. 2 American Beauty -From when Carolyn arrives home until the end of the scene with Lester in their living room (Chapter 19: 1:14:35–1:17:40) The movie â€Å"American Beauty† literally is trying to express how much beauty there is in America but it is not always so easy to see. Often in the film objects normally thought of as ordinary are magnified to express deeper meaning and show what beauty really exists in the world. The color red, for instance, is an ordinary color but it shows its face numerous times throughout the movie. The color is not just ordinary it is significant, as it represents love, passion, and†¦show more content†¦In an instant the moment ends when Lester almost ruins her precious couch. Carolyn returns to being uptight and materialistic and Lester to being angry. He becomes so angry with her because she has let material things be her life. This shows how important love, passion, and happiness in life is, what it is really about, and how hard it is to maintain all in only a few short minutes. The cinematography in the film does a wonderful job conveying the genuine meaning behind t he sequence as well. The camera is placed far from the actors at the beginning of the scene and becomes closer and closer as the desire between Lester and Carolyn grows. When Carolyn relapses and becomes upset about the couch almost getting ruined the camera goes out again and the actors are surrounded by all of the material items in the room. In that frame it is clear that the more intimate, close up scene was more tasteful to see than the angry room full of expensive furniture. Through this sequence the viewer should be able to understand the social issue addressed; that today Americans ignore the raw, pure beauty in the world and instead are obsessed with the amount of objects that they can own. Natural beauty is disappearing, while store bought beauty is growing. In time this will destroy true happiness. The film is touching the viewer’s heart and mise-en-scene and cinematography do a wonderful job at exposing the actualityShow MoreRelatedAmerican Journalist, Editor For N ews Of The New York Times962 Words   |  4 Pages American journalist, editor for news of The New York Times, and Harvard graduate Susan Chira (author’s background) uncovers society’s stagnant opinion of unwed motherhood being deviant and unacceptable, as portrayed in movies (content). Chira states that from the 1930’s to the 1950’s unwed motherhood was a disgrace, and films depicted it as such. This stigma remains today, even when unwed motherhood is a conscious decision, society views it as a bad one. Movie plots have not shifted from a motherRead MoreThe Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay1359 Words   |  6 Pagestranslated to in a way where we are able to analyze media in all it’s shapes and forms. Psychoanalytic media analysis argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the characters within a movie, and the literary work is a manifestation of the Id, Super-Ego, and Ego. The text t hat I will analyze using the psychoanalytic media theory will be the film The Great Gatsby, originally a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will be using Freud’s primary psychoanalyticRead MoreThe American Dream1808 Words   |  8 PagesAn idea that individuals in America have been provided with equal opportunities to grow and pursue their happiness regardless of their economic and social status is the crux of an American Dream, an aspect that has been applied for a long period to define the nation’s psyche. When referring to the American Dream, individuals tend to believe that it relates to having better opportunities to achieve material prosperity, living a comfortable lifestyle, enjoying the nature of the landscape, and livingRead MoreWalt Disney s Influence On1942 Words   |  8 PagesBird Sean Skokan Cleveland State University Outline 1) Introduction- Introduces reader to Brad Bird, his films, and Disney s influence on both his work and his life. 2) Body Disney Protagonists- Demonstrates how Disney protagonists, specifically females, are depicted in films through several studies. Brad Bird s Protagonists- Examines how protagonists are displayed in Brad Bird s films and compares them to previously established masculine and feminine qualities that have resulted from theseRead MoreFear and Trembling Film Anaysis1549 Words   |  7 PagesFear and Trembling Film Analysis Paul Regallis Intercultural Communication 35852 Dr. Mei-Chen Lin November 28, 2007 Abstract The movie Fear and Trembling shows many examples of intercultural communication. Amà ©lie, one of the main characters in the movie, encounters different kinds of intercultural adaption difficulties. A few examples of these are making friends, cultural knowledge and appreciation and pressure to conform. Some of Amà ©lies experiences have her going through some aspectsRead MorePhotoshop in Business and Society1502 Words   |  6 Pageslimited to media or photography. Photoshop has a brief history since it has only been around for almost three decades. At the end of the 1980s, it was beginning to be developed as a way of procrastination by Thomas Knoll, a University of Michigan graduate student and doctoral candidate in computer vision. Knoll was trying to write programming code to display gray-scale computer images on a black-and-white bitmap monitor as told by Jeff Schewe in his PEI magazine story The Birth of a Killer Application:Read MoreStatement of Purpose23848 Words   |  96 Pages. 31 Literature (American) ........................................................................................................... 33 Literature (English and American) ....................................................................................... 35 Literature (Medieval) ............................................................................................................ 36 Ohio Wesleyan University Writing Center  © 2011 IV. Arts (Fine Arts, Music, Film, Theatre, and Dance)Read MoreDisney, Racism, And The Renaissance Era2978 Words   |  12 Pages the company has now become a world-wide phenomenon, diversifying its company into live-action film production, television, and theme parks. It surrounds us every day, in almost every way possible. More importantly however, the Disney industry is known to people world-wide as being one of the top leaders in children’s popular films and subsequently, storybooks. The countless movies and short films made over the years have not only provided joy and happiness to families and young children, butRead MoreANTH 1120 Midterm Exam Review2818 Words   |  12 Pagesimpossible to make moral judgements about the beliefs and behaviours of members of other cultures. Armchair Anthropology: An approach to the study of various societies that dominated anthropology in the late 1800s. It involved the collection, study, and analysis of the writings of missionaries, explorers, and colonists who had sustained contact with non-Western peoples. Armchair anthropologists used these documents to make comparisons and generalisations about the ways of life of various groups. ParticipantRead MoreEssay about Gendered Media9688 Words   |  39 Pageswhite men as women (Basow, 1992 p. 159), or children’s programming, in which males outnumber females by two to one, or newscasts, in which women make up 16% of newscasters and in which stories about men are included 10 MEDIA’S MISREPRESENTATION OF AMERICAN LIFE The media present a distorted version of cultural life in our country. According to media portrayals: White males make up two-thirds of the population. The women are less in number, perhaps because fewer than 10% live beyond 35. Those who