A Better Life, And Dirty Pretty Things : Film Analysis

This characterization gives a bigger meaning to the dangerous journey taken by immigrants to cross these socially constructed borders and brings meaning to immigrants as people, and not just as objects. The film shows the landscape of Honduras, people working in the fields, how children learn in school, soccer playing as a pastime and other visual occurrences that expose the viewer to the daily life of a Honduran citizen. The personification of Yohan being from Honduras, being father of three kids, a husband, a son, and a worker in his community, shows that his identity does not just amount to one negative connotation that is perceived out of ignorance and xenophobic principles. With Yohan as a real-life example, it motivates individuals to see that migrants expose themselves to dangers because of their family and goals. Yohan is not just a number or a name, but a person with a dream and a background—which provides a further representation of immigrants as people. This depiction gives immigrants a contextual background, gives them an identity through their “homeland.”

“Becoming American” is short film that informs the viewer about the process of immigrants getting jobs in America. Immigrants both gain and lose many aspects of what make them who they are when coming to America. This film teaches many things that people don’t probably know about Hispanic immigrants and allows others to understand what immigrants stand for.

In this paper I am going to write about the movie “Grease.” Specifically, on the two main characters Sandy and Danny. I will be describing and analyzing their interpersonal communication, but mainly on the conflict of their communication.

Over the course of history, South Asians have been mistreated and undermined within American society. This is especially evident after the terror attacks of 9/11 in which Americans shunned its South Asian Population, and reduced them to devastating stereotypes. This has created tension and hostility within the South Asian community, thus pressuring them to being more Americanized, and further creating a fixation towards becoming more white. The obsession with American culture has caused many to conform, leaving behind cultural and religious parts of their identities. It is necessary to explore the history behind the mistreatment of South Asians to understand why the change in identity such as those portrayed with Changez in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Amir in Disgraced have occurred. These main characters of South Asian descent make it is clear that the American dream for immigrants creates a constant struggle between national and transnational identities as racism and hostility are being thrust upon them by American society.

Peter Marin’s article “Toward Something American: The Immigrant Soul” explains his views on American life versus American culture and how they differ. He explains that in the average American life it is simply the task of finding and calling the place they now reside in home. “Home is for us, as it is for all immigrants, something to be regained, created, discovered, or mourned-not where we are in time or space, but where we dream of being”. (84) In other words, a new immigrant coming to America and a descendent to new world immigrant still experience the same conflict of American life. In the

The film Pleasantville directed by Gary Ross is about two modern teenagers, David and his sister Jennifer, somehow being transported into the television, ending up in Pleasantville, a 1950s black and white sitcom. The two are trapped as Bud and Mary Sue in a radically different dimension and make some huge changes to the bland lives of the citizens of Pleasantville, with the use of the director’s cinematic techniques. Ross cleverly uses cinematic techniques such as colour, mise-en-scene, camera shots, costumes, music and dialogue to effectively tell the story.

Immigrants come from different parts of the world in many shades of white, brown, and black. In extreme cases, some immigrants are stereotyped as rapists, thieves, drug dealers, etc. or at the very least seen as second-class citizens. Depending if they support the issue or not, even the red or blue side of the political party, people tend to blind themselves from the reality of why they actually migrate. Natives tend to deny seeing the humanity in immigrants’ individual stories and lives. They not only migrate to different countries for better opportunities, but to find jobs to support their families and give their children a better education than they would have had in their country. George Saunders’ short story, The Semplica-Girl Diaries, relates to immigration because the SG’s reflect the treatment of immigrant workers in our society. The SG’s display women who have lived in extreme poverty and don’t have a better choice but to sell themselves to the rich as lawn

Every individual, no matter who they are, will all face challenges that result from their backgrounds and cultures. Born in Calcutta, India and later moving to the United States, Amin Ahmad was an individual who discovered this harsh truth first-hand. In his essay, “I Belong Here,” Ahmad reflects on his experience of being treated differently from those around him based off his cultural background. He analyzes the emotional barrier that forms between the journey of immigration and the continuous feeling of inferiority based solely on the desire to belong. The article is written to provide a different point of view; one focused on introducing to the world the challenges and emotions immigrants face after starting the journey towards a new life.

In the movie A Better Life, the Main Character Carlos Galindo is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who started working as a day labor worker when he first arrived in the country, however he has had steady work from Blasco Martinez who owns a gardening business which he tries to convince Carlos to buy from him as he says he is moving. The idea of being self employed is very appealing to Carlos but he knows he can never afford to do so and the risk of getting caught and deported is very high. Carlos has a son Luis who is reluctant to go to school on a daily basis and gets into trouble as he is influenced by his friends who are part of the

How would you react if you found your wife in the shower with another man? Any sane person would furious, but would you lose control and beat the other man senseless? Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of bipolar disorder in The Silver Linings Playbook how untreated the disorder can take control of a person’s life giving them manic episodes and major depressive episodes. This film aims to accurately display the struggles any person with bipolar disorder will deal with in their daily life while trying to manage the extensive mood swings they experience. The intended purpose of this paper is to analyze not only in what ways the director and cast accurately display the everyday life of an individual with bipolar disorder, but also the quality of the film. Throughout the movie themes of divorce, medications, the need for social support when dealing with mental disorders and a person’s unwillingness to accept help, will all be brought up in order to help an individual manage their disorder.

Immigration makes up of the United States. The life of an immigrant faces many struggles. Coming to the United States is a very difficult time for immigrant, especially when English is not their first language. In Oscar Handlin’s essay, Uprooted and Trapped: The One-Way Route to Modernity and Mark Wyman’s Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, both these essays describes the life of immigrants living in America and how they are able to make a decent amount of money to support their families. Handlin’s essay Uprooted and Trapped: The One - Way Route to Modernity explains how unskilled immigrants came to adapt to the American life working in factories to make a living. In the essay, Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, this essay describes the reality of many immigrants migrating to the United States in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Many were living and adjusting to being transnational families. Both these essays show how the influx of immigration and industrialization contributed to the making of the United States. With the support from documents 3 and 7, Thomas O’ Donnell, Immigrant Thomas O’Donnell Laments the Worker’s Plight, 1883 and A Slovenian Boy Remembers Tales of the Golden Country, 1909, these documents will explain the life of an immigrant worker in the United States. Although, the United States was portrayed as the country for a better life and a new beginning, in reality, the United

“The Arrival,” by Shaun Tan, is a wordless novel that depicts the experience immigrants go through when vacating their home countries to start new in a different country. Readers can see that on the first page there is a collage of headshots from multiple people of different ethnicity and religion. The first image page of the wordless novel helps viewers get a clearer image of what the novel is about. In “The Arrival,” Shaun Tan depicts the hardships and enjoyment that immigrants experience when moving to a new country, since the piece was written in 2006, there seems to be more hardships than enjoyment when coming to the United States, which means the idea of the United States being a melting pot is flawed.

“Ordinary people” everywhere are faced day after day with the ever so common tragedy of losing a loved one. As we all know death is inevitable. We live with this harsh reality in the back of our mind’s eye. Only when we are shoved in the depths of despair can we truly understand the multitude of emotions brought forth. Although people may try to be empathetic, no one can truly grasp the rawness felt inside of a shattered heart until death has knocked at their door. We live in an environment where death is invisible and denied, yet we have become desensitized to it. These inconsistencies appear in the extent to which families are personally affected by death—whether they

For thousands of years, waves of immigrants continue joining the developed countries in the world, bringing with them the unique cultures, languages, and ideas. Over time, those unique values might be faded away with each generation because of the new culture exposition. The second-generation immigrants experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of host society. Most of them are unable to preserve and empower their origin cultures. Many differences between the first-generation and the second-generation immigrants arise. Through the analysis of the mother in “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” and the Das family in “Interpreter of Maladies”, I would like to demonstrate the differences between the first-generation immigrants, who travel from other countries, and the second-generation immigrants, who were born and raised on the immigrated land. These differences include the purpose of being in the foreign land, the connections to their homelands, society’s view, and the culture differences.

The arrival of immigrants into developed nations has been a common trend for centuries, but so has the wave of resentment from natives of the land towards those who are migrants. Adichie illustries this migrant struggle through Americanah, which explores the hardships migrants must face with trying to be accepted into the new society. With her portrayal of the immigrant tendency to assimilate, Adichie skillfully highlights the pain associated with losing essential parts of one’s true identity.