Contrasting Themes In David Lynch's Film Blue Velvet

Focusing on a twenty year old obsessed with death and suicide who falls in love with an eccentric almost-eighty-year-old woman, Harold and Maude is a somewhat unconventional romantic comedy widely regarded as a cult classic. This movie’s use of suicide and other sensationalized ideas from Psychology is jarring to say the least, but its Psychological principles are not limited to those. There are many everyday aspects of Psychology immortalized through this film that would hardly make one bat an eye. In the movie, twenty year old Harold lives, mostly, with his mother. During the time he is not living with his mother, he is faking suicide for her attention, bringing home a hearse as his first car, or attending funerals, presumably for fun. Harold’s quirks seem to at least somewhat

Stephen King wrote the short story “Why We Crave Horror Films” explaining why our mind gets so excited during horror movies. He continues to make the statement “the horror film has become the modern public lynching” (paragraph 6) showing that no matter what generation a person is in the excitement of gore will always exist. King proves this statement discussing emotions and psychiatric points in his work.

The film The Green Mile was originally written by Stephen King and later directed by Frank Darabont. It is based on the guards and inmates of a penitentiary’s Death Row during the great depression. There is a certain monotony that comes with working on Death Row and Paul Edgecomb, played by Tom Hanks, has become numb to the fact that he is paid to take lives; that is until John Coffey gets sentenced to death and is sent to Paul’s “green mile”. John Coffey is a very large black man that was accused of rape and murder of two little girls, and in the 1930’s having charges like that brought upon you was grounds for the death penalty, especially for a black man in the south.

In his sophomore film, Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), director Harmony Korine tunes in to the psychotic perspective of Julien (Ewan Bremner) – a suburban schizophrenic with raisin-black eyes and detachable dentistry – and his almost equally grotesque family, in a disorderly smear of violence, incest, and finally, tragedy. The film 's fragmented narrative structure, with its grainy and hand-held visual style, shudders on to the screen in a fusillade of discursive vignettes, that reflect, not only the digital dexterity of its director, but the haunting psychosis of its titular protagonist. It is the inarticulate jumble of Julien 's psychology which is the organizing principle of the film. And, it is precisely how we as viewers identify with this character and become complicit in his pathological perspective which this essay will continue to explore.

Tim Burton’s fictional worlds are ones of clear compartmentalization, quite often between literal shades of black and white. Through visual contrasts the audience is not only drawn into the plot, but also given explicit messages about how to interpret the actions and motives of the characters. His macabre art style and purposeful storytelling both hint at his rejection of the status quo; throughout his stories he reinforces the idea that normality is not synonymous with morality through the use of stark lighting contrast, yin and yang style settings, and costumes that are polarly different.

Sonny’s Blues, a short story by famed African-American author James Baldwin, is the story of two bothers. Other famous stories of two brothers include both The Prodigal Son parable and the story of Cain and Abel, both from which Baldwin clearly draws inspiration from. Baldwin grew up with many religious teachings, as his adoptive father, David Baldwin, was a preacher. Though the relationship between father and son was not enviable, Baldwin still grew up active in his religion (James Baldwin- Biography). Baldwin, despite growing up in the Baptist church with a preacher for a father began to convert to Pentecostalism began in his early teenage years when he accompanied friends to a Pentecostal church, where, at the age of fourteen, he became ‘street preacher’ (James Baldwin- Biography). Of those years as a preacher, Baldwin recalled, “Those three years in the pulpit – I didn’t realize it then – that is what turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty.” Many of his works prominently feature religion, and mimic the bible in language and tone (James Baldwin- About the Author).

Through the depiction of Chiron and his struggle in the film Moonlight Jenkins shows that the system one lives in and the internal self results in domination against oneself. Chiron the protagonist of the film is considered weak and fragile in comparison to his classmates and the people in his community and thus Chiron is targeted by his peers and even within his own household. In Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks it is argued that the black man plays a part in their own domination by constantly viewing themselves as less than the white men.

People watch horror films to renew their feelings of normality. Caught up in our lives, we all begin to lose our sense of feeling like a normal person. By watching the peculiar events and characters in a horror movie, a person can replenish their normality. Stephen King offers another example from a horror movie that compares humans to the ugly personae in a horror movie--“Freda Jackson as the horrible melting women in Die, Monster, Die!” (King, “Why We 1) makes us feel, to put it bluntly, normal. King continues to use this example to prove we are “light- years from true ugliness” (King “Why We 1). Humans require the strangeness of horror movies to demonstrate they are normal. A short story by King represents an example on how to compare a “regular” person to the main character of the story “Strawberry Spring.” King states that everyone is a tiny bit insane, and they need horror films to contain their insanity. King describes how even a “normal” person has a minuscule piece of insanity living inside them, “ Your insanity leads you only to talk to your self when you are under stress” (King, “Why We” 2). The average person has a mild case of insanity and to view a horror movie or read a terrifying story about strange characters it reestablishes their sense of normality. In “ Strawberry Spring” the main character loses control of his own mind when the fog comes. When he loses control he carves

It doesn’t take long to figure out that race and ethnicity issues continue to affect America - a quick glance at the news will show the latest riot, hate crime, or police brutality incident. This centuries old struggle has given rise to a number of literary works on the topic, many of which take a different approach to the issue. W.E.B. Du Bois, for instance, published the work The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, arguing for blacks’ right to equality in a horrifically segregated society. In these essays, Du Bois coined the term “double-consciousness,” wherein those with black skin must view the world both from their own perspective, and from the perspective of the predominately white society. The short story Recitatif by Toni Morrison explores this concept through the removal of the characters’ races, and the film Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, tells a story to demonstrate it. While the former shows double-consciousness through the usage of ambiguity, the latter almost directly references the concept. Taken together, these two sources argue a multi-faceted version double-consciousness, wherein society alienates the characters in ways that go beyond just the color of one’s skin.

We feel that One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest is filled with many psychological connotations. This movie is set in a mental hospital where McMurphy was admitted to be psychologically evaluated because of violent behavior. Upon his arrival McMurphy noticed that the patients were very robot-like in their actions. The hospital is extremely structured where the patient’s daily life was monotonous. We will discuss the various connotations by answering the following questions that have been asked.

David Lynch's Blue Velvet is an exploration of things above and below the surface. This surface is really a borderline between not only idyllic suburban America and the dark, perverted corruption that lies underneath but also between good and evil, conscious and subconscious, dream and reality. Although this division seems quite rigid and clean-cut some of the most important implications of the film stem from the transgressions of these borderlines. In the initial scenes of the film Lynch introduces Lumberton, the typical small town in Middle America where the fireman waves at you, the children are well protected, the lawns are green and there is a smile on everybody's face. Naturally, the most important clich?

After the dog it cuts to a close up of the grass in begins to zoom in, closer and closer. The score becomes non existent and the churning noise begins and becomes louder as the grass gets closer. The camera moves through the grass and the disturbing sound of bones breaking becomes prominent. The lighting becomes darker and darker and the beetles are revealed. The beetles are shot with very low key lighting and extremely dark colors which are used to emphasize the difference between the first and last shots.

In the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", the main character, John Nash, is a mathematician who suffers from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is actually the most chronic and disabling of the major mental illnesses and it distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, interprets reality and relates to others.

To help create his debut film Citizen Kane, Orson Welles assembled a talented group of artists and technicians who together produced a film that redefined cinema forever. During the film’s production process, Welles himself stated that making a film “is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had.” By this he meant that the production studio was his playground and he intended to use every tool at his disposal. Starting from the film’s very first shot; he proves this to be true. As the film begins, the camera silently cranes up over the fences that surround Charles Foster Kane’s mansion and then slowly transitions to a montage of palatial estate. In this unique sequence the viewer understands that they are watching no ordinary film! Since its release in 1941, Citizen Kane consistently is called one of the greatest films ever made. It also is one of the most analyzed films ever created as well. In watching the film, a person can select from a countless number of famous scenes on which to review, comment, admire, and draw conclusions. For this assignment, I chose my personal favorite scene from the film to analyze in depth. The scene occurs near the end of the film just as Kane’s second wife Susan Alexander leaves him for good. The scene lasts about 3 and a half minutes in length, consists of 12 shots, contains almost no music, and just one word of dialogue is spoken. However, even with these limitations, the scene has more impact and film techniques packed into it

Throughout the movie, The Notebook, there were many different aspects that corresponded with the material learned throughout the semester. There were times were you were able to pin point why each problem was faced based on different character backgrounds. As began to watch the movie, you start to understand the culture aspects of each individual by the way they talk and present themselves, which caused many situations to arise. Also, these many situations arise throughout the movie that affected the outcome of decisions made: biological, psychological, and social/environment. However, diversity played a magnificent role from the beginning to the end. So, therefore, throughout this paper you will have a better understanding of the analysis of this film, which should provide information about the movie.