Movie Analysis : Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

Numerous directors have tried to change a novel or story to a movie, just like Joyce Chopra did to “Where Are You Going, Where Have You been?” short story. Most critiques will agree that the book is much better than the film “smooth talk”. Chopra adds a few parts of Connie the

Where there is desire, there is hope, despair, and struggle. Joyce Carol Oates illustrates animatedly the asphyxiated struggle of desire in her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” The story narrates the life of a young girl, named Connie, and her fated and enigmatic confrontation with a strange man. Feeling trapped in her own home with her own family, Connie, a self-conscious and rebellious teenager, tries to figure out a way to identify herself with the world around her. Her desire of escaping the reality fuels her struggle to enter adulthood. Through the physical form of Arnold Friend, who embodies both the hope and the despair in Connie’s struggle, the author metaphorically portrays a vigorous and psychological pressure that Connie has to endure. The story is scripted to allude to the danger of identifying oneself through sexuality in young girls. To better understanding this cryptic story, it is important to follow the psychological processes and conflict of Connie’s character, which help unveil the allegorical meaning of a young girl’s rite of passage through sex.

In spite of the way that Connie tries to show the nearness of being a created woman who has learned about men, her involvement with Arnold reveals this is only an execution. She has made an engaging grown-up personality through her dress, hairstyle, and general direct and gets the thought she hopes for from young fellows. Regardless, Connie dumbfounds her ability to summon thought from young fellows with her longing to truly have

Adding on to that, Connie’s shortfall that rock music has molded her has come to light when Arnold Friend gives sexual advances to her. Joyce Carol Oates shows this by writing, “It was the same program that was playing inside the house. “Bobby King?” she said. “I listen to him all the time. I think he’s great.” “He’s kind of great,” Connie said reluctantly.” “Listen, that guy’s great. He knows where the action is.” (p.3-para.2). This shows how Connie feels shocked that Arnold was also listening to the same music as she was when she was inside the house last time. Since she was incompetent in realizing how teenagers interpret the music than adult figures, Connie is vulnerable when Arnold threatens her to come to him because of the rock music that is being allotted to teenagers. To sum it up, the sexual song lyrics and the image of rock music that is normally played and embraced in the American culture has influenced Connie, a teenager, physically and mentally; therefore, she is taken advantage of by Arnold because of her immaturity and youth.

The encounter that Connie experiences with Arnold Friend involves a series of events that would lead someone to believe that he in fact was a figment of her subconscious, or a nightmare. Before their rendezvous, Connie had been sitting “with her eyes closed in the sun”, daydreaming (29). This is the first clue Oates presents the reader to show that Connie falls asleep. In addition to this, when Connie “opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was” (29). When a person is involved in a dream, it is common that they

As stated previously, the screen door is considered a boundary between Connie and Arnold. Arnold stands outside the house with his arms wide open as if he is waiting for Connie to come out and Connie is inside the house. When Connie opens the screen door at the end of the story, she hesitates because “she put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open” (56). When she opens the door even though she is hesitant, she is acting mature by accepting her fate to go for a ride with Arnold (she will not come back the same after the ride). If Connie keeps the screen door closed and stays inside the house she would still be the same girl, a fearful young innocent teenage girl who is afraid to face her own fate. Being mature also means sacrificing valuable things in life, Arnold Friend implies that he is going to threaten Connie’s family when he tells her that they do not need to get “involved”. Connie sacrifices herself for her family, which shows a kind of maturity. Even though she feels detached to her family, they mean a lot to her since they were the ones who always stood beside her and took care of her. The inside of the house is a safe place for Connie, but she leaves the safe area as a mature (sacrifice-taker) version of herself, a different person. Once she opens the screen door to go for a ride with

Connie’s identity is shown at the end of the story, but who she was at the beginning of the story differs to who she became at the end of the story. To start, Connie was a fifteen year old girl who was beautiful and adventuress, but failed to acknowledge and grasp the idea of a real family. Connie’s family or her mother is not the exact loving and caring mother some people have experienced. In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, Connie sated “Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn 't

The short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was written in 1966 by Joyce Carol Oates’s. It was later remade into a movie called “Smooth Talk” in 1985. This movie and this book is about a daughter that doesn't fit in with her family. She gravitates towards the teenage culture and society while her parents tries to pull her away.

In the story the ending concludes that Connie gets into the car with Arnold Friend and drives off with him in his golden vehicle, an “open jalopy, painted a bright gold,” (Oates, para. 15) without any explanation of what occurs after the ride, leaving the reader in the dark about what had occurred “on all sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.” (Oates, para. 162) In the movie Smooth Talk the Connie is taken from her house by Arnold Friend and driven to an unknown field where something occurs with slight faint screams in the distance while the camera is focused on the golden vehicle. She is then driven back to her home, where apparently some time has passed, and is reunited with her family with a “new outlook” on life. The house is different and even Connie’s room is changed, creating an effect that Connie has passed on and her spirit returned to mend broken ties with her family. The cliffhanger that Oates leaves and the insight that Chopra allocates are significantly

During the conversation between Connie and Arnold Friend, she experiences a dramatic moment so intense that it cannot be avoided or ignored. Her attempt was creating a sexy appearance and fascinating the boys in the local diner delivers as her experiment to analyze new fields as well as a new side of herself. However, until Arnold comes into the story, her expeditions have always been closed into security. She may go into an dark alley with a boy for a short period, but no matter what happens there,

To my understanding, the movie Home for the Holidays not only reveals a lot of potential family conflicts, but also reflects a lot of different communication approaches of the various family members. As a foreigner, I have never experienced Thanksgiving homecoming dinner before, so I may cannot understand some of the holiday customs in the movie, but I found out that their family interactions are interesting indeed.

Throughout the film Do the Right Thing, we continuously observe racial conflict that builds up to such an extreme point that it leads to a fight for power. This movie portrays the struggles and realities of a neighborhood with white and black African American people. This can be seen in many instances for example when Buggin ' Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley march into Sal 's and demand that Sal change the Wall of Fame. Another vital instance shows the height of power struggle. It is when the huge fight starts in the street and results in Raheem being killed by a white police officer.

Both the movie and the story emphasize the dramatic separation of understanding between Connie and her mother. The apparent lack of depth in Connie and her father’s relationship dims in comparison to the almost-tangible hatred Connie seems to feel toward her mother, her mother “who had been pretty once too, but now her looks were gone, and that was why she was always after Connie” (Oates 148). Despite the anger she feels, however, it is her mother that Connie cries out to for help in both versions as she sees herself forced to give into Friend’s wishes in an attempt to spare her family the evil he hints will come

Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” begins with the introduction of it’s main character, Connie, a fifteen year- old girl. Oates makes Connie’s vanity

"Split" is a rated PG-13 horror movie released on January 20, 2017 that was not only written, but also directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan is renowned in the entertainment business for his movies filled with a great deal of twists and turns. An example of some of the movies that he has written and directed with such a style are "The Sixth Sense" as well as "The Village". Split is no different and bares M. Night Shyamalan's signature style of suspenseful movies accompanied by many twists and turns.