My Table Conflict

She originally thinks her prison room is "The most beautiful place!" and the bars on the windows are "for little children" (231); however, two weeks later, she thinks the room is "atrocious" (232). Her mental state deteriorates rapidly: soon she believes there is a figure in the wallpaper. The narrator later identifies this figure as a woman trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper. Ironically, her husband believes his treatment is helping her; however, when he enters the narrator's room at the end of the story, he sees that she has lost nearly all of her sanity: she has torn the wallpaper off the wall to free the imaginary woman trapped behind it. The narrator identifies with her imaginary woman and declares, "I've got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (242). The final mental state of the narrator in itself is shocking, but it is even more shocking that her husband would lock her inside a room with no human contact and with nothing to do. Most of today's readers are shocked that such a treatment would ever be accepted and implemented, especially by the narrator's own husband.

The windows show the outside world, showing you what lies beyond the four walls which you are stuck between. Many cases throughout the book result in a woman’s character being trapped and not being able to leave the house they are in. The women then result in looking out the windows only to dream about leaving. “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” (11). The main character’s grandmother was trapped in her own house, her husband had stripped her of her freedom and was enable to leave. Windows are tricky, they are sweet like honey showing you the outside world, but in the book the character, then realizes they cannot venture past them so they

Furthermore, both authors explore the theme of isolation throughout their texts. In Jasper Jones, Laura constantly feels isolated from her community, and seeks refuge from this isolation in a relationship with Jasper. The isolation is represented through the characterisation of Laura. Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that her father had been sexually assaulting her. The isolation she was experiencing due to this assault comes to a head at the climax of the novel, where we read Laura’s suicide note. She reveals that although she is now dead, she has been “dead inside long before this” and that her “life was disappearing”. This is a clear example of the isolation manifesting within her to the extent that she feels suicide is her only option. In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, we are introduced to the isolation and anxiety Holly feels through dialogue. In one particular scene, Holly explains to Paul how she is experiencing the “Mean reds”, which is when you are afraid of something, but you do not know what

She has been confined to the former nursery in her family's colonial mansion to cure her of hysterical tendencies, a medical condition she was diagnosed with after the birth of her son (Gilman 1997: 1f.). The woman confides in her secret journal how her contact with the outside world has become strictly limited on account of her Doctor's recommendations, and how the treatment forces her to spend her days in a barely furnished room with only her own mind and the objects around her as companions (Gilman 1997: 1f.). One of the main objects she actively engages with during this period of isolation, other than the nailed down bed and her secret journal, is the old yellow wallpaper covering the walls around her (Gilman 1997: 1f.). While the woman's condition worsens gradually over the course of the entries she makes in her secret journal, her growing isolation and inactivity make her start to see movement in the patterns and holes of the old wallpaper (Teichler 1984: 61, Gilman 1997: 1f.). The character becomes absorbed by what she thinks she sees, and begins to directly interact with the things she sees in the paper, until she rips the paper to shreds, and violently frees what she sees, and subsequently, also herself from captivity (Teichler 1984: 61, Gilman 1997:

To support this idea, Bordwell illustrates how art cinema motivates its narratives differently, through two principles: realism and authorial expressivity. Firstly he proposes the notion that art films reflect realism in their characters, space, and time. Psychologically complex characters are present in real worlds dealing with true-to-life situations. Art cinema is concerned with the characters ‘reaction’ to these situations, rather than their ‘action’. Thus it bares an element of psychological subjectivity as the characters survey the world they are in, which aids the realisation of the distress of

The Necessity of Art in Station Eleven Ever since I can remember I have loved theatre. It’s been a constant presence, and an important touchstone, in my life. However, for as long as I’ve loved theatre, I have also been ridiculed for my enjoyment of it. As a child, my interest

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) explores the intermingling of public and private realms, puncturing the illusion of the former and unveiling the grim and often disturbing reality of the latter. By delving into the personal delusions of its characters and showing the devastation caused by disrupting those fantasies, the film provides

In today’s society, especially in the American education system, there is often an emphasis placed more on math and science, rather than the arts. Similar to Marc Slouka’s central argument in “Dehumanized”, Atwood agrees that capitalism has led to a culture where it is almost shameful to pursue the arts and humanities. This conflict is reflected in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, where the protagonist struggles to clutch onto the seemingly intangible value of the arts amidst a capitalist society where scientific innovation is encouraged. However, even after this society’s eradication of anything that cannot turn a profit, Crake’s genetic modification, and the destruction of almost the entire human race, the efforts to eliminate the arts were still not effective. In this way, Atwood argues that it is not wise to attempt to eradicate the arts because the need for self-expression through arts and emotions is embedded in what defines humanity. Atwood uses Oryx and Crake as a vehicle to stress the importance of valuing the arts and humanities in a capitalist society, specifically in the education system.

Another small but important window scene takes place after Clarissa returns home to discover that her husband has been invited to Millicent Bruton’s lunch party but she has not. After reading the message about the party on a notepad, she begins to retreat upstairs to her private room, “a single figure against the appalling night.” As she lingers before the “open staircase window,” she feels her own aging, “suddenly shriveled, aged, breastless… out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed…” Again, there is a hint of danger as death is portrayed as a somewhat alluring transcendental experience,

Following, a memorable turning point develops with Art’s birthday at the dinner. Establishing a precedent background, that will be the key to understand the aim of the film as a contribution to the universe. It condenses all the social, medical and political views of the time towards disabled people. The scene has such a strong force on the audience creating a mood, where each individual face every image with feelings of awkwardness, disgust, courage, and

Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) is a film composed of a variety of genres. In certain aspects it represents a feminist film; at times it becomes melodramatic. The film is melodramatic in many ways; music in this melodrama is used as a motif for the female protagonist Ada, who cannot verbally express her feelings and emotions. Music is a melodrama is a valuable indicator of a scene’s mood or a character’s feelings; the piano in this film is an extension of Ada and the diegetic and non-diegetic scores portrays her voice. On one level the film recounts the tale of a woman at the mercy of a patriarchal society in which she has little power; Ada is forced into an arranged marriage by her father, treated as a commodity by Stewart,

In response to the work of Cindy Sherman, I did not know she was considered an “artist” because her works are mostly of photography and film director. This is because I believe that her works is more of motion work more than art. However, when I looked it up, her work is definitely art captured in motion. I feel like her art is very different from the other artist, and that it more like an aesthetic form of art. Before this assignment, I did not know that Cindy Sherman was a photographer or a film director and it was interesting to know that she one.

“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” This poem was called Last Fragment by Raymond Carver it portrayed self-actualization to seek or need something and having the affirmation of it. The movie Birdman (2014) touches this but mainly with the issues of seeking relevance and the need to have their own self-image. In this essay, I claim that Birdman (2014) gives an image on how narcissistic and obsessed people can become when it comes to being relevant and staying relevant in the world every day and how the thirst of self-image can take over your mindset. I will be using mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography and sound to verify this

Janet Maslin of The New York Times commended the "thoughtfulness of [Boaz] Yakin's direction" and wrote that he "doesn't include many violent episodes in this film, but the ones he stages are made so meaningful that their impact is brutalizingly intense. She also complimented Adam Holender's cinematography and commented that he makes the film "extraordinarily handsome, with a sharply sunlit look that brings out the hard edges in its urban landscapes.

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)