Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker could have never imagined her movie winning six academy awards. While the opinion from the audience played a role in these winnings, the technical aspect of the movie all the way down to the first shot of the movie, played the biggest role in this achievement. Bigelow used things such as moving camera shots, camera angles, lighting, and the use of long shots to create a realistic feel throughout the movie.…
Throughout this essay Denby states the different characters that plays in teen movies. He starts off by describing the popular girl which he says is usually blonde and has a few friends. He continues by describing her boyfriend who is typically the jock. He says that the jock usually plays football, is muscular but dumb. Denby also says the popular girl and the jock are bullies. He calls them the villains of high school. Denby calls high…
Raised in an African bush country with only her parents, Cady Heron, a 16 year old home schooled teenager takes on a challenge when she enters her first public high school. She instantly makes friends with two sweet teenagers, Damian and Janis. However, she soon learns that high school is a jungle in itself, when she meets the ‘Plastics’- A group of four girls consisting of Gretchen, Karen and Regina George, the unofficial leader. The Plastics immediately let Cady into their group, however when Cady falls for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels, things turn ugly. When Regina finds out about this, she schemes for revenge to destroy Cady’s future social status, and to take Aaron away from her. Cady, jealous and angry turn to her old friends Damian and Janis to plot revenge to bring down Regina’s status. However as Cady spends more and more time with the Plastics, she too begins to become one.…
As the story opens, we are introduced to an opinionated, observant, sarcastic and hormone-driven 19-year old boy who works as a cashier in a grocery store of a small town. As he describes the store and his surroundings, the reader begins to sense Sammy’s discontentment with his mundane life when he shares his thoughts and perceptions. For example, he refers to customers as “sheep” and “house slaves”. The external conflict between Sammy and his small town’s views develops as he watches the girls maneuver their way around the store. These girls were a breath of fresh air. They were new, different and seemed to stir up some outrage and criticism. For instance, Updike writes, “A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct” (119). He even began to feel sorry for the girls as he saw “old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (Updike 120). This demonstrates how Sammy began to realize how closed-minded and ordinary the town he lived in was. Another external conflict arises when Lengel, the store manager and Sunday school teacher confronts the girls about the store’s policy. In particular, Updike states, “‘we want you decently dressed when you come in here’ ” (121). Sammy resented the fact that Lengel and all the “sheep” judged the girls simply by their clothing or lack thereof. His act of quitting was to show them that they all overreacted to the situation with the girls.…
“What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn’t because we’d have kids, so instead she’d become the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this… If that was life, then it was twisted” (190-191). In the novel Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, Tyler John Miller is an average nerd and senior in high school, living in a household of harsh language and constant fighting. He lived in the social background, having only one friend, Calvin Hodges, nicknamed Yoda for his obsession of Star Wars. But at the end of his junior year, he pulls a prank on the school grounds - he spray-paints the school building with obscene words, and he is caught, making him become popular with much of the student body and giving him a reputation for being reckless. When naked pictures of Bethany Milbury, a popular girl and Tyler’s crush, are released after a party, Tyler is the main suspect, though he is innocent, which causes many of Tyler’s problems in this book. Tyler…
Specifically, Frankie would mess with all of the girls in school but he and his crew targeted out Gina as their main victim. She says “He tormented all of the girls in our class. But Frankie relished singling me out - the only black girl in a sea of Jewish girls……” (Greenlee, Gina. "No Tears for Frankie.")Frankie always tormented the girls by sexually harassing them when authority wasn’t around. For example the writer says, “Frankie and his crew would grab my breast, genitals, and buttocks when the teachers weren’t looking, their hands, and quick as filthy street rats, darted across my private…
The most disliked teenager that runs the halls is a popular blonde-.... She's tall and slender, with a waist as supple as a willow... slatternly tongue that devastates other kids with such insults.... She has two or three friends exactly like her, and together they dominate their realm. This is the typical popular girl as we in-vision partly because of the movies, but the movies must have gotten the foundation for such a character from a real life all American girl. And although not all stereotypes are true, this one seems to have quite a lot of truth to it. As he goes on into his theories he describes several “everyday American teenagers” from the bitchy popular girl to the gothic kids. But he ends up revealing this character in such a way as the,” male counterpart”. As in movies the typical football player is represented as muscular but dumb, with a face like a of a male model/ pretty boy and only two ways of speaking- in a conspiratorial whisper, to a friend; or in a drill sergeants sudden bellow. Not only does he get into the descriptions of the girls, but the typical jock. If one was too compare and contrast the people in their high school to the ones that Denby is speaking of, they will be able to pin point them perfectly. Denby uses many examples of stereotypes, but also presents ethos. He takes many movies and compares the characters from both views, so in a way he is…
The introduction of the Mean Girls/Plastics (Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith) shows how physical attractiveness and money are the two most valuable traits that a high school student can have, and how possession of those traits means power for the individual. Gretchen comes from a rich family, Karen is considered to be beautiful, and Regina has both of these characteristics, making her the so-called ‘Queen Bee’. Her powerful role in the social structure of North Shore High School is shown not-so-subtly by depicting a crowd of admirers actually…
In the beginning ten minutes of the movie one can see the setting of a team form. This means that it was clear that there would be a plan of action made by the teenagers, and that they would execute this plan that would involve going against the rules set forth while they are in detention. Once this has been made clear, the orientation phase begins within the movie. The most notable part of this phase is how three out of the five students do not talk, and the other two make remarks at one another. This causes primary tension within the group; and increases as such derogatory words like “asshole” and “jerk” are used to reference others. The primary tension really begins when one of the characters say, “Let’s close the door and impregnate the prom queen.” As time goes on, we see the students begin to talk to one another more; but we also see a power for…
A theme of the story is the societal standards and it's effects on our behavior and disposition. Important to note is the context of the story; it begins in 1959 in a high school. Important are societal views on sexuality and the traditionally collectivist-type society of high school settings where there is safety in numbers and danger in sticking out. Sunny's mask was her nickname. As Barbara, she is plain, but as sunny she is pure, happy, and too good to be true. She was involved and "normal" and lived up to the expectations her society her bound her to by her nickname. Zachary's mask is his appearance, behind which, he hid his sexuality.…
The element, a pattern of assault, deception and betrayal is evident in Carrie. When Carrie came home to her mother she was abused for getting her period hours before. In the movie, she was repeatedly backhanded and kicked by her mother and verbally assaulted as the mother claimed, “Don’t’t lie to me, Carietta, don’t you know by own I can see inside you? I can see your sin just as surely as god can”. With that Carrie was locked in the closet for the unjustified reason that she had “sinned” and therefore obtained her period. After the shower scene Carrie felt betrayed by her mother for letting her go uneducated about her womanhood sobbing, “Oh Momma why didn’t you tell me something, I was so scared”. Because of her mother’s deception Carrie is left in the dark, blind and unprepared for what was to come. Mrs. White is so radical in her beliefs she knowingly betrayed Carrie because it was marked as a sin in the bible. At school Carrie is assaulted during the shower scene and…
Odd Girl Out is a TV movie that follows the struggles of a young girl named Vanessa Snyder, who must deal with the brutality and peer pressure from the children in her class. This film is based on the advice book Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons. It shows that bullying among girls is usually non-physical, indirect and unnoticeable. This problem is harmful, destructive and usually ignored, leaving victims to suffer in silence. Vanessa is a young girl in eighth grade who begins the year a happy, confident teenager who is “in with the in crowd” led by her best friend Stacy. When a young boy Tony becomes interested in Vanessa whom her friend already likes, Stacy and her band of loyal followers seek revenge on Vanessa by completely destroying her. Vanessa soon becomes the victim of this non-physical, verbal violence from her former friends. Even though Nikki, Stacy’s other best friend who is jealous of Vanessa, is the main girl who is tormenting Vanessa, Stacy plays her part by pretending she's still Vanessa's best friend and not stopping the verbal attacks on her. Vanessa is slowly pushed out of class activities, called names, socially isolated and the worst, her tormentors create a hate site about her on which they put humiliating photos and hateful comments about her. The bullying escalates, with Stacy, Nikki and the rest of the popular girls, cornering Vanessa inside a bathroom and verbally brutalizing her, including degrading every aspect of her and revealing her embarrassing secrets. Vanessa ends up chopping all her hair off while in a nervous breakdown. Soon she starts cutting school and lying to her mom to avoid the brutal attacks she faces every day. Vanessa’s mother tries unsuccessfully to address the problems and speaks with the principal of the school to see if any steps can be taken to stop this harassment. The principal, however, informs her that they cannot take disciplinary action against non-physical…
Mary begins to get hysterical by the girl's imitation of her. While it is obvious to the outside reader that the girls are only pretending, it truly affects the person that they are pretending to be. By only repeating exactly what Mary is saying, the girls affect her rational thought and…
Imagine a completely innocent individual being convicted for a crime he or she had no involvement in but being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The individual lives out his or her jail sentence in an orderly fashion only to be found not guilty after more than a decade with the discovery of vital evidence produced by advanced technology. This is just one of countless cases of wrongful conviction of innocent people by the justice system. Since 1989, countless of cases were found wrongfully convicted after the case had been closed, but were reopened thanks to the advancement in the justice system such as the usage of DNA testing. Problem is, if this is the state of our justice system at the moment, where there is such a large chance of someone being wrongfully accused and having to serve in prison for so many years and only to be released after the damage has already been done, one would always fear that type of justice system. The innocent should fear the justice system no matter how…
This sort of tawdry teenage conduct spooks some administrators. The principal of Manuel High School, Beverly Keepers, witnessed teens doing the nasty and had the good sense to turn up the lights. Soon chaperones were moving through the crowd, separating couples. "Nothing seemed to calm them down," Keepers said. "It's difficult when you have 800 students to tap every one on the shoulder when they're dancing inappropriately." Tapping 800 students on the shoulder would be exhausting! But the chaperones pressed on. Keepers complained that they saw it everywhere on the dance floor. "It looked like they were having sex, only with their clothes on, and sometimes the clothes were pretty revealing. To me, a public school should not allow that to…
