The Talented Mr. Ripley: A Fake Somebody

"I always thought it'd be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody ".  This is such a memorable line because it seems so insightful. For a person who is searching for an identity, the appeal of pretending, in order to feel important, and to feel accepted, by denouncing the struggle to find one's genuine interest which is probably essential in realizing one's sense of  fulfillment, is a very real option. 

But the talented Mr. Ripley's efforts to become the real person he pretended to be  ultimately collapsed in a moment of introspection, marked by an honest look at what  he really was, a liar. Wanting to be somebody else because being himself provided no satisfaction, required an incredible measure of duplicity that involved and ever growing inventory of lies. These lies, in the multitude, became too much for Ripley to manage.  Mr. Ripley was talented, and his lack of awareness as to how to use his talents in a manner that would have granted the status of significance he passionately coveted, was his undoing. 

Some seek importance by acting like those who are already considered important. The yearning for significance, and the benefits of achieving this status, is too strong of  a temptation for some to repel, but the consequence acquiescing,  may be an identity conflict, involving the pressure to be truthful against the prestige of being significant.       

The Working Class in Romantic Comedies: My Best Friend's Girl

Minus a few economic details, many of the romantic comedies that I have watched portrays the plight of the working class with a satisfactory degree of accuracy. This is not relative to those who are suffering from considerable economic loss, but to the way of life of those with average economic means in their quest for love. In My Best Friends Girl , the main male characters played by Dane Cook and Jason Biggs, live in a place that seems fitting for college students. Based on how these characters are portrayed in the movie, they do not seem to possess the economic means to own an apartment, but with an injection of reality, the possibility of them owning the apartment with a stated income loan is not so far fetched. 

Keeping in line with reality, Cook's character, Tank, works as a customer service representative/trainer at a call center. Tank's occupation, arguably, does not generate enough income for him to live without roommates, and the same applies to Jason Biggs's character. Toward the end of the film, Kate Hudson's character, Alexis, frankly tells Tank that his job is a "joke". The ending was quintessential Hollywood embellishment. 

Even with a home and a job that is far from impressive, Tank gets the girl; but in reality would there be economic factors that would greatly affect a man's likelihood of getting the girl? In romantic comedies the characters are not customarily affected by outsourcing, but in the real world people's capacity to experience love and romance, among other things, are greatly affected by the availability of jobs to pay for dates. 

Suppose Tank's call center job was outsourced to the Philippines, would this have affected Tank's chances of winning Alexis, who is after all, a career woman? Marked by one partner constantly sponsoring another partner, is a strain on relationships resulting from economic restraints, and in this case, Alexis would have been the sponsor, who is constantly paying for everything because Tank's job was outsourced.

Equilibrium

Equilibrium is a film I like to revisit occasionally, because the premise of human beings' capacity to feel is what begets a chaotic world, almost seems unquestionable, especially for those who are sentimental about the prospect of a Utopian society. As human beings, many of us have been in a situation where our emotions have conquered our sense of diplomacy, allowing some form of violence to serve as the agency for settling the issue. Recognizing that the lack of control of one's emotions can lead to violence, or poor decision making, is a universal human penchant, and abdicating human beings from the dictatorship of emotions in order to establish a world free of violence including war, is grossly self evident.

At first glance this premise strikes as a revelation, but as the film develops the premise is not so cogent and not so epiphanic. Equilibrium presents a society where human emotions are controlled by the scheduled injection of a drug called "prozium" during specific times of the day. Every member of the society takes the drug at the same time. A rigid opposition to emotions is ubiquitous. Everyone must live a life free of emotion, from adults to children. This is a society where music, colors, paintings, and even crying is forbidden. Those who revolt and strive to live an emotional life are branded as "sense offenders", and their offenses are punishable by bullets, or incineration. Paintings are burned. Books are burned. People are burned. Dogs are shot. Obedience to the state is rewarded.

The enforcers of the ethos that emotions are the cause of war and violence, are not cognizant that they are using war and violence to sustain a world free of war and violence. If war and violence are used to sustain a world free of war and violence, is the world really free of war and violence? No. The peaceful society sustained by scheduled injections of "prozium" and violence against sense offenders indicates that there is a war. It is a war against emotion. And the violence against those who choose to feel is the signature of that war.

Those who participate in this society appear to sustain an equable way of life that is partly characterized by a internal trilateral resistance of prozium and reason versus emotion. Is this constitutive of a peaceful and happy person? Peaceful perhaps. Happy perhaps not. Indeed this issue presents an interesting question of whether a peaceful society is a happy society. While this society appears to be peaceful, describing this society has a collection of happy individuals would be challenging. With emotions being so stigmatized, happiness would have to be defined by the ability of people feel the least amount emotions as possible. The less one feels, the happier one is.

Since there is such a relentless vigilance against emotions, the members of this society are watchmen of their own emotional suppression, and they are perpetually encumbered with the task of controlling their emotions by the injection of prozium. As peaceful as this society aims to be, there is constant control by the authorities as people deal with the struggles of controlling their emotions. Sense offenses are dealt with draconian swiftness, and because emotional suppression means no war and violence, this does not necessarily mean there is peace, for one the challenges of being human is to have reason and emotion come to an equilibrium.

We Need To Talk About Kevin: A Character Analysis About Kevin

Kevin, played by Ezra Miller, did not possess the moral components found in the average human being. Even while being playful Kevin was morally grotesque. In several scenes where he was playing with his sister, Kevin's playfulness crossed the boundaries from harmless sibling squabble to something more ominous, but why did Kevin behave this way? The film leads one to infer, Kevin's moral dysfunction resulted from a biological defect which rendered Kevin rather unresponsive to human emotion, including his own mother. As an infant Kevin cried incessantly despite his mother's care, thus Eva, Kevin's mother, began to sense, that there was something wrong with Kevin. After observing Kevin, with very little difficulty, one could deduce he had an eerie ominous character that was not a product of socialization, because Kevin had loving parents.

Although Kevin had loving parents, they rarely disciplined him. As a preschooler, Kevin was rude and commanded his parents at will, and seldom did his parents ever scold him on comments such as " I don't give a rat's ass". Kevin's impudence greatly affected his mother to the point where Kevin understood that his mother was inured, " Just because your use to something does it mean you like it. Your use to me ". Eva was clearly frustrated and defeated by her problem child; she openly admitted she was happy before Kevin was born. Kevin threw food on the refrigerator door as a toddler. He slammed bread layered with jelly on a glass table as a preschooler, and in shameless defiance stared at his mother afterward. Being in diapers pass the age of six, on one occasion Kevin defecated after his mother finished changing the diaper in hopes witnessing his mother endure the frustration of changing the diaper again. Frustrated, Eva tossed Kevin which resulted in him breaking his arm. After coming home from the hospital, Kevin began using the the toilet normally.

While touching the scar on his forearm, Kevin's adolescent wisdom deemed his mother's action as commendable. Kevin admitted to his mother the incident gave him a taste of his own medicine in saying, " You know how they potty train cats? They stick their noses in their own shit. The don't like it, so they use the box". Does this indicate as a child Kevin wanted to be disciplined, and that his misconduct was an indicator of contrition, and he was relying on his parents to discipline him so he could stop being bad so he could feel better about himself ? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Kevin's impudence traces back to his years as a toddler. However, being a toddler does not exempt disciplinary action. The impression from the film is, there is something fundamentally wrong with Kevin, and no measure of discipline would have changed the outcome. Kevin behaved as he did because his moral machinery was essentially defective. He was born a sociopath. Kevin's contemptuous behavior in his childhood could reasonably be attributed to immaturity although he was rather perceptive.

In his adolescents, Kevin's acute perception shaped a worldview enabling him to understand his place in society as a sociopath. This is a worldview that described humans as being fascinated by evil in a pointless repetitive life in which people watch the news because they want see to bloodshed. They want to see individuals like Kevin commit horrific acts, and not to " get an A geometry", Kevin:

It's like this: you wake and watch TV, get in your car and listen to the radio you go to your little jobs or little school, but you don't hear about that on the 6 o'clock news, why? 'Cause nothing is really happening, and you go home and watch some more TV and maybe it's a fun night and you go out and watch a movie. I mean it's got so bad that half the people on TV, inside the TV, they're watching TV. What are these people watching, people like me?

The point Kevin makes is that people live monotonously. The routine of life is inane to such an extent, that people need to witness tragedy in order to feel that life has significance. Kevin's social commentary is insightful, but not axiomatic, because empathy may drive people to witness tragedy because they could imagine themselves in a tragic situation that they may not want for somebody else, not necessarily because life is pointless. Indeed, people have an interest in tragedy, either a serial killer who has murdered over twenty people, or a fatal car accident, but people also have an interest seeing others prosper. After all, people love happy endings.

However, according to Kevin's worldview," there is no point", and "nothing is really happening." Since people are watching individuals like him, what is his role in the scheme of people's pointless lives? Is Kevin bothered by people's vacuous monotonous lives so much that he had to commit an abominable act to make a point about how meaningless people's lives are? Did Kevin commit the act to make a point about human nature? Perhaps Kevin's logic was the guarantor of a worldview that was so infallible that the natural outcome was to commit such an act. Maybe Kevin felt his own life was pointless, and through this act he earned the recognition that he deserved for his work thus attributing meaning to his life, or maybe Kevin he did it simply because he could. Whatever the reason may be, when Kevin's mother asked him why he committed the act, his response was, " I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure."

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Official Site: www.breakingdawn-themovie.com
Director(s): Bill Condon
Writer(s): Melissa Rosenberg, Stephenie Meyer.
Producer(s): Wyck Godfrey, Stephenie Meyer, and Karen Rosenfelt.

Starring: Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Clarke, and Peter Facinelli, (IMDb). PG-13.

Admittedly, this film was engaging. Like the previous films, it dealt with family, love, and the conflict between the werewolves and the vampires that is showcased in other popular films. The twilight franchise has always been a soap opera featuring pale skin and fur. With a strong focus on the emotions involved in familial and amorous relations, watching these films seem to induce the same feeling one may experience while watching a soap opera. With many eagerly curious to know what will develop in the following film, the Twilight franchise has been successful in attracting a large audience predominantly consisting of teenage girls, well according to the lobby in my theater at least.

OK. The honeymoon scene. It dragged. Possibly by design. The last part of this franchise was split into sequels, so there may have been an incentive to prolong the film longer than necessary. With the anticipation this latest release was likely to generate more than three dollars and fifty cents at the box office, prolonging the film was probably not done to showcase editing talent. In any event, if your a guy, who was dragged to see this film by your girlfriend, you probably had to get in touch with the teenage girl deep, deep,deep, deep, deep, deep inside of you to enjoy this film. Deep inside of you, very deep.

According to metacritic.com the film received mixed reviews, and rottentomatoes.com rated the film with 33 fresh tomatoes to 95 rotten ones, but on average, 92% of the audience gave it a rating of 4.6 out of 5. I was not fond of the film, but I liked it more than the previous films. It was OK. The teenage girl in me sort of liked it. Yes. I have a teenage girl in me. Her name is Bella. I'll give it 75. Stay tuned movieporium.blogspot.com.