RTF 317 Postmodernism KEVIN LUDLOW RTF 317 RESPONSE PAPER POSTMODERNISM A STRANGE BREW OF REALITY FRAN GUILFOYLE MAY 7 1999 As we have gotten closer and closer to the twenty first century the lifestyles of Americans and other cultures for that matter have changed drastically Television has changed drastically as well It has changed to not only fit the times but also to make fun of them Lifestyles that we see in average American households are displayed in realistic but sometimes over exaggerated senses This is especially evident in Pee Wee s Playhouse and the ever so popular primetime show The Simpsons In 1986 Paul Reubens was transformed from being a relatively smalltime actor into a character that children would learn to love Pee Wee Although this was not the first time that Pee Wee was around it was the first time he appeared on network television Pee Wee s Big Adventure had been produced and released the previous year but now a show was in the Saturday morning lineup Each week millions of kids would sit in front of the screen laughing at his goofy suit magical bike and infamous word of the day But there was certainly more to the show then comedy Pee Wee s show was made up of radical sets make believe worlds talking animals even talking furniture It was categorically described as an educational children s comedy Less the comedy I suppose one could almost compare it to Mr Roger s Neighborhood All of the elements were the same Of course anyone s who has ever watched both of those shows would say quite the opposite Characteristically Pee Wee reflected the life of the eighties teenager and young adult Hairstyles were very eccentric and strangely colored a modern house look was always in effect as mentioned previously and women were not shown to be housewives but rather important figures in the world Although all of these things may seem like nothing they were quite a change for the time Single hosted shows before this time were nothing like that of Pee Wee s Playhouse Many times the host would be and older man talking calmly and enunciating his words simply trying to get a message across If the host wanted a guest on his show it would be another person similar to the host explaining their message in the same sense I resort back to Mr Roger Children were often taken on trips to the post office or the bank They would see a postal employee named Mr Smith or a bank clerk named Mrs Morris doing their job and learn what they did The farthest stretch that the show had was Never Never Land which was made up of humans and talking puppets Paul Reuben was far from anything like this His Never Never Land was the entire show The set was not made up of nice furniture and fishbowls but rather of magic windows and furniture that talked to the audience Even the character names were made up There was Conky Knucklehead Captain Carl and of course Pee Wee The entire show was a display of the post modernism cinema and television style that had emerged People of the era were tired of being normal and individualism was a key Children teens and even young adults wanted to be different then the regular guy This could be seen through the way that people dressed and did their hair to the way that they built their homes No more slacks and tucked in collared shirts People wanted to dress in ripped jeans and wear Jean jackets covered in patches They did not want their hair to be blonde or brown with the standard cut but rather for it to be purple or pink with spikes or even a Mohawk Pee Wee s Playhouse catered to this style of life and it certainly became popular because of it As the eighties ended and the nineties began lifestyles began changing yet again and a new display of postmodernism shows would begin Within that realm of shows would emerge one of the most popular animated series of all times The Simpsons The Simpsons did not necessarily look at individuals differently but rather at the family To understand how this works we must look at each family member separately We begin with the children As we have seen in shows in the past children were generally well behaved polite and listened to their parents Take for example Leave it to Beaver Wally and the Beaver were always civil to one another they were courteous to their parents and when they wronged their parents the apologized and learned how not to make the same mistake again The Simpsons is much different from this model Bart Simpson is the epitome of the nineties child He is misbehaved crude to others disrespectful to authority and makes the same mistakes over and over again Lisa Simpson is not quite like Bart but her ideas are very eccentric as well Although she is supposed to be extremely educated she often causes problems for others by means of protest even against her parent s wishes She is simply another reflection of the nineties child Children nowadays tend to form their own radical opinions about matters and do not usually take into consideration what their parents feel about it The legalization of drugs and especially marijuana can is a perfect example of this Parents realize the dangers of drugs but children believe them to be perfectly safe or are ignorant to their dangers Because of this we have the rebel child that goes out and does exactly what his or her parents would not approve of in this case doing drugs As we look at the mother of the family Marge we can see yet another perfect reflection of today s mom Marge is depicted in a number of episodes as the working mom She has held down jobs such as a teacher a policewoman and even a spokesperson for the community She is often afraid of where her path may take her but is not afraid to try Quite opposite of what we would expect from Mrs Cleaver who could be seen cooking and cleaning the house at all times On the flip side however this is the way that it was back in the fifties and sixties That was what moms did It only makes sense that we would see it would be on television like that Finally as we look at the father of the family the infamous Homer Simpson we can only laugh As in other postmodernism shows Homer is known as the buffoonish father Recalling on the Cleaver family we would expect nothing more from Mr Cleaver then for him to come home from a hard days work pay the bills tell his children goodnight put himself to bed and do it all over again Homer is a little different In his average thirty minutes we see Homer skip work drink himself into a stupor watch hours of television and ignore most of the bad things that his children do not to mention ignoring his wife This is obviously a harsh way to look at the nineties father but there is some truth to it The father of today does not always run the show and is not always the one on top in the family In the past the father held the family together but nowadays we see different and random bonds form between family members We do not see fathers throwing a ball around with their son as much anymore Not to mention slacking off from hard work is more evident now then in the past So as we have gotten closer and closer to the twenty first century we can see that the postmodernism television shows are changing to fit the lifestyles of Americans As we have scene in Pee Wee s Playhouse and The Simpsons television follows the time but it reflects it in some ways and mocks it in others I can not wait to see how television reflects the twenty first century and I especially can not wait to see how it mocks it

Rebecca and Manderlay Oceanfront Property KEVIN LUDLOW RTF 317 FINAL PAPER REBECCA AND MANDERLAY OCEANFRONT PROPERTY FRAN GUILFOYLE APRIL 30 1999 In March of 1940 United Artists released one of Hitchcock s most memorable movies Staring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine Rebecca won the academy award for best picture of the year By this time Hitchcock had released over twenty other films none of which measured up to the intensity of Rebecca Why Perhaps because of the incredibly developed plot which Hitchcock managed to capture in perfection Rebecca has a series of plot twists within it Through these plot twists the viewer s feeling towards the characters changes steadily throughout the movie The resolution also remains uncertain up until the very last minute As the movie opens we learn that Mr de Winter Laurence Olivier is an extremely wealthy and unhappy man Hitchcock holds out on the audience as to why Mr de Winter is so unhappy but we are given some hints He soon falls in love with a young lady Joan Fontaine who is being a paid companion of one of Mr de Winter s female friends They know each other for an extremely short time period and are married Although this happens early within the story line there is certainly a feeling that Maxim is rushing things along from a viewing standpoint It appears that he is a lonely man searching for love and that he could not have found it with such a lady When we view Joan Fontaine s character at this point in the story we see her as a young and na ve girl that would do anything not to work as a servant It is hard for us to view her as a bold and independent woman ready to face the challenges of marriage and a new life The new Mrs De Winter is soon taken to the infamous castle of Manderlay the home of Maxim As the plot continues Mrs De Winter comes into many conflicts with a castle servant Mrs Danvers The servants look down upon her because they all compare her to the first Mrs De Winter Rebecca Around this point in the story Maxim gets very upset with Mrs De Winter on several occasions On one particular occasion Mrs Danvers dresses Mrs De Winters up in a beautiful ball gown for a party that Maxim is throwing It seems at this point that Mrs Danvers is being exceptionally nice to her and that she is a very dynamic character As Mrs De Winter makes her way down the grand staircase in the house Maxim is immediately upset with her He asks her where she got the nerve to wear such a costume and makes her take it off It is at this point that we realize that Mrs Danvers has tricked Mrs De Winter and is not changing after all Through sequences like this our emotions change for the characters From the first minute that we are introduced to Mrs Danvers we see that she is a bitter woman and almost get a sense of hatred towards her It appears that she will not change throughout the entire movie despite Mrs De Winter s constant kindness towards her As a viewer we had a sense of relief when it appeared that Mrs De Winter s efforts had finally paid off Especially after Mrs Danvers kindly created the dress for her Hitchcock had an incredible way of playing with our emotions in this way He would never reveal the behind the scenes look at Mrs Danvers but instead led us to believe that she was finally changing It is nothing more then a kick in the teeth when we find out how Mrs Danvers has wronged her once again Hitchcock could easily have shown us just for a second a mischievous look on Mrs Danvers face or anything to lead us to believe that she was up to no good but he did not This is one of the ways that he was able to create such incredible mysteries When it appears that she can take no more Mrs De Winter finally learns that Rebecca drowned while sailing in a storm or so it would seem We eventually learn from Maxim that his first marriage was nothing but a fraud and that Rebecca never did love him It was all for an image that he wanted to have Our emotions are once again toyed with at this point in the story Maxim goes into great detail about Rebecca at one point in the story and it almost seems as if the new Mrs De Winter is playing the same role to him that Rebecca did He tells her how he loves her and would not hurt her but can we really believe him at this point It seems that Maxim has been all but a good husband to his new wife since very early in the story There is no reason for the viewer to believe that he is all of a sudden going to change and be kind to her as he should We must also question the idea of what really happened to Rebecca Maxim has so much anger and aggression towards his ex wife that makes it seem as if he has killed her Obviously this is exactly what Hitchcock wanted us to believe or he would have told us otherwise through the use of flashbacks or narration Maxim s character has fluctuated throughout the film but around this point he is certainly at the peak of throwing us off He fell in love with Joan Fonatine s character in the first few minutes of the movie After marrying her he mistreats her and neglects to give her the love that she feels for him After it finally seems that he may be ready to tell the truth to Mrs De Winter it is impossible to decipher what the truth really is As an audience we feel that the only protagonist in the movie is Mrs De Winter Both Mrs Danvers and now Maxim seem to have turned for the worst He claims to be innocent of killing Rebecca but there is suspicion from her ex lover that foul play was involved For several scenes Hitchcock has us jumping back and forth in our heads trying to figure out what really did happen To view this movie for a second time with a person that has never seen it can be very humorous during these scenes The frustration level that Hitchcock manages to build up in our minds is incredible When we can finally take no more confusion abuse a doctor proves Maxim could not have killed Rebecca therefore changing our opinion of him once more To those who hated him for believing that he killed Rebecca and lied about it a sense of relief He is once more a likeable character but we now need to find out what really did happen to Rebecca However to those who loved the idea of Maxim being a killer and not really loving Mrs De Winter the frustration sets back in Someone obviously killed Rebecca and if we can prove that it was not Maxim who was it We have learned that Maxim did not in fact kill his wife However about three fourths of the way into the movie we learn that she wanted to die She committed suicide Even though Rebecca is never actually in the film this brings up several questions as to the kind of person that she was She had gotten almost everything out of life that one could possibly ask for She was given an incredible home in which to live more money then she could possibly spend a husband and even servants She did lack one thing however love As a viewer it is hard for us to feel sorry for Rebecca She is the second hand cause of the pain and suffering that the new Mrs De Winter has gone through But still she was willing to take her own life As we learn more and more from Maxim we not only begin to understand how their marriage was a fraud but also Maxim would be ruined if he left her Rebecca claimed that she would tell people how their marriage was a fraud which would make him look terrible in a to others As we hear more and more from Maxim we begin to feel less sorry for Rebecca and more sorrowful towards Maxim Although after time there was not necessarily love in their marriage he still gave her everything that a person could give to another He was also not abusive to her like we might expect To make things even worse Rebecca happened to take her life in the presence of Maxim It is hard to speculate whether or not she did this on purpose which leaves more confusion inside of us She may have purposely killed herself in front of Maxim for the sake of making him remember such a site or she may have just thought it was a way to make things right Rebecca s last intentions alive are never really unveiled in the story line but we know she is dead and that Maxim witnessed it Whether you have loved and prospered or loved and lost it would be a horrible site to see a loved one take their own life To complete this confusing sequence we learn that Maxim put a body on another boat and sent it off in the storm He was afraid of what people might say to find his wife had killed herself or worse to be accused of murder When the authorities found the boat they assumed that it was Rebecca but could not tell because of the damage that the body had gone through Maxim could not face the reality of his own life and was forced to make these decisions in haste Many people could say that Maxim was not a very smart man because of such a decision but I feel that in such a case others would do the same He placed Rebecca on a sailboat and caused it to sink which leads to the previous explanation of her body being found As the story nears an end the new Mr and Mrs De Winter are almost able to go about their lives but not before one more fateful scene As they return home to Manderlay they discover that the beautiful mansion has been set ablaze We feel almost sorry for the turn of events in Maxim s life and now it has gotten even worse One of the final shots reveals Mrs Danvers in the window of the burning building with an expression of pure evil on her face We as viewers are racing with mixed feelings about the plot while watching this scene It finally becomes evident that Mrs Danvers can be considered the antagonist in the movie not only to Maxim but also to his wife When we look back at all of the wrongfulness that Mrs Danvers has brought upon Mrs De Winter we feel a sense of justice being done As in most classical Hollywood narratives the antagonist is taken care of In this particular case it is safe to assume that she has killed herself At the same time however it brings a feeling of sadness to us to see Maxim s estate burned to a ground by a servant that he has housed and fed for so many years Also by this time all of our feelings that Maxim could have been a bad man have been altered He did not kill Rebecca he married Mrs De Winter because he loved her and yet everything that he owned has been destroyed It is terribly upsetting or is it One of Hitchcock s views towards movie making was never to leave the audience with the antagonist getting his or her way He would create that realm of suspense and make you think that everything had gone wrong but then fix it The protagonist will win So leave it to him to once again twist things around for the better If we read into what Manderlay really was we find that it was nothing more then a graveyard of memories of Rebecca Everything from the carpet to the ceiling was designed and picked out by Rebecca Maxim is finally given a chance through fate to start a new life to rid himself of the horrible memories that Rebecca has left him with Of course who better to do it then Rebecca s personal servant Mrs Danvers Although it is somewhat harder to find then in many of Hitchcock s movies all is well for the protagonists We feel a sense of relief for Maxim and are happy that he and Mrs De Winter can move on I can only imagine if the story had continued that Mr and Mrs De Winter would be seen building their own house together As we look back at this immeasurable plot line we can understand why Rebecca was such a successful movie With the exception of Mrs De Winter every character goes through drastic changes throughout the film or so Hitchcock got us to believe Mr and Mrs De Winter are clearly the protagonists of the movie Maxim and Mrs Danvers appear to be very dynamic characters but I disagree Mrs Danvers has nothing but bitterness running throughout her from the beginning of the film until her death At times it seems that she is changing but it never does once stick with her Maxim is just the opposite He is so full of love for his new wife but it seems at times that he is not treating her as he should He is however merely trying to protect her from the past that he himself can not deal with As things wind down it is quite clear that he is still full of love and that his second marriage has a strong foundation It has been said that a fool builds his house on sand and a wise man on solid ground If this is true Manderlay was a beach Fortunately for Maxim solid ground was just around the corner