Blog Post #1

Reading Summary

The reading focuses on how realism is movies and television is different from real life and that there are many ways that directors portray realism in their films. It also mentions how movies show many scenes that would not be able to be done in real life because in real life things just happen rather than being planned. With this we can see that in movies there are scenes where things are made to look nicer or more vivid than in real life to make the movie have more color or to create a different mood in the eyes of the audience. In the chapter the author also talks about how people are able to judge how realistic a movie or show is based on if events that happen are logically able to happen in real life.

Outside Example

This reading reminded me of the recent movie Joker which focuses on the origin of the most known villain of Batman. We (the audience) see the life of Arthur Fleck, a guy that is just trying to make an honest living and take care of his mother, Penny. We learn that Arthur takes medication until budget cuts limit his ability to buy them and we start to realize the effects this starts having on his life. Due to his unstoppable laughing condition, we often see him getting beat up until he loses control and begins to kill people without regret. This fact becomes even more terrifying when we see that after he killed a group of guys on the subway, he goes to a bathroom and starts dancing in front of a mirror as if what he did was right. Arthur slowly starts to become Joker by wearing a maroon suit, dyeing his hair green, and wearing makeup to look like a clown.

Reading Connection

I associated the movie Joker to this reading because in the movie there are many scenes where the audience is tricked into believing that a scene is happening but in reality we just saw what Arthur believed. This makes the audience have doubts about the whole film, the audience doesn’t know what is real and what is made up. Even though the movie is not a very realistic movie because there are many scenes that wouldn’t be able to happen in the real world, we can see the differences between this world where Gotham exists and the world Arthur sees. The movie also shows some real world problems even though they might be exaggerated, we see the way people with mental problems are treated, the divide between social classes, riots against government, etc.