Developing a Thesis Using Representative Evidence - Essay Example

Developing a Thesis Using Representative Evidence In the film Welcome to the Dollhouse, Dawn Weiner is used to portray the difficulties that teenagers go through when they get to the transition period between being a kid and an adult. Dawn’s actions in dealing with lack of attention from her parents and the rest of the adult world bolsters Hine’s claims that seek to explain strange behavior in the youth. Welcome to the Dollhouse uses Dawn Weiner’s leading role in the film to address the challenges that teenagers go through during this crucial transition period in their lives. Compared to both Steve and Brandon, Dawn is seen as the victim of naivety brought about by lack of support from the appropriate quarters (George & Trimbur 113). The two boys represent the Goths and Monsters talked about by both Hines and Cohen in their respective essays. They are monsters in the sense that they represent what young people end up becoming and the notions that they entertain in their lives. Welcome to the Dollhouse shows that X (use of Dawn) is a portrayal of the challenges that teenagers face when they are discovering their maturity. The film portrays the two male characters (Steve and Brandon) who are Dawn’s centers of interest at different times in the movie, are a representation of the Goths mentioned in Hine’s essay. These two characters fuel Dawn’s desire for recognition which spawns her quest for sex with either of the two, which she believes will gain her acceptance. Dawn is also a representation of the monster (Y) mentioned in Cohen’s seventh thesis. The article Goths in Tomorrowland by Thomas Hines addresses the issues and challenges facing young adults and teenagers in their formative years of crossing over to adulthood. In the article, Hines extrapolates on how the youth, try to carve an identity for self by going through a trial and error stage which requires them to experiment with various aspects of their lives. “The body alterations that young people use to assert that they are no longer children successfully frighten grown-ups, but they also convince them these weird creatures are well short of being adults. The ring through the lip or the nipple merely seems to demonstrate that they are not ready for adult responsibility. What they provoke is not respect but restrictions” (Hine page-71). This is shown in the scene where Dawn embraces the notion of having sex with Steve after being told by her only friend Ralph that its sex that boys want from girls. After this revelation there is manipulation of light around Dawn especially around her face to indicate enlightenment or discovery of the secret behind getting a boyfriend. The source of this information is also made to be significant in the sense that Ralph is sitting in front of a computer. The computer represents the alternative that teenagers result to for guidance on issues that have been neglected by adults. Ralph notices the new resolve on Dawn’s face, and he offers himself to her as an alternative, but she out-rightly rejects him. To enhance the feeling of disappointment for the viewer, when Ralph bows his head, the brightness of colors around his personal space is dimmed. This aspect is further advanced by dull grey color of the wall behind the desk he is seated on in the room. When Dawn enters Ralph’s room and finds him seated at the computer, his position is from Dawn’s standing point of view from an elevated angle. This is indication of Ralph’s status and meaning to Dawn; she might be in need of his opinion but she does not hold him in high enough regard to consider him in her stature. In this scene, there is the use of color intensity alteration to help bring out the difference between two friends who are in a similar situation but have differing solutions to address their common problem of lack of friends (George & Trimbur 186). When Ralph is offering his advice to Dawn, his dull colored shirt seems brighter from Dawn’s perspective through which this instance in the scene is presented. Even though Dawn’s face is bright with enlightenment, her personal space is dull since it is presented from Ralph’s perspective who does advocate for what Dawn might be aspiring to embrace. The seventh thesis in Cohen’s article presents a concept that can be construed to represent teenagers as monsters that are shunned and castigated by society. However, they come back and ask how the society has come to misrepresent what it has attempted to put in place. “Monsters are our children” (Cohen page-20) is a phrase from Cohen’s seventh thesis whose concept represents teenagers. In the context of this paper, the article goes on to forward a query by the monsters or the youth as to why they were created or brought into this world. This is in retrospect to the dire need for adults to reevaluate their assumptions about race, sexuality and gender, which is accompanied by their perception of difference (George & Trimbur 383). Young people have different perceptions and ways of dealing with the above mentioned factors. The different coping mechanisms and perceptions that the youth develop about these issues are not in line with traditional societal norms. The misunderstanding that ensues from these ideological differences leads to teenagers to be metaphorically branded as monsters with reference to Cohen’s thesis. According to the title of Cohen’s seventh thesis, “The monster stands at the threshold….of becoming” (Cohen page 20). For the adults in this film the statement can either mean that the youth are at a point of conforming to their expectations or changing for the worst. The scene where Dawn is confronted by her mother about calling her small sister a lesbian, the camera zooms onto Dawn’s face that is contorted by conflicting emotions. In this scene, the tempo of the conflicting emotions is heightened by the fast music in the background. The intensity of light behind the mother dims in opposition to Dawns background lighting becoming brighter. This serves to show the Dawn’s innocence and her mother’s negativity (George & Trimbur 254). When Dawn hits out at her small sister by refusing to tell her the pick up arrangements from her school, Dawn’s small sister is presumably abducted. In the scene that ensues, Dawn is confronted by her mother who accuses and blames her for her small sister’s unfortunate situation. This scene concludes with Dawn deciding to go to New York to look for her sister after her toy is discovered in Times Square. This is an indication of Dawn’s mother negative attitude and perception her, an aspect that is enhanced by different perspectives with regard to subject positioning and illumination. During the confrontation between Dawn and her mother about the disappearance of her sister, the camera shoots Dawn’s position from her mother’s over the shoulder point of view. This shot manages to create an overbearing and intimidating stance on the part of Dawn’s mother towards Dawn. In this scene Dawn is wearing clothes that have clashing colors that represent her conflicting emotions with regard to the plight of her sister and her mother’s irrational reasoning. The shot from her mother’s point of view castigates Dawn in a dull personal space, and the lighting casts a pale shadow over her face. This represents the grief that has befallen her because she privately blames herself for her sister’s disappearance. The vector line used in the scene when Dawn is in New York in the search for her sister enhances the world’s negative perception of Dawn and her ilk. When Dawn is at Times square the buildings are bright, and the shot from the camera is a look down on her dull presence. When Dawn gets back home from New York she expects a somber mood to have engulfed her family due to her unexpected absence. The mood in her family is illustrated by a bright full screen shot of her house which is augmented by lively background music. This is an indication of the opposite nature of her family’s mood with regard to her absence. The film ends with Dawn being confounded by numerous questions as to her purpose and role in a family that does not note her absence. The film Welcome to the Dollhouse ends on a somber note for the main character who ends up in an even worse situation than when the film stated. This is because at the end of the film Dawn Weiner feels bad about herself for letting her sister get lost. Her efforts of getting noticed by Steve seem to have made no headway, and Brandon does not show much interest in her despite his earlier demonstrations of interest. The struggle represented in Hine’s essay seems to have no foreseeable conclusion at the end of the film because the issues Dawn, Steve and Brandon were facing remain relevant in its conclusion. To her mother, Dawn still remains a ‘monster’ whose only consequence is to bring negativity into their family. The concepts represented by both articles from Hines and Cohen still remain relevant at the end of the film. In the film Welcome to the Dollhouse, Dawn and her three close male counterparts represent Hine’s Goths in Tommorrowland through their exhibition of orthodox coping mechanisms regarding the challenges the face in life. On the other hand, Dawn represents monsters on the verge of becoming according to Cohen’s seventh thesis on monster culture. The film is an adequate medium for developing theses using representative evidence. Work Cited George, D. & Trimbur, J. Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing. 6th Illustrated Edition. New York: Longman. 2006. Print. (Pgs. 113, 186, 254 & 383). Read More