Paper 2 - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages 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 ...Download file to see next pagesRead More