Society and Social Issues - Essay Example

Ideally, a society is a setting where people live peacefully without any social issue. Every person often wishes for a society with a peaceful atmosphere. On actual grounds, society often gets filled with a lot of social problems like crime, poverty, drug abuse, prostitution, economic deprivation, political corruption, natural calamities, competitions among people of different classes, and so on. These social issues often end up causing hatred among people in the society, vengeance, frequent violence in society, fear among people, mistrust, mental health, domestic violence, stress, and so on. As these issues happen, people tend to come in trying to give solutions to them. While trying to solve them, others succeed while some don't; and end up getting into even worse situations.

For instance, in workplaces, people often come from various backgrounds, and everyone has different reasons for working. When they meet at the workplace, they often join up and solve a given problem jointly. At these places, people often rub shoulders during their daily endeavors. They often differ due to punctuality, commitment, or difference in ideas. A lot of people in the workplace do not usually take disagreements lightly. They become more bitter towards the other, and it interferes with their focus. Making these disagreements personal becomes more dangerous to a given organization.

Taking arguments personally often affects how workers focus, and as a result, some find ways of resolving them. A lot of people often go for vengeance. If, for example, people differed in the office due to some teamwork projects, one may take this person and plan to attack the other outside the working premise. Other people often take their vengeance to other’s families and either kill them or kidnap them.

At these points of arguments and wanting vengeance, evil powers often come in the way. People would become more bitter and kill others with evil powers just to satisfy their hunger for revenge. Others even do more than and send secret agents to do homicides. In many news sites like the New York Times, many cases often get recorded concerning deaths and kidnap, and all these results from people's hunger for vengeance.

Once vengeance becomes to many, people often find ways of resolving their differences to obtain peace. Peacemaking does not usually happen as expected. During peacemaking, people would either succeed or fail, depending on how others get affected. If it fails, a lot of more vengeance cases of result and society comes to its ideal condition if it succeeds.

These social issues happen in our societies, and film industries have often tried to educate people on their adverse effects and needs always to make peace. One of these film industries is the Film Noir that has films dating from 1930 to 1967 that offer a lot of themes relating to causes of the social issues, their effects, and how to solve them to obtain an ideal society. A virtual curated retrospective film series program is available to give a more summary of movies on Film Noir.

Double Indemnity (Biller Wilder, 1944, the United States of America, English, 107 min.)

Double Indemnity is a classic Noir Film movie that, according to its genre it got considered a quintessential movie. The main character of the movie is Walter Neff. This movie is about Walter Neff, who gets undone by an evil woman, Phyllis Dietrichson. Walter Neff works at an insurance company as a representative; he is more obsessed with Phyllis. Due to his obsession with Phyllis, he is always ready to do anything that would impress her. Phyllis then knows that Walter is obsessed with her and manipulates her into using his position wrongly to murder him so that she can get her husband's lucrative insurance policy.

Walter's and Phyllis' plans seem to be perfect at the start until Walter's Boss notices a foul play and begins an investigation. This movie depicts a lot of effects of social issues like lust, murder, and intrigue. From the movie, with a self-centered woman, the viewer learns that crime does not pay.

Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947, USA, English, 97min.)

Out of the Past is Film Noir movies that change the usual occurrence in movies where it begins from the present to the future: it begins from the past. The main character in the movie, "Out of the Past" is Robert Mitchum. Weary eyes and a laconic voice characterize Robert. Robert has a past and puts more effort into breaking his past; that is his weakness and goes to a different place to start over: he gets a new job and a new girlfriend. While in his new place, trouble finds him there when he meets somebody who existed in his past.

Mitchum's past had him as a hired gangster, and his work was tracking a woman's name, Kathie. His boss has a grudge with Kathie because she shot him and stole his forty thousand dollars. Mitchum's boss does not want revenge but only wants Kathie to be brought to him. While he is a gangster, she also has a girl, Ann, that he loves. Coincidentally while tracing Kathie, Mitchum fell in love with her, and they fled away instead of taking her to his boss. While escaping, Kathie shot someone dead while protecting herself. This whole movie talks of vengeance.

Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, USA, 1945, English, 103min.)

The movie "Scarlet Streets" is a second classic Noir Film from a novel, "The Woman in The Widow." This movie is about a story of desperate love and casual betrayal. The main character is Christopher Cross, a bank clerk, a husband, and an amateur artist. Along his musical journey, he meets Kitty March, who decides to be his model. Thinking that Kitty is genuine, Cross works while determined to achieve his dream, but all these shutters when he realizes that all this while Kitty has been a petty con with Johnny Prince.

Cross dream of a successful music path gets down with Kitty and Johnny, who takes his art and performs it as theirs. These are similar things that happen in our society. People blindly fall in desperate love for others unknowingly, and they end up facing a massive betrayal. Kitty and Johnny become successful with Cross' art.

Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1945, Mexico, French, 95min.)

The movie "Murder, My Sweet" is an American Film Noir based on Chandelier's novel. The main character of the movie is Philip Marlowe, who is a detective. The detective gets hired by an ex-con to find his fiancé whom they lost contact due to imprisonment. Marlowe takes another job to help a man who was going a huge sum of money for stolen jewels. The escorted ends up dead, and scandals face Marlowe leading him to get visitations from a reporter.

Marlowe faces a lot of social issues by searching for the film like getting forced into an insane asylum. He suffers a lot through a nightmare, and he experiences hallucination induced by the use of drugs. Marlowe felt guilty and decided to find the man’s killers. In his investigations, the detective found the two jobs similar.

The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949, United Kingdom, English, 108min.)

The movie "The Third Man" is a movie from Film Noir Classic that focuses on Vienna's state. The main character in the movie is Holly Martins. After World War II, Holly Martin arrives in Vienna to meet an old friend that they studied together. His friend Harry Lime has offered him a job. When Martins arrives, he learns of his friend's death, who got hit by a truck. Instead of doing what brought him in Vienna, Martins gets into funeral arrangements. While at the funeral, he sees a beautiful woman called Anna, who was Harry's girlfriend. The officer who was conducting Harry's death gave Martins a ticket back home. Martins discovers a third man who happens to be behind the inconsistency and, therefore, gets into investigations.

From his investigations, Martins discovers that his friend, Holly, was in a gang leader who used to steal penicillin from a hospital belonging to the military for selling. This business caused the deaths of a lot of children. His further investigations get him to find who the mysterious third man is.

Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945, USA, English, 68min.)

This movie "Detour" is an American low-budget crime drama film from Film Noir. The main character of the movie is Al Roberts. Al Roberts has a girlfriend called Sue Harvey, who is a singer. A conflict arises between the couple when Sue leaves to go to Hollywood. When Roberts gets some money, he decides to be a hitchhike. He moved out of California and found another woman who is also a hitchhike. The woman, Ann Savage, forces Roberts to continue the ploy. Ann goes ahead to tell Al to try and claim an inheritance of a certain dead man. Ann tells him that he knows his real identity.

The dying man was a rich man's father, and Ann saw this as a perfect opportunity to take all this man's inheritance. A lot of these behaviors get depicted by a lot of people in our daily lives, and it often ends in tears.

The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953, USA, English, 90min.)

The movie "The Big Heat" is one of Fritz Lang's best-directed movie in Noir Film. The main character of the movie is Dave Bannion. David Bannion had a happy family until she got murdered. Bannion does not know his mistress's real murderer, but he is sure it was not a natural death. Filled with rage, Bannion decides to launch his investigation to find his mistress' killer. While investigating the issue, he follows trails of corruption that direct him to a certain leader. An in-depth investigation unveils that the local leader is together with other city officials.

To Bannion's surprise, he comes to find out that his death was next in inline; this makes him even more terrified and thirsty for vengeance. To put these corrupt leaders down, Bannion teams up with a mistress who faced abuse from the mob to avenge the leaders. He succeeds in getting revenge, and his thirst got quenched.

The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944, USA, English, 107min.)

"The Woman in the Window" is a movie produced by Fritz Lang from Film Noir. The main character in the movie is Wanley, who happens to be a professor. One day when the Gotham College Professor was in a restaurant with her friends, they see women some distance away with a very nice portrait. They get obsessed with the woman's portrait and decide to meet her. Wanley meets the woman, and they went to her apartment while chit-chatting and took come Champaign.

The woman's boyfriend bursts into the house and finds Wanley but misinterprets, which brings misunderstandings, and her boyfriend gets killed. As any person would do protect their reputation, miss Wanley decides to dump the man's body to cover the killing. Deeper police investigations kept making professor Wanley a suspect, and more clues directed the incidence to her.

The Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948, London, English, 95min.)

The movie is also known as "The Twisted Road." The main character in this movie is whose main actors are Keechie and Bowie. Even though Bowie is innocents, he still gets imprisoned and spends seven years in prison. In prison, Bowie meets hardened criminals and hooks up with them. With the help of hardened criminals, Bowie plans to escape from the prison. Despite his reason for getting out of prison: proving his innocence, the hardened friends of him convinces him to participate in several heists. The police get wind about them and go after them.

During this period of getting chased by the police, Bowie meets a woman, Keechie, who nurses his badly injured wounds. They fall in love, but unluckily from the beginning, their relationship seemed doom.

The Poster Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946, USA, English, 113min.)

The main characters of this movie are Nick Smith, Frank Chambers, and Cora. Frank Chambers is looking for a job, and luckily, he gets a job at Nick Smith's roadside dinner ass a drifter. With some time of working, Frank and Cora started having an affair because they had a past together. Their love affair becomes stronger until Nick realizes though he was not sure. Cora cooks up plans to end his marriage with Nick Smith.

Frank and Cora went ahead to make plans to delay Nick’s and Cora’s honeymoon. The two went as far as bribing a lawyer who became suspicious of what was going on. Frank and Cora conspire to kill Nick Smith and inherit all his assets. Before doing many evils, they come to notice that no evil has ever gone unpunished.