California Dreamin’: Hollywood’s Filmic Class Consciousness Represented in Parasite, Harlan County, U.S.A., and Hoffa (1992)
Paper by Larry Gleeson.
The imbalance of power created through the exploitation of the working class, and the attempts by individuals to overcome the vast economic disparity between the working class and the capitalist class are represented in the films, Parasite, Harlan County, U.S.A., and Hoffa (1992). Director Bong-ho through the film Parasite, provides social commentary on globalization in contrasting two families, in an upstairs/downstairs, upper class-lower-class, framework. The Parks represent the upper-class capitalists, surviving on the labor carried out by the Kim family who are indicative of the lower working class. Hoffa (1992), on the other hand, creates a vivid, compelling portrait of large-scale class warfare, from angry confrontations between the Teamster labor union truck drivers and management from the 1930’s through the Red Scare and into the violent 1970’s. Barbara Kopple’s 1976 documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A., provides an intimate look at a striking Eastern Kentucky labor union, United Mine Workers, coal miners and their violent fight with bottom-line-minded capitalist corporations, corrupt public officials, and gun-wielding anti-strike thugs. Through a comparison and contrast of these three films, two narrative films and one documentary film,
The Magic In Fantasy Lives On
Written by Matheus Clorado.
The fantasy genre has established itself in the miscellany of genres that have endured for decades of Film History. Grown-ups and children from all over the world will likely be able to name at least one feature film that has touched their imagination and changed them forever. Considering the genre has such a large lifespan, it’s remarkable how more recent movies still share ideologies with their predecessors of the previous century. For instance, despite the sixty-two years between the release dates of Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz and Columbus’ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, it’s clear they both transcend the genre’s iconography to inspire life out of the status quo, at the same time they reflect their time’s hopes and fears.
Friedman argues in his book An Introduction to Film Genres that “more evolved fantasy films stretch the ordinary understanding of reality for a higher, more serious purpose: to encourage an expanded sense of the possibilities that are necessary if we are to avoid a clichéd and limited, ultimately hopeless attitude toward our lives”. (161) He also presents
