Spaces and Exchanges : Road Movies.

A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home to travel from place to place, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives.^[1] The term can still apply to scenarios where it can be a misnomer, such as when the plot of a film involves off-road travel.

The genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The road film is a standard plot employed by screenwriters. It is a type of bildungsroman, a story in which the hero changes, grows or improves over the course of the story.
The on-the-road plot was used at the birth of American cinema but blossomed in the years after World War II, reflecting a boom in automobile production and the growth of youth culture. Even so, awareness of the "road picture" as a genre came only in the 1960s with Bonnie and Clyde^{[citation needed]} and Easy Rider.^{[2]
 
                                                                       Extract from Paris Texas.}

^{I think that this film can illustrate the notion of "spaces and exchanges" because it speaks about a man who seems to travel in the desert alone with some water. We can supposed that he is traveled since a lot of time because his clothes are not clean, so may be he came from an other country. Nevertheless he follows his travel, and we see that aroud him there is only the desert so the ending is very far of him.} 

 

 ^{UNDER THE SAME MOON (LA MISMA LUNA) tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico. Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again.}

 ^{This movie can illustrate the notion of  "places and exchanges" because he speaks about immigration to America. A little boy wants to find his mother and he is going to do everything to go to live with her. So he will meet a lot of diffrent people, he will see a lot of different country. He will discovers a lot of things related with this notion.} 

Russians - Sting

This is the video clip of sting's song : Russians.

Stan RIDGWAY

WALKING HOME ALONE

Stan Ridgway   

                                                  VIDEO                                                                  

 

COVER ARTWORK

    

This is the written comprehension of the lyrics of the song : Walking Home Alone

The American Dream

This is a graph published in 2011. In this image we can see a lot of percentages. It's a poll about the American Dream. There are very importants information. First, we notice that 57% of people think that they are achieving the American dream according to them, it's means with their definition. 62% of people think that their parents have achieved the American Dream. We can explain this number because the graph's young generation ( people who are between 18 and 40 years old) have parents who had lived at the times of the beginning of the American Dream. During this period, the consumer society was very important and present in the population mind. So a lot of people were living an "American Dream life" based on the American Model. Then, we see the percentages of people who want to achieve the American Dream and who don't. I'm very surprised because 54% is a lot. I could never have imagined that so many American people don't believe in the American Dream. However, the other number seems to me more comprehensible. 

Therefore, all of them have a most important goal to achieve the American Dream way of life. The most popular reason is having money for the retirement, it seems logical because when we think that in America the gorvernement doesn't give money to retired people, so the population has to save money for the future by themselves. The second most important goal is owning a home. It's true that in American movies, we often see characters owning their big houses in the suburbs. It's a true American Dream. Finally, we see information about the poll, how many men and women have answered and their age.


Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17th, 1706. He was a printer, writer and a American politician man. He was one of the most famous self made men and he is part of the American Dream. When he was young he left Boston to go to Philadelphia, even if it was very complicated in his times he reached it and became an apprentice printer, and his first dream came true. When he was older he started working actively for independence. He was elected by the Second Continental Congress and worked on a committee of five that helped to draft the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston and Thomas Jefferson.  In 1776 he signed the Declaration of Independence. This declaration is very important to the freedom of America because she says that the United States is not a British colony. Franklin died on April 17th, 1790. In the American Dream and in the US philosophy,  freedom is one of the most important values. The economic freedom or the professional freedom (being one's own boss) are two aspects of the American ideal beliefs. So, Benjamin Franklin is a model to follow because of his career, in fact he was the son of a soap maker and he became a very powerful politician by his own means, and also because of his importance in the contruction of the foundation of the American dream.


Conclusion about the American Dream.

First of all, the American Dream is a very strong belief for everyone, it is the symbol of hope to the immigrants and the ideal life for american people.  Nevertheless, it is also a very idealistic notion. At the beginning of the American Dream, all was very new and it was a new conception of life for the people. After the war, an affluent society was developped and a new way of life appeared. There is a goal to achieve which would be being his own boss, having his own house or having money for retirement. To sum-up, it is to be free. Nowadays, we can think that the American Dream belongs to the past but it seems that people's goals are the same, the only difference is that we don't call them : the American Dream.  

Two videos about The American Dream.

Speaker Series: The Future of the American Dream - Excerpt

This videos is about the future of the american dream. A man, Bob Herbert tells us that the most important aspect of the American dream is having a good Job. This is the basis of all others things. He says that to realise their dreams, the people have to be support by a good job which enables gain monney. He takes the example of the childrens on the school who are better prepared to become writters journalist or lawyers. Because thanks to this kind of job they can gain monney and reach to better way of life. According to him, having a good job, is the future of the American dream, and the belief of the news generations. 

In America - Trailer

This film takes place in New-York. It is about a family who leaves in this new city because they lost one of their childrens. They try to build a new life but it is very dificult because the father doesn't find a job. This movie gather lots of very important point of the American Dream. First, it seems that the importance of the family is very present. Because there is two little sister who try to understand this system and the father looks like  desperate. Then, the idea of the employement is here too, by the father. Finally, the black man who can be the symbol of the Hope, represents the ideal of the American dream beliefs, a land of opportunities to everyone. However, I think that it is a pessimist point of vue of the american dream, maybe even a criticism but I am not sure.

Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese

GoodFellas is a film about the american mafia based on a true story. The story takes place in Brooklyn in 1955, we follow Henry Hill's life, a boy who always wanted to become a Gangster. Indeed, at the beginning of the film he says :  "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" and he is going to reach it by being hired when he was 11 by the most important gangster family of Brooklyn : The Lucchese crime family. Henry learns the basis of the life as a mafia. He becames very quickly one of the best guys in the group. In this group there are "El Capo" Polly acted by Paul Sorvino, and two other men very influent and powerfull, Tommy, acted by Joe Pesci and Jimmy acted by Robert de Niro, who acts in a lot of mafia movies. 
 But when they are involved in a drugs affair,  Henry's life is going to change dramatically. 

This is the trailer of the movie. 

We can consider this movie as a thriller because there are all elements which are characteristic of this genre.
Indeed, there is a central protagonist, Henry Hill who is telling his story thanks to a voice-over. We can see all his life since his childhood until the end. His job makes him faces the death all the time, either because he has to burry someone killed by his "friends", either because he is threatened. 
Henry has to be careful because in the film Tommy kills a guy who belongs to another band of gangsters and this band reach to killed Tommy and another man. So some times its very dangerous because in his job he doesn't have real friends. Then, at the end, he has to change his identity because Jimmy wants to kill him. We should not forget either that he goes in jail twice. 
The main storyline is about his life as a gangster, it shows how its like to be a gangster.
 He has to gain money commiting infractions. But when he is involved with drugs, his aim is to do things behind the back of "El Capo" without being discovered by him. 
There is also Tommy who is very unpredictable and kills people without reason, so Jimmy and Henry must hide Tommy's murders. It's kind of the opposite of a mystery that has to be resolved. 
Henry Hill tell us the story, we see everything through his point of view. His voice-over explains the character's personnality, the actions, the project of futurs thefts and the slightest details of the gangster life. 
This movie is based on a true story so in most cases the actions can only be true. Furthermore, we can see that everything in the film is very credible because we can found them in a lot of other movies like "The Godfather" or "Malavita". 
The notion of justice here is in every part of the film, indeed, the characters dispense justice by themselves, its not very conventionnal but this is the gangster law! And the morality is more or less the same. Because the gangsters don't have real morality, only Henry's wife has a kind of guilty conscience. She is the only one who have a real and "normal" morality. Henry's friends have their own morality, the law of the strongest.
The unique sign of innocence in this movie are the two henry's daughters, who live the further away as possible of their father bussiness.

Statistic about the American Dream

This graph is not surprising to me because we can see that opportunity comes first and this is the basic value of the American Dream, indeed, for a lot of emigrants this is a land where everyone can work their way up and achieve upward mobility. Then, freedom ranks second.
To explain that we can remember the Founding Father who were the seven politicians who signed the declaration of independence in1776 and 11 years after wrote the Constitution in 1787.
 It was too, a welcoming land for the Pilgrim Fathers who were Puritans who traveled to the USA in 1620 aboard the mayflower to escape religious persecutions in Great Britain. Since this time, American has become a symbole of freedom and an example of democraty.
Financial security aspect is a very important aspect too, for the people need to have monney to meet their own family's needs. We can oppose it to wealth which shows more a kind of desire to strike it rich. Indeed, we can speak of wealth when the people want to meet needs that they don't have like a huge house, lots of cars, the last technological products... etc
Family is an idea which is liked by everybody. Everybody wants to have the perfect model of family which means, two working parents, children who have a very prestigious education and who will be part of the consumer society.
The item of happiness can regroup all the other categories, because when the people manage to be rich, with a lot of hard work and will power, when they have a perfect family, when they need nothing else, they imagine that they will be happy... But as is often the money can't buy happiness ! 


This document redefines the American Dream as the people see it nowadays.We can see that the values aren't the same because the society has changed a lot over the last centuries. We notice a kind of fear of the future for example when 47% of the people are dreaming of money for their retirement. It's true that in America the system it is very different from the european one. It's more individualistic and almost everything is private. When in Europe there is the social security, in America the people have to pay for all their medical treatments and save for their retirement by buying pension funds, for example.
The second notion is to have their own house, which is a heritage of the American Dream which made dreaming the emigrants dream in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because to have their house we have to have money, the basic element of the American dream.
In this graph we can see a kind of evolution in the demands and need of the people because of drastic changes in society.