FACULTAD DE EDUCACIN PEDAGOGA EN INGLS POPULAR CULTURE EDI510

Take-Home Test: Films Instructions: With your group and according to the films seen in class, choose TWO questions in each section and answer them in 50 words each question. Then type your answers and send them to your teacher by June the 14 th. Make sure to use appropriate grammar and vocabulary and style. Score /40. Names: Iver Farias, Francisco Lara, Carlos Rojas.

I.

Section one: Pride and Prejudice a) Discuss the importance of social class in the film, especially as it impacts the relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy. b) Pride and Prejudice is about women who feel they have to marry to be happy. Taking Charlotte Lucas as an example, do you think the author is making a social criticism of her eras view of marriage? c) Compare and contrast the Bingley-Darcy relationship with the Jane-Elizabeth relationship.

II.

Section two: American Beauty a) Why might the writer and/or director have chosen roses as one of the film's primary symbols? What ideas do roses convey that are important to the overall meaning of the film? b) Discuss the connection between the murder at the end of the film and the meaning of life in the story? c) Discuss issues on gender identification present in the film?

Pride and Prejudice.

1) Discuss the importance of social class in the film, especially as it impacts the relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy.

Darcy is extremely wealthy and from a high social class, and Elizabeth is completely the opposite. One of darcy's internal arguments, or scruples, about proposing to elizabeth is that she is of such a lower social class than he is. He even takes it upon him to tell her that, which really bothers and offends her. The differences between their social classes helps create difficult conditions -just makes it hard for darcy to first propose to her. It also makes darcy's aunt hate Elizabeth, not just because she wanted Darcy to marry her daughter, but also because she implies Darcy is spoiling their blood. So belonging to different social classes, back then, was clearly a hindrance for couples to get married, so if they were of the same social class, darcy might have had no scruples proposing to elizabeth, and she might have not found him so proud and accepted him in the beginning.

2) Compare and contrast the Bingley-Darcy relationship with the Jane-Elizabeth relationship. Mr. Bingley and Miss Jabe Bennets relationship is not nearly so dramatic as Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennets. Mr. Bingley is, in the beginning, shown as a somewhat handsome man with a very charismatic air. He easily converses with anyone and very quickly falls in love with the oldest (and most lovely) of the Bennet girls, who never speaks a word ill of anyone. They are both very much alike in the aspect that both are very much loved by others. This is a great contrast to Mr. Darcy, who, after the first town ball, is disliked by almost the entire neighborhood. So definetely, Mr. Darcy and Miss Eliza's relationship is the most dramatic, and also of a more true relation of "love", because after all their differences, and hindrances they loved each other anyhow.

American Beauty. 1) Why might the writer and/or director have chosen roses as one of the film's primary symbols? What ideas do roses convey that are important to the overall meaning of the film? First of all those roses in the film are of a type called American Beauty, but neither the director nor the writer wanted to show that, it has another meaning: Roses have two meanings in the film, the first one is; American Beauty roses are a type of hybrid rose, thart is perpetual in its look, eventhough they might be rotten underneath, or its prone to rot, they always look beautiful. So the film shows a tipical American family, in search of happiness, the perfect life, and thats what they display. But if we look closer as the tagline tells, viewers, when they look beyond the perfect suburban life they will find something rancid at the root. The second meaning are the rose petals.These ones are featured again surrounding dad's obsession with the underage virgin chearleader.

2) Discuss the connection between the murder at the end of the film and the meaning of life in the story?
"Look closer," the film's tag-line tells us to look closer at the beautiful things we yearn for and spend our life chasing them. The characters in "American Beauty" are yearning to fulfill a dream that they think will somehow get them out of their miserable life, even though when all the beauty they needed, they had it all the time, they spent their lives yearning something that led them to the wrong direction, and this is clearly displayed when Fitt (a closet homosexual) murders Lester, and all realized that they were missing out, and everything that they yearned and dreamt about was nothing more than an oasis, because everything they needed was always there.