Skip to main content

What Effect Does it Have on You?

    Catharsis- purgation of emotions-particularly pity and fear- through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration. So why do so many people use catharsis in their work? How does it better the creators piece of work?

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) ~ Dan's Media Digest

    In many cinematic pieces of work, directors input and utilize the technique of catharsis in order to make their work more enjoyable and relatable for their viewers. However the type of catharsis matters as not every moment that displays catharsis will have the same effect on every viewer. This is because everyone has a different personality which causes viewers to react or be touched differently to moments of catharsis. Therefore, not every cathartic moment will touch every viewer. 

    Furthermore, as we saw in "Little Miss Sunshine", our class was split between which cathartic moment had the most impact on us. Personally, the scene at the beauty pageant towards the end of the movie had a greater impact on me than Dwayne's emotional moment. This is because comedy touches and appeals to me more than tragedy does. But why do we need catharsis?

Review: Little Miss Sunshine - Slant Magazine

    The use of catharsis allows for viewers to feel that sense of relief that they've been waiting for. With "Little Miss Sunshine" being far from your traditional movie about a family, there are many emotions that are included into the film. With many of these emotions that are felt by the viewers, the moments of catharsis in the film are almost considered satisfying. Especially after that rollercoaster of emotions that us viewers experienced. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's So Great About Poetry?

Poetry- the unit that most students dread to learn about in their English class. But why is poetry so disliked among high school students? A few of these reasons, and that I can attest for personally, are that poetry is seen as old, it can be quite difficult to understand/interpret, and we just fail to see the point of it. However, after interpreting some poems in class, my perspective began to shift (only slightly not significantly though). While I am still not the biggest fan of poetry, I am beginning to see a different side to it.  Yes, poetry is all of the negative things that I stated above (at least in my opinion) but once poetry is understood, the lesson becomes that much clearer and applicable. Understanding and correctly interpreting poetry is not only a beneficial skill to have but it also opens your eyes to a deeper understanding to things that are important in terms of culture, history, and etc. For example, poetry has effectively been used to advocate and teach about i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everlasting Mistakes: America Never Seems to Learn

America is essentially naive. We take what we want and we take what we have for granted. If something is going to propel our status up, whether it's for wealth, our social lives, or just out of selfishness, we don't seem to even hesitate to act. As we observe in Raymo's piece, the act of selfishness and naiveté is what drives their decisions, and eventually, will lead to their own death. The piece takes place in 1987, which is only around 25 years from when we learned how harmful cigarettes actually were. Just like in Raymo's piece when the six-year-old girl "rubbed the glowing dust on her body" not knowing that the "beautiful dust" would "damage her living cells" (Raymo 212) and kill her, our society did something quite similar and acted out of same naiveté. We did the same thing with tobacco and cigarettes and blindly rushed into using them because "they were cool" and "the new thing". Then once it was already too late...
2 comments
Read more

"How Are You?" (I don't actually care though)

When we talk to people, we always seem to start our conversations with phrases such as, "how are you?" or "what's been going on with you lately?". But what is the purpose to asking these questions if the responses that we get back essentially don't mean anything to us? What are we getting from one-word answers like "good", "I'm fine", or just "yeah"? By nature, we ask these questions without actually caring about what the person answers back to us. However, I actually believe that these questions are of crucial use to us. For example, when your parents force you to meet someone like their "high school friend" and all you have to do is be polite, these questions are quite handy. You're able to fill awkward time and be polite at the same time. While it might seem cold-hearted to think this way, in reality, everyone does it. On the other hand, I'm sure there are some people who are asking these questions to ...
2 comments
Read more