bashoGWSS1

Alice's life is complicated to say the least. She must juggle school work, family life, social life and all the while deal with becoming a woman. Her world is full of situations that push her power as a child to its limits. A few times during the movie Alice's age were brought up sometimes explicitly and sometimes it was just implied as a limiting factor. Her mother said that she needed to grow up and wise up when the street vendor tried to take her money, Lila wanted to stay young and look good forever, and Alice herself, wanted to grow up faster and be an adult but only in certain situations. these scenes in the movie show the constant struggle in society where the young want to be older and the old want to be younger. Although this is not an example of how gender plays into her life, I believe that the movie was at least partially about age as a factor in everyday life and what it means in terms of how power is determined. An example of how gender affects Alice is how value is placed on men in society, in the movie the boys of the class dictate what the class accomplishes and the girls effectively have none. This uneven distribution of power prevents Alice from learning because she has just as much right to the teacher's help but because the boys were overwhelming in their demands they are rewarded with attention. Alice's frustrations are a result from her inability to overcome the limits that are placed on women; men take advantage of (Lila), no free passes (teacher treatment), and conditional treatment(store clerk).