Week 4
Alice's everyday life is fraught with conflicting information about what it means to be a woman, and what that entails. This conflicting information often came from the difference between the ideal (as projected from characters in the film) and the actual. The conflicting information between various characters say and how they act shows us some of the limitations that our reality has imposed.
Consider the basic concept of feminine beauty. After being confronted by her teacher about being late, she was told that beauty isn't on the outside, that beauty comes from within. Such was a speaking of an ideal, that how we physically appear is superficial. However, as Alice experiences in her everyday life, we see that reality does hold the same influences. Beauty as seen on the cover of magazines, and beauty as seen after being dressed up and having makeup applied by the mothers friend. Now beauty is being portrayed simply as how you appear on the outside. Not only does this counter the ideal presented to her, but it also is inherently restrictive. There is only so much we can do to change our physical appearance.
Similarly, the same ideal/real influential conflict arise in the concept of the knowledge. The ideal that intelligence should be considered as a positive thing. Asking questions was encouraged, and an intellectual project was praised, but the question went unanswered in favor of those (the boys) who took the situation less seriously. The praise to Alice's project was far outweighed by the constant snide remarks make by the majority of her class. Should we consider knowledge as power, the classroom setting did very little to encourage Alice's growth and far more to discourage it. Such hindrances show the limiting factors of her reality.