Last Blog
"Leaving Normal" was a ok film. I thought Darly's character was really funny, and entertaining, though her character does get a little too much to handle towards the end. Her sarcastic and dark view of the world gets to be too much by the end. I do not like Marianne's character at all. I had no interest in her, and was not invested in what happened to her. The film was funny at times, but just something about the story (maybe that it is somewhat conservative) made me lose interest.
My favorite movie, if I had to chose, would be "Set It Off." I thought it was a really funny movie, and it was also full of excitement and violence; therefore really entertaining. I also liked that the story touched on a lot of different issues, like sexuality, motherhood, poverty, racism, urban life, violence, etc. Though the movie did not really look at all these factors in depth, just by bringing them up within the story, made me as a spectator conscious and thoughtful of those issues.
The representation of lesbianism was far from perfect. Cleo is stereotypically butch, and very masculine. She has a girly, feminine girlfriend. Their power dynamic is quite exagerated, with Cleo always the one in command and control, and Cleo's girlfriend never even speaking. Yet, Cleo's sexuality is not presented as something negative of her personality; we don't like her less because of it. Though, her friends seem a little homophobic at first, they somewhat non-chalantly accept her sexuality later on.
The presentation of other racial, social and emotional factors is similar to the representation of Cleo's sexuality. The movie may even suffer from trying to tackle too many subjects to actually cover them all in depth. The characters are female, black, poor, one is a mother, one is a sister, one is a lesbian. Even though the movie fails to properly handle all these characteristics, the fact that they are present makes the representation more well-rounded and more true to life. Life is complicated, there are many factors that play a role in every individual's life; "Set it off" presents this complexity within a funny and entertaining film.