POST 12: MYTHS & HEROES: THE AMERICAN DREAM: NOW IT'S YOUR TURN!

The first document is a video: it is an extract from the musical West Side Story, written by Leonard Bernstein. It tells the story of a group of young portoricans who move from Puerto Rico to America. They live in the Upper West Side of New York, and are rivals with a gang of white youngsters, named The Jets. The portorican gang’s name is The Sharks. This scene takes place in the building where they live after a party where the Jets and the Sharks are together and a young portorican, Maria falls in love and dances with Tony, a jet. In the scene, the women and the men are fighting over a subject : life in America. The women are obviously very happy in their new country and the men start to enumerate all the bad things about America, and they actually seem to hate it. A kind of battle starts between the men and the women through a song and a choregraphy, which I find very nice, and also typical of this kind of musical, about life in America.The scene illustrates very well the concept of American dream because the women, led by Anita, are dreaming about their new life and telling all the good things about it : buying on credit, owning a washing machine, etc… The other side of the American dream is illustrated by the men who make fun of their girlfriends' dreams : they negate everything the girls say, talking about the life of immigrants in this country, who has no futur there : they say « better get rid of your accent » to the girls, in reference to their very strong hispanic accent. The girls are trying to give their life a fresh start in America, by, for example « changing » their names : when her boyfriends starts making fun of her with all her spanish names « josefina, margartia, etc… » , Anita gets upset and says « no, it’s PLAIN Anita now ».
All in all, this document illustrates very well one part of the American dream, about immigrants from all over the world coming to America for a fresh start and eventually get dillusioned by it.

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The second document is a picture of the very famous american actress and singer Marilyn Monroe. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson on August 5th 1962, she was and will always be an icon of beauty, fame and glamor. She grew up in various foster homes subject to abuse and neglect. In a few years, she became a factory worker, a model and finally Hollywood's biggest star and sex symbol.

Marilyn is one of the best examples of a person who achieved the American dream: she started from the bottom and reached the top. She had everything, but we can see, in the story of her life, one of the downsides of this concept of American dream: even though she had everything a human beeing can get in life, in the material part, Marilyn didn't achieve the ultimate goal of the American dream: happiness. This huge star with a beautiful smile and everything women were dreaming of was unhappy and ended her life at the age of 36 years old.

The case of Marilyn shows that the American dream isn't just about money because the ultimate goal of this dream is happiness, and happiness can't be bought by money.

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To put it in a nutshell, i chose these two documents to illustrate the fact that even though the American Dream is (or maybe was) real, it has its downsides, like everything. I tried to show through this documents that people who dream to much or who get every material thing they want/can, can end up disapointed, unhappy and in the end they don't even achieve completely the American Dream because the ultimate goal of the dream is happiness, and material things can't bring this.