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.

POST 11: MYTHS & HEROES: THE AMERICAN DREAM

 

This is a debate from the Arthur M. Blanck Foundation between a journalist and a guest, i presume. They are talking about the future of the American Dream, and the journalist is wondering wether this ideal is about opportunities, home ownership, economic betterment, education or expecting that the next generation's lives will be better than now. The guest answers by using a notion that the journalist did not mention: jobs. He explains that nowadays, "kids" are better prepared for jobs that aren't available, and who, when they are, don't have health care, retirement benefits or payed vacations. And so he wonders what America might have to do to give all the young generation the jobs they need, because jobs are the cornerstone of this American Dream.

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This video is the trailer of a movie called In America by Jim Sheridan. It tells the story of a family of Irish immigrants who got away from the police in their country and arrived in New York City. It embraces very well the concept of American Dream because they came to America to start from scratch after loosing a child. They meet a black man, their neighbour, who is an artist and a loner and who has AIDS. They also try to have another child but the mother could die and in America, any medical intervention including delivery, is very expensive.

POST 10: DEFINITION AND REDIFINITION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM



 

 The first thing that comes up in American people's minds about the American dream is the word "opportunity". This idea sums up a lot of other criteria, named in the first document above. Freedom is the second thing that comes up to their minds, since America has been known and named as the "land of freedom" .It comes as no surprise if we remember that America was one of the first democracy in the world (after Great Britain) thanks to the Pilgrim Fathers, puritans who travelled in 1620 to the USA aboard the May Flower to escape religious persecution in Great Britain. If we look at all the others, we can see that, before, the idea of reaching material prosperity in the pursuit of happiness remained very strong, and even though "wealth" comes almost last, it is still present in American people's idea of the American Dream, happiness being the ultimate goal. 

If we look at the second document though, we can see that the American Dream has been redefined, and that now, expectations are much lower than before, and that the idea of the American Dream is getting closer to the idea of the perfect american way of life, with the perfect house and family, financial security being the priority, for example having enough money for retirement is the first idea in the new version of the Dream (47%), or owning a house (17%), a car (3%), and paying for child's education (5%). We can see that now, American became disillusioned about the american dream and that they no longer expect to go "from rag to riches" even though i think that now, their expectation are a too low for us to talk about this as the American Dream

                                                 

POST 10: DEFINITION AND REDIFINITION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM



 

 The first thing that comes up in American people's minds about the American dream is the word "opportunity". This idea sums up a lot of other criterias, named in the first document above. Freedom is the second thing that comes up to their minds, since America has been known and named as the "land of freedom". If you look at all the others, we can that, before, the idea of reaching material prosperity in the pursuit of happiness remained very strong, and even though "wealth" comes almost last, it is still present in American people's idea of the American Dream, happiness being the ultimate goal. 

If we look at the second document though, we can see that the American Dream has been redefined, and that now, expectations are much lower than before, and that the idea of the American Dream is getting closer to the idea of the perfect american way of life, with the perfect house and family, financial security being the priority, for example having enough money for retirement is the first idea in the new version of the Dream (47%), or owning a house (17%), a car (3%), and paying for child's education (5%). We can see that now, American became disillusioned about the american dream and that they no longer expect to go "from rag to riches" even though i think that now, their expectation are a too low for us to talk about this as the American Dream

                                                 

POST 9: MYTHS & HEROES: THE AMERICAN DREAM

'Myths & Heroes' is but one of the four notions that will be research topics next year for the Baccalauréat in Terminale.
Thus, it seems quite advisable to broach it in 1º.

This post as well as the next three will include different types of documents dealing with the American Dream.

 Study the documents, copy and/or embed them to/into your blog and write a five-to-ten-line commentary on each of them after giving a definition of the American Dream.

Definition: 

The American Dream is a very strong belief for immigrants from all over the world (and of course for american themselves) in the ideal that America is a land of oportunities where everyone can work their way up/upward mobility (through hard work and will power) and make their dreams come true in order to reach material prosperity in pursuit of happiness.