She's the Man

 

She's the Man, as we know, is a play off of Shakespeare's Twelvth Night. The boy (Channing Tatum) goes for the girl (the character Olivia), who falls for the girl dressed as a boy (Amanda Bynes), who likes the boy.

Both stories, as we know, work out in the end. Really though: why do these stories make such good ones? What is it that people really go for in these stories?

As we talked about in Mulan, the manly man (Tatum) stays the manly man through the whole script. There's no cross-dressing there. (Although we do get a comical scene where he sticks a tampon up his nose to stop a nose bleed because of Bynes' character's advice.)

Maybe we enjoy texts like this because of that line between sexes and the secrets that each group has. Crossing over that line answers the questions that we wonder about--what is the opposite sex actually doing/thinking?

One of the themes in the story is also woman-power. Amanda Bynes' character gets to play soccer on a men's team, proving that she's capable of doing so. We could like these texts because of these reasons as well: looking at the issues of equality and inequality between men and women.

Vampiric Classes

Class has a very large imprint upon the structure of the books "House of Night". House of night is a series of Novels and Novellas. The books start with a normal high school class structure that is well known by most people. And then the class becomes even more noticeable. Once Zoey Montgomery was Marked, the author shows us a huge other class system in this world, that humans choose to ignore.

The Vampiric classes of Priestesses and Masters, the Changed, and Consorts. The Priestesses and Masters are the rich, bourgeoisie type of people. They are very influential, have power given to them, and are looked up to and usually respected. The Changed are people who have completed the change to Vampires. They are the middle class, proletariat type of people. They are people who have influence, but not much. They are normal hardworking type of people who show respect to the Priestesses and Masters. The Consorts are what would be thought of as slaves to the Priestesses and Masters. The Changed are disgusted by them. Yet the Priestesses and Masters all have one and use them for many different purposes.

Cinderella

The children's book and Disney movie, Cinderella, is an example of marxism. The time era of Cinderella was very big on social class and order throughout a community. Cinderella's step sisters and step mother were protagonists of marxism. They had hired help that they looked down upon. The three liked to consider themselves upper class. The step mother does anything she can to get her daughters noticed by the royal family, especially the prince. Cinderella defies the norm of marxism by capturing the Prince's heart and living happily ever after with him.

  

Hermione Granger and the Mudblood struggle

Even though there were only a select group of people that  believed that pure  bloods were better, you can still compare it to the Marxist idea of the bourgeoisie and proletariat because it is the select few "righteous" people overpowering those who were seemingly not worthy.  If these people had their way, the mudbloods were be treated inhumanly because they were not worthy to be practicing magic.  They were viewed as below the purebloods because of their heritage and long history of wizards and witches. 


Draco Malfoy: No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood! 
-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 


Draco: "I got the idea of poisoning the mead from the Mudblood Granger, as well, I heard her talking in the library about Flich not recognizing potions..."

Dumbledore: "Please do not use that offensive word in front of me."

Draco: "You care about me saying "mudblood" when I'm about to kill you?"

Dumbledore: "Yes, I do."

-Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Kindred

                       “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

The novel Kindred is a great example of Marxism because it is about slavery and the differences between white and African American people.  In this book a modern day couple is sent back into time and ending up in Maryland in the 1800s.  The husband in this couple was white and the wife was African Amercian.  When she arrived in Maryland she was treated as a slave and she could not believe what the slaves had to go through.  Since she is now a slave and her husband is white they are not allowed to be together so he ends up leaving Maryland.  Not until the end of the book are they finally reunited and are able to travel back to their original time period.

 “I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman - to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.”

Les Miz

I think a good example of a Marxist cultural problem is found in Les Miserables. In this play, you have a high-ranking ruling class that cares nothing for the poor, and a poor dying class that is a powder-keg to revolution. It culminates in a grand battle, while a majority of society sits idly by.

Antz

If you haven't seen the DreamWorks movie Antz (1998), you are missing out an excellent example of Marxism.  The story began on an anthill will millions of ants are working on a conformity system. The main character, Z, is an average ant worker who serves pretty low on the ants' system.  Of course, for every system to run smoothly there must be a leader.  The ants are ruled by an old king and Princess Bala who eventually gets involved with Z.

However, the ants do not willingly work under their system.  They serve the grasshoppers who demands the ants to harvest food for all the grasshoppers before the winter season.  If the ants do not collect enough food, the grasshoppers will eat all the ants.