The film shows the plight of ordinary American people in the events of America’s Great Depression. They become migrant workers when they end up in a ranch in California. They are in search of work and opportunities for their family, but the best of opportunities are not given to them by the people they work for and live under. Food prices are ridiculously high on purpose such that they cannot afford good food; bottom line the ranch owners they work for oppress them. The camp in which they live in is crowded; the immigrants are starving and desperate. The Joad’s concept of moving was to go west, get jobs and become rich. However, their ideal life turned out impossible to attain and they eventually ended up not finding success in California. The Joad’s story is quite contradictory with the film industry during the Great Depression. In the film industry it was the whites who were given top priorities when it came to jobs in Hollywood. It was the African Americans who were “last hired and first fired” (Steinbeck 45) and they found it difficult to acquire jobs in the film industry. The African Americans were not welcomed in Hollywood and the lived on very low wages: this is contradictory in the film seeing that in the film, it’s the Joad’s family, who are actually white, that are denied livable wages in California. It is the whites who are treated by other whites in California as second class citizens.
How the Film Purports a Socially Critical Perspective While at the Same Time Containing its Radical Potential.
The society in the “Grapes of Wrath” is portrayed by John Ford as a society where the wealthy plan and rip off the immigrants to reduce their odds of surviving and living at ease throughout their stay in California. In California the rich are worried that “when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take b force what they need.” (Steinbeck 249). In the film California is depicted as land that was grabbed from Mexico inhabitants by greedy squatters and used is as their own. California ranch owners perceive this chronological instance like an intimidation because they think increase in number of immigrants might result to a repeat of past events. So as to safeguard their ranches, they resort to treating the migrants like animals, having the migrants live in overly crowded and dirty camps and denying them livable wages. The film portrays the population as socially divided between the rich and the less fortunate. This film actually depicts what was happening in the society at that time hence it evoked many reactions. It is thought that the film was powerful and strived for justice by conveying messages of compassion and unity.
The Joads and other migrant farmers experience downward mobility due to their change in status from middle class to lower class caused by the many economically damaging events. Family Values Ford intensely shows the Joad family as people who have self-respect and nobility; Ford puts emphasis on how one has to have some dignity so as to thrive in sprit. The most evident part that portrays this is towards the last part of the movie. The Joad’s family has incurred unsurpassed misfortunes: Connie, Noah and Tom are no longer part of the family; One of their own had a still delivery; the lacks both food and work. However, toward the end of the film, the Joads manage to triumph over their misfortunes and be kind enough to donate to a starving gentleman; these kind acts make it clear that the Joads have not stopped valuing other people’s lives.
These migrant families were very reliant on their members; they had strong sense of family ties. Their strength was in numbers the more people in the family the stronger you were, similarly the fewer the members in the family the weaker you were. Always had to stick together through the thick and thin, but as the film progresses the only way the Joads can survive is by separating (Noah, Jim, and Tom). Many families have a strong sense of pride, many will not accept charity, like the man in the diner and the woman at the Shantytown did not want her children to eat Ma's food. Most families believe hard work will solve their problems at if they work hard enough they can survive and make a new life in California (like the Joads wanting a small house), but this is changed when they get to California prices are too high and wages are too low. John Ford creates a vivid relationship linking self-respect and anger in this film. Provided the community maintains an aspect of injustice (towards people that are ready to undermine their dignity) they will never lose self-respect.
How the Film’s Particular Genre Facilitates the Containment of the Alternative Perspectives of Social Struggle and Military Conflict
The film Grapes of Wrath creates an insane stir that leaves the viewer thinking the screenwriter made the whole thing up. The film shows a hellishly real set of circumstances but it isn’t just a film that records an era. The Joads seem to be going through an odyssey for happiness and peace, while it is arguable whether or not they achieve it. The film is of a melodramatic genre, an almost historical friction. It is political dynamite. It is set in the American agrarianism and it faces the reality of the loss of the dream – this is clear when the Joads move from Oklahoma to California in search of greener pastures and end up finding the situation worse over there. There is an effort to make the Joads’ collectivism more progressive and motivated. Through introducing the scene at the refugee home after the experience they had at the Peach Ranch and during their stay in Hover Field, the family’s enthusiasm to take part in group activities become positive and understandable effects of the actions are clear.
This film depicts the Joads as having been exploited by injustices. Things for the migrants go from bad to worse when the Joads have to leave their government protected camp and are forced to go to Peach Orchard where we see Casy getting murdered and the events that follow lead to the Joads having to leave again. The film shows a traditional figure of the isolated individual who will make things right by all means. It encourages the philosophy of socialism through various conflicts of tradition as a solution to certain social and economical problems of past times. In retrospect, this philosophy of government never works, socialism ends up raring an ugly head as an oppressive body that sucks the life out people under the bias of fairness. The most vital clash of traditions in the film is perhaps the scene where Tom comes back from jail and asks to hike a ride with a random bus driver and the driver initially refuses pointing Tom to a large sign on the wind shield but later agrees. This clash of tradition could best be said to best represent the age old saying “every man helps another”.
Generally, a collective spirit is largely contained in this film, to put in another way, class-based frustrations are represented onscreen as primarily gender and race based frustrations (the way Hollywood becomes a white male-dominated industry in real life and onscreen there are white migrants as a minority). The cause of the great depression is a collapse of the class-based system. It focuses on Hollywood’s representation of collective versus individual action as a product of the growing importance during the era. Hollywood’s conservative nature towards social issues is not inevitability of the film. The film depicts the old labor unrest and class conflict which was thriving at that time, the shift in the political attitude of the film can be attributed to this.
Generic Codes, Structures and Techniques used to Facilitate the Film’s Ideological Aims
The film is rich with use of generic codes; most of the occurrences in Grapes of Wrath do not show their intended effects. Even though the Joads seem to be on the road to hope, somehow irony manages to strike them at every chance it gets. There is dramatic irony in the characters’ wrong doings but the characters themselves do not depict it. Verbal irony is also shown in the film; the characters mean something else which is usually different from what they intend. There are themes such as wealth and poverty in the film too. There is a lot of juxtaposition used by the screenwriter in the movie too; it is mainly made to use while unifying different scenes in the film. Details are constantly and repetitively inter-related connecting intercalary and narrative scenes. Many times, an intercalary chapter shows a general condition that also become fully recognized or brings it to finalization. For example, the scene where the Joads contemplate on leaving and even buying a used car is repeated when the Joads’ car breaks down. The repetition of major elements, mostly thematic and symbolic in nature also works in integrating the two scenes.
Dramatization is another commonly used device. The use of monologues and dialogues in scenes is intended to illustrate the history of the events that were happening in the narrative about the Joad family. For instance, there are frustrated farmers who are forced to sell their possessions through a structure of economics that they themselves have no understanding of. The screenwriter also employs general characters and dialogue to show the troubles of the evicted tenant(s). This does not mean wishing a mere tale about historical and social facts which made up the backbone of the movie’s plot, the writer lets his viewers find by themselves the result of the famine on the migrants, or the gradual fall of the housing deserted by the farmers who were forced into migration to California.
Works Cited
Baxter, John. The Cinema of John Ford. A. Zwemmer, 1971.
Black, Edwin. "War against the weak." Eugenics and Americas Campaign to Create a Master Race, New York (2003). rican Quarterly 31.5 (1979): 596-615.
Gomery, Douglas. "THE HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYSTEM, 1930-49."Hollywood: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies 1 (2004): 107.
Rothbard, Murray Newton. America's great depression. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1972.
Rogin, Michael. Blackface, white noise: Jewish immigrants in the Hollywood melting pot. Univ of California Press, 1996.
Steinbeck, John. The grapes of wrath (1939). na, 1939.
