2012 Standard Module C Elective 1
Living in the global village both limits and extends individual freedom.
Discuss this view with reference to A Man with Five Children and ONE other related text of your own
choosing.
Sample response: Drama
Prescribed text:
Related text:
A Man with Five Children, Nick Enright, 2003
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin, 2012 (film)
Introduction defines
global village and
links it to the terms
in the question
The term ‘the global village’ suggests that the world is now a small place, where all
people are connected by economic interdependence, rapid transport and
communication technology. Our ability to easily connect with the rest of the world
brings many advantages, but it also has disadvantages. Nick Enright’s 2003 play, A
Man with Five Children and the 2012 film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by
Benh Zeitlin, both explore how living in the global village can extend individual
freedom, as well as limiting it in some ways.
The context of the
play, to link it to the
concept of the
global village
A Man with Five Children is a play about how the lives of five children are affected
by being part of a long-term reality TV show. As media celebrities in the public
consciousness from 1972 to 2000, they are very much part of the global village,
being seen on TV on New Year’s Day every year from the age of seven until they
are in their thirties. The audience watching the play sees how being part of the global
village through participating in the TV show has benefits for the people who are
being filmed, and also for Gerry, the film-maker.
Extended freedom
for a participant
It is clear that Cam personally benefits from being part of the show. He has a
difficult childhood in unhappy family circumstances and at thirteen is in danger of
becoming a young criminal. The public interest in his circumstances and Gerry’s
intervention, so that he can keep Cam safe and keep the show running, contribute to
Cam’s rehabilitation. His prospects are further boosted when his public celebrity
helps him to build on his football talents and become a first-grade AFL star. His life
is very much lived publicly, including proposing to Annie on camera, but for him
this is all a way of keeping him in the public eye, popular and successful, until the
accident.
How the show
offers freedom for
others
It is not only the participants who benefit from the show. Theo reveals that Jessie’s
speech when she was fourteen, when she says, “I want time to be all the things that I
can be”, was an inspiration for him to do things that mattered for others. Jessie’s
speech is important in the play, as it resonates for many characters, who see it as a
confirmation of their own freedom to act according to their hearts and to act
selflessly for others. In Jessie’s case, this means devoting herself to environmental
and political causes and in Theo’s case, devoting himself to Jessie to support her in
her activism. Jessie has the freedom to follow her heart because the TV show has
given her the celebrity and opportunity to be able to do what she wants.
The show extends
Gerry’s freedoms,
but limits the
participants’
Gerry also benefits from the show, by making the lives of the children both public
property and a significant part of his own personal life. Apart from the obvious
benefit of owning a successful TV show for nearly thirty years, he also benefits in
other ways. As the man behind the camera, he exercises considerable control over
the participants, even when they are no longer children. The public desire for the
program to continue means that he can override their wish to leave the program.
Even though their personal freedoms are limited by being to some extent trapped in
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There can be
extensions and
limitations at the
same time
the program, he benefits in many ways. It is his livelihood, but it is also his life, and
he is inextricably caught up with all of the participants in various ways. In effect, the
show gives Gerry a life by proxy, which he sees as a plus, but which could also be
seen as a significant limitation, because he has never gone out to make his own life,
being content to live through ‘his’ children.
The film makes the
point that being
separate from the
global village is a
way of finding
freedom
Beasts of the Southern Wild shows us a different view of the way living in the global
village extends and limits personal freedoms. When the film starts, we see a happy,
functioning community in a wetland area known as the Bathtub. The people of the
Bathtub have very little in the way of material possessions, but they have a close-knit
and supportive community and live according to their own codes and values. The
people of the Bathtub are free to live their lives as they wish because they are
isolated from the rest of the world by a levee. There is no interference from the
outside world, which leaves them alone to function in their own way. While the
buildings and boats are makeshift and unglamorous, we see that the community
places importance on things such as the children’s education and that there is a
strong bond between Hushpuppy and her teacher.
The nature of the
community is
shown through
personal
relationships
The limits to
freedom in the film
How the film shows
ideas about
extending and
limiting freedom
However, when the levee is destroyed, the Bathtub can no longer avoid the rest of
the world. The freedom of the residents is completely lost when they are forcibly
removed to a detention centre. The residents of the Bathtub have lost more than
just their houses. While they have more material comfort in the detention centre,
they have lost the freedom to determine how they can live their lives. Contact with
the outside world has limited their freedoms to the extent that they are desperate to
leave and eventually manage a mass escape during a security lapse. The film’s
director contrasts the centre’s clean and clinical white spaces, confining walls and
barred windows with the open spaces and ramshackle beauty of the Bathtub. On
their return to the Bathtub, the residents re-build their world just as it was before
and re-establish their lives in the free and open pattern they formerly enjoyed. The
point is made that it is better for the residents to be separate from the rest of the
world and poor in comparison, because they are free to live as they wish. Being part
of the global village is, for them, a very limiting experience.
How modern
celebrity limits
freedom
The children in the play also express concerns about the way that living their lives in
the public eye has limited their freedoms. Roger expresses this most poignantly
when he accuses Gerry of ruining his life for others’ entertainment. He says that his
life was never his own, he was public property, carrying the burden of complete
strangers’ interests and expectations, and he had been cast by Gerry as the ‘loser’ in
the show. Susannah reinforces this idea of the show as a story where they were all
actors being manipulated by the director, telling Gerry that what he made was “not
documentary, it’s disaster movies.” Enright is here making the point that the ‘fifteen
minutes of fame’ that everyone is likely to experience in the global village comes at a
price. Being well-known public property means not having the luxury of making
mistakes anonymously and in private. Ordinary people have the freedom to mess up
and learn from their mistakes. In the case of Roger and Cam, however, their
mistakes are in the public domain and follow them throughout their lives, known to
just about everyone they meet.
Conclusion is a
summation of the
views about the
global village and
freedom, as
expressed in each
text
Both texts comment on the way people’s freedoms are affected by the way we are all
now connected in the world. For Enright, mass communication that turns the lives
of ordinary people into everyday entertainment for millions can offer both great
opportunities and many restrictions. Zeitlin shows us a very different view, where
contact with the rest of the world can rob whole communities of the traditions and
values that make life meaningful for them, thus limiting their freedom in very
significant ways.
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