Dramatic themes often include current issues, societal ills, and problems, concerns or injustices, such as racial prejudice, religious intolerance (such as anti-Semitism), drug addiction, poverty, political unrest, the corruption of power, alcoholism, class divisions, sexual inequality, mental illness, corrupt societal institutions, violence toward women or other explosive issues of the times. These films have successfully drawn attention to the issues by taking advantage of the topical interest of the subject. Although dramatic films have often dealt frankly and realistically with social problems, the tendency has been for Hollywood, especially during earlier times of censorship, to exonerate society and institutions and to blame problems on an individual, who more often than not, would be punished for his/her transgressions."
Social Problem Dramas
Social dramas or "message films" expressed powerful lessons, such as the harsh conditions of Southern prison systems in Hell's Highway (1932) and I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), the plight of wandering groups of young boys on freight cars during the Depression in William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road (1933), or the lawlessness of mob rule in Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), or the resourcefulness of lifer prisoner and bird expert Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1961), or the tale of a framed, unjustly imprisoned journalist (James Cagney) in Each Dawn I Die (1939). In Yield to the Night (1956), Diana Dors relived her life and crime as she awaited her execution. A tough, uncompromising look at New York waterfront corruption was found in the classic American film, director Elia Kazan's. On the Waterfront (1954) with Marlon Brando as a longshoreman who testified to the Waterfront Crimes Commission. The film drew criticism with the accusation that it appeared to justify Kazan's informant role before the HUAC.
Problems of the poor and dispossessed have often been the themes of the great films, including The Good Earth (1937) with Chinese peasants facing famine, storms, and locusts, and John Ford's. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) about an indomitable, Depression-Era Okie family - the Joads - who survived a tragic journey from Oklahoma to California. Martin Scorsese's disturbing and violent. Taxi Driver (1976) told of the despairing life of a lone New York taxi cab driver amidst nighttime urban sprawl. Issues and conflicts within a suburban family were showcased in director Sam Mendes' Best Picture-winning American Beauty (1999), as were problems with addiction in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000).
Modern Day Examples
Precious (2009)
In 1987, obese, illiterate, 16-year-old Claireece P. "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) lives in the New York City ghetto of Harlem with her dysfunctional and abusive mother, Mary (Mo'Nique). She has been impregnated twice by her father, Carl (Rodney "Bear" Jackson), and suffers long-term physical, sexual, and mental abuse from her unemployed mother. The family resides in a Section 8 tenement and subsists on welfare. Her first child, known as "Mongo", which is short for Mongoloid, has Down syndrome and is being cared for by Precious' grandmother, though Mary forces the family to pretend Mongo lives with her and Precious so she can receive extra money from the government.
Following the discovery of Precious' second pregnancy, she is suspended from school. Her junior high school principal arranges to have her attend an alternative school, which she hopes can help Precious change her life's direction. Precious finds a way out of her traumatic daily existence through imagination and fantasy. In her mind, there is another world where she is loved and appreciated.
Inspired by her new teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton), Precious begins learning to read. Precious meets sporadically with a social worker named Miss Weiss (Mariah Carey), who learns about incest in the household when Precious lets slip who fathered her children. Precious gives birth to her second child and names him Abdul. While at the hospital, she meets John McFadden (Lenny Kravitz), a nursing assistant who shows kindness to her. After Mary (her mother) deliberately drops three-day-old Abdul and hits Precious, Precious fights back long enough to get her son and flees her home permanently. Shortly after leaving the house, Precious stops at a window of a church and watches the choir inside sing a Christmas song. She begins to imagine herself and her dream boyfriend singing a more upbeat version of the Christmas song. Later on, Precious breaks into her school classroom to get out of the cold and is discovered the following morning by Miss Rain. The teacher finds assistance for Precious, who begins raising her son in a halfway house while she continues academically.
Her mother comes back into her life to inform Precious that her father has died of AIDS. Later, Precious learns that she is HIV positive, but Abdul is not. Feeling dejected, Precious meets Miss Weiss at her office and steals her case file. Precious recounts the details of the file to her fellow students and has a new lease on life. Mary and Precious see each other for the last time in Miss Weiss' office, where Weiss questions Mary about her abuse of Precious, and uncovers specific physical and sexual traumas Precious encountered, starting when she was three. Mary begs Miss Weiss to help get Precious back, but she refuses upon finding out the extent of the abuse. The film ends with Precious still resolved to improve her life for herself and her children. She severs ties with her mother and plans to complete a General Educational Development (GED) test to receive a high school diploma equivalent.
This is England (2006)
Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), a 12 year-old schoolboy, gets into a fight at school after someone makes an offensive joke about his father, who died in the Falklands War. On his way home Shaun runs into a group of young skinheads led by Woody (Joe Gilgun), who feels sympathy for Shaun and invites him to join the group. They accept Shaun as a member and he finds a big brother in Woody, while developing a romance with Smell (Rosamund Hanson), an older girl who dresses in a punky new wave style.
Combo (Stephen Graham), an older skinhead, returns to the group after a prison sentence. He expresses English nationalist and racist views, and attempts to enforce his leadership over the other skinheads. This leads the group to split. Shaun stays in Combo's group instead of the apolitical skinheads led by Woody. Combo is impressed by and identifies with Shaun, who in turn sees Combo as a mentor figure. Shaun goes with Combo's group to a National Front meeting. After group member Pukey (Jack O'Connell) expresses doubt over the group's racist and nationalistic politics, Combo threatens and abandons him. The gang then engages in racist antagonism of, among others, local shopkeeper Mr. Sandhu, a Pakistani man who had previously banned Shaun from his shop.
Combo becomes depressed after Woody's girlfriend Lol, whom Combo has loved since they had drunken sex years before, rejects him. To console himself, Combo buys cannabis from Milky (Andrew Shim), a member of Woody's group, and the only black skinhead. At a party with Shaun and the other members of Combo's group, Combo and Milky bond while intoxicated. Milky tells Combo about his many relatives and invites him for a meal. Combo becomes agitated at Milky and his race, before snapping and violently beating him unconscious and attacking the other nationalists there. An emotionally regretful Combo then realises what he has done and seeks Shaun's help to get Milky to hospital. Afterwards, Shaun's mother tells him Milky will be all right. Shaun goes down to the shore and tosses a flag of St. George's Cross, a gift from Combo, into the sea and looks into the camera as the movie cuts to black.
London to Brighton (2006)
The film opens with a woman and child, Kelly and Joanne, bursting into a London toilet. Joanne is crying and Kelly has a black eye. Eventually Kelly gets them on a train to Brighton, and it is clear they are running from someone.
Joanne is an eleven-year-old runaway who is procured by a reluctant Kelly into having sex with an old violent mobster with a taste for underage girls. Kelly's pimp, Derek, bullies her into complying, but it all goes horribly wrong, and the old mobster is killed, presumably by one of the girls. The older man's son, Stuart, then forces Derek to find the girls. The film follows the duo's flight from London in the wake of what has happened.
Arriving initially in Brighton, Kelly visits her friend Karen and tries to earn enough money through prostituting herself to help Joanne afford the train to Devon, where the child's grandmother lives. The two are eventually tracked down by her pimp and his associate and taken to meet Stuart at a secluded field. Upon arrival, Kelly's pimp and associate are made to dig two graves, presumably for the girls. However, Stuart decides that the girls are the victims in this episode and decides instead to kill Kelly's pimp and associate. The film ends with Kelly and Joanne arriving at Joanne's grandma's house in Devon. Kelly watches from a distance as the girl and the grandmother hug, then turns away.
Irreversible (2002)
A young woman named Alex is reading An Experiment with Time by John William Dunne in a park, surrounded by playing children. Beethoven's 7th Symphony is heard in the background. The camera spins around faster and faster until it blacks out into a strobe effect, accompanied by a pulsing, roaring sound. A rapidly-spinning image of the cosmos can be dimly perceived. A title card reads: "Time destroys everything" — a phrase uttered in the film's first scene.
Marcus and Alex now lie in bed after sex. Alex reveals she might be pregnant, and Marcus is pleased with the possibility. They prepare to go to a party, and Marcus leaves to buy wine. Alex takes a shower, then uses a home pregnancy test that confirms she is pregnant. She is elated. She sits on the bed clothed, her hand on her belly. A poster for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the tagline "The Ultimate Trip", is above the headboard.
Some time passes. Alex and two male friends, Marcus and Pierre, at a party. Alex is annoyed by Marcus' unrestrained use of drugs and alcohol and his flirtatious behavior with other women, and consequently decides to leave the party. Marcus and Pierre go with her. At a nearby Paris Métro station and aboard a subway train, the trio discuss sex in a metro station. Pierre refers to the fact that Alex and Marcus are no longer in a relationship.
On her way home, Alex sees a man (le Tenia, or "the Tapeworm") beating a transsexual prostitute named Concha in a pedestrian underpass. Alex attempts to flee, but le Tenia catches her and threatens her with a knife. Le Tenia pins Alex to the ground and rapes Alex vaginally and anally for several minutes of screentime. Le Tenia then brutally beats her.
A short period of time passes. The audience learns Alex is in a coma. Marcus and Pierre go looking for the man who raped Alex. Questioning several prostitutes (off-screen), they talk to a street thug named Mourad and his friend Layde. The two gangsters promise to help them find the rapist, whom Mouard claims is le Tenia, if they get paid.
Marcus and Pierre track down Concha, the rapist's last victim. At first, she refuses to talk to them. After Marcus threatens to slash her with a piece of broken glass, she identifies le Tenia as the rapist and says he can be found at a gay BDSM nightclub called The Rectum.
Marcus and Pierre go to The Rectum. Marcus finds le Tenia and assaults him. But le Tenia wrestles Marcus to the ground, breaks Marcus' arm, and then attempts to rape Marcus on the club floor. Pierre grabs a fire extinguisher and kills le Tenia by crushing his skull. Police arrest Pierre and put him in handcuffs. An ambulance arrives, and Marcus is put on a stretcher and taken from the club. Outside, a group of men shout homophobic insults at them. The audience learns that the murdered man was not le Tenia after all. Rather, the man standing next to him in the club was the real le Tenia.
Across the street in a small apartment, two men are talking about sex. One of them is "the Butcher", the protagonist of Noé's previous film, I Stand Alone. In a drunken monologue, the Butcher reveals that he was arrested for having sex with his daughter. Their philosophical musings shift to the subject of the commotion in the streets outside. Without looking out the window, they derisively attribute the commotion to the patrons of The Rectum.
Our Film
Our 5 minute film is a social problem drama, focused on the problem of the peer pressure into drinking and taking drugs to fit in with the majority and rape, which turns out to be planned and a really destressing time for fiona (geek).
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