Blog Assignment #5

For this weeks blog post I have decided to talk about the spine chilling and drama filled film famously known as Beloved. Oprah Winfrey plays as Sethe, who is the mother of three children and is suffering the consequences of her past. Sethes home has been possessed by an evil spirit so strong that it had driven away both of her sons; therefore, leaving Sethe and her daughter to hopelessly live with this angered spirit creeping through the walls of the house. After years of unwillingly having to endure the neglect of the sprint, Sethe and her daughters life unexpectedly took a turn for the better when an old friend named Paul had arrived. In a sense, Paul was their savior. The moment he had entered their lives, Seth and her daughter began to feel a sense of happiness and were reminded of what it was like to live a more normal life. The problem was Paul’s unexpected entrance had only ticked off the spirit even more. One of the main scene that had caught my attention, was when Paul was taking a close look at the scarred tissue all over Sethes back. The marks appeared to be in the form of a tree. As he begins to gently kiss the marks on Sethes back the ghost shows up and does what it knows best, which was to terrorize them. The spirit than shoves the kitchen dining table towards Paul, slamming him against the wall. Fighting back the ghost with all his might, Paul pushes the table off of him, putting an end to the ghosts attack. What I found most interesting is how at any given moment where Seth would find any shred of happiness, the spirit would constantly feel the need to step in and remind her that it has not gone anywhere. Even when she would have any hint of healing such as forgetting about her past memories filled with horror, the horrible trauma she had faced over the years, or even when Paul gently kisses her wounds the ghost would always have to make entrance. Another scene that had caught my attention was when Seth, her daughter, and Paul had attended the Negro day fair. The moment they had arrive back home, the literal ghost of slavery had appeared in the flesh nearly gasping for air. This women on their lawn happened to be Beloved. The underlying message of this scene is that Beloved was a manifestation of the baby, except she had not retuned as a baby. Beloved had returned in the body of a women. The body she is in is also the grown body that Beloved would have been in at that very moment in time within the film. Seth, her daughter, and Paul don’t have any clue that she is a superficial manifestation. They are so clueless that they think she is disabled due to her being unable to talk maturely or even feed herself. In other words, it is a ghost of a child who is in a sense now back and alive, but this time she is stuck in the body of a young women. Beloveds true intentions of her return was for her to build that missing bond that she had lost as a child with her mother. That is why she had returned and somehow made it to the real realm from the spiritual realm. Overall, this film portrays the horror of pain and a mother who at one point is seen battling with her nurturing drive.