Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Choose to scenes from the film that illuminates the text of Educating :: English Literature

Choose to scenes from the film that illuminates the text of Educating Rita by Willy Russell When the play was written there was a still a cultural divide between the uneducated (as in no higher education) working class and the cultural and educated upper class but higher education was slowly being madeavailable to the masses. This was partly due to Open University (OU) with provided a university education to those who normally would have not been able to go due to employment or the fact that they might feel they wouldn't fit in, like Rita, because of the cultural differences. Rita feels she needs an education to fill her life, as she knows that something in her life is not right and so she turns to the part of a life she doesn't have -education and knowledge of culture- to fill the gap. However as we find out this is not necessarily what she is missing, but in her search for an education she finds 'a new Rita', she even changes her name back to Susan. Susan is Rita's real name, however when she started OU she changed it to Rita after Rita Mae Brown, someone who she thinks writes literature, but in fact writes "pulp- fiction" stories, because at this time she thinks all books are literature- this shows the cultural difference. The play Educating Rita by Willy Russell gained great popularity especially during the early eighties. There has also been a movie made from it starring Julie Walters and the more famous Michael Caine. As so often the case, the movie was more elaborate with additional scenes, some of which were spoken of or retold by the actors in the play. The movie also included several actors while the play only featured two, Frank and Rita. In this essay I am going to explore how the film illuminates parts of the text when performed on stage. Although most of the details are small and subtle, they have a great impact on how the story portrayed. The movie offers much more background information on other characters and events that are important to the story. The play is much more restricted in the sense that a great many things are bound not to happen on stage, especially as there are only two characters. In fact nothing taking place outside Frank's office can be seen by the audience. All action is then confined within the stages four walls. When Frank invites Rita to his home for dinner in the play the

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