Misfits
The art of not fitting in…
The ideology of a society contains the concepts of communal ties, acceptance, and camaraderie. If people do not belong to a society they become its outsider. If people differ from the main group and cannot follow its ethical guidelines, norms, and overall rules, the outsider becomes excluded from the group. There are many ideas of society shunning individuals as well as groups of people who differ from the mainstream. The larger group dictates its choice of normal and the abnormal. The power of creating the abnormal is merely pointing out at someone different and labeling him a monster.
The adolescent is the monster of the new age. The influence of society’s norms can create a new branch of individuals, who differ from the main mass, or those who shut themselves down and do not explore themselves . Younger generations and youth of today struggle with their appearance, interests, and life choices in the constant battle of choosing between being oneself and fitting into the acceptable image of society. Youth is labeled abnormal by society, creating a tension within the community due to misunderstanding each other.
In our project we will look at Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus,” where the monster is shunned from existence by society and his own creator, and a Russian documentary on hippies in the Soviet Union, where an association of peaceful westernized youth was assaulted by the soviet regime, excluding them from society. To show contrast and similarities of bonding groups, but that are also monstrous or abnormal, we will do a deep analysis of “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton, where camaraderie is shown through shoulder touching. The greasers from “The Outsiders” are literally misfits of their community, in a constant misunderstood battle between social ranks. The hippies of the soviet union alike to the the greasers have created their own community to fight against the norms of the society, where they do not fit in, but have each other. However, both groups are despised by a majority, like Frankenstein’s monster, who could not find a place nor way to belong in the world he was brought into. To underline the escape from reality, which all the outsiders commit to, to be themselves, we will analyze “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. In the novel, Pauline, the protagonist’s mother, falls in love with cinema and tries to escape the dreadful reality, where her family is rejected from society and seen as abnormal. Pauline understood that she will never be able to live the luxurious lives of her movie heroines and accepts her monstrosity and family’s abnormality.
All these monsters of society have a long and winding road to social acceptance, sometimes it is not an achievable goal, sometimes the ties within an abnormal group grow stronger and that is enough, and lastly sometimes they give up.
