Outcasts Essay, Research Paper

The Outcasts

When you hear the word magic, what do you think of? Sorcerers, illusions, or what about Merlin the magician? Well all of those thoughts are correct. The most common one though is known as the art of witchcraft. Witchcraft has been practiced for thousands of years, and for it s entire existence the witches were made outcasts. They could not show their faces in public areas without having people point and stare. Deviance became their second nature. There are many movies that talk about witches, but one in particular shows the contrast between humans and witches, The Craft .

To the other kids at St. Bernard Academy, they were the girls who didn t belong. Bound together by the secret of witchcraft, the foursome –Nancy, Bonnie, Rochelle, and Sarah– started hanging out in the woods practicing magical rites. Drawing on the power of nature, Sarah wishes that Chris (a boy at their school) really liked her, Bonnie asks to be as beautiful on the inside as well as on the outside and Rochelle wants to be able to love those who hate her for her color. Nancy is more ambitious and decides to absorb all the power of Manon, the deity-figure who is all around. They dress in all black; they are considered the freaks of the school. The only friends that they have are each other; nobody else wants anything to do with them. Throughout the hallways, across the courtyard and even in class they would be stared at, pointed at and even confronted and told that they are freaks.

After several years of being on the outside, they decide that enough is enough. They realize that the best way to get back at all the people that made fun of them would to put a spell on them. That is exactly what happens. It was fun at first, but Nancy took it to the extreme and actually killed a guy that Sarah liked.

That was the turning point in the movie. Sarah starts to use her magic for good rather then evil. Earlier in the movie, Nancy called on the power of Manon, but she was using it for evil purposes. When Sarah asks for Manon’s power, she uses it for good. The movie ends with Nancy in an insane asylum, Bonnie and Rochelle powerless, and Sarah with more power then she ever imagined.

If you take this movie and break it down, you can see that it deals a lot with the different cliques that our society has. The way our society ridicules people into making other people feel like they don t belong, make them feel like outcasts to society.

If you break down a movie in general, you come across, what are known as appeals. There are three different types of appeals. First are logical appeals, which are appeals that contain evidence, facts, personal experience, etc. The second type of appeal is an ethical appeal, which can be use to argue values, principles: the way things should or should not be. The final appeal is known as emotional appeals. Emotional appeals reinforce logical arguments; it uses creative sense of informing people.

One of the factors that make something have an emotional appeal is that it is visual. Since The Craft is a movie, and movies are visual, then that means that this movie has an enormous amount of emotional appeals. You are able to see characters emotions when they are acting. If one of the characters happens to die, you are able to see the other actor s emotions toward the death of a friend. That is what happens in The Craft. After Nancy receives the power of Manon, she uses it to kill Chris. That s when Sarah turns around emotionally and took revenge for her friends death. Sarah was always the quiet one, until Chris died. Another emotional appeal that is shown in this movie is the fact that there are different cliques in schools. The more popular the group the more they put down other lower class groups. Just like in the movie, the head cheerleader makes fun of Rochelle, because she is black. Even in my school we had groups that secluded themselves because nobody accepted them.

The next type of appeal that appears in this movie is logical appeals. The movie basically says, only give what you can receive. What that means is that, if you ridicule somebody you better be able to be ridiculed right back. Most of the people that put down people for something that they do wrong, usually aren t comfortable with themselves. The way this movie shows it is again with the head cheerleader. When she is around her friends she has to act all big and bad and make fun of people that aren t as popular as she is. But when it comes back at her, she cant handle it. You are able to see the entire school, make fun of these four girls.

The final type of appeal is ethical appeals. Since this is a visual text, you are able to see that at the beginning the movie takes the side of the school, in the fact of making fun of the four girls. As the movie progresses, we see a complete change in the side the movie takes. When the girls said that they have had enough, they start casting spells on people that have made fun of them over the years. The movie is now looking through the eyes of the witches rather then the regular kids at St. Bernard Academy.

When you think if something is effective, you want it to make you think. You want to be able to take a specific text and be able to tell what they are talking about. The Craft is definitely effective because our society knows exactly what it is to make fun of people. When we watch this movie, some of us are able to feel the pain of the four girls, because they were always put down in school. Then you have the people that were the people who put people down, so they are able to relate to the other kids at the school.

There is another thing that you look for when analyzing a movie, is it credible? What we mean by credible is something that is well supported with strong evidence. You can say that this movie is credible because you can see everything that is going all the time. All the evidence is there, because when it happens you know about it even if the actor doesn t.

All in all I think that this movie was done extremely well. You are actually able to relate to the situation that these four girls are going through. Maybe you weren t the one that did the picking on or were the person that was picked on, but all of us at least know somebody that falls into one of those categories. I leave you with a phrase from the movie, Exercise Your Rites!