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  • Essay / It's Hard Being a Man: Film Review and Interpretation

    “Family melodrama… more often records the failure of the protagonist to act in a way that could shape events and influence the emotional environment , not to mention changing the stifling environment… Melodrama gives them a negative identity through suffering, and progressive self-immolation and disillusionment generally results in resignation; they emerge as lesser human beings because they have become wise and accepted the ways of the world. (Elsaesser, 78-79)Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayThis quote from Elsaesser's Tales of Sound and Fury encompasses the nature of It's Tough Being a Man as a family melodrama, setting highlighting both what is likable and what is not. Torajiro, a brutal yakuza member who returns to his hometown, Shibamata, and unwittingly causes trouble for those close to him. Tora’s story is one of frustration. The audience feels bad for him because of his history of abuse at the hands of his father, but is frustrated when they do not understand the implications of his rude behavior in particular social environments. When he runs into Hiroshi, a factory worker in love with Sakura, Tora is rather silent and ignores Hiroshi's question of whether Tora has ever been in love with a woman he cannot have due to his background (in particular, his lack of university education). On the first occasion of this twice-asked question, Hiroshi foreshadows what the viewer might glimpse in Tora's then-burgeoning feelings for Fuyuko. She's not explicitly unattainable yet, but later in the film, when Tora visits Fuyuko for a fishing trip together, he gets a taste of his own medicine when a man, in street clothes, reveals himself to be the future Fuyuko's (educated) husband. Thus, the audience sees the both tragic and ironic parallelism that Elsaesser mentions at the beginning of his essay on page 70, and Tora once again returns to his life as a wanderer, albeit in a more tragic setting, seen as he cries in a restaurant after dismissing Noboru in the last minutes of the film.