"Meet the Parents" Questions

1.      “Meeting the parents” is all about impressing them, sometimes stretching the truth, and the slot is driven by these lies snowballing and catching-up with Greg Focker.

2.      Jack and Diana are foils because Jack is very hard and serious all the time, whereas Diana is loving and compassionate towards everyone. Greg and Kevin are also foils because the rest of Pam’s family loves Kevin because he’s very smooth and talented, where Greg is very awkward and constantly and consistently embarrasses himself in every conceivable situation.

3.      While DeNiro portrays the same hard-ass personality that he is famous for but transfers it to his non-traditional role as a fairly normal father.

4.      Pam’s family is very judgmental of Greg because there are several peculiar things about him: he works as a male nurse, his full name is Gaylord Focker, and he is Jewish where the rest of the family is Christian.

5.      Kevin’s character serves to further augment the terrible embarrassment of Greg because Kevin responds perfectly to every situation and Greg continues damage himself by repeatedly looking foolish.

6.      My favorite scene is the volleyball scene, and it draws on several techniques to create its comedic effect; the scene itself is an anecdote of another situation gone awry for Greg, Greg commits an offensive blunder in smashing Pam’s sister’s face with the volleyball, Greg’s last name of “Focker” serves as a double entendre throughout the entire movie, the relationship between the foils of Greg and Kevin are completely exposed, and the slow-motion, silent instant of the volleyball striking the poor woman’s face is a perfect example of a visual gag.

"Kiss and Tell"

Expounding on a scenario familiar to all who have experienced their teenage years with their parents in "Kiss and Tell", Alain de Botton employs colorful characterization, awkward dialogue, and a detached point-of-view to illuminate the way embarrassing, over-bearing parents can elicit a comic effect - if they're not your own.
The author utilizes his considerable skills at overt and subtle characterization to create a humoroous atmosphere within the theater. He does so through all three members of the Rogers family. Isabel possesses a social awareness that her parents apparently do not, and when they obnoxiously strive for her attention with waving and yelling she "smiles feebly, turns a beetroot shade" and tries with all of her might to ignore them. The father is portrayed as the quintissential clueless married man, "looking up at the ceiling with an intent expression" and paying more attention to the light bulbs than the conversation with his daughter. But neither is characterized as vibrantly as Mrs. Rogers, the stereotype of an invasive, intrusive mother who is constantly making incredibly embarrassing commments to her daughter; "pity you don't have more of a cleavage for [the dress]." Right in front of her daughter's date she pints out the small size of her daughter's breasts, clearly an undesirable statement from Isabel's stance. These hilarous characters are the foundation for the comedy of the story.

"Naked Lunch"
Shifting from a scene of awkward conversation to one of physical and mental domination in "Naked Lunch", Michael Hollinger employs skillful characterization, careful symbolism, and illuminating dialogue to display the disfunctionality of a relationship between two mismatched personalities.

"Suburban"
Shifting from mundane daily events to a deep figurative conclusion in "Suburban", John Ciardi utilizes dry sarcasm, playful allusion, and graphic detail to describe the trials and tribulations of living in suburban America.

Kanoodling Kids

I have a pet peeve about seeing couples in the hallway. Not normal couples who are just talking, maybe holding hands. I’m talkin’ excessive physical contact, usually on the periphery of the hallways but still in plain view of the entire student body. They make it seem like they’re trying to be unobtrusive and stay out of everyone’s way, but in reality they’re trying their hardest to advertise their graphic groping and face-sucking. But on this particular day, the hallway was empty, and the couple I encountered had no illusions of concealing their relationship.
Now, most couples that are generally despised by the population of the school do a lot of the same things to deserve this hated; being perpetually and sickeningly inseparable, speaking so close to each other that their faces are almost touching, like every innocuous conversation is an intimate and passionate and beautiful thing. Rarely do these offenses exceed this magnitude, but this couple ignored the usual progression of annoying high school relationships.
As I opened the door on the first floor heading towards my locker, I was having a pretty good day; ate a nice breakfast, had all my homework done, had a fairly stress-free schedule. And as I processed the contents of the corridor, I noticed a short, obese figure standing awkwardly in the very center of my vision. No one else was around. And then I realized that the figure was not a short, obese person, but it was in fact two people wrapped tightly around each other. They were fused together in a passionate and uncomfortable embrace, groping each other unashamedly, their faces glued together. It was two especially small, immature-looking freshmen, who clearly had no concern for how I felt about their relationship. I was sufficiently startled and adequately disgusted, but I assumed that, especially in the presence of a senior, the two tiny lovers would pull apart in embarrassment and depart awkwardly while I laughed to myself. But to my horror, none of this occurred; they acted as if I wasn’t even there and continued to produce sounds that were not unlike pigs feeding from a trough. I tried to inch my way by as discreetly as possible, but I could not, for the life of me, tear my gaze away from the offensive spectacle before me. It was impossible to suggest they had not noticed me, for I had done my best to make my presence blatantly obvious. I came to the conclusion that nothing short of physical intervention would separate these two. As I walked back to my classroom, my brain just couldn’t wrap itself around what I had just seen, couldn’t possibly produce a rational explanation for the absurdness it just processed. Theirs is a love I will never understand.