Belonging

You cannot belong to anyone else, until you belong to yourself. That was a famous quote by Pearl Bailey. To belong it isn’t crucial to change your character. Good morning and welcome here today to the 2008 forum on belonging. Today I’ll explain to you what composers have shown us about how belonging changes characters through 3 texts, strictly ballroom directed by Baz Luhrman. Looking for Alibrandi by Marlene machetta and the ugly duckling composed by Hans Christian Andersen.
Strictly ballroom is about a ballroom dancer called Scott Hastings. He comes from a family with a history of ball room dancing, but then Scott gets tired of dancing the steps and decides to enrich the dancing federation with his own steps. Scott’s consequences for dancing his own steps led to losing his partner Liz, after he dances he’s steps he asks Liz “Do you like my steps?” this shows he knows himself but is waiting for acceptance from others. Scott in this movie is portrayed as an elitist and arrogant person, we can tell this when a girl out of the blue called Fran asks him to dance with her, but he laughs back at her. Characters in this movie are divided into Cliché’s which are fake example his mum when she says “I’m keeping my happy face on” and authentic example Fran when she quotes “to live with fear is a life half lived”. Fran knocks Scott to his senses with the quote “to live with fear is a life half lived” what she meant with this quote always take challenges don’t live in someone else’s shadow be brave! A major contributor to Scott’s change in character is Frans family, towards the end you start to gain the sense that Scott is becoming authentic because of the influence Fran and her family have had on him.   A song played in this movie is by Cindy Lauper time after time on the scene where there dancing on the roof.   She quotes “if your lost you can look and you will find me” this song is played in that scene to show us Scott was lost until Fran came into he’s life, then that’s...