Throughout these few weeks I had the task of watching several films, all telling different stories in different ways. Some had uplifting screenplays to leave the audience feeling warm and fuzzy, others had grittier tones with an underlying social message. To be truly honest, none of these films really made me look at my life, environment and change or question my views. I guess it’s just that what the filmmakers were trying to say were things I already knew.

The first film, Wall Street tells the story of a young stockbroker who wishes he could rub shoulders with the NYC elite. Through the film he loses his morality only to see that his actions hurt his family and friends, so he changes to save them. It told us that being rich wasn’t everything, that the rich were purely selfish and greedy. On the other end of the spectrum we watched, Moonstruck. This film was a romantic comedy centered on an Italian-American family in New York. Cher plays a widow, who is getting married again, only to fall in love with her fiancée’s brother. Meanwhile her father is cheating on her mother, secrets come out and trouble ensues but in the end all is well. The plot was rather hard to swallow but still left you feeling happy on the inside.

Some of the other films didn’t have such tight, happy endings but ran along the same lines of light hearted or gloominess. Reading some of my classmates’ blogs I can’t help but notice their opinions about NYC. Many of them chose the darker films of the semester as impactful because they thought they were true representations of the city. The nicer films, Moonstruck, The Muppets Take Manhattan, to them were just movies with overblown ideas of love and life. Which quite frankly puzzled me, did people really believe that NYC wasn’t all of the things it is claimed to be? A concrete jungle where dreams are made, a city that never sleeps, the capital of the world? Because for me it kind of is but then again it kind of isn’t.

This is was what I meant when saying the movies were just showing me things I already knew. I have a certain view of the world that I apply when talking about New York City. The world will never be purely good or purely evil. It will always be stuck in the middle. In one corner people will be struggling due to their circumstances and the wrongs of others. In the other corner, you will find people living happy lives with their families and friends. That is just how it is. There is suffering and there is happiness, they can’t exist without each other.

For me, this is what NYC is, a place where both of these are found, just like any other place in the world. Spike Lee taught me about the prevalence of racism and stereotypes in the city which I totally agree with. Yet at the same time movies like The Muppets Take Manhattan (I swear this was the only movie with a good opinion about the city that we watched) show us that New York is a place of opportunity where dreams can be achieved, which at least to me, is also true.

Now at the end of this blog I still feel that the movies didn’t really impact me but they did reinforce the opinion I have about New York City. It has its good parts as well as its bad parts, and it always will.