"Today's Entertainment: Social Commentary or Not?" Argumentative essay based on book Fight Club and movie Secret Window. 1st Draft, got a great criteria score. Includes works cited.

Essay by booradley67College, Undergraduate May 2005

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Social commentary is the act of imparting one's opinion on the nature of society to another person. This is usually used with the idea of bringing a change in society by means of informing the general populace of a given problem. Problems range in topic and relevance from racism, poverty, and child abuse, to greed, individual identity, and chasing The American Dream. W.H. Auden said, "What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten and replaced by a new dish." While Auden says that today's entertainment is disposable, the book Fight Club and the movie Secret Window should be recognized as social commentary.

The main character in Fight Club, the Narrator, and the main character in Secret Window, Mort Rainey, are both pursuing The American Dream. Their relentless pursuit of it drives them to split personalities and committing violent crimes.

The term American Dream was first used by James Truslow Adams. He states:

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. [. . .] It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position (214-215).

In the United States' Declaration of Independence our founding fathers "held certain truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."...