answered: 1. More Spielberg Blondes – this time we have two fully deve

  

1. More Spielberg Blondes – this time we have two fully developed characters who seem to contrast – Roy Neary’s (Richard Dreyfuss) wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) and Gillan Guller (Melinda Dillon) – who have very different impacts on Roy’s life and on the lives of their respective children. Describe those impacts and discuss whether these women help elaborate Spielberg’s views on womanhood and explain to what degree women are objects of fear in his films and to what degree he sees them positively and why. Finally, given the fact that the film climaxes with the arrival of the Mother Ship, discuss to what degree you see this picture as a comment on motherhood.
2. Male Authorities – the film also seems to focus on men as authorities and father figures. Compare and contrast characters like the Ufologist Lacombe (Francois Truffaut), the cartographer/translator Laughlin ( Bob Balaban) and Roy Neary with the men assoicated with the military, science and police in the film. Does the film comment on how men need to wield authority, just a it does on mother figures?
3. Character Growth – as Haskell points out, Spielberg said that Neary finally becomes a real human being by the film’s end. What do you think he meant by that?
4. Technology – to what degree does the film comment on benevolent vs. destructive uses of technology?
THIS IS A DISCUSSION POST AND SHOULD BE BASED ON THE FILM “CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE
THIRD KIND” BY STEVEN SPILEBERG. The topics that should be discussed are listed above.