Dinner and a Movie

 

    The inspiration behind this piece was the 1988 movie Heathers, which, through a series of murders disguised as suicide attempts tries to relieve the characters from their burden of living in a society where one cannot truly be themselves due to certain social expectations to be and act a specific way. When I thought of the movie, I immediately thought of the colors used to represent each character. Each person is assigned a color (red, yellow, blue, and green for the main characters) that fit their roles in the movie just as we are assigned certain connotations with our own roles in society. The string leading from one cup to another represents being connected with individuals. We are all connected in our society and have the power to form and change our relationships to mold and sculpt the way someone acts towards and with us. The upside down glasses and hexagonal plate in the center of the triangle formed by the thread represent this feeling of being trapped. I often find myself feeling trapped in my own representation of myself, leading me to present myself in certain ways to satisfy other people's expectations rather than my own, and thus the yellow and green powders and hexagonal shape are encased in their own prisons. The fallen glass with red powder spewing out represents being freed from one's "trapped-ness", escaping the expectations and simply being who you want to be rather than what you are expected to be. The watches are representative of the time constrictions we face to finally escape. We only have one life to figure out how to escape the presuppositions we are subjected to, and with each passing day we are running out of time.