Fresa y chocolate Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Fresa y chocolate - Essay Example These issues are increasingly important in this age of human relationship varieties and politics influence on these relationships. The purpose of this paper is to show Cuban society and its contradictions according to the film, as well as the politics and its reflection in people's characters and actions. The paper will also pay particular attention to the director's aim of the film and the importance of the film from the point of view of the historical period concerned. 2. The film presents colourful description of Cuban society under Fidel Castro's rule, and the plot of the film Fresa y chocolate is tightly connected with life conditions and cultural contradictions of Cuban society. The film tells the story of two young men each of whom had different cultural outlook, although they both supported political regime. Diego was a gay artist, but homosexual life was forbidden in Cuba. Otherwise, David studied sociology in Havana and was a true communist. The film shows social life in Cuba and its ethical and cultural features which influenced the flow of the film and main characters' actions. The both protagonists of the film present two different sides of social ethics: the way of life of communist ideology supporters, and that of people who don't put down in ethical limits of socialist state. As was mentioned above, Daniel studied sociology, and he was a true communist supporter and a member of communist youth brigades. Diego followed another style o f life: he was an artist who saw his mission in Cuban culture promotion. So, any link between these two young men seems to be rather strange, but in spite of this fact they became real friends: "Diego is gay, religious and a nationalist, while David is straight, an atheist and a communist. Their relationship is flawed, in addition, by jealousies, both mutual and contextual (Santi, 2001)". The name of the film, Fresa y chocolate, is rather symbolic in this context: David and Diego met in a caf, David took chocolate while Diego did strawberry ice cream that was surprising to David, but Diego underlined that some people prefer chocolate while others prefer strawberry. This scene symbolically shows the protagonists' membership to different and contradictory sides of political, cultural and ethical sides of Cuban society. The film doesn't deny socialist ideology in Cuba, but there is a clear notion of variety of ethical and sexual life in post revolution Cuban society. It needs to take i nto account that Castro's regime didn't support such social and ethical phenomenon as homosexuality, and in 1965 he told that "we would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true Revolutionary, a true Communist militant. A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant Communist must be (West, 1995)". Diego feels real affectation to David, but his feeling cannot be accepted by his friend in that time in Cuba that is reflected in the film: it was just unrealizable desire which contradicted the system of the state. David who was heterosexual is shown as an opposite protagonist: he had relationship with women and wanted to be a