Media Connections to Appearance vs. Reality

Topics: South Africa, Nadine Gordimer, Racism Pages: 3 (1031 words) Published: January 17, 2013
A Closer Look.
Themes are the framework of works of art. Just like a backbone in humans is needed to provide support and aid movement, a theme is used to send a message across to the audience and provide the means used to send it. Appearance vs. reality is a theme most commonly used in writing. It requires the audience to think about the fact that the piece of art they have just read or seen has more to it. This theme is used in Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time”, Julio Polanco’s “Identity” and American rock band Evanescence’s song, “Everybody’s fool”. It is used in the plot of each work to give three major underlying messages. The first is that appearance exists to hide the truth, the second is that reality is often a harsher world and the lastly, they use it as an umbrella to express their feelings and thoughts.

Reality is the state of things as they actually exist. Appearance on the other hand, was made to cover up reality. There only reason as to why the original, fixed state of things has to be altered is to hide the truth. For instance, the main characters of Gordimer’s story are a family living in a suburb that are racist but try not to make it seem so. They put up a silhouette of an intruder as a warning to future burglars. The silhouette is neither black nor white proving that the family is not racist (Godimer). The possible burglars the family was expecting were the coloured people from the other side of town. This is racist because they see them as harmful because of their colour. Likewise, Julio Polanco’s poem also shows that there is something hidden under all the glamour and falsity that is appearance. It is about pretty flowers that are “always watered, fed... but harnessed to a pot of dirt” (Polanco). The flowers appear better off because they are being taken care of but in reality, they are not truly happy because they are not free. Lastly, Evanescence again reinforces this idea through the behaviour discussed in their song. They describe...
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