11/14/2017 0 Comments An Offer He Couldn't RefuseCover Sheet Purpose: My purpose for this rewrite mirrors that of the original. Outside appearances should not influence one’s perception of a person. Inside qualities should be valued above exterior features. In addition, the stereotypes surrounding one’s demeanor should be ignored when considering character and morality. Audience: My original audience was geared toward young adults, specifically high school age. In this multimedia project, I changed the audience to an adult one allowing for an unhappier ending to be appropriate and realistic. If I had More Time: I would have loved to make another wanted poster for Ella’s father, Marco Rossi. This would have been a poster warranted by the Beast who desired for Marco to pay off his debt. It would have acted as a prologue of sorts, allowing insight into the beginning interrogation that is the opening scene for my story. Major Changes to my Original Rewrite: I altered the ending of the story from one where everybody lives happily ever after, to one where actions have consequences and accusations can be falsely made. I feel as though the ending relationship between Luca and Ella was also changed and elevated, in that they now have to go through a difficult and scary time together. I also shifted the intended audience, going up in age. Examination Essay Crime and punishment is an infatuation cited to our current society. People today have a fascination with court cases and the justice system, given that our television sets display daily news and documentary adaptations of the crimes that surround us on a daily basis. O.J. Simpson, the Menendez Murders, and Oscar Pistorius are some of the few whose actions captivate a large part of adult audiences. Therefore, I decided to offer my story, An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse, on a platform that would appeal to an older, adult audience: wanted posters. By altering the ending of my story to fit the desirable effects of a wanted poster, I hoped to reinforce my original purpose of emphasizing the importance of inner beauty and the dangers of stereotyping. In my original story, the audience leaves Ella and Luca in the hospital. A bullet wound fired by a rebelling member of the mafia “had missed his heart, instead piercing his shoulder”. No harm or retribution is directed back to either of them, allowing for the story to end happily. However, through my retelling, I altered it to appease an older audience. We are reminded by Laura Tosi that “the fairy tale was not…a genre meant primarily for children” (368). Therefore, adapting my original story of Beauty and the Beast to fit a more mature audience seemed like a plausible idea. Instead of having everyone live “happily ever after”, I instead decided to have my characters undergo a common misfortune of society: injustice. Marco Rossi, Ella’s father, “ended up passing away in a shootout near their apartment”. However, instead of authorities realizing this manslaughter, I had them instead place blame for Marco’s death upon Ella and Luca. The plot of my story already gave both people believable motives for the killing: Ella’s revenge for her father’s abandonment and Luca’s fury over a debt not yet paid. In addition, Luca’s position as a well-known mafia boss adds causation for his warrant. Therefore, they are evading the police and avoiding arrest in a world that is out for blood. This new ending for my story derives from the fact that “no text exists in isolation from…social and historical contexts” (Tosi, 368). A crime-hungry society is a perfect audience and an easy one to please. Therefore, the practical ending of justice and law-enforcement was altered appropriately. The wanted posters allowed for a visual of the criminal acts committed. Often, court cases and news announcements are viewed on television, so I thought these posters would captivate the audience’s interest in a similar way. However, many fairy tales are not “violence – free” to begin with. Maria Tatar notes that these tales possess “graphic descriptions of murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest” (3) Therefore, allowing for more violence and maturity to seep into the ending of my story would be appropriate not only to co-align with the spirit of fairy tales, but to also suit the fascinations of my intended audience. In terms of my physical retelling, I wanted my wanted posters to fit the part. I soaked them in tea and ripped the edges to a façade of abuse. I wanted these papers to have been possessed by the judicial pubic, who grew disgusted with the idea of a girl murdering her own father. The bounties on their heads were also chosen accordingly: Ella has a price of $25,000 while Luca’s is $50,000. Therefore, this accentuates the publics displeasure with them, evoking like-minded thoughts or appeal from the intended audience. However, despite the notion that “in fairy tales, nearly every character…is capable of cruel behavior” (Tatar, 5), I desired for both Luca and Ella to be the exception. I wanted for them to be wrongly accused to further emphasize the moral of my original story. Both characters are innocent of the murder of Marco Rossi, however society has twisted both appearance and stereotypes to complete the picture of desired cruelness. The character of the beast is often depicted as “a representation of the shadowy world of instinct” (Hallett and Karasek, 169). Even Luca “The Beast” Crivelli portrays this image in the beginning of my tale. However, the publics prolonged image of him based upon rumors and harsh words chains him to this untrue label. My moral of this story was to warn of the dangers of stereotyping and judging others based upon appearances. The hasty conviction of both Luca and Ella perfectly displays this danger. Instead of allowing for reasonable decisions and assessments to be made, rationality was clouded by irresponsible gossip. Luca was known as being the Beast, “a man of feral capabilities and an infamous reputation for placing power and greed on a pedestal”. The murdering of a man would have been a trivial matter for the Beast. But not for Luca. The shedding of his feral tendencies symbolized the “break between the animal and the higher aspects of man” (Bettelheim, 309). An animal would attack a man based upon instinct, but a man would have intellect and mercy. However, the muckraker tendencies of the public would place the dramatics of a beast above the humanities of a person. Likewise, Ella is convicted based upon presumptions made concerning her relationship with Luca. She is guilty simply by association. Overall, a wrongful sentence has been made based upon shallow words and appearances which highlights the moral made in my original story. The use of wanted posters as a way to retell an alternate ending of An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse allowed for an older audience to be reached while simultaneously reinforcing the primary moral. I used violence as a method of storytelling, a feat not uncommon in fairy tales, and allowed misconceptions to be the basis of a spiraling downfall. The new ending should offer a realistic scenario more inclined to capture the attention of the crime-driven public, while still offering a display of hastily-made judgements and their harming effects. The wanted posters should co-align with the viewer’s perspective and create a clear warning to watch out for killers on the loose. Works Cited
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