The 60's directed by Mark Piznarski (part 1)

The 60’s directed by Mark Piznarski is a film that portrays important events that marked the 60’s as an important period on American history. These events are presented through the lives of two fictional families that are affected by most of the things happening in that period of time. The first part of the film presents the Herlihys, who represent a “common stereotypical” American family and that throughout the film have to face different situations that will bring them together at the end of the story. The father, Bill Herlihy is the “support” of the family and he presents an indirect sexist character towards his daughter and wife. The wife, Mrs. Herlihy, is submissive to her husband and resigns to the social opinion of women not having a voice of their own. The youngest daughter, Kate, also has to deal with the sexist society and discrimination towards women. This is shown when she gets in trouble for dancing with a colored man on a school dance which also presents the discrimination towards colored people. Later on, at the end of part one, Kate gets pregnant and due to it his father is ashamed of her and her mother suggests that she could go away until she give birth and give the baby for adoption and then everything would go back ton normal. What other people thought had a lot of importance to their family it even defined who they where, this is also why the mother wouldnt dare to speak up her opinions. The youngest son, Michael, is the ideal son, all A’s kind of student and his father expects great things from him just because of it. He is exposed to the idea of fighting for a cause or fighting for what one believes in. The film even shows when Michael takes a course in Loyola University with a certain father Dennis who makes clear to his students that he is against the war and that he believed in social protest. Michael gets involved in protest and learns more about the war when his brother Brian decides to join the military. Last but not least there’s The oldest song, Brian, who’s not as smart as Michael and doesn’t care much about grades. Even though he’s not that good in school his father expects him to get in to Notre dame. Brian decides to get into the military to make his father proud. This shows how Brian has not defined well his identity and needs the aproval of his father by joining the war. A mentality that the goverment has put in its citizens, "fighting for a greater cause", a cause that is not even defined because young men joining the military usually didnt know the purpose of the war. The second family that the film presents, are the Taylors. This family has to deal with racism in the United States. Mr. Taylor is a reverend and is usually trying to make statements against racism with fellow friends who share his same ideal. Because of his manifestations he gets beaten up and his church gets burned down. This first part of the film ends with a national teach-in against the war that Michael assists to. Here is where the characters of Kenny and Sarah are first presented. Kenny is a revolutionary young man who has many ideals against the war and seems to be focused in only one thing, make an impact that would stop it. Also on this meeting is when the character of Sarah is presented she is shown as a strong character, she wasn’t afraid to raise her voice and to speak her mind in the teach-in meeting. She's also brave because cosidering that at that time women's opinions wheren't even looked upon she still spoke up. This carelessnes upon womens opinions is also shown when Kenny tries to ridicule Sarah's opinion by asking her what organization did she speak for. Lastly something very important that Kenny starts to show with his behavior is that he doesn’t really care for the safety of people, he just cares for the cause that he's fighting for.