Requiem for a Dream Film Response

In Requiem For A Dream, the story revolves around four main characters: Harry, Marion, Tyrone, and Sara. All four of these individuals are shown as expressing what is generally believed to be deviant behavior, and a couple of theories that explain how these characters are deviant include labeling theory and conflict theory. Anomie theory also plays into their stories.

Sara Goldfarb is shown to be affected by labeling theory by the fact that she becomes obsessed with losing weight since she is “fat.” As she struggles with a diet plan found in a book a neighbor gave her, she decides to take up using diet pills. The fact that she is shown checking her weight, and that this becomes what she talks about constantly (i.e. when Harry comes to visit), she has adopted becoming thin for television as her primary purpose (secondary deviance according to labeling theory). As Sara progresses with her pursuit of thinness, she starts to psychologically break with reality. She begins to hallucinate and showing symptoms of tardive dyskinesia (the grinding of the jaw, and snake-like movement of the tongue) as a result from the increasing number of pills she has been taking. Eventually, after she has a delusional episode where she sees herself as a winner on the infomercial, Tappy appears in her home and mocks her. The entire studio then takes over her apartment, the audience mocks her viciously and then her refrigerator tries to eat her. As she runs from the refrigerator and takes a train to find the company who supposedly told her she would be on television she is called “whack” and people look at her as if she were crazy because of her insistence that she is “going to be on television.” Further breaks with reality (her asking people to call her husband who has died, and her wanting to see her grandson that has not even been conceived) lead her to being place into a mental institution. While it appears that there are some people who are caring and want her to get better (one doctor), the hospital is highly impersonal and it can clearly be seen that there is a disconnect between those in power (the doctors) and those who are under their control (the patients) through the personal discussions in front of the patients with no regard to their being present and the way that Sara is forcefully restrained to be force-fed. Despite receiving treatment, she continues to get worse (health-wise - both physical and mental) and after undergoing ECT she is shown as having completely broken with reality and is living in the infomercial where she is the grand-prize winner and Harry is there expressing how much he loves her.

Harry’s story is that he is a heroin addict who occasionally visits his mother to pawn her television to pay for a fix. He eventually decides that it would be easier for him and Tyrone to start dealing and they can make more money to support their habit. This falls into the realm of Anomie Theory because as they are not able to legitimately make enough money due to their already being heroin addicts, they turn to crime in order to acquire more money. Harry does express some thoughts of using the illegitimate means of selling drugs to help Marion establish a store where she can sell her clothing designs...but this in turn would