Thursday, July 18, 2013

Media Outtake #3: Enough Sweat


After reading the story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, I instantly thought about the movie “Enough” starring Jennifer Lopez. Both the story and movie are about the mental and physical abuse two women face and how they finally achieved liberation.
 In “Sweat”, Delia is mentally and physically abused by her husband, Sykes. Sykes does not seem concerned with her feelings and constantly yells at her about her job. Suddenly, tired of all the abuse, she screams about how hard she’s been working and picks up an iron skillet from the stove as if to strike him. He is taken back by his wife’s actions, especially since she usually just bottled up her anger without trying to defend herself. Delia realized that she didn’t deserve the abuse and was willing to stop her husband from putting her down. At the end of story, Delia decides to not help her husband after he is bitten by a rattlesnake and watches him die.
            In “Enough”, what starts off as a happy marriage results in a series of adultery and abuse. Slim, the main character, is slapped around by her husband, Mitch, when she tries to confront him about him cheating on her. Mitch uses their daughter Gracie as leverage to keep her under control. Slim tries desperately to get away from him and keep her daughter safe. After being told by a lawyer that there is nothing she can do to protect herself from Mitch, Slim chooses to train with a tough personal trainer to be ready for any move that Mitch could possibly make. She becomes strong both physically and emotionally and decides that the only way to free herself from Dave is to kill him. In both cases, death is the only thing that allowed the women to be let free from their husbands’ brutal control. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3LVthzm88g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA9Byir_S1g

2 comments:

  1. Yordan, I loved your post, I almost used this as well! I completely agree with your connection that you made with Slim from "Enough" and Delia from "Sweat" because at some point, both woman fought back against their husbands. In both the movie and the story, the women each become stronger throughout the process of fighting back, and they both change as a person throughout the story. The point that you made about death being the only thing in both cases to free the women from their husbands was very true, and I enjoyed reading your post very much.

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  2. This class must really love this movie because Rashard posted about this for the first Media Outtake.

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