Contextual Analysis of Rodney Graham's Halcion Sleep - Term Paper Example

The pill has been presented as the leap from the societal pressures that an individual takes to escape the pressures of society, which is certainly inappropriate for him. In the film Halcion Sleep, Rodney Graham has been filmed on the backseat of a car in the state of unconscious due to the dose of drug. The whole film is a sequence of Graham’s journey in an unconscious or sub-conscious state from the room of the motel, where he has consumed the drug, to his apartment in the center of Vancouver city.

In the film, the city lights and life of Vancouver is being focused through the rear windshield of the car. The total length of the film is twenty six minutes in which the journey of sleeping Graham has been presented; however, the production of the film is contained with deeper interpretations which will be explicated in the following paper (Graham 0:01-26:21). Halcion Sleep is metaphoric representation of the average human individuals who bears significant and severe societal pressures to survive in the society. . Although these problems are diverse and multilateral in nature, but it can be categorized in multiple dimensions from which the pressure on individuals builds up.

The most significant and grave problems, which develop pressure in individuals are social problems which are further correlated with political problems (Sterba 103-114). The political structure of a society determines the quality of life, economic conditions and stability and individual’s status and roles in a society. These determinations are necessarily coupled with several responsibilities for each individual to survive in the society. In the traditional or modern, that is capitalist system, systems, every individual cannot be pertained to be considered on similar grounds.

These grounds are being measured in terms of social economic status of individuals. As this dissimilarity among the individuals of society is developed, the society becomes divided into classes in which individuals belonging to lower or middle classes are pertained to struggle more than the higher economic class. These struggles are largely focused on the acquisition of better economic status by which there social status can be raised (Sterba 120-126). These striving life of individuals make them mentally fatigued and pressurized due to the political and social structure of the society.

It is the class difference, which inevitably creates the divide in individuals of the society. It is because of the class difference, there is status divide and with this discrimination, individuals are brought to mental and physical pressures. Life’s struggle which is actually futile in a sense has to be made by each member of the society, because the society sets a tradition that every man is part of this competition. Consequentially the