POWER STRUGGLE

Ennis and Cothran in their article clearly spell out that teachers and teenagers today experience a power struggle. Traditionally, teachers have control over their students and they are superior to them. Due to social and economic changes, this control is deteriorating. The film Battle Royale takes an approach on Chinese students during an economic crisis.
The ninth grade students in battle royale begin to physically abuse thier teachers and boycott school during an economic collapse. When this happens, students are under control and the teachers have less power. When the government intervenes, the teacher has more power and teaches the kids a "lesson". This complex film can be seen in 3 ways :


1)About The Youth

• This film can be seen as an attempt to save the youth. The time period is during an economic crisis and educating the children is what the "grown ups" are up to. This however results in the untrust of teachers and loss of repsect for the school system and its bizarre creation of Battle Royale.

2) Loyalty and Trust

• The students are sent off to an island and their mission is to kill every single one of their colleagues. I personally did not expect the killing to happen the moment they are on the island. This concept of greed and humanity reminds me of Lord of the Flies. Many of the students do not even try to form groups and negotiate , instead killing their "friends" irrationally one by one. There ends up to be 3 winners not one, resulting in a moral lesson of rationality and trust in people. Some of the students commit suicides and gain an honourable status and some stick together, but most of the students go on a killing rampage. What does this say about friendship?
  

3) Politics

• One can not help but think of how much the government is in control. Do our governments have enough power to do something like this in the future? Are the innocent students to blame for the society's downfall?
  

4) Innocence

• Battle Royale illustrates that teenagers can be violent and have the ability to be as violent as "grown ups". Society should be more aware of the teenage innocence ingrained in our heads and question this notion. Are weapons the source of this violence, because it seems the winners had the most unuseful weapons. Students with the most threatening weapons began to kill right away and some even bragged about them.
  

- I noticed that sex was mentioned in one of the scenes. These are 9th graders and one guy wanted to have sex before he died. This could be another issue the film was getting at.
- Gender can also be looked at in that the men and woman are mostly seperated. Some women are shown to be strong and some very fragile and need to be saved by the men.However, Men and women are equally violent in the film.
- Above all this film makes you THINK.
- what would you do?