An analysis of ‘Pumpkin’ (Post 1)

Pumpkin is the story of a dismal sorority girl’s chanced meeting with a mentally retarded young man is sheltered by his mother. From the very beginning this seems like an odd match because they are obviously both from different social classes. Caroline Mc Duffy is your stereotypical snooty rich/upper class college student. While Pumpkin is both poor/lower class and only identified by a nickname Caroline has both ‘friends’ and a social circle. Caroline meets Pumpkin after her sorority decides that they are going to impress the council by attempting to raise more money than their rivals through working with kids in the Special Olympics. Though I haven’t seen the movie in quite some time I decided to do this one because it deals with social class and some aspects of Marxism. First theres the idea of Classism. Pumpkin is obviously slightly retarded but even with this he attempts to try and fit in, as does Caroline, obviously not happy with a Dudley Do right es boyfriend and fake sisters she mentors Pumpkin and discovers that there’s more to life than popularity. The two of them are from different classes which causes disarray for both parties. Especially Pumpkin’s overprotective mother who brands her as a ‘whore’ after she catches the two of them in his bedroom naked. Her boyfriend calls him a ‘retard’ and looks down on him immediately. She is branded as a social outcast because of her relationship with him. Her sorority sisters (the bourgeois) desert her. All at the cost of trying to find a place to belong. The whole Idea of classism is based on being catagorized based on social standing and income. Caroline comes from a rich family though the monetery aspect of who she is stays the same because she decides to associate herself with Pumpkin, she is some how dropped into another catagory. Though the idea of communism is based around working for a common goal the concept of Alienation comes into play also Marx defines alienation as "the worker, who is alienated or estranged from the products he creates, is also estranged from the process of production, which he regards only as a means of survival. Estranged from the production process, the worker is therefore also estranged from his or her own humanity, since the transformation of nature into useful objects is one of the fundamental facets of the human condition. The worker is thus alienated from his or her “species being”—from what it is to be human" Caroline is the estranged party. No matter how dedicated she was to the Phi Omegas all of this went out the window when she decided to go against traditional expectations of her peers. The extremeness of the situation is different because they are only a sorority group and not something as serious as a social group or some sort of company. The particular scene I wanted to focus on was when Pumkin comes to the formal ball and says "I came to dance with you Caroline I took a cab" He shows up against everything dispite what people may think. This defied what was socially acceptable. Marx beleives that people are doomed to remain in their social classes but this some ways disobeys the idea because he is somewhere he doesnt belong mingling with the upper class.