FInal Blog Post: The American Tale, and The Real American Dream:

As for my last blog post for the semester, I am going to end it on a good note and talk about the movie that we watched in class last week and how it compares to real American history. The movie that we watched was “An American Tail.” This film follows a family of rats that flee from oppression brought on by cats in their home country of Russia, and end up making their way to the west to America in hope to start over with the idea that there are no cats in America. On their way over on the ship, one of the youngest in the family gets separated from the rest and ends up having to fend for himself for most of the movie. The youngster who is known as Fievel starts looking all over the place in the city of New York for his family who at this point think he is dead. Well push comes to shove, they end up reuniting and all is well. This is just a quick synopsis of the story so anyone that hasn’t seen it can be caught up. What I am going to delve into for this post is the message that this movie gives off and how it is very similar to what the people that immigrated to this country had to go through.

Well first, what is interesting to me about this film is that the rats that are coming over to America have just about the same feeling towards America as people did during the immigration period. The rats thought that they would be free from the oppression of the cats, just like people thought that they could escape the things that were happening in their own country. This whole idea that the rats had about there being no cats in America and the streets were paved with cheese is not as ridiculous as it may seem. When people were immigrating over to America they all had this concept of what was known as the “American Dream.”

But when they got over to America, there was still a lot of hardship. The rats still had to work hard to provide for their family just like the people did, and there were cats as well. Now, based on the cats being there they represent a good message. That message is hardship. Whether it is rats or people they both wanted to get away from the hardships that plagued them, but when they made it to America the hardship continued. But even though there was hardship, that did not stop the rats from doing what they needed to do in order to provide for themselves this is the same for the people that immigrated to America they didn’t stop just because it got a little hard.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about is the idea that this movie seems to be directed more to older kids who are in a middle school or high school History class, but does have a story for younger audiences as well. For the younger audience, it is about a little rat that has to find his family. That is pretty cut and dry and is easier to understand. For the older crowd, there is a bigger picture which is, the idea that a family is facing the hardships that I discussed earlier and there was this idea of what we discussed in class, the “American Dream.” I believe that this film does a very good job conveying that message over. And also, it seems to be more accurate in the story than that of what Disney did with “Pocahontas”.

When Disney made “Pocahontas”, there were many inconsistencies with it and the real story. I have a blog post that you could refer to that would show you all of these inconsistencies. As for “An American Tail,” even though it is about a bunch of rats trying to go to America to escape cats and start over, it is more accurate as to what happened back when immigration was a big thing. Even though this film is much darker than “Pocahontas” I think that it is the better of the two because of its historical significance.   

With that I will close out this blog post and leave it open for discussion and will be willing to read your comments.