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Life s a Beach Who lives the superior life? The technologically advanced first world or the old fashioned third world? The majority of Americans would undoubtedly never want to live in a third world. At the same time, there are always those few adventurers who claim they see the third world lifestyle as ideal.
In the movie The Beach, three friends; Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), Etienne (Guillaume Can), and Franchise (Virginie Le doyen) seek third world lives because the fast paced first world isn t satisfying them. The key to what they think is happiness lies on a beach on an island in the South Pacific. The three find this island and encounter a community of first world people, with their same ideals, living on the beach. In the movie The Beach, the director, Danny Boyle, accurately shows the geopolitical relationship between the third world and the first through plot and symbolism. In the movie, the islanders are dependent on the first world, and the first world is dependent on the islanders. In the book Green Delusions, the author, Martin W.
Lewis, states that the third and first world are dependent on one another for economic growth. More specifically, he says that most third world nations are regulated to the tasks of providing raw materials to, and purchasing manufactured goods from, the industrialized core (Lewis 196). The mutual dependency portrayed in The Beach between the Thai people and first world is extremely accurate to how the first and thirds worlds depend on each other. The beach community encounters a problem midway through the movie, their supply of rice has gone bad, and they need supplies from the mainland. Richard takes orders from all the islanders for supplies, which turn out to be everything from batteries to tampons. All the products he ends up buying are supplies produced in the first world.
The companies selling those products depend on beach community and the Thai stores to buy from them. At the same time, the beach community and Thailand are both dependant on the United States and other first world countries to produce many of these necessities. Also, when Richard and Sal (jahiofhieahi) arrive in mainland Thailand, they city is shown filled with American and European tourists. Thailand is dependant on these tourists for money. Lewis states that often times the economy of the third world is shaped by it s ability to produce raw goods to the first world, who, in turn, manufacture products that the third world can buy. The dependency theory, which this idea is aptly named, was correctly understood and presented in the movie The Beach.
This is one of the many aspects of the plot that show accurate geopolitical relationships between the first and third world. Another aspect of the plot that supports a geopolitical relationship is the colonization of the beach. The islanders in the movie are essentially colonizers, and the beach a colony. All the members of the beach community are originally first world people.
Richard is American, Etienne and Fran oise are French, and the rest are either European or American as well. The islanders took over the third world Thai island and selfishly made it their own for no other reason than that they wanted to live different types of lives. The colonization of the beach is much like the first world s colonization of the third world. Peter Coates, in his book Nature, addresses European old views of colonialism. He specifically says that colonization occurred largely because of European brutality and rapacious cultural and economic values (Coates 102). The islanders believe they are just in taking over the beach because of their cultural rapacity, exactly like Europe s selfish motives in colonizing the world.
Going further into the colonization of the third world countries, Coates states that though Europeans did not settle into the tropics in any great numbers the methods they employed included irrigation, deforestation, forestry, and the transfer of plants and plantation crops between tropical areas (Coates 102). Coates is saying that colonizers didn t just settle into nature and leave it as it was, but rather they modernized and altered the landscape to fit their needs. When Richard first arrives he describes the beach as a full scale community of travelers and a beach resort. These two descriptions usually connote that the beach did disrupt nature and it wasn t the same as when they first found it.
This alteration is further proved when one islander is seen with a chainsaw and another with a hammer and nails. The modernization of the beach shows a direct link between the geopolitical relationship of the first and third worlds and the relationship between the islanders and the beach. The islander s inhabitants on the beach is extremely selfish in that they try to keep it secret from others. The first world s view of the natural third world is very similar. Coates describes how the first world puts a price on nature and treats it as a possession. A passage from Coates book reads: At Pebble Beach, California, a wind-contorted cypress clings to a rocky spit. (Next to the tree) a sign reads: Lone Cypress is a trademark of quality and the corporate logo of Pebble Beach Company It may not be photographed or reproduced for any commercial purpose.
Lone Cypress stands as a peerless monument to capitalism s bid to privatize, incorporate and commodify nature. (Coates 82) The American view of Lone Cypress is extremely selfish because it puts a price tag on something that nobody really owns. This idea can be applied to the first world capitalists in The Beach who found the beach and immediately took it as a possession. For example, when the Richard, Etienne, and Fran oise first arrive at the island, the islanders appear to be giving them dirty looks, and Richard even says, in fact, I m not even sure if we were welcome. The three are taken to Sal (Tilda Swinton), the leader, and the first thing she is interested in is whether or not the three newcomers told anyone or made a new map. Sal and the islanders show the first sign of joy only after they know nobody else knows about the beach. The beach members privatized the beach and look at it as a commodity.
This geopolitical relationship between the first world and nature is accurate in the movie. The difference between the lives of the first world and those of the third world are shown through Richards attempt to live a third world life and with the symbol of blood. The Beach shows an accurate geopolitical relationship, socially, between the third and first worlds in that it shows how many first world people aren t mentally capable of living in the third world. At the beginning, when Richard first arrives in Thailand, he says that he came to a country like Thailand because he was bored of his life and he needed somewhere more beautiful, exciting, and dangerous. Richard s view of the third world is accurate according to many environmentalists; whose ideal views say the third world has an enviable lifestyle characterized by tolerance, leisure, radiant health and longevity, communal ownership, abundant food, consumption based on need, and not least, good earth-keeping skills (Coates 86). A peddler on the corner hounds him about drinking a glass of blood, and when Richard refuses, the peddler says he is just like all the tourists, afraid to try something new.
In fact, the majority of the tourists in the movie are depicted watching TV and playing video games, two amenities they need for survival according to many third world people. Richard wants to be different, so he drinks a glass of snake blood, much to the surprise of the Thai peddler. This drinking of the snake blood symbolizes Richards attempted departure from the first world. This act of savagery literally sets him apart from most first world people. Blood makes an appearance for a second time immediately before Richard is truly accepted as an islander.
While fishing, a shark attacks Richard, and he kills it with his spear, makes the water blood red, and impresses all the islanders. Once again, he committed a savage act, which puts brings him closer to his objective of separation from the first world. Next, right when Richard thinks he has settled down, the Swedish brothers are brutally attacked by sharks, and blood is everywhere. The whole island is distraught, and Richard gets his first reality check of the life of a third world person. Soon after, when Richard is ordered to watch the surfers, he begins to go crazy. The burden of his attempted departure from the first world is too much for him.
The last time blood appears with a connection to Richard during this insanity when the four surfers are shot and killed by the marijuana farmers. A pool of blood from the girl forms directly below him and seems to suddenly snap him out of his psychotic state. Richard then informs the islanders they must leave the island, because he realizes he, nor them, is not part of the third world and never truly will be. In the movie the blood appears whenever Richard makes a significant advance, or decline, in his quest to live a third world life. First world lives differ greatly from third world lives, and The Beach accurately shows this geopolitical relationship between the two worlds. The movie also gives an accurate reason why the life of a first world person would make it hard for them to live in the third world through use of video games.
Coates states that third world views are closer to the idea that everything in the universe is imbued with divinity and intrinsic meaning (97) This is true because they have less technological luxuries. Right before Richard hears the screaming of the shark bitten Swedish brothers, he is playing a video game. This symbolizes the falsity of his sense of being safe and at home on the island. The bloody images of the Swedish men bring him back to reality, away from the video game. Next, when he is going insane, the video game symbol appears once again. He pretends he is in a video game and his objective is to find the map, which is the director s way of showing how technology is the main focus in the lives of first world people.
Richard doesn t know what to do so he turns to the familiar, a video game. Through the character Daffy, played by Robert Carlyle, The Beach accurately shows the third world view of the first world people. Daffy, like Richard, went to the island seeking a new way of life. After living on the island for some time, Daffy went insane much like Richard and left the island. On his departure cursed the islanders for their invasion of the beach. Daffy refers to all the islanders as Charlie, which is a term used in war for the enemy.
He walks down the hall screaming Charlie eating up the whole world! , chunky Charlie, and bloody parasites parasites. Essentially Daffy is calling the first world the enemy because they are trying to spread out over the whole world. Earlier he called the beach ideal, yet he ended up wanting everyone to leave. Daffy realizes that many ideals of the third world were being corrupted by the first world. The only way to keep the beach as beautiful as is it is to leave it alone.
The geopolitical relationship between the first and third worlds is portrayed very accurately through the words and ideas of the character Daffy, who believes the first world is a parasite to the third world ideals. Daffy s beliefs are exactly the same as environmentalist beliefs. The Beach portrays the geopolitical relationship between the first and third worlds very accurately. The plot, along with the symbolism through the blood and video game, help the director show Richards attempt and failure of trying to be part of the third world.
Is it possible for the first world people to thrive in the third world? Or was Richards fate sealed before he even began his swim to the island? Works Cited Coates, Peter. Nature.
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. Lewis, Martin W. Green Delusions. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1998. The Beach.
Danny Boyle. 2000
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