Coming of Age in the Movie Smoke and Signals
Probably, adolescence extension crisis became confusing problem a manhood facing nowadays. For someone coming of age may stretching for years and years to realize he is no longer a minor. As a fact, sometimes males have a difficult time making the transition and can drift along indefinitely. For example, in film “Smoke and Signals” Two friends Victor and Tomas had a scorched childhood. Victor’s father Arnold, rescued as an infant from burning house which killed his parents, so Tom considers him a hero, on the other, Victor suffered Arnold’s alcoholism and domestic violence, subsequently child abandonment.
Regardless, Victor respect his father with both deep love and resentment. It shows, when a man does not have a proper education, they neglect with important things, such as responsibility, right speech, behavior and etc. When they reached adolescence, mostly Tomas did not quite understand how to behave as an adult, so Victor helps him from time to time, for instance, don’t wear suit, because it looks ridiculous. At the same time, Victor was depressed and rude, so Tom tried to cheer him up. The movies, music, books also often intend coming of age and problems associated with the transition. Especially reading books initiate to whole different world, in which author trying to express his feelings and explain it. Most religions and cultures have coming of age event or rites of passage, which helps children to consciously understand they have grown up. Depending on your cultural or religion background child may celebrate different coming of age ceremonies. For example, for catholic teens it is confirmation in their faith as one of the three most important sacraments in conjunction with baptism and the Eucharist.
For American teens, families celebrate their children’s coming of age with a “Sweet 16” party. Actually, coming of age means, in some ways is being and adult, when you are legally responsible for your behavior. Victor is behaving very selfish, he always looks for defects in every people he meets, on the other hand, Tomas acting very kind and gentle. He tries to make a conversation with strangers mentioning every small detail, sufficiently to impress them. When I was 15 years old, I had a couple of acquittances, who was 5 or 6 years older than me, which helped a lot in my adolescence, preparing and provide myself mentally for coming of age. Making a good conversation or arguing with them, defend my own opinion or taking a responsibility for my decisions, manage that I’m not always telling correct things.
Besides, books also changed my world vision, I find out a lot of things, which I had never thought or imagine before. In film, we can observe, that Tomas loves telling different stories from his life, or people he suddenly met. Sometimes it was lie, sometimes not, but everybody liked the way he spoke, apart from Victor. He could not endure him, nevertheless, Thomas and Victor grow up together as neighbors and acquaintances, fighting and arguing with each other every time and simultaneously forming a close, albeit uneasy, friendship.
Coming of age also focuses on psychological and moral growth of every people from youth to adulthood. It relies more on emotional response, stability and managing constructive dialogue rather than action. Often people you recently have met, knows some facts about you, and piece it all together in a way they could understand and it makes sense to them. Perhaps, if you don’t know about yourself enough, possibly you might even believe that they are right. But, in that case, the truth is that you could not recognize yourself, that is not you at all.
