Double Identities...Good or Bad?
What would life be like with a double identity? Would it make life more interesting, by being able to more than one person, more than just yourself? Empowering, giving you a feeling that you are not able to feel while in your own shoes? Or maybe damaging, where you were given this double identity by someone else, and identity that you did not choose for yourself, and do not want for yourself? There are many different aspects of secrecy and double identities, both positives and negatives. In terms of the film L.A. Confidential, there were different effects on each one of the characters with a double life.
Lynn Bracken, who pretends to be fabulous Veronica Lake, tends to have more of an empowering experience overall. Lynn gets to pretend that she is someone that she is not. Someone beautiful and charming. Someone who all the men want. She is beautiful and gets what she wants, when she wants, all while making the good money that she, and everyone dreams of. Although empowering for Lynn, she is put in a vulnerable place when experimenting with her double identities. She has her "job" as Veronica Lake, but soon that starts interfering with her real life as Lynn when she becomes involved with Bud, who sees her as Lynn Bracken, not Veronica Lake.
On the other side of the spectrum, it is a negative thing for Ed Exley. Everybody at the police station does not have any feelings for Ed, or see that he is a good cop. All he is known for is being "the son of the legendary Preston Exley." This has a negative effect on Ed because people do not know him as his own person. He has to try to make a name for himself throughout the whole movie, so people know him for him and his good police work, not for his father. For the majority of the movie, Ed was working on his own, with most of the men at his work not liking him.
In the end, the double life is more of a negative thing. To begin with Lynn, she had a positive life until the end when it all fell apart. She started to realize that her double life and identity was not coming out the way she planned it. Ed had the reverse effect though. It got better for him in the end. He helped solve the big mystery and succeeded in killing of the "bad guy" in the mystery. It may be empowering in some ways, but in the end, it is more damaging to the person. It will be fun while it lasts, but people will not live in their own shoes and they will not be able to be happy with who they are and what they have, because they have spent so much of their life focusing on this "secret identity"...which could also be known as a "false identity".
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5 comments:
I think that Ed also had another identity, one in which he played a good wholesome cop, and the other where he played the game of the "politian". I liked your analysis of Veronica Lake vs. Lynn a lot.
Your analysis of Lynn was very good. I think Ed's main goal was to out do his father so people would remember him as well, but in the end he realized that it isn't about outdoing his father.
Your response was good. I liked your opinions on Lynn, and how leading double lives will come back to haunt you. Your last sentence sums up the movie very well.
Personally Iw as a little confused in the movie but Im glad that you wrote tho point of Ed's character because I didn't catch that, even though now it's completely obvious.
Ed also attempted (with varying degrees of success) to be the D.E.A.'s "golden boy" in the beginning. Overall a concise, well-analyzed portrayal of the character. Kudos.
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