One event can be told many ways, our lives, experiences and goals change our perception of the event and therefore alter our reality. Look Both Ways directed by Sarah Watt, shows how one event can change a person, or many people's lives. Look Both Ways uses the theme of death to show the characters deepest hopes and fears, Meryl and Nick who both imagine death at every corner, Julie and the train driver who are close, either physically or emotionally to the deceased Rob, and finally Anna and Andy, who are expecting a baby, the beginning of life, which alternately is the end of it. The film focuses on the different views of the characters, how their lives are impacted and how their reality best helps them to deal with the tragedy that is somehow related to them.
One reality is not the same as another, culture, aims, morals and society all play their part in shaping our lives, and by doing this shaping our reality. Young or arranged marriages, homosexual relationships, young mothers, politics and women's rights, all controversial topics that have different and changing answers. To a woman living in a patriarchal society, a male dominating world is the reality they face, comparing this to a woman currently living in Australia, with a female Prime Minister, Governor General and Queen, this shows that reality can be changed by our physical place in the world.
If our lives are defined by who we are and where we live it's only fare to say that society controls our reality. Our families that control our upbringing, using their experiences to better shape and define what is best for us, if this is the case whose reality are we living? Are we living our parents lives, how they would have lived them if they could repeat them? Or are we simply taking their advice on-board and using it to make our own decisions? Reality is our existence, our being , without it we are an empty man-made shell, it gives us life and personality. Our parents, families, friends and experiences all shape this, though so do our mistakes, we learn and imagine a better and brighter future, but it's when we imagine this future as real, that we have our own reality.
We are given one reality. What we make of it, how we interoperate it and whether or not we use it is up to us. To create our own reality is when it becomes ours, the reality we follow is mealy a society based and concept driven law, if we break it we could go to gaol, (Meursault in The Outsider) a mental asylum (Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire) or just looked upon as a social outcast or reject, (Jed Parry from Enduring Love). In a way its society's way of telling us that if you deviate from their well thought out and carefully structured plan, creating an alternate reality, they will restore their reality by destroying yours. There are few people that have changed what society thinks acceptable, rulers, scientists, poets, politicians and musicians, they are the few people that have lived their reality without the consequences, but ultimately our reality is societies reality, until we find a way to change it.
