Why Personal Freedom is So Difficult to Attain in Billy Elliot and Funny Boy
Abdullah Raja
600498
December 17, 2009
Mr. Vitols
ENG 2D8
Personal freedom is the confidence in oneself to ignore negative societal and familial influences in order to become an individual solely based on personal ethics and beliefs. Unfortunately, personal freedom has nearly become an extinct virtue in human beings as we are constantly being manipulated and influenced to believe what others believe. Every human has been created different and possesses unique characteristics; therefore one shouldn’t try to force or try to become someone that one wasn’t meant to become. The novel Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai and the film Billy Elliot directed by Stephen Daldry are two works of art that play upon this issue of personal freedom. The two boys, Arjie in Funny Boy and Billy in Billy Elliot live in completely different cultures and yet they’re rooted down by stunningly similar gender roles, familial expectations and relationships as each boy tries to assert his personal freedom and become a unique member of society.
Arjie and Billy cannot perform the activities that they love because of the ‘cookie-cutter’ gender roles that have been laid out by their society. Arjie is forced to give up his favourite past time, which is playing “bride-bride” because he is a boy. “Bride-bride” is viewed by his family as a feminine activity and they fear that he will become funny if he continues to engage in such activities. Thus, he is forced to play cricket with his brother Diggy so as to make him a normal or stereotypical ‘boy’ fitting in with his gender role. Similarly, when Billy’s dad finds out that his son is taking ballet lessons instead of boxing lessons he forces him to quit ballet again because that is not what a boy is supposed to do. Taking ballet lessons is seen as a feminine or ‘sissy’ sport and boys should not play it, rather they should be playing football, wrestling or boxing like ‘a real man’. Furthermore Arjie cannot openly express his love for Shehan because he is expected to marry someone of the opposite gender. Billy’s friend Michael also has a liking for the opposite gender but Billy does not. Michael kisses Billy in secrecy so that no one else will find out his sexuality and thus confront him asking him to explain himself for not liking girls. Thus he is not fitting his gender role just like Arjie. Hence, Billy and Arjie try to hide their respective activities from society because they contradict the gender roles that have been laid out.