Surviving adolescence with dignity: an interview with Todd Solondz.
Cineaste › Vol. 22 Nbr. 3, June 1996
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Summary
Film director - Interview
Todd Solondz's 'Welcome to the Dollhouse' accurately portrays adolescent school life. The film is centered on Dawn Wiener, the girl who occupies the lowest rung in the high school hierarchy ladder, and presents the way she perceives her world with acute sensitivity. Solondz claims that although it is not autobiographical, it does portray the world which every middle school student must survive.See the full content of this document
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Surviving adolescence with dignity: an interview with Todd Solondz.
Never has the ruthless nature of middle school been better delineated than in Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Doll-house. Acts of kindness are returned with insults; cruelties visited upon the weak are revisited upon the weaker. No bond of friendship is so strong it cannot be betrayed. Prime target for ridicule is Dawn Wiener. Labeled "wienerdog" by her classmates at Benjamin Franklin Junior High, Dawn represents all the confusions of early adolescence that her peers want to deny in themselves. If they fear rejection for their looks, for gaffes in the codes of fashion and social behavior now demanded of them, for their ignorance about sex, they have only to look at Dawn and feel superior. Here is someone whose hunched shoulders and furrowed brow advertise a total inability to navigat...
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