Love and Modernity: before Sunrise and before Sunset in Cultural Studies Criticism

Abstract

This thesis explores some of the possibilities of the relationship between love and modernity by mainly doing close textual analysis of two movies, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset. It also introduces a Japanese movie, Adrift in Tokyo, to be a comparation and discuss love between family members. Love, as an emotion, has its own initiative. It is in the confrontation against modernity that emotion will emerge. But the relationship between love and modernity is complicated, love arising between the characters in the movies is not only anti-modernity, but also seems to carry the inherent advancement of modernity.