...so frustratingly bound to physical appearance rather than personal depth? Or is it my reclusive nature and timid personality that restrains me from racing down the stairs and potentially entering into my own fairytale? For the adult population of the modern world, in particularly males, the possibility that fairytales and happy endings still exist seems to be a fanciful notion. Perhaps I am a child at heart or more likely delusional in the hope that such “fabrications” of reality that struck a par with me as a young girl do exist in the contemporary world. And whilst years of seemingly perfect yet failed relationships, contradictory evidence and vindictive and damning opposition stack up against me, I still earnestly believe in the literary complex of Prince Charming sweeping me off my feet and into my happy ending. But what if there is the possibility that simply waiting for Prince Charming is not the key to a happy ending? Contemporary women are not forced into chambers guarded by vicious dragons or put under spells that can only be broken by the kiss of their one true love but rather they are bound by ingrained social expectations that prohibit them from realising their happy ending. And with the modern man being so intent on mediocrity, there is only one...
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...Investigator,” in fact, we read that a typical investigator will be, male, hard-boiled, an expert on the city, a loner, streetwise, tough, physical, and a mixture of an idealist and cynic. In, however, “Lost Polars,” we see that the author wants to add the novelty of a female character, while maintaining the integrity of the detective genre. Therefore, in Shelley Singer’s depiction of Barrett Lake, the salient and correlative aspects of the archetypal qualities of a private investigator are not tainted with progressive, feminist values. Even though Lake is a woman, she still typifies the noir, solitary hero who stands up for justice even in the face of circumstances that would break the morale of anyone else. This is Singer’s big trick on the audience. We see, for instance, Lake’s intuition, coupled with her quick-thinking, which assured her successful investigation into Judy Garbman’s murder. She’s a woman who does this, but there’s nothing really “feminine” about this process. Her willingness to calm and collectively rationalize and reason, while the rest of her reunion classmates underwent group hysteria and shock, gave her the poise and volition required to think clearly and make assertions and accusations that turned out to be true. One could argue that these are traditionally male character traits in this genre. It is also a marked characteristic of Barret Lake and the archetypal private investigator that they would disregard the condescension of...
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...Rice suggests these passages provide “a kind of self-portrait in sound” (17-18), and are very effective in shaping a more complete picture of Mozart’s upbringing. Particularly helpful are the clarity and conciseness with which certain concepts are presented, such as performance conventions, dramatic archetypes, and scenic layout to mention a few. Those familiar with Mozart’s well-known operas can come to understand the infrequently performed ones by viewing them all as subcategories of one basic dramatic archetype, as presented by Rice in chapter 2. Also in this chapter is the insightful discussion of operatic genres, which goes beyond the basic explanation of subcategories. It demonstrations how terms were understood and used by Mozart, and their relation to a modern audience. Rice maintains an excellent balance between remedial introductions to concepts or individuals, related inaccurate critical assessments, and explanations for such shortcomings. Gentle reminders of Mozart’s interactions with other composers, such as Haydn, Salieri, and Gluck occur throughout the book, which makes this publication palatable to a less scholarly reader without a seemingly condescending...
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...jaded by the hardships of real life. King Kong was crafted when the ability of fantastic cinema to bewilder and haunt the audience was probably at its greatest. In the 30s, one of the public's most prominent cinematic whims was to submit the bizarre, the unfathomable, the dangerous or the eccentric to the scrutiny of scientific exploration. This caprice was capitalized in exotic adventures that sharply contrasted with the lameness of real life, and that, by virtue of their populist nature, reinforced certain ideological agendas and even social prejudices largely extinguished today. This movie descends from a long tradition of jungle movies in America, specifically, a subgenre that explored pseudo-romantic relationships between apes and women. Notwithstanding its ludicrous premise, King Kong is symbolic of the American aspirations during the Great Depression. The ability of the individual to confront and conquer any hardships of life no matter how magnificent those hardships may be, was the sort of message that many Americans sought after in cinemas. The characters of the movie also display an ethos that seems representative of, at least, the male mindset in the 30s. King Kong is a wholly competent movie. It employs a formula of populist cinema still kept in use today, but here it was shaped with a visionary ambition that can hardly be matched by contemporary filmmaking. This is not a subtle flick. We are promptly engulfed in the 'action' without much ceremony and only a sketch...
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...Spike Jonze and Hollywood’s Tug-of-War “The other day, I was lucky enough to be at an event to bring the arts back into schools and got to see an amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and a young dancer in LA, Lil Buck. Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck's own creation and unlike anything I've seen. Hope you enjoy.” This is the preface given by Spike Jonze, to a video he filmed in April of 2011. In this video, an L.A. street dancer named Lil Buck performs a style of dance, which is commonly referred to as “gangster walking”, while classical musician Yo-Yo Ma accompanies him on the cello. The performance cannot be compared to anything else – the blend of street dancing and classical music is truly a unique combination. It’s a combination that we don’t see in everyday life, a distortion of reality – which is most likely why Jonze was drawn to the idea. From his early days as a music video director and all throughout his career, Spike Jonze has had a penchant for escaping the confines of reality. From one of his earliest music videos, which plays in reverse, to films like Being John Malkovich and Where the Wild Things Are, in which he literally brings the viewer in to a new reality. This distortion of reality is a mirror of Spike’s obsession with straying from convention, in narrative and filmmaking technique. While Spike and his characters may seek to escape the confines of reality, what they are really seeking...
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...Both crucial historical events and profound creations can end up going unnoticed. They may end up ignored while less profound actions and inventions are glorified. Ultimately, the reasoning behind such an occurrence comes down to context; whether or not an event or creation makes an impact depends as much upon the contemporary atmosphere as it does on the thing itself. Thus, when discussing any creation or event that has made a largely unparalleled impact on society and culture, it is important for one to discuss how the atmosphere of the time period enabled this to happen. Similarly, if it maintains popularity throughout generations, one should also consider what recurrent historical changes have enabled this as well as if the original event/creation needed to face any important changes in order to maintain said popularity. Ultimately, the story of the 47 Ronin was able to make such a profound impact on Japanese society and culture because of how much it resonated with people who were longing for and romanticizing a...
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...Though elements of the characters and settings of Burton’s film borrow heavily from Irving’s text, the overall structuring of the film is significantly different, and representations of various elements are crucially re-imagined. Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” was released on November 19, 1999, a few months before the new millennium. Set in 1799, Burton’s film modifies the 1790 date that Irving’s text is set in, showing an acute concern with living out anxieties surrounding millennial change in the ‘safe’ formats of film and of established folk legend. Irving’s tale, written in 1820, also works with antiquity, but in a different manner: it lives out colonial cultural anxieties of Irving’s present, as he seems to be concerned with constructing archetypes of folk and with placing folk culture in the new American literary landscape. Examining the two versions of the tale, then, provides a fascinating peek into the transformation of concerns and values in America from Irving’s nineteenth century landscape to Burton’s twentieth (on the verge of twenty-first) century. Burton makes several significant moves that modify the basics of Irving’s tale, frequently at the cost of the folk elements of Irving’s version. The frame narrative of Irving’s story—the tale, part of a series titled “The Sketch Book,” begins with the preface “Found among the papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker—is completely done away with (Irving 41). What is more, the second narrator of the story, who is narrating...
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...INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR IN EARLY FILM One Film To Rule Them All In 1915, the blockbuster film, The Birth of a Nation swept the nation. In a pivotal scene, the attractive daughter of a former slave owner, whose cotton business had been ruined by the war, is stalked by a menacing looking black soldier, named Gus. He is shown with his shirt wide open and bare-chested. Flora, the stereotypical southern belle, notices the voyeur and is visibly shaken. Flora tries to hide from Gus, but Gus corners her and tells her that he wants her and that he is not married. Since the end of the Civil War, Flora has noticed several black soldiers in the area in the past few months harassing her family and other upstanding families. Gus forces Flora closer and tries to kiss her. In a panic, Flora slaps him and pushes him away. Flora flees into the woods. The ensuing pursuit shows Gus as a sex-crazed maniacal troll chasing down the seemingly innocent virginal fairy. Gus follows her absorbedly intent on raping her. Flora winds up on a cliff overlooking a series of jagged rocks. She stares at Gus and motions for him to leave her alone. In a silent ultimatum, she gesticulates that if he doesn’t leave then she’ll leap from the cliff to the rocks below. Gus is exposed as a beast, sweating and pulsating lustful desires. He moves closer to Flora to stop her from leaping. Unwilling to give herself to a black man and death being the only alternative, Flora jumps from the...
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...A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO THE SIGNET CLASSICS EDITION OF G EORG E B E R N A R D S HAW ’S PYGMALION By LAURA REIS MAYER BUNCOMBE COUNTY SCHOOLS, ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA S E R I E S E D I T O R S JEANNE M. MCGLINN, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Asheville and W. GEIGER ELLIS, Ed.D., University of Georgia, Professor Emeritus 2 A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion TABLE OF CONTENTS An Introduction .......................................................................................3 Synopsis of the Play .................................................................................3 Prereading Activities .................................................................................6 During Reading Activities ......................................................................13 After Reading Activities .........................................................................21 About the Author of this Guide .............................................................29 About the Editors of this Guide .............................................................29 Full List of Free Teacher's Guides...........................................................30 Click on a Classic ..................................................................................31 Copyright © 2007 by Penguin Group (USA) For additional teacher’s manuals, catalogs, or descriptive brochures, please email academic@penguin.com or write...
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...Film Theory and Approaches to Criticism, or, What did that movie mean? by Christopher P. Jacobs Movies are entertainment. Movies are documents of their time and place. Movies are artistic forms of self-expression. Movies we see at theatres, on television, or home video are typically narrative films. They tell stories about characters going through experiences. But what are they really about? What is the content of a film? DIGGING DEEPER: FOUR LEVELS OF MEANING Recounting the plot of a movie, telling what happens, is the simplest way to explain it to someone else. But this is neither a film review nor a film analysis. It’s merely a synopsis that anyone else who sees or has seen the movie will likely agree with. This level of content may be called the referential content, since it refers directly to things that happen in the plot and possibly to some aspects of the story that are merely implied by the plot. In John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), four men from the city go on a weekend canoe trip that unexpectedly becomes a life or death struggle for survival of man against man and man against nature. Some characters survive, others don’t. Most films can be analyzed more thoroughly to reveal deeper levels of meaning. A review (perhaps 400-1200 words) typically includes personal impressions and evaluations of a movie’s content and techniques. A good review may be subjective, yet still touch superficially on topics that might be explored in more detail in a longer...
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...Dante created a “fictional version of himself who travels through the farthest reaches of Hell (Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio), and paradise (Paradiso)” (Matt Collins). The Inferno is the first and most popular of the series, possibly due to its “accessible voyeurist lure of its strange punishments and fearsome beasts” or perhaps due to the “imaginative allure of strange and foreign places” (mmkelly). While Inferno is excellent in its strangeness, the most relevant book for the typical human audience is actually Purgatorio. It is extremely similar to the Earth, and the individuals in it are also trying to achieve salvation. It is easier to relate to Purgatorio due to its similarities to Earth and humanity than to Inferno and its mythological and magical...
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...Narrative A narrative is a sequence of events that a narrator tells in story form. A narrator is a storyteller of any kind, whether the authorial voice in a novel or a friend telling you about last night’s party. Point of View The point of view is the perspective that a narrative takes toward the events it describes. First-person narration: A narrative in which the narrator tells the story from his/her own point of view and refers to him/herself as “I.” The narrator may be an active participant in the story or just an observer. When the point of view represented is specifically the author’s, and not a fictional narrator’s, the story is autobiographical and may be nonfictional (see Common Literary Forms and Genres below). Third-person narration: The narrator remains outside the story and describes the characters in the story using proper names and the third-person pronouns “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they.” • Omniscient narration: The narrator knows all of the actions, feelings, and motivations of all of the characters. For example, the narrator of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina seems to know everything about all the characters and events in the story. • Limited omniscient narration: The narrator knows the actions, feelings, and motivations of only one or a handful of characters. For example, the narrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has full knowledge of only Alice. • Free indirect discourse: The narrator conveys a character’s inner thoughts...
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...whose titles and introductions were of particular interest. The three news sources, particularly the Times and The Advocate, published many articles related to LGBT issues—typically greater than a dozen for each weekly search—from which I selected only two per week. In sifting through the 16 articles, I identified three important themes that tie, by and large, the articles together: notions of inalienable rights (marriage), the normalization of homosexuality, and LGBT and frequently, by extension, women’s empowerment. I argue that the Times, by virtue of its wide distribution and generally positive portrayal of LGBT people, attempts to ‘normalize’ (nationally) sexual orientations other than heterosexual; that The Advocate, whose primary audience is LGBT people, attempts to promote LGBT empowerment (encourages LGBT people to stand up for themselves), contemplating a world in which LGBT people enjoy equal rights and equal protection; and that Newsweek, a national weekly magazine, highlights the political debate about rights, generally being more circumspect/judicious than the other two outlets in its approach to expressing support for the LGBT community (perhaps an expression of a little occasional discomfort with LGBT issues, which could reinforce discomfort in the public and male heterosexism). The news sources do not participate in the construction of attitudes exclusively in the ways I have suggested. For the sake of organization, though, I have chosen...
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...Art history From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the academic discipline of art history. For an overview of the history of art worldwide, see History of art. For other uses, see Art history (disambiguation). This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011) Venus de Milo on display at the Louvre Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style.[1] This includes the "major" arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the "minor" arts of ceramics, furniture, and other decorative objects. As a term, art history (also history of art) encompasses several methods of studying the visual arts; in common usage referring to works of art and architecture. Aspects of the discipline worms. As the art historian Ernst Gombrich once observed, "the field of art history [is] much like Caesar's Gaul, divided in three parts inhabited by three different, though not necessarily hostile tribes: (i) the connoisseurs, (ii) the critics, and (iii) the academic art historians".[2] As a discipline, art history is distinguished from art criticism, which is concerned with establishing a relative artistic value upon individual works with respect to others of...
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...Design + Culture: New Directions for Interior Design Scholarship and Pedagogy Date: March 15-16, 2015 Fort Worth, Texas Guest Editor: Tasoulla Hadjiyanni Associate Professor, Interior Design University of Minnesota Title: Design as a malleable structure: Reframing the conceptual understanding of design and culture through George Kubler’s morphological approach to the history of things Author: Joori Suh, Assistant Professor, Interior Design Department, Iowa State University Under the banner of globalization and internationalization, what actually happens in design? Has today’s blended culture lost the identity unique to the context? What should be the interior design educator’s attitude toward teaching design and culture in the current age? We encounter dilemmas in global design, the results of which are sometimes almost identical regardless of unique settings because of our tendency to grasp design as a whole with respect to particular style or trend without fully apprehending the core and the deviation. Perceiving the entire design project as a mere symbolic expression also hinders our true understanding of design and culture. In this article, I attempt to answer fundamental questions regarding the complex, innate relationship between design and culture and suggest restructuring a conceptual framework applicable to related research and education that effectively reveals the multi faceted characteristics of design and culture in the present age. From the perspective of morphology...
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