...visual sense and diegesis into a context of postmodern philosophy; drawing inferences and theoretical connections between the film and the work of Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin and the neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt School, most notably Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1979). The importance of postmodern philosophy and cyber culture to the visual sense of The Matrix is declared from its very opening titles. Random strings of green neon data are scrolled against a black background imbuing the viewer with a sense of the virtual and the cybernetic and this is concretised and given definite focus later on as Neo (Keanu Reeves) hides the two thousand dollars given to him by Anthony in a copy of Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. This reference however is more than a mere visual joke it is a signifier for a number of the film’s sub-textual tropes and motifs. For Baudrillard, the notion of the simulacra was central to an understanding of the modern capitalist society. In his essay “The Precession of the Simulacra” (2004) he offers up four vital concepts, all of which appear, in one form or another in The Matrix: the simulation, the simulacra, the Real and the hyper-real. The simulation covers the gaps in the Real, the actual; as Baudrillard says “To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn’t have” (Baudrillard, 2004: 3). The simulation takes on the image of the Real in order to...
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...Camille Paglia once said “Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature...” (1) Her striking words befit Valentino’s 1995 vogue advertisement perfectly. It seems no two words (capitalism and apollonian) could combine together better to describe this image. The model is statuesque, poised, and serene. The advertisement captivates its audience by inviting it to buy into the idea of the Valentino woman and everything this role entails. If we desire to become this woman what is our role in society and how does a medium such as a magazine manage to create this appealing world? In today’s capitalist society it seems everything is trying to sell you a hyper reality, a brief moment in which you can become something else or live vicariously through somebody else. And yet while we want it we don’t think about how it is created. The advertisement is no fluke; millions of dollars are spent to achieve the perfect model, clothing, light, even the placement of the logo. Finally by analyzing this image it is not only the composition of the advertisement, but the impact it has on its readers. It is this incredible insight into the societal roles, class, and insecurities that sell this brand to the everyday consumer; and in return this brand sells the audience an identity. Media has become a vital tool for companies because of its incredible ability to persuade its audience. The various components of the advertisement play on what Aristotle coined as the three main tools...
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...derivation. In the avalanche of articles and books that have made use of the term since the late 1950s, postmodernism has been applied at different levels of conceptual abstraction to a range of objects and phenomena in what we did call reality (Bertens,1995 p3). Postmodernism is also related to Modernism which refers to a certain period in Western culture, which covered the later Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. However, others dated the movement in the 1960s after the War, notably to Marshall McLuhan's coining of the phrase: “ The medium is the message” (1964). By this, I believe McLuhan means that the manner in which the message is mediated becomes more important than the meaning of the message itself. However, according to Jean Baudrillard, McLuhan himself, did UP 502522 not see that beyond the neutralization of all content, one could still...
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...“Postmodernism is a way of thinking that is reflected both in the ways texts are composed and in their exploration of challenging ideas.” Everything that is around us makes up our world and our life. It is reality, until someone asks, “Are we the players or the puppets of our lives? Or are we both?” and it is such questioning of assumed certainty that characterizes postmodernism. The Matrix is a film directed by the Wachowski Brothers in 1999 portraying the rebellion of a group of people against an artificial reality that has imprisoned their mind while A Beautiful Mind directed by Ron Howard is a 2001 film that describes a man’s journey to accept the real world and ignore the imaginary one he created in his mind. Despite their contrasting nature, both texts are able to reflect postmodernist understanding through their composition and their exploration of the challenging idea of relative truth. Through this, it demonstrates that postmodernism is a way of thinking portrayed in the forms, features and structures of texts. The life that we live today is what we consider to be reality, but this is a relative truth for what proof is there that our world is real or fake? Such a concept is emphasized upon by the Wachowskis in the Matrix in which it presents a portrayal of the possibility of our world being in fact, a simulation. During the film, references are made to external sources such as Jean Baudrillard’s book of Simulcra and Simulation and Morpheus, the Greek God of Dreams in...
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...[Author’s Name] [Instructor’s Name] [Course Title] Date Georges Bataille George Bataille is a French librarian and writer whose essays, novels, and poetry expressed his fascination with eroticism, mysticism, and the irrational. He viewed excess as a way to gain personal sovereignty. After training as an archivist at the school of paleography known as the Ecole des Chartes (School of Charters) in Paris, he worked as a librarian and medieval specialist at the Bibliotheque National in Paris until 1942. In 1951 he became keeper of the Orleans library. He also edited scholarly journals and in 1946 founded an influential literary review, Critique, which he edited until his death. George Bataille’s “Theory of Religion” is an attempt to sum up religion in as succinct a manner as possible. To be all things to all religions, the book is very vague and difficult to understand. Bataille created a chart or table to explain what he was doing and to give body to the work. ALAS! The chart is not in the book, lost to time. Thus, as it exists, Bataille’s book is a glimpse into the inner workings of a genius mind. It is a colorful attempt to understand “religion,” whatever that is. Further, it is an off-the beaten path romp through the daisies of the study of religion, sweet flowers that often remain unromped. Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille’s earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis based on notions of...
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...At this point Baudrillard introduces the possibility of resistance to the new global simulation, but before he elaborates on this impossibility, he tells us that we can no longer look to traditional leftist critique for our oppositional strategy. He explains that because we exist within a system where power is exercised through the carnival, and the only law is the law of excess, we must understand that crime is normal or even total. Baudrillard’s thesis is that the system itself is totally criminal, and by virtue of this has absolutely no problem talking about its own criminality. This is precisely what Baudrillard means when he talks about the ritual couple, the cannibal and the carnival, in The Agony of Power. Here, the process of cannibalism entails the striping back of old Western values in order to build a new hyper-moral system to cynically partner the carnivalesque, which reflects the criminal hypocrisy of a system that no longer really believes in its own values and knows full well that they are part of an enormous simulation or masquerade. So, crime is over. There is no more real crime because the West no longer believes in anything that could moralize criminality. All of its values are simply simulations of once strongly held beliefs. However, belief is not the only ending Baudrillard talks about in The Agony of Power. Baudrillard talks about the end of capital in the collapse of value into the ecstasy of global communication where everything is exchanged. We learn...
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...BAUDRILLARD Baudrillard(1929-2005), was a French sociologist ,philosopher ,political commentator ,and photographer .His work is associated with postmodernism and post structuralism .His main interests were in mass media and post modernity .A sharp critic of contemporary society, culture and thought. He was born in cathedral town of Reims, France .According to Gane (1993) he told interviewers that his grandparents and his parents became civil servants. Baudrillard also claims that he was the first member of his family to pursue an advanced education and that this led to rapture with his parents and cultural milieu. His notable ideas were on hyper reality, sign value and simulacra. Baudriallard’ s published work emerged as part of a generation of French thinkers including Gilles Deleuze,Jean- Francois Lyotard ,Foucault ,Derrida and Lacon who all shared an interest in semiotics and he is often seen as a part of post structuralist philosophical school .In common with many post structuralists ,his arguments consistently draw upon the notion that signification and meanings are both only understandable in terms of how particular words or signs interrelate .Baudrillard thought ,as do many post structuralists that meaning ,is brought about through systems of signs working together .In contrast to post structuralists such as Foucault, for whom the formation of knowledge emerge only as the result of power, Baudrillard developed theories...
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...Introduction Objective: This paper has the purpose to study economies of scale and economies of scope in business using Chang Cooperation which is naturally a monopoly which can produce at a lower cost than others’ firms. They are using the economies of scale in decreasing the cost of production such as plastics, bottles, and fixed cost by produce large amount of outputs to decrease the total cost. However, Chang has now entered the long-run which make the average cost of production declines throughout the entire market. As a result, Chang Corporation can supply the entire market demand at a lower cost than the others’ firm. In the economies of scope, Chang produces various kinds of products such as Chang Classic, Chang Draught, and Chang Light. This make Chang Corporation reduce average and marginal costs in long-run, due to the production of similar or related goods or services where the output or provision of an item such as beer reduces the cost of item like water which has the same intermediate goods, bottle. Benefits: This study shows various benefits of being large firm behavior of taking advantages. Including, economies of scale benefit, which firm earn absolute cost advantages due to producing large amount of outputs. Vice versa, there are also some external factors in affecting the economies of scale such as a better transportation network, resulting in a subsequent decrease in cost for a company working within that industry, external economies of scale are said...
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...VA 0500 DESIGN CHANGE AND CONFLICT W11026064 - Samuel Rubin Figure 1. Screenshot of the clip http://www.markallencam.com/AndyEatingaBurger.jpg Figure 1. Screenshot of the clip http://www.markallencam.com/AndyEatingaBurger.jpg The very first subject that intrigues us is a scene from a documentary “66 Scenes of America” to which Andy Warhol is seen eating a hamburger. Why does it captivate our imagination and sparked interest? Maybe because it was layered, to ordinary viewer it might have looked like a simple scene of a man slowly eating a hamburger, but deep down there’s message that the director want to get across that can be analyzed through various theorem taught in the class. The group chose “Post-Modernism”, “Barthes’s semiotics” and “Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation” theorem to analyze the subject in matter. Perhaps we chose these 3 are because the content of the clip is laden with subdued symbols and signs and the relationship between objects in the clip. The segregation of art, between high and low. A model where cultural, political and social progress defines art. A movement that flourished from post world war development and growth in society. The entire characteristic above signifies Modernism, and Postmodernism is standing opposed of that. Postmodernism rises from time of peace, it does not dictate rules or narratives, instead it focuses on contradiction, reality and disorder. Postmodernism mixes the high and low art from the Modernist period as a...
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...Consumerism is sometimes used in reference to the anthropological and biological phenomena of people purchasing goods and consuming materials in excess of their basic needs, which would make it recognizable in any society including ancient civilizations (e.g. Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Ancient Rome). However, the concept of consumerism is typically used to refer to the historically specific set of relations of production and exchange that emerge from the particular social, political, cultural and technological context of late 19th and early 20th century capitalism with more visible roots in the social transformations of 16th, 17th and 18th century Europe. The consumer society emerged in the late seventeenth century and intensified throughout the eighteenth century. While some[who?] claim that change was propelled by the growing middle-class who embraced new ideas about luxury consumption and the growing importance of fashion as an arbiter for purchasing rather than necessity, many critics[who?] argue that consumerism was a political and economic necessity for the reproduction of capitalist competition for markets and profits, while others point to the increasing political strength of international working class organizations during a rapid increase in technological productivity and decline in necessary scarcity as a catalyst to develop a consumer culture based on therapeutic entertainments, home ownership and debt. The more positive, middle-class view argues that this revolution...
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...Baudrillard’s Theory of Hyper-reality One of the leading figures in postmodernism is Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard began his analysis with Marxism and modernity, and developed what he considered a more radical approach – a society of simulations, implosions and hyper-reality, where it is difficult to distinguish image from reality and where signs and simulations have become society. Baudrillard considers society to have entered a new era. Society is no longer based upon the production of material goods, but upon the selling of signs and images, its culture is of “Simulacrum”. He also suggests that these signs and images have little or no relationship to reality. He sees the postmodern society consisting of an exchange of images that he refers to as “simulacra”. These simulacrums are images of things that do not, or never have existed. In his essay “Precession of Simulacra” Baudrillard states that what has happened in postmodern culture is that society has become so reliant on signs, models, images and maps that people have lost all contact with the real world that before preceded the map. Reality itself has begun merely to imitate the model and images, which now precedes and determines the real world: "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory" (Baudrillard 1). Furthermore according to him, when it comes to postmodern simulation and simulacra...
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...Refera The Pre-Referral Process: Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) /Response to Intervention (RTI) Anika M. Taylor Special Education Foundations and Framework February 20, 2013 Schools and entire districts have embarked on multiple strategies to address challenging areas for students with disabilities and those at risk for behavioral and academic failures. Over the years, educators and policymakers have recognized the need to create, implement, and document practices that have proven to make an impact on student learning and behaviors. Many of the strategies used have focused on the collection of data and the collaboration between and amongst professionals. Today, educators agree that the key to effective interventions for students at risk for failure and those with disabilities lies in a comprehensive approach that fosters growth in student overall learning and behaviors. Several approaches were designed to meet the challenges that students experience as they engage in their learning. These approaches include two processes outlined in this discussion: Response to Intervention (RTI) and Positive Behavioral Intervention Support (PBIS). Response to Intervention (RTI) integrates assessments and intervention within a school wide, multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and reduce behavior problems. The RTI process helps to identify students for poor learning outcomes, provide evidence based interventions and...
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...The Reality of Quick Response (QR) in the Japanese Fashion Sector and the Strategy Ahead for the Domestic SME Apparel Manufacturers Nobby (Nobukaza) Azuma School of Management Heriot-Watt University UK E-mail: nobukaza@aol.com N.Azuma@hw.ac.uk Fax: +44-(0) 131-451-3498 Abstract Quick Response (QR) has long been perceived as the essential survival strategy of the textile and apparel (T-A) manufacturers in the developed economies against offshore competition. However, the regionalization of global economies and active governmental investment in the T-A industry in the offshore countries has allowed the offshore QR to become increasingly feasible. This changing facet of QR may spell out more lucrative opportunities for Japanese "apparel firms", which have predominantly in-house creative and marketing functions, to widen the scope and the scale of their fashion business operations, since the economic upgrading in the Pacific Rim will create a huge consumer market that shares similar fashion trends as in the Japanese market. However, the apparel firms' production shift offshore has, on the other hand, threatened the existence of the domestic SME apparel manufacturers that have traditionally served their apparel firms customers, now that QR is no longer the sustainable competitive advantage of domestic manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to explore the levels of QR implementation, identifying the potential pitfalls and drawbacks of the current QR initiatives in the Japanese...
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...as the Stroop effect. Studying this gives insight into the human mind. It can show how we handle interference across a number of different situations or how our automatic processes interact with and affect our controlled processes. The cause of the Stroop effect has been widely debated and researched over the years. Some researchers believe the cause is due to the fact that reading is such a well learned or even over learned process that it becomes automatic. When asked to identify ink colors of words reading the word causes distraction because reading is done much more often than naming ink colors. But where is the exact interference occurring in this process and why? It has been suggested that the interference occurs at the output or response stage as an individual struggles to express the correct color word from alternatives. Others believe the interference happens during encoding as an individual analyzes the word and is distracted from ink color. Still others would say it happens somewhere between the encoding and the output. All of these suggestions have various criticisms. The search for the correct answer to this phenomenon continues. Literature Review In an attempt to determine where the interference was taking place, Naish (1985) designed two experiments, the first to see if the interference occurred earlier than the output stage and the...
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...submitted satisfaction surveys during the previous year and to see what the expected number of responses should be in comparison with our peers. Methodology From January to June, 100 patient satisfaction surveys were placed throughout our facility advising patients to take one. These surveys had return envelopes attached to them, without paid postage. One designated individual was responsible for maintaining these surveys so as we could determine the number of surveys that were taken. The surveys that were placed in our office were printed on gray paper. Goal The goals of this study are to receive a comparable percentage of patient satisfaction survey responses in comparison with our facilities. Comparison/Benchmarks A 30% to 35% response rate is satisfactory according to a study, “Survey Response Rates and Overall Patient Satisfaction Scores,” published in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality 2003 Jul-Sept. And the Patient Survey Website June 2011 Article “What Does Patient Response Mean?”. Results At the end of the 6 month period, January to June, there were 71 surveys remaining of the original 100 placed throughout our facility by which we determined that 39 surveys had been taken. We received only 6 surveys back during this time period. This is a response rate of 15% which is 20% lower than our benchmarks. In attempts to increase the number of patient satisfaction survey responses we are getting, beginning in June, we will have our “Patient Satisfaction Survey” available...
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