...In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey argues that Classical Hollywood cinema encourages spectators to look at women and identify with men. Female stars receive the look, while male stars control the narrative and dominate space. She writes, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness,” (205). What kind of looks, gazes, or points of identification structure (or destabilize) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)? Your response should engage Mulvey’s claims. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film directed by Carl Th. Dreyer made in France in 1928. In Laura Mulvey's essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she argues that the female stars receive the look, while male stars take control of film space. She also points out that the women’s role in the Classical Hollywood cinema is to satisfy the viewer and to be a passive character, i.e. being pleasant to look at. This essay will argue Mulvey's analysis such as: active/man and passive/female, a woman/actress being looked at as an attractive object and the female role in the cinema industry depicted by The Passion...
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...blasters, this tends to shed a more childish light on the genre and most people tend to dismiss it as being no more than mindless entertainment. While there has certainly been a surplus of the campy science fiction shows on the air, some shows have used the science fiction genre to tackle serious social issues as well. This essay will take a look at two shows 54 years apart and will analyze how both use social concerns of the time period and create memorable narratives that speculate about human behavior and interactions. The first show this essay will look at is the generation defining classic The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), and the second show is a modern cult hit from the United Kingdom Utopia (2013-2014). //Through a comparative analysis of the episode “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) and “Episode 5” of the British cult hit, Utopia (2013-2014) this essay illustrates how the science fiction genre can be and has been used generation after generation to highlight certain social issues. Whereas The Twilight Zone uses America’s anxieties of communism and consumer culture to cause paranoia in the early sixties, Utopia uses big business, government conspiracies, and overpopulation in a plot that stirs up concern for the environment. Ultimately this essay will illustrate how social issues lay the foundation for a compelling science fiction narrative. \\ Shortly after WWII ended US soldiers returned home to a country very different than the one...
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...Video Analysis Through out the course we have been wrestling with how the media is made and who influences it. A lot of time there are underlying narratives to stories produced in the media. They use everything from lighting to shot angles to make a certain impression on the viewer. In this essay I will do a video analysis on Adele’s song “Someone like you. My goal is to illustrate my understanding of the many ways media producers make meaning and how we interpret that meaning. I will use narrative and semiotic analysis to see what strategies are being used to make the video. Through a careful analysis of how the video is being made we can see what type of meaning is trying to be expressed. Theoretical Frame To be able to do a video analysis it is important to understand semiotics. Semiotics is the discipline that studies the nature of any type of communication (Grossberg p.143). Its important to understand this does not only involve language but other forms of communicating such as traffic light codes, dress codes, or rolls that men and woman play. In all these things we are communicating with each other by using a system that we all understand and can relate to. Semiotics define that system as codes and those codes are constructed signs. For example the English language is a code that we use to communicate with each other. The code consist of words or signs that arbitrarily symbolize something for us. As mentioned above the traffic light is another code of communicating...
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...Jada Huntley 2/27/15 English 1103 Margaret Garrison Compare & Contrast This paper is about two little girls and their similarities and differences. How they are different is that one of the little girls (Lynda Barry) is going unnoticed in her household and is being neglected and her only safe place is school and she loves it. The other little girl in Edward P. Jones story her mother takes care of her and makes sure she gets to school and has everything she needs for the first day. Where these two are the same is that they are both black, they both go to school and they both love it. “The Sanctuary of School” is Lynda Barry’s narrative essay about her experience as a neglected child and how she learned to use art to cope with her situation. In her essay Barry describes a memory of being a seven-year-old child of parents who focus their attention on finances instead of her and her brother. Barry writes about an occasion when she leaves her house in the early morning hours and finds herself at her school’s playground. She is found by the school janitor, who allows her to assist him as he does his duties to prepare the classrooms. Soon after she greeted by the school secretary and a teacher who both wave at her. When her teacher, Mrs. LeSane, arrives she runs toward her in tears of relief. Mrs. LaSane asks Barry to carry her purse, which Barry feels to be an honor. It is here that Barry finds her security in art, drawing a house with a blue sky and sun in the corner and...
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...,Compare and contrast the narrative structure of at least two of the films studied. Your answer should also evaluate the reasons why these structures were chosen. Since the commercial success of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros in the year 2000, there has been an indubitable resurgence in the amount of interest in, and amount of films being produced within Mexico. This picture, as well as Y Tu Mamá También (2001) by Alfonso Cuarón both received worldwide acclaim and have set a high benchmark for the other Mexican releases since the millennium to live up to. This essay will explore the prominence of narrative structure in the aforementioned Amores Perros (2001), as well as Amat Escalante’s Los Bastardos (2008) and Guillermo Del Toro’s El Espinazo del Diablo (2001). The constituents of a film’s narrative structure come under two different entities: the content of the film’s story, and the way in which the story is presented to the spectator. Vis-à-vis the content of the films story, the essay will mention how, on a thematic level, these films each rely heavily on the use of violence to delineate its message and intentions. James Kendrick states that the use of violence in a film is employed as a structuring device and it is evident that each of these films uses violence for differing intentions, of which the essay will later make discernible. Subsequently, the essay will contrast the order in which the stories are presented to the viewer, chiefly, regarding how Amores...
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...beats exaggeration in society's mind. Slave were treated like animals throughout the times of being attacked, beat on, and personal issues.Some of them were lack of education, and many broken families around slave communities. Night john gave more of a watered down more theater friendly version of these terrible years in the United States History.All of the hardships presented have been proven historically accurate due to supporting documents and how they corroborate to each other. Although Gary Paulsen's novel Nightjohn, is considered historical fiction, the description broken family structures, harsh restrictions, and cruel and unusual punishment can be corroborated with multiple sources provided by actual slaves at the...
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...Tomas Alfredson’s critically acclaimed ‘let the right one in’ (based on a novel of the same name by author John Ajvide Lindqvist) is an arthouse, low budget horror-thriller set in Blackeberg (a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden) in the early 1980’s. This essay will investigate the themes of the horror genre focusing on narrative codes and conventions including Claude Lévi-Strauss’ binary oppositions and Roland Barthes’ action and enigma codes, concluding with whether ‘Let the right one in’ is a typical representation of these theories. ‘Let the right one in’ falls mainly into the category of horror, in someways staying quite typical to its genre. For example it features typical narrative elements of the horror genre including murder and survival as well as style conventions such as low-key lighting and an ominous score. However, ‘Let the right one in’ also subverts these conventions by challenging various narrative elements. Alfredson was unconcerned with vampire conventions associated with the horror genre and scaled down many...
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...excluded from the few powerful positions the British system of colonization allowed in Rhodesia,” suggesting the traditional place of women as storytellers, somewhat ironically, was also suppressed by the colonizers. Only women are interested in revealing the internal pressures of postcolonial Zimbabwe. But these hidden pressures are just the ones that cause the “nervous conditions” in the book titled as such. A female character narrates this text about women, bearing to light women's struggles to be themselves within a constraining environment. But even as critics revel in this rare, realistic portrayal of Zimbabwean women, they seldom explore the significance of Tsitsi Dangarembga's representation of men, too often passing them off as flat characters. But because male-authored African texts hide domestic turmoil and mixing of cultures, they not only hide the realities of women, they also hide the reality of their own selves. Thus, Nervous Conditions is an important text, not just for what it reveals about women, but also for what it reveals about men, the value of which is under-explored. Indeed, the male characters do appear...
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...postmodernism through textual analysis of Arrested Development. This essay will consider the postmodernism within the television programme Arrested Development through postmodern theories, postmodernist techiniques and textual analysis. Through historical context, genre conventions, intertextuality and continuity; the essay will investigate the use of pastiche in modern satire. As popular situation comedies fulfil the generic conventions of using multiple cameras, linear narratives, stand alone catchphrases and aspirational ideologies, the essay will deliberate whether post modernism is legitimate in television comedy. "As Hollywood agents worry about the demise of the town's lowing cash cow, the multi-camera, staged sitcom, here to save the day is Arrested Development, a farce of such blazing wit and originality, that it must surely usher in a new era in comedy." —Alison Powell, The Guardian (UK), March 12, 2005 Television situation comedy has always appealed to mass market audiences. From ‘The Brady Bunch’(1969 – 1974), which centred on a blended family, perhaps the best-known domestic comedy in US television history to ‘Cheers’(1982 – 1993), the show set in a bar in Boston. Sitcoms usually consist of recurring characters in a common environment such as a home or workplace. Sitcoms provide the audience with iconic moments in television history. The longitivity of this genre of programming allows the audiences to build up relationships with the characters, therefore becoming an active...
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...well to introduce a personal visual media paper, or other media analysis paper, because it encourages students to think critically about their childhood experiences with TV, etc in a personal, creative way. The exercise may become an early paper draft, or simply stimulate their thinking about the programs and commercials they have watched, and how these media affected them. Description: Students will write creative narratives about a childhood TV experience, then trade papers with another classmate, who will assess the program, the narrator, and then complete the narrative with a commercial break description suited to the program and audience. You may want to have your own example written up to read to them before each step, just to get them thinking about what’s possible. Suggested Time: 20 minutes to a full class period Procedure: Ask the class what their favorite shows were as kids: cartoons, sitcoms, even documentaries. You may want to bring in a few stills or uTube clips to project (in a tech class), as a memory jogger (ex. The Cosby Show, Ren & Stimpy, etc). Once you’ve discussed a nice variety of TV programs, ask the class to freewrite for 5-10 minutes (however long you wish to tell them) in first-person P.O.V. about their experience watching a show like these as a kid. They should be specific and detailed, writing whatever comes to memory about what’s going on in the program and their thoughts/reactions/and situation as they watch. Ask them to consider tings like: What are...
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... 2011 13 Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information 57 TANYA BARRIENTOS Se Habla Español MEMOIR he man on the other end of the phone line is 1 Tanya Maria telling me the classes I’ve called about are firstBarrientos has rate: native speakers in charge, no more than six stuwritten for the dents per group. Philadelphia “Conbersaychunal,” he says, allowing the fat vow- 2 Inquirer for more than els of his accented English to collide with the sawedtwenty years. off consonants. I tell him that will be fi ne, that I’m familiar with 3 Barrientos was born in Guatethe conversational setup, and yes, I’ve studied a bit mala and raised of Spanish in the past. He asks for my name and I in El Paso, Texas. Her first novel, Frontera Street, was supply it, rolling the double r in Barrientos like a pro. published in 2002, and her second, That’s when I hear the silent snag, the momentary Family Resemblance, was pubhesitation I’ve come to expect at this part of the exlished in 2003. Her column “Unchange. Should I go into it again? Should I explain, conventional Wisdom” runs every the way I have to half a dozen others, that I am Guaweek in the Inquirer. This essay originally appeared in the collectemalan by birth but pura gringa by circumstance? tion Border-Line Personalities: A Do I add the humble little laugh I usually attach New Generation of Latinas Dish to the end of my sentence to let him know that of on Sex, Sass & Cultural...
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...coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm. "New Wave" is an example of European art cinema. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking presented a documentary type style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end. It holds that the director is the "author" of his movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. The informal movement was spearheaded by a handful of critics from Cahiers du cinema Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric...
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...Writing an essay is not as much about the end product as it is the journey to get there. You may possess the most expansive vocabulary, but the one variable that shows through your writing is time. Time is the one factor that shows improvement, effort, and persistence. Without time, the journey would not exist. Step one in the journey is throwing ideas on to paper. Throwing refers to the chaos of that first step. In my case, the throwing of ideas was evident in the lack of cohesion and argument. This action of throwing is only able to happen if the topic is of meaning to the writer. The topic I chose, the benefits of immersion programs to help learn a language, is something I am very passionate about. I've been lucky enough to experience it...
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...In her short story “Bloodchild,” Octavia Butler presents a dystopian society in which humans draw little agency. Isolated from Earth, Humans (who are referred to as Terran throughout the story) are stranded animals on a far away world and are used by Tlic as birthing vessels. Despite its very overt science fiction elements, Bloodchild is as much as story about a far off dystopia as it is a story located in present conditions. That is to say, Bloodchild embeds enough elements of current Western civilization within its narrative that the story positions itself as a dystopia of the present day. First, Bloodchild confuses the reader’s notion of space and temporality by gradually revealing its science fiction and dystopian elements. The story opens with the line, “My last night of childhood began with a visit home” (3). Here, Bloodchild positions itself as a coming of age story. This is critical because immediately, at the stories inception, the story posits an exploration of distinctly human themes: rites of passage, coming of age, loss of childhood, etc. This is juxtaposed with the way the gradual revealing of dystopian elements in Bloodchild. For instance, it is not until page 25 (out of 32) that the reader finally learns that the story does not take place on earth. T’Gatoi says, “And your ancestors, feeling from their home world, from the own kind who would have killed or enslaved them – they survived because of us” (25). The overall effect of the gradual development...
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...woman’s curves and these features are accentuated in some way, such as, purposeful camera movements or through the use of slow motion and/or cut-aways. The term was first coined by Laura Mulvey in her article “Visual pleasure and Narrative cinema”. In this article, Mulvey advocates that the use of the Male Gaze in films, causes women to only be admired for their physical appearance and therefore relegates women to the stature of objects, refusing them human identity. She demonstrates this by using film examples that infer a female’s existence in the film world is only in relation to the male, that she has no real importance, besides how she makes the male feel or act. Mulvey states female characters only serve two roles in a narrative: 1) As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view, and 2) As an erotic object for the spectators with the cinema to view. They tend to slow the narrative down; they give men inspiration to act, they are considered passive. Where as male characters push the narrative forwards making events happen, they are seen as active. This can be seen in Star Trek into darkness (2013) Directed by J.J. Abrams. In this scene Carol (depicted by Alice Eve) a weapon specialist is informing Kirk (Chris Pine) that they must make a detour to a near-by planetoid – thus also making a detour from the main narrative. As well as you can see from the image above her intelligence and authority is undermined...
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