Birth of a Nation: Art or Propaganda Essay

Mankind, engaging in war, driven by whatever instincts guide him, seeks to keep the defeats and victories of battle in his memory and on his conscience. To accomplish this men have used paint and canvas, ink and paper, or instrument and song in their effort to communicate the tragedy and glory of war. Never, before the career of D. W. Griffith had anyone attempted to bring the subject to film. The result of his efforts, weaknesses aside, mark a change in attitude towards film as a media. Perhaps audiences previously going to a picture expected emotional manipulation. After all, years before the film Birth of a nation, makers of film employed techniques to evoke pathos from viewers; whether through the use of a sobbing mother, a frightened child or what have you. In this respect the film was not a ground-breaker; However, through its effective use of devices such as symbolism, foreshadowing and allusions, as well as building on and arguably perfecting film techniques such as continuity editing, intercutting and close-ups, he transformed film from mere entertainment to art and propaganda. To present and explore a theme, symbolism is used everywhere in literature. Whether the image is subtle or obvious it is regardless a sign of considerable calculation and effort. In Birth of a nation Griffith places symbols everywhere, in doing this he merges literary devices of written works with his own visual works. For instance, the parched corn symbol in the scene where the southern army is eating symbolizes their desperation in the face of defeat. This imagery proves that Griffith wasn’t just presenting actors and a plot, he intended to dig far deeper than that, into the realm of a clever storyteller. Another example of his unique style is the use of foreshadowing, another literary device now commonly employed in film. The most prominent example of this is the scene where two gentlemen are talking, and as the camera pans down, we see a puppy struggling with a kitten. This is another strong example of symbolism; however, even more importantly it foreshadows the coming war. It is expertly placed to add to the building tension between sides which the audience already knows results in confrontation. Its placement reflects Griffiths desire to advance the complexity and diversity of film beyond entertainment to higher levels in society. To manipulate his audience’s emotions, he first had to draw them into the story and in turn into the stories underlying theme. He accomplished this by using numerous virgin film tools, much as an artist uses his own tools to create a believable painting. Among these tools he uses panoramas to illustrate setting, to paint, if you will – a moving picture. To show the swell of heated gunfire on a crowded battlefield i. e. the scene of the battle of Petersburg, or to bring across image of the delicate beauty of his native southern land to those who had never been there or seen a picture of it. This was the substance that transformed film into a genuine art form. Once he had the attention and anticipation of the audience, as well as their almost guaranteed acceptance of his word, he merely had to feed them a easily grasped, recognizable message to sway their emotions his way. This method of classic propaganda was used to fuel the audience’s already considerable ill-founded hatred of blacks. It comes in the form of a rebel black group who terrorizes the Cameron family, the film’s main characters. By placing blacks in this position it isn’t difficult to imagine the reaction of an average theatre goer. The film spawned riots, fired up racism, built stronger the negative stereotypes of blacks. It portrayed them as lazy, as illustrated in the black parliament, where a man rests his bare feet on a desk, alluding to uselessness in the employment environment. More horrifyingly than that it portrayed them as ultimately evil with the seizing of the Cameron’s home and the attempted rape of one of their daughters. The obvious bias presented, although appalling, demonstrates just how effective Griffith was at utilizing film not with the intention to merely entertain, but to spread propaganda and affect the perceptions of society itself. Griffith exploited his audience, he turned them against minorities and themselves. The film Birth of a nation exemplifies ignorance and hate at its worst. Although it stands for something that today is looked on as morally wrong, it proves by this very reaction that the film is not just mere entertainment, but something with a far more serious purpose. Since Griffith was the first to accomplish something of this nature, Birth of a nation therefore marks the transformation of film from pure entertainment into art and propaganda.

Modern Drama Essay

Restoration literature Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration (1660–1689), which corresponds to the last years of the direct Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In general, the term is used to denote roughly homogeneous styles of literature that center on a celebration of or reaction to the restored court of Charles II. It is a literature that includes extremes, for it encompasses both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester’s Sodom, the high-spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of The Pilgrim’s Progress. It saw Locke’s Treatises of Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and holy meditations of Robert Boyle, the hysterical attacks on theaters from Jeremy Collier, and the pioneering of literary criticism from John Dryden and John Dennis. The period witnessed news become a commodity, the essay developed into a periodic al art form, and the beginnings of textual criticism. The dates for Restoration literature are a matter of convention, and they differ markedly from genre to genre. Thus, the â€Å"Restoration† in dramamay last until 1700, while in poetry it may last only until 1666 (see 1666 in poetry) and the annus mirabilis; and in prose it might end in 1688, with the increasing tensions over succession and the corresponding rise in journalism and periodicals, or not until 1700, when those periodicals grew more stabilized. In general, scholars use the term â€Å"Restoration† to denote the literature that began and flourished under Charles II, whether that literature was the laudatory ode that gained a new life with restored aristocracy, the eschatological literature that showed an increasing despair among Puritans, or the literature of rapid communication and trade that followed in the wake of England’s mercantile empire. Theatre The return of the stage-struck Charles II to power in 1660 was a major event in English theatre history. As soon as the previous Puritan regime’s ban on public stage representations was lifted, the drama recreated itself quickly and abundantly. Two theatre companies, the King’s and the Duke’s Company, were established in London, with two luxurious playhouses built to designs by Christopher Wren and fitted with moveable scenery and thunder and lightning machines.[10] Traditionally, Restoration plays have been studied by genre rather than chronology, more or less as if they were all contemporary, but scholars today insist on the rapid evolvement of drama in the period and on the importance of social and political factors affecting it. (Unless otherwise indicated, the account below is based on Hume’s influential Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century, 1976.) The influence of theatre company competition and playhouse economics is also acknowledged, as is the significance of the appearance of the first professional actresses (see Howe). In the 1660s and 1670s, the London scene was vitalised by the competition between the two patent companies. The need to rise to the challenges of the other house made playwrights and managers extremely responsive to public taste, and theatrical fashions fluctuated almost week by week. The mid-1670s were a high point of both quantity and quality, with John Dryden’s Aureng-zebe (1675), William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) and The Plain Dealer(1676), George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676), and Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677), all within a few seasons. From 1682 the production of new plays dropped sharply, affected both by a merger between the two companies and by the political turmoil of the Popish Plot (1678) and the Exclusion crisis (1682). The 1680s were especially lean years for comedy, the only exception being the remarkable career of Aphra Behn, whose achievement as the first professional British woman dramatist has been the subject of much recent study. There was a swing away from comedy to serious political drama, reflecting preoccupations and divisions following on the political crisis. The few comedies produced also tended to be political in focus, the whig dramatist Thomas Shadwell sparring with the tories John Dryden and Aphra Behn. In the calmer times after 1688, Londoners were again ready to be amused by stage performance, but the single â€Å"United Company† was not well prepared to offer it. No longer powered by competition, the company had lost momentum and been taken over by predatory investors (â€Å"Adv enturers†), while management in the form of the autocratic Christopher Rich attempted to finance a tangle of â€Å"farmed† shares and sleeping partners by slashing actors’ salaries. The upshot of this mismanagement was that the disgruntled actors set up their own co-operative company in 1695.[11]A few years of re-invigorated two-company competition followed which allowed a brief second flowering of the drama, especially comedy. Comedies like William Congreve’s Love For Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700), and John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697) were â€Å"softer† and more middle class in ethos, very different from the aristocratic extravaganza twenty years earlier, and aimed at a wider audience. If â€Å"Restoration literature† is the literature that reflects and reflects upon the court of Charles II, Restoration drama arguably ends before Charles II’s death, as the playhouse moved rapidly from the domain of courtiers to the domain of the city middle classes. On the other hand, Restoration drama shows altogether more fluidity and rapidity than other types of literature, and so, even more than in other types of literature, its movements should never be viewed as absolute. Each decade has brilliant exceptions to every rule and entirely forgettable confirmations of it. [edit]Drama Main article: Heroic drama See also: She-tragedy Genre in Restoration drama is peculiar. Authors labelled their works according to the old tags, â€Å"comedy† and â€Å"drama† and, especially, â€Å"history†, but these plays defied the old categories. From 1660 onwards, new dramatic genres arose, mutated, and intermixed very rapidly. In tragedy, the leading style in the early Restoration period was the male-dominated heroic drama, exemplified by John Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada (1670) and Aureng-Zebe (1675) which celebrated powerful, aggressively masculine heroes and their pursuit of glory both as rulers and conquerors, and as lovers. These plays were sometimes called by their authors’ histories or tragedies, and contemporary critics will call them after Dryden’s term of â€Å"Heroic drama†. Heroic dramas centred on the actions of men of decisive natures, men whose physical and (sometimes) intellectual qualities made them natural leaders. In one sense, this was a reflection of a n idealised king such as Charles or Charles’s courtiers might have imagined. However, such dashing heroes were also seen by the audiences as occasionally standing in for noble rebels who would redress injustice with the sword. The plays were, however, tragic in the strictest definition, even though they were not necessarily sad. In the 1670s and 1680s, a gradual shift occurred from heroic to pathetic tragedy, where the focus was on love and domestic concerns, even though the main characters might often be public figures. After the phenomenal success of Elizabeth Barry in moving the audience to tears in the role of Monimia in Thomas Otway’s The Orphan (1680), â€Å"she-tragedies† (a term coined by Nicholas Rowe), which focused on the sufferings of an innocent and virtuous woman, became the dominant form of pathetic tragedy. Elizabeth Howe has argued that the most important explanation for the shift in taste was the emergence of tragic actresses whose popularity made it unavoidable for dramatists to create major roles for them. With the conjunction of the playwright â€Å"master of pathos† Thomas Otway and the great tragedienne Elizabeth Barry in The Orphan, the focus shifted from hero to heroine. Prominent she-tragedies include John Banks’s Virtue Betrayed, or, Anna Bullen(1682) (about the execution of Anne Boleyn), Thomas Southerne’s The Fatal Marriage (1694), and Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent (1703) and Lady Jane Grey, 1715. While she-tragedies were more comfortably tragic, in that they showed women who suffered for no fault of their own and featured tragic flaws that were emotional rather than moral or intellectual, their success did not mean that more overtly political tragedy was not staged. The Exclusion crisis brought with it a number of tragic implications in real politics, and therefore any treatment of, for example, the Earl of Essex (several versions of which were circulated and briefly acted at non-patent theatres) could be read as seditious. Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d of 1682 was a royalist political play that, like Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, seemed to praise the king for his actions in the meal tub plot. Otway’s play had the floating city of Venice stand in for the river town ofLondon, and it had the dark senatorial plotters of the play stand in for the Earl of Shaftesbury. It even managed to figure in the Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s illegitimate, war-hero son who was favoured by many as Charles’s successor over the Roman Catholic James. Venice Preserv’d is, in a sense, the perfect synthesis of the older politically royalist tragedies and histories of Dryden and the newer she-tragedies of feminine suffering, for, although the plot seems to be a political allegory, the action centres on a woman who cares for a man in conflict, and most of the scenes and dialogue concern her pitiable sufferings at his hands. Comedy Main article: Restoration comedy Restoration comedy is notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court. The best-known plays of the early Restoration period are the unsentimental or â€Å"hard† comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege, which reflect the atmosphere at Court, and celebrate an aristocratic macholifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester, real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege’s Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, and sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity.s idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never a very common character in Restoration comedy). Wycherley’s The Plain Dealer (1676), a variation on the theme of Molià ¨re’s Le misanthrope, was highly regarded for its uncompromising satire and earned Wycherley the appellation â€Å"Plain De aler† Wycherley or â€Å"Manly† Wycherley, after the play’s main character Manly. The single writer who most supports the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley. During the second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the â€Å"softer† comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh reflected mutating cultural perceptions and great social change. The playwrights of the 1690s set out to appeal to more socially mixed audiences with a strong middle-class element, and to female spectators, for instance by moving the war between the sexes from the arena of intrigue into that of marriage. The focus in comedy is less on young lovers outwitting the older generation, more on marital relations after the wedding bells. In Congreve’s plays, the give-and-take set pieces of couples still testing their attraction for each other have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the famous â€Å"Proviso† scene in The Way of the World (1700). Restoration drama had a bad reputation for three centuries. The â€Å"incongruous† mixing of comedy and tragedy beloved by Restoration audiences was decried. The Victorians denounced the comedy as too indecent for the stage,[12] and the standard reference work of the early 20th century, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, dismissed the tragedy as being of â€Å"a level of dulness and lubricity never surpassed before or since†.[13] Today, the Restoration total theatre experience is again valued, both by postmodern literary critics and on the stage. The comedies of Aphra Behn in particular, long condemned as especially offensive in coming from a woman’s pen, have become academic and repertory favourites.

Argumentative Research Paper on Censorship Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Argumentative on Censorship - Research Paper Example nts for and those against censorship citing various examples of countries where censorship has been applied and the resulting consequences of those censures. Censorship will be defined and its various forms identified and defined. Positive attributes will be examined on the backdrop of human welfare and society as well as the negative attributes. Upon evaluation, a conclusion will be reached as to the significance and overall effect of censorship. Censorship is the omission or suppression of material/ information deemed harmful, objectionable and inappropriate from the general public. The restricting party can be a government, a government institution or media outlet. These organizations judge whether material released or to be released is offensive directly or indirectly to any section of the public such as children, women, a specific ethnic community and workers. However, reasons for censorship can vary dependent on the censoring body and the target population. Censorship can be of several forms. They include moral censorship, military censorship, political censorship and political censorship. OReilly and Parker (2003) note that, â€Å"In moral censorship, material of obscene nature and questionable morally is removed, while in military censorship tactical and military intelligence and secrets are kept from the public to prevent the information from being available to the enemy and used against or to the detriment of the n ation† (p.2). Political censorship involves the withholding of information by governments and political leaders from their subjects/ citizens as a means primarily of exerting control and dominion over the population. In religious censorship, material deemed objectionable by a sect or its leaders is removed. Information may be from another sect or religion. Corporate censorship conducted and executed mostly by media executives who remove or prevent the publishing/ distribution of information that portrays their businesses or business partners in

Art and Architecture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Art and Architecture - Essay Example The whole cathedral together with its supplementary buildings occupies a whole block. The outside of the church is decorated with white marble making it to have a shiny and beautiful surface. The parish is about four hundred feet in length and its width is approximately more than seventy feet wide. Standing at the entrance of the cathedral are two spires decorated in gothic curved architecture. At the center of the two spires is the cathedral entrance. On the western vestibule, towers and a gallery above it border the cathedral. The vaulting of the main roof is made of brick. The cathedral takes the form of gothic revival architecture, with important parts taking forms of medieval French gothic and British gothic architecture. Some of the most important features of the architect are the facades, the spires and the windows when viewed from the exterior. The spires provide proportionality in the architecture. The entrance of the cathedral is between the two spires that are a bit taller than the roofing at about 330 feet high. This provides balance and harmonizes proportionality in the architecture, making it an admirable aspect as a piece of art. The use of stained windows is a functional to provide the serene atmosphere inside the cathedral for the purposes of peace during prayer. The stained windows mimic other gothic designs that were common in Europe (Janaro & Altusher, 2009, Ch. 5). The inside of the cathedral is made with perfect proportional arrangement. The nave of the cathedral attains the balance that most cathedrals do through proportional arrangement of the rows where worshippers sit. Light is spread throughout the church through the highly placed windows that ensure there is enough light during the day. However, during the night, three chalices that hang perfectly through the center of the nave provide enough illumination. The curved faà §ade of the church at the exterior provides ample decorations of the cathedral while

Talent Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Talent - Essay Example Talent individuals, whether they are employees or managers, know what they have to do in critical business situations. They don not become nervous in difficult situations, rather take logical steps to come out of such situations based on their precious knowledge, critical thinking ability, and talent. Talent is something that leads a company towards market domination and competitive edge. From the perspective of business, talent also refers to the ability of an employee to deliver good job performance. According to Wheeler, excellent talent refers to such individuals who produce above-average performances, whereas poor talent refers to those who produce less than average performances. I also possess such qualities or skills that I would call ‘talent’. For example, I can make good decisions even in critical conditions. Moreover, I have the ability to manage a large number of interrelated works in a systematic manner. Therefore, I would call myself as a talented

Popular Music, Culture & Politics Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Popular Music, Culture & Politics - Article Example This shows how some isolated or marginal areas within Japan are capable of upholding authentic Japanese culture, characterized by composition of musical lyrics in Japanese. There is further emphasis on the fact that urban areas of Japan, unlike the isolated ones, are connected to and even compromised by Western influence, coupled with Japan’s troubled history. The association of Japanese popular music with the West is evident throughout the article, forming its greatest theme. For instance, Morris takes note of the fact that the country’s musical culture hence national identity is largely tied up with its 19th century occupation by Western Allied forces. It was as a result of the occupation that Japanese musicians were forced to embrace western styles of music composition and performance, in order to keep Allied soldiers entertained hence surviving the occupation. The author is keen to note that, since that time, music primarily reflects the country’s cultural pl acement hence national identity in connection and contrast to the West. The systematic review approach adopted by Morris adequately demonstrates that Japanese popular music adopts practices that allow it to capitalize on emerging trends. These include not just utilization of English in composition and performance, but also adoption of emergent trends such as those in media technology. This approach is, however, too broad to fully examine and effectively facilitate understanding of Japan’s national identity, as shaped by music and its resulting culture. There is extra focus on the nature of music, as influenced by the relationship between Japan and the West, especially the U.S., thus overlooking crucial cultural elements within the country. Other examples of broad or non-specific music associations with national identity include the association of rock and roll music with British

International Financial Management - Currencies and Costs Essay

International Financial Management - Currencies and Costs - Essay Example That is, the probability of issuing foreign debt is highly correlated with the degree of foreign operations. Their results are consistent with those of Kedia and Mozumdar (2003), who conclude that firms have to satisfy a demand to hedge via foreign debt. Kedia and Mozumdar (2003), also conclude that the correlation between foreign operations and the probability of issuing foreign debt is consistent with both the role of foreign debt as a hedging instrument and the existence of information barriers. The integration of capital markets implies that financial assets traded in different markets should possess the same risk/return characteristics. Kedia and Mozumdar (2003) however note that the segmentation of capital markets and barriers to international investment could result in opportunities for choosing the currency of debt to minimize funding costs (interest rates). Kedia and Mozumdar (2003) identify two sources of segmentation including legal barriers and Informational sources. According to them legal barriers which constitute a broad variety of restrictions such as differences in tax treatment for foreign and domestic investments, capital controls, security law, and ownership restrictions could give rise to opportunities for multinational companies to reduce their funding rates. It is also evident in the study by Kedia and Mozumdar (2003) that foreign investors face high costs of gathering information about capital markets in different countries and as such domestic companies take advantage of this information asymmetry to issue debt at a low cost than they would have issued to domestic investors. According to Keloharju and Niskanen (2001), issuing in the Euromarket may be more economical since it helps to mitigate withholding taxes and capital controls. They further illustrate that borrowing cost in two currencies can be reduced by borrowing the weaker currency and that tax laws in Finland encourage companies to borrow the foreign currency. Allayannis et al (2003: pp 2669) in their study of the capital structure and financial risk of East Asian Firms with particular emphasis on foreign-currency debt use, provide evidence that differences in home country interest rates and foreign interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), are important determinants for both home country and foreign debt use. The study finds that the higher (lower) the difference in interest rates, the