sport Essays - Health, Personal Life, Food And Drink, Nutrition

I cannot say I identify with my family on any health issue. We aren?t terribly susceptible to any one disease, and health habits vary with each person. Age, however, does affect my attitude to health. Young adults are still subject to peer pressure, are free to make their own choices, and are healthy enough to disregard healthy habits. The topic of healthy eating arises because it is a major part of health that young adults do not have the right to ignore. If young people don?t regularly examine themselves for signs of cancer, it?s because cancer is statistically rare for their age group. If they don?t frequently check their cholesterol levels, it?s because they know from previous checkups that high cholesterol levels are unlikely in their young age. But if they don?t manage their diets well, there is no good reason. Eating healthy foods, eating a proper amount of food, and avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol are just as important now as ever, but we do not acknowledge this in our lifestyles. Young adults need to know that their diets now will affect their health later, and they need to provide themselves with healthy eating. As a young adult I see several reasons why healthy eating is not an apparently important topic. Personal responsibility is a new concept at this point in life; if we are used to snacking on junk food and eating healthy meals when they are served, we are not automatically trained to make healthy meals ourselves. With lives full of school and work, it is easy to prioritize economic needs over health. To make matters worse, we feel healthy and energetic, so health and healthy eating never beg for our attention. Compared to the elderly, who take the time to eat vitamins, buy healthy food, and meet regularly with a doctor, the young can seem quite reckless and irresponsible. Another reason for a lack of emphasis on proper eating is peer pressure, whether this promotes donuts, energy drinks, or alcohol. Although I don?t experience this problem personally, I see how dangerous it can be when we have more school friends than work acquaintances. Alcohol can be very tempting when we reach the legal age, because it is to some a symbol of independence. Peer pressure can bring the young adult culture together in a negative way. If we take cues from our fellow students, they imply that fast food and other unhealthy products are acceptable. To worsen the problem is the media, although it may not directly target young adults more than any other age group. Movies reinforce stereotypical images of young adults focused on anything but healthy eating, and advertisements promote junk food, fast food, and caffeine. Mostly, this negligence affects me, too. Eating can be equated with the search for any form of pre-packaged and processed food, and I have not considered any nutritional value, or considered taking vitamin supplements. I realize healthy diets need to be addressed, and will attempt this in the near future, although feeling somewhat victimized by unhealthy eating may hinder my efforts. Part of the problem is that procrastination is so easy. From this disregard for health comes statistical evidence, showing that we do not consider our health or diet enough. Writer Lorraine Heller reveals from one poll, ?75 percent of respondents aged over 55 considered themselves to be healthy eaters, compared to 47 percent of those aged 18 to 34.? That means that out of every four people, one of them will become a healthy eater around his forties. You don?t have to be forty to realize healthy eating will improve your lifespan, yet younger adults put the issue aside for as long as possible. An article entitled ?Smoking, obesity, poor eating highest among young adults? reveals from another survey taken in 2000, ?More than one-third of white men and women ages 18 to 24 smoked, the highest rate among all the groups covered.? A general explanation assumes everyone who wants to smoke starts when they turn eighteen, and then some quit later, but should this be taken for granted? Even when a person at the age of ten decides he will become a smoker, he is not destined to start smoking as soon as

Biography of Angela Davis, Political Activist, Academic

Biography of Angela Davis, Political Activist, Academic Angela Davis (born January 26, 1944) is a radical activist, philosopher, writer, speaker, and educator. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was well known for her association with the Black Panthers. She was fired from one teaching job for being a communist, and for a time she even appeared on the Federal Bureau of Investigations Ten Most Wanted list. Fast Facts: Angela Davis Known For: Davis is an academic and activist known for her association with the Black Panthers.Also Known As: Angela Yvonne DavisBorn: January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, AlabamaParents: B. Frank Davis and Sallye Bell DavisEducation: Brandeis University (B.A.), University of California, San Diego (M.A.), Humboldt University (Ph.D.)Published Works: Women, Race, Class, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Are Prisons Obsolete?Spouse: Hilton Braithwaite (m. 1980–1983)Notable Quote: Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. Early Life Angela Yvonne Davis was  born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama.  Her father B. Frank Davis was a teacher who later opened a gas station, and her mother Sallye Bell Davis was a teacher.  Davis lived in a segregated neighborhood and went to segregated schools through high school.  She later became involved with her family in civil rights demonstrations.  She spent some time in New York City, where her mother was earning a masters degree during summer breaks from teaching. Davis excelled as a student, graduating  magna cum laude  from Brandeis University in 1965, with two years of study at the Sorbonne, University of Paris. She studied philosophy in Germany at the University of Frankfurt for two years, then received an M.A. from the University of California at San Diego in 1968. Her doctoral study took place from 1968 to 1969. During her undergraduate years at Brandeis, she was shocked to hear of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which killed four girls she had known. This Ku Klux Klan-perpetrated violence marked a major turning point in the civil rights movement, bringing worldwide attention to the plight of African-Americans in the United States. Politics and Philosophy A member of the Communist Party USA, Davis became involved in radical black politics and in several organizations for black women, including Sisters Inside and Critical Resistance, which she helped found. Davis also joined the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was part of an all-black communist group called the Che-Lumumba Club, and through that group she began to organize public protests. In 1969, Davis was hired as an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. She used her post to teach Kant, Marxism, and philosophy in black literature. Davis  was popular as a teacher, but a leak identifying her as a member of the Communist Party led to the UCLA regent- headed then by Ronald Reagan- to dismiss her.  A court ordered her reinstatement, but she was fired again the next year. Activism After her dismissal from UCLA, Davis became involved in the case of the Soledad Brothers, a group of  prisoners at Soledad Prison. Anonymous threats led her to purchase weapons for self-defense. Davis was arrested as a suspected conspirator in the abortive attempt to free George Jackson, one of the Soledad Brothers, from a courtroom in Marin County, California, on August 7, 1970. A county judge was killed in the failed attempt to take hostages and rescue Jackson, and the guns used were registered in her name. Davis was eventually acquitted of all charges, but for a time she was on the FBIs most wanted list after she fled and went into hiding to avoid arrest. Davis is often associated with the Black Panthers and with the black power politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. She joined the Communist Party when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Davis ran for vice president on the Communist Party ticket in 1980. Davis left the Communist Party in 1991, though she continues to be involved in some of its activities. As a self-described prison abolitionist, she has played a major role in the push for criminal justice reforms and other resistance to what she calls the prison-industrial complex. In her essay Public Imprisonment and Private Violence, Davis calls the sexual abuse of women in prison one of the most heinous state-sanctioned human rights violations within the United States today. Academia Davis taught in the Ethnic Studies department at San Francisco State University from 1980 to 1984. Although former Gov. Ronald Reagan swore she would never teach again in the University of California system, Davis began teaching at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1991. During her tenure there, she continued to work as an activist and promote womens rights and racial justice. She has published books on race, class, and gender, including such popular titles as Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Are Prisons Obsolete?, The Meaning of Freedom, and Women, Culture Politics. When Davis retired from UCSC in 2008, she was named Professor Emerita. In the years since, she has continued her work for prison abolition, womens rights, and racial justice. Davis has taught at UCLA and elsewhere as a visiting professor, committed to the importance of liberating minds as well as liberating society. Personal Life Davis was married to photographer Hilton Braithwaite from 1980 to 1983. In 1997, she told Out magazine that she was a lesbian. Sources Aptheker, Bettina.  The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis. Cornell University Press, 1999.Davis, Angela Y.  Angela Davis: an Autobiography. International Publishers, 2008.Davis, Angela Y.  Are Prisons Obsolete?  Seven Stories Press, 2003.Davis, Angela Y.  Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Vintage Books, 1999.Davis, Angela. â€Å"Public Imprisonment and Private Violence.† Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance, by Marguerite R. Waller and Jennifer Rycenga, Routledge, 2012.Davis, Angela Y., and Joy James.  The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Blackwell, 1998.Timothy, Mary.  Jury Woman: the Story of the Trial of Angela Y. Davis. Glide Publications, 1975.

Assignment Final Paper Topic Essay Example for Free

Assignment Final Paper Topic Essay This work contains GEN 499 Week 3 Assignment Final Paper Topic Thesis Statement and Annotated Bibliography Education – General Education Review the Final Research Paper instructions located within the Final Research Paper link. The Final Research Paper is due in Week Five. To help with the preparation of the paper, complete the following and submit it to your instructor for feedback. Topic : Refer to the Final Research Paper guidelines for your topic selection. Confirm your topic, and identify how this selection relates to your academic and professional pursuits. Review the feedback from your topic choice presented in the Week One discussion. How did your argument stand up to the examination of your peers? Thesis : Write a direct and concise thesis statement, which will become the point or perspective you will argue or prove in the Final Research Paper. Refer to the Ashford Online Writing Center for information on how to develop a solid thesis statement. APA Reference Page : For this paper, you will conduct research in peer-reviewed journals or other sources that are considered to have academic information. You will need a minimum of five professional scholarly sources, at least one of which is a multimedia source. For each source, you are responsible for summarizing the source and examining how it will support you in defending your argument. Keep in mind the Academic Research standards for all Ashford University Papers. Academic Research Academic research and papers must meet certain standards of quality recognized by the academic community. What constitutes quality, academic research? Primary sources, which are documents from the time period being discussed Secondary sources supported by research in primary sources Credible sources (experts in the area of study)   Relevant research (materials are p†¦ For downloading more course tutorials visit – https://bitly.com/1rubFkT If you are returning to college with a kid or more, you might assume that on-campus living is not an option. This is not always true. Alot of colleges provide a place for children to live as well. Colleges and universities have accepted the fact that some students are older and already have families. Be sure to ask early about housing options for families, because it tends to fill up very fast. Education – General Education Review the Final Research Paper instructions located within the Final Research Paper link. The Final Research Paper is due in Week Five. To help with the preparation of the paper, complete the following and submit it to your instructor for feedback. Topic : Refer to the Final Research Paper guidelines for your topic selection. Confirm your topic, and identify how this selection relates to your academic and professional pursuits. Review the feedback from your topic choice presented in the Week One discussion. How did your argument stand up to the examination of your peers? Thesis : Write a direct and concise thesis statement, which will become the point or perspective you will argue or prove in the Final Research Paper. Refer to the Ashford Online Writing Center for information on how to develop a solid thesis statement. APA Reference Page : For this paper, you will conduct research in peer-reviewed journals or other sources that are considered to have academic information. You will need a minimum of five professional scholarly sources, at least one of which is a multimedia source. For each source, you are responsible for summarizing the source and examining how it will support you in defending your argument. Keep in mind the Academic Research standards for all Ashford University Papers. Academic Research Academic research and papers must meet certain standards of quality  recognized by the academic community. What constitutes quality, academic research? Primary sources, which are documents from the time period being discussed Secondary sources supported by research in primary sources Credible sources (experts in the area of study) Relevant research (materials are pertinent to the area of study) In graduate work, the use of peer-reviewed journal articles (journal articles reviewed by recognized experts in the relevant field of study) is required. Assignment Final Paper Topic. (2016, May 19).

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING REPORT FOR New Zealand Essay - 2

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING REPORT FOR New Zealand - Essay Example CT New Zealand [Rodney HIDE]; Green Party [Russel NORMAN and Metiria TUREI]; Mana Party [Hone HARAWIRA]; Maori Party [Tariana TURIA and Dr. Pita SHARPLES]; New Zealand National Party [John KEY]; New Zealand First Party or NZ First [Winston PETERS]; New Zealand Labor Party [Phil GOFF]; Jim Andertons Progressive Party [James (Jim) ANDERTON]; United Future New Zealand [Peter DUNNE] (CIA) Blue with the flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant with four red five-pointed stars edged in white centered in the outer half of the flag; the stars represent the Southern Cross constellation. (CIA) Consists of a series of legal documents, including certain acts of the UK and New Zealand parliaments, as well as The Constitution Act 1986, which is the principal formal charter; adopted 1 January 1987, effective 1 January 1987 Domestic:Â  combined fixed-line and mobile-cellular telephone subscribership exceeds 150 per 100 persons; International:Â  New Zealand code - 64; the Southern Cross submarine cable system provides links to Australia, Fiji, and the US; satellite earth stations – 8(CIA) Asking for the approval of government is the appropriate way for starting a business. A business should also take care of its location, which should not over crowd the commercial area. (International Business Center) It is difficult to conduct business in New Zealand, as the people are very cautious of the reputation and product quality of the company. For new brands it is harder to win public interest and loyalty. (Tourism New

Fasting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Fasting - Essay Example From the early times, fasting has been criticized due its diverse scope of practice. In modern times, fasting in the form of a hunger strike has been employed as a political weapon. Fasting is a broad term that has become a focus over various controversies in the medical, spiritual, or political arena. Since time immemorial, controversies have come out on how to properly practice fasting. As an example, a religious practice that precludes one to do any sexual activity or refrain from eating a certain type of food during fasting has become a controversy that comes together with the proper practice of fasting. Looking back to the ancient times, several reasons are presented with regards to fasting. People fasted for purity, spiritual and physical. However, a controversy came out when some of those who fast seeking for spiritual purity end up being drained. This was discounted when majority of spiritual seeker felt energized after fasting. Moreover, this account was supported by the det ox dieters noting that they feel clearer, and from one point to another, felt some form of physical purity. This research paper will open up our horizon to better understand and unfold the complexity of fasting. In the context of medicine, fasting is defined as â€Å"voluntarily not eating food for varying lengths of time† (eNotes, 2008). For many conditions, fasting is used as a medical therapy, and is utilized for various chronic medical conditions such as allergies, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, depression, diabetes, headaches, heart disease, high cholesterol, low blood sugar, digestive disorders, mental illness, and obesity. In medicine, fasting is used to refer to the state that is achieved after digestion. During fasting, it is noted that various metabolic adjustments occur and for this reason, various diagnostic tests in medicine are standardized for fasting. It is assumed that a person is fasting after 8 – 12 hours of no food

The language in look back Essay Example for Free

The language in look back Essay The language in look back in anger is different compared to its contemporaries. The language is realistic; the characters are able to say what they would say in that situation in real life. In a way the writer John Orsborne had no limits because if something had to be real it needed everything to be realistic. Orsborne uses his characters as a mouth piece to examine the reality of life in the 1950s in Britain. Cliff has a Welch accent which is shown when he says like boyo and dullin. At the start of the play there seem to be a lot of exposition from the characters to describe themselves or tell us about the situation. For example James Porter, aged twenty five, was bound over last week after pleading guilty to interfering with a small cabbage and two tins of beans on his way home from the Builders Arms. This tells us Jimmys age and that he likes going to the pub, and shows that Cliff seems to have a sense of humour. The exposition goes on through out the play. We see this when jimmy is talk about Alison family and what was happening to his dying father when he was 10. The colonel has his share in exposition when hes talking to his daughter Alison about the past. It was March 1914, when left England, and, apart from leaves every ten years or so, the information Osborne constantly provides us with about each characters past helps the audience understand their personalities. In this play Orsborne uses dramatic irony. For example jimmy has some lines of dramatic irony, for example when he says to Alison if you could have a child, and it would die. This is ironic because towards the end of the play Alison has a miscarriage. Although Jimmy wanted her to go through this sort of pain he is affected in a way he never expected. The other ironic line Jimmy has is when Helena tells him that his got a phone call and he says well, it cant be anything good, can it? this is ironic because as he gets the message from the call that Hughs mother has had a stroke. Jimmy at some extent is a product of what has happened to him during his life. The play involves a lot of emotion. Jimmy chief motivating emotion is anger through out the play until the end when he embraces Alison, this is no doubt it is the characters most vulnerable point in the whole play.  The pauses are very important in the play because they make the moments of tension more effective, and shows us the emotion of most of the characters. For example when Alison tells cliff shes pregnant.  Alison: you see- (hesitates) Im pregnant.  Cliff: (after a few moments) I will need some scissors. Alison: They re over there.  Cliff: (crossing to the dressing table) thats something, isnt it? When did you find out?  At this point it shoes that Cliff is troubled about this, thats why he asks for the scissors just to hide his feelings for her. Another point which we worked on in class is when Alison arrives at the end of act 3 scene 1; there is a big pause before she says anything.  Alison: (quietly) Hullo.  Jimmy: (to Helena, after a moment) friend of yours to see you. After saying the line he leaves the room and the two women are left staring at each other. This is obviously this is a cliff hanger ending to the scene, there is tension between the two women.  Osborne has included several monologues in the play. Jimmy is the character with most of the monologues. In the majority of his monologues his objective is to provoke the others but the desperately try to ignore his taunts. His main objective usually is to irritate his wife Alison that it could lead to an argument. From the beginning of Act 1he is constantly trying to make his wife angry, he finally succeeds when she gets burnt with an iron and she tells him violently to get out. Alison: Get out!  Jimmy: (her head shaking helplessly) clear out of my sight.  This s the first time that Alison is actually showing that she is angry with jimmy. Even though the fight that caused the accident was between him and Cliff.  The monologue that I worked on in class was from act 2 scene 1 when Alison is about to go to church with Helena and jimmy is not in favour of her decision. In this monologue I had to think of the emotions which where associated with jimmy at the time, and I had to picture they way he would talk and act to these emotions. At the start of the monologue he is motivated and wants every one to see how he feels and as he goes on he loses his inspiration because he knows that no one is paying any attention to him.  The emotion and realism in the language makes the play very realistic because it helps the audience understand the situation the characters are in and helps the audience make a good mental judgement of the characters.

beziehung zwischen deutschland und england :: essays research papers

England ein Land voller Traditionen Trotz allen Beharrens auf liebgewonnenen Traditionen, die manchmal in unseren Augen etwas skurril anmuten – zum Beispiel, dass der Speaker of the House of Commons, der Prà ¤sident des britischen Unterhauses, vor jeder Parlamentssitzung mit einer Handvoll seiner Mitarbeiter im Gleichschritt im Parlamentsgebà ¤ude einen ganz bestimmten, festgelegten Weg nehmen muss, um zu seinem Arbeitsplatz zu kommen, und dass sein Kommen dabei jedes Mal umstà ¤ndlich angekà ¼ndigt wird, wo doch jeder weiß, wann morgens die Plenarsitzung beginnt – also obwohl Tradition immer noch hoch im Kurs steht: Großbritannien ist sehr viel moderner als frà ¼her. Eine neue Generation hat in allen Bereichen, von der Politik à ¼ber die Wirtschaft bis zur Publizistik, den Stab à ¼bernommen. Das ist unverkennbar. Und das hat natà ¼rlich auch Auswirkungen auf das deutsch-britische Verhà ¤ltnis. Schon vor à ¼ber hundert Jahren schrieb Lord Salisbury an Bismarck: "Zwischen keinen zwei L à ¤ndern sollte die Verstà ¤ndigung so gut sein wie zwischen den unsrigen". Und tatsà ¤chlich: Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und dem Vereinigten Kà ¶nigreich sind nun schon à ¼ber mehreren Generationen hinweg stabil gut. Es gibt einen regen Austausch zwischen den Regierungschefs, aber auch auf den niedrigeren Regierungsebenen und zwischen den Parlamenten. Und wie eng unsere Gesellschaften gerade im Bereich der Wirtschaft miteinander verbunden sind, braucht man sicher nicht besonders hervorzuheben. Deutschland ist nach den USA fà ¼r Großbritannien der wichtigste Handelspartner, und bei uns kommt Großbritannien nach Frankreich und den USA auch gleich an dritter Stelle. Es findet also auch hier ein reger Austausch statt. Und dennoch drà ¤ngt sich, trotz der guten politischen und wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen, oft der Eindruck auf, dass Deutschland und Großbritannien im Grunde ferne Nachbarn sind. Zurecht ist von einem gescheiten Beobachter gesagt worden, dass es eine "Illusion der Vertrautheit" in unseren Beziehungen gebe. Hier spielt der Generationswechsel eine Rolle, aber keineswegs nur eine positive. So paradox es klingen mag im Zeichen von Internet und weltweiter Kommunikation: Die Grà ¼ndergenerationen seit Beginn der 50er Jahre wussten in mancherlei Hinsicht wahrscheinlich mehr voneinander als die heutige Generation. So geht die Zahl der jungen Menschen, die in Großbritannien Deutsch lernen – wie insgesamt die Zahl derer, die eine Fremdsprache lernen – seit Jahren immer mehr zurà ¼ck. Inzwischen legen nur noch etwa 1 % der Oberschà ¼ler eine ihrer A-Level Prà ¼fungen – in etwa mit unserem Abitur vergleichbar - im Fach Deutsch ab. Entsprechend wenige studieren anschließend Deutsch, und entsprechend ist auch auf britischer Seite das ohnehin eher bescheidene Interesse an Schà ¼leraustauschprogrammen mit Deutschland zurà ¼ckgegangen.

Digital Cinema

Scott McQuire Millennial fantasies As anyone interested in film culture knows, the last decade has witnessed an explosion of pronouncements concerning the future of cinema. Many are fuelled by naked technological determinism, resulting in apocalyptic scenarios in which cinema either undergoes digital rebirth to emerge more powerful than ever in the new millennium, or is marginalised by a range of ‘new media’ which inevitably include some kind of broadband digital pipe capable of delivering full screen ‘cinema quality’ pictures on demand to home consumers.The fact that the doubleedged possibility of digital renaissance or death by bytes has coincided with celebrations of the ‘centenary of cinema’ has undoubtedly accentuated desire to reflect more broadly on the history of cinema as a social and cultural institution. It has also intersected with a significant transformation of film history, in which the centrality of ‘narrative’ as th e primary category for uniting accounts of the technological, the economic and the aesthetic in film theory, has become subject to new questions.Writing in 1986 Thomas Elsaesser joined the revisionist project concerning ‘early cinema’ to cinema’s potential demise: ‘A new interest in its beginnings is justified by the very fact that we might be witnessing the end: movies on the big screen could soon be the exception rather than the rule’. 1 Of course, Elsaesser’s speculation, which was largely driven by the deregulation of television broadcasting in Europe in conjunction with the emergence of new technologies such as video, cable and satellite in the 1980s, has been contradicted by the decade long cinema boom in the multiplexed 1990s. It has also been challenged from another direction, as the giant screen ‘experience’ of large format cinema has been rather unexpectedly transformed from a bit player into a prospective force. However , in the same article, Elsaesser raised another issue which has continued to resonate in subsequent debates: Scott McQuire, ‘Impact Aesthetics: Back to the Future in Digital Cinema? ‘, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2000, pp. 41-61.  © Scott McQuire. All rights reserved.Deposited to the University of Melbourne ePrints Repository with permission of Sage Publications . 2 Few histories fully address the question of why narrative became the driving force of cinema and whether this may itself be subject to change. Today the success, of SF as a genre, or of directors like Steven Spielberg whose narratives are simply anthology pieces from basic movie plots, suggest that narrative has to some extent been an excuse for the pyrotechnics of IL;M. 3 Concern for the demise, if not of cinema per se, then of narrative in cinema, is widespread in the present.In the recent special ‘digital technology’ issue of Screen, Sean Cubitt noted a ‘common intuition among reviewers, critics and scholars that something has changed in the nature of cinema — something to do with the decay of familiar narrative and performance values in favour of the qualities of the blockbuster’. 4 Lev Manovich has aligned the predominance of ‘blockbusters’ with ‘digital cinema’ by defining the latter almost entirely in terms of increased visual special effects: ‘A visible sign of this shift is the new role which computer generated special effects have come to play in the Hollywood industry in the last few years.Many recent blockbusters have been driven by special effects; feeding on their popularity’. 5 In his analysis of Hollywood’s often anxious depiction of cyberspace in films such as The Lawn Mower Man (1992), Paul Young argues that ‘cyberphobic films overstress the power of the visual in their reliance on digital technology to produce spectacle at the exp ense of narrative’, and adds this is ‘a consequence that [Scott] Bukatman has argued is latent in all special effects’. A more extreme (but nevertheless common) view is expressed by film maker Jean Douchet: ‘[Today] cinema has given up the purpose and the thinking behind individual shots [and narrative], in favour of images — rootless, textureless images — designed to violently impress by constantly inflating their spectacular qualities’. 7 ‘Spectacle’, it seems, is winning the war against ‘narrative’ all along the line.Even a brief statistical analysis reveals that ‘special effects’ driven films have enjoyed enormous recent success, garnering an average of over 60% of the global revenue taken by the top 10 films from 1995-1998, compared to an average of 30% over the previous four years. 8 Given that the proportion of box office revenue taken by the top 10 films has held steady or increased slightl y in the context of a rapidly expanding total market, this indicates that a handful of special-effects films are generating huge revenues each year.While such figures don’t offer a total picture of the film industry, let alone reveal which films which will exert lasting cultural influence, they do offer a snapshot of contemporary cultural taste refracted through studio marketing budgets. Coupled to the recent popularity of paracinematic forms, such as large format and special venue films, the renewed emphasis on ‘spectacle’ over ‘narrative’ suggests another possible end-game for 3 inema: not the frequently prophesied emptying of theatres made redundant by the explosion of home-based viewing (television, video, the internet), but a transformation from within which produces a cinema no longer resembling its (narrative) self, but something quite other. Complementing these debates over possible cinematic futures is the fact that any turn to spectacular f ilm ‘rides’ can also be conceived as a return — whether renaissance or regression is less clear — to an earlier paradigm of film-making famously dubbed the ‘cinema of attraction’ by Tom Gunning.Gunning long ago signalled this sense of return when he commented: ‘Clearly in some sense recent spectacle cinema has re-affirmed its roots in stimulus and carnival rides, in what might be called the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects’. 9 For Paul Arthur, developments in the 1990s underline the point: The advent of Imax 3-D and its future prospects, in tandem with the broader strains of a New Sensationalism, provide an occasion to draw some connections with the early history of cinema and the recurrent dialectic between the primacy of the visual and, for lack of a better term, the sensory. 0 In what follows here, I want to further consider the loops and twists of these debates, not so much with the grand ambition of resolving them, b ut firstly of adding some different voices to the discussion — particularly the voices of those involved in film production. 11 My intention is not to elevate empiricism over theory, but to promote dialogue between different domains of film culture which meet all too rarely, and, in the process, to question the rather narrow terms in which ‘digital cinema’ has frequently entered recent theoretical debates.Secondly, I want to consider the relation between ‘narrative’ and ‘spectacle’ as it is manifested in these debates. My concern is that there seems to be a danger of confusing a number of different trajectories — such as cinema’s on-going efforts to demarcate its ‘experience’ from that of domestic entertainment technologies, and the turn to blockbuster exploitation strategies —and conflating them under the heading of ‘digital cinema’.While digital technology certainly intersects with, and si gnificantly overlaps these developments, it is by no means co-extensive with them. ‘Spectacular sounds’: cinema in the digital domain Putting aside the inevitable hype about the metamorphosis of Hollywood into ‘Cyberwood’, like many others I am convinced that digital technology constitutes a profound revolution in cinema, primarily because of its capacity to cut across all 4 sectors of the industry simultaneously, affecting film production, narrative conventions and audience experience.In this respect, the only adequate point of reference for the depth and extent of current changes are the transformations which took place with the introduction of synchronised sound in the 1920s. However, while the fundamental level at which change is occurring is widely recognised, it has been discussed primarily in terms of the impact of CGI (computer-generated imaging) on the film image. A more production-oriented approach would most likely begin elsewhere; with what Phil ip Brophy has argued is among ‘the most overlooked aspects of film theory and criticism (both modern and postmodern strands)’ — sound. 2 A brief flick through recent articles on digital cinema confirms this neglect: Manovich locates ‘digital cinema’ solely in a historical lineage of moving pictures; none of the articles in the recent Screen dossier mention sound, and even Eric Faden’s ‘Assimilating New Technologies: Early Cinema, Sound and Computer Imaging’ only uses the introduction of synchronised sound as an historical analogy for discussing the contemporary effect of CGI on the film image13. While not entirely unexpected, this silence is still somewhat urprising, given the fact that digital sound technology was adopted by the film industry far earlier and more comprehensively than was CGI. And, at least until the early 1990s with films like Terminator 2 (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993), the effect on audience experience was arg uably far greater than was digital imaging. Dominic Case [Group Services and Technology Manager at leading Australian film processor Atlab] argued in 1997: I am more and more convinced that the big story about film technology as far as audiences are concerned in the past few years has been sound.Because, although you can do fancy digital things, the image remains glued to that bit of screen in front of your eyes, and it’s not really any bigger†¦ But the sound has gone from one woolly sound coming from the back of the screen with virtually no frequency range or dynamic range whatsoever †¦ to something that fills the theatre in every direction with infinitely more dynamic range and frequency range. To me, that’s an explosion in experience compared to what you are seeing on the screen.However, the visual bias of most film theory is so pervasive that this transformation often passes unremarked. Part of the problem is that we lack the necessary conceptual armature : there are no linkages which pull terms such as 5 ‘aural’ or ‘listener’ into the sort of semantic chain joining spectacle and spectator to the adjective ‘spectacular’. Film sound-mixer Ian McLoughlin notes: Generally speaking, most people are visually trained from birth. †¦ Very few people are trained to have a aural language and, as a result there isn't much discussion about the philosophy of the sound track. .. There has been very, very little research done into the psycho-acoustic effects of sound and the way sound works sociologically on the audience. 14 Compounding this absence is the fact that the digital revolution in sound is, in many respects, the practical realisation of changes initiated with the introduction of Dolby Stereo in 1975. (On the other hand, the fact that CGI entered a special effects terrain already substantially altered by techniques of motion control, robotics and animatronics didn’t prevent critical atten tion to it. Four-track Dolby stereo led to a new era of sound experimentation beginning with films such as Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). As renowned sound mixer Roger Savage (whose credits include Return of the Jedi, 1983; Shine, 1996; and Romeo + Juliet, 1996) recalls: ‘Prior to that, film sound hadn’t changed for probably 30 years. It was Mono Academy †¦ Star Wars was one of the first films that I can remember where people started coming out of the theatre talking about the sound track’. 5 While narrative sound effects such as dialogue and music were still generally concentrated in the front speakers, the surround sound speakers became the vehicles for a new range of ‘spectacular’ sound effects. In particular, greater emphasis was given to boosting low frequency response, explicitly mirroring the amplified ambience of rock music. There was also greater attention given to the ‘spatialisation’ of di screte sound elements within the theatre.As Rich Altman has argued, these developments presented a significant challenge to one of the fundamental precepts of classical Hollywood narrative: the unity of sound and image and the subservience of sound effects to narrative logic: Whereas Thirties film practice fostered unconscious visual and psychological spectator identification with characters who appear as a perfect amalgam of image and sound, the Eighties ushered in a new kind of visceral identification, dependent on the sound system’s overt ability, through bone-rattling bass and unexpected surround effects, to cause spectators to vibrate — quite literally — with the entire narrative space.It is thus no longer the eyes, the ears and the brain that alone initiate identification and maintain contact with a sonic 6 source; instead, it is the whole body that establishes a relationship, marching to the beat of a different woofer. Where sound was once hidden behind t he image in order to allow more complete identification with the image, now the sound source is flaunted, fostering a separate sonic identification contesting the limited rational draw of the image and its characters. 16 Altman’s observation is significant in this context, inasmuch as it suggests that the dethroning of a certain model of narrative cinema had begun prior to the digital threshold, and well before the widespread use of CGI.It also indicates the frontline role that sound took in the film industry’s initial response to the incursions of video : in the 1980s the new sound of cinema was a primary point of differentiation from domestic image technologies. However, while Dolby certainly created a new potential for dramatic sound effects, in practice most film makers remained limited by a combination of logistical and economic constraints. In this respect, the transition to digital sound has been critical in creating greater latitude for experimentation within e xisting budget parameters and production time frames. In terms of sound production, Roger Savage argues: ‘The main advantages in digital are the quality control, the speed and the flexibility’. This is a theme which is repeated with regard to the computerisation of other areas of film making such as picture editing and CGI. ) Enhanced speed, flexibility and control stem from a reduction in the need for physical handling and a refinement of precision in locating and manipulating individual elements. In sound production, libraries of analogue tape reels each holding ten minutes of sound have given way to far more compact DAT tapes and hard drive storage. The entire production process can now often be realised on a single digital workstation. There is no need for a separate transfer bay, and, since digital processing involves the manipulation of electronic data, there is no risk of degrading or destroying original recordings by repeated processing.Once the sounds are catal ogued, digital workstations grant random access in a fraction of a second (eliminating tape winding time), and, unlike sprocket-based sound editing, all the tracks which have been laid can be heard immediately in playback. The creative pay-off is an enhanced ability to add complexity and texture to soundtracks. In terms of sound reproduction, the most marked change resulting from six track digital theatre systems is improved stereo separation and frequency response which assists better music reproduction in theatres — a change which goes hand in glove with the increased prominence that music and soundtracks have assumed in promoting and marketing films in recent years. 7The enhanced role of sound in cinema is even more marked for large format films which, because of their high level of visual detail, demand a correspondingly high level of audio detail. Ian McLoughlin (who, amongst many other things, shares sound mixing credits with Savage for the large-format films Africaâ₠¬â„¢s Elephant Kingdom, 1998 and The Story of a Sydney, 1999) comments: If you look at the two extremes of image technology, if you look at television, and then you look at something like Imax, the most interesting difference is the density of the sound track that is required with the size of the picture. When you’re doing a TV mix, you try to be simple, bold. You can’t get much in or otherwise it just becomes a mess.With 35mm feature films you're putting in 10, 20 times more density and depth into the sound track as compared to television, and †¦ when you go to Imax, you need even more. McLoughlin also makes a significant point concerning the use (or abuse) of digital sound: When digital first came out and people found that they could make a enormously loud sound tracks, everyone wanted enormously large sound tracks. †¦ Unfortunately some people who present films decided that the alignment techniques that companies like Dolby and THX have worked out arenâ₠¬â„¢t to their liking and they think audiences like a lot of sub-base and so they sometimes wind that up. †¦ [S]uddenly you’ve got audiences with chest cavities being punched due to the amount of bottom end. †¦Dolby and screen producers and screen distributors in America have actually been doing a lot of research into what they are calling the ‘annoyance factor’ of loud sound tracks. Because audiences are getting turned off by overly jarring, overly sharp, soundtracks. This comment is worth keeping in mind for two reasons. Firstly, it underlines the fact that the image is by no means the only vehicle for producing cinematic affect: in this sense, ‘impact aesthetics’ offers a more apt description of the trajectory of contemporary cinema than ‘spectacle’. Secondly, it warns against making hasty generalisations when assessing the long-term implications of CGI.While digital imaging undoubtedly represents a significant paradigm shif t in cinema, it is also feasible that the 1990s will eventually be seen more as a teething period of ‘gee whizz’ experimentation with the new digital toolbox, which was gradually turned towards other (even more ‘narrative’) ends. (The way we now look at early sound films is instructive: while contemporary audiences were fascinated by the mere 8 fact that pictures could ‘talk’, in retrospect we tend to give more weight to the way sound imposed new restrictions on camera movement, location shooting and acting style). Painting with light In contrast to the relative dearth of attention given to changes in areas such as sound and picture editing, digital manipulation of the film image has received massive publicity.While this is partly the result of deliberate studio promotion, it also reflects the profound changes in cinematic experience that computers have set in train. When we can see Sam Neil running from a herd of dinosaurs — in other wo rds, when we see cinematic images offering realistic depictions of things we know don’t exist — it is evident that the whole notion of photo-realism which has long been a central plank of cinematic credibility is changing. But how should this change be understood? Is it simply that ‘live action’ footage can now be ‘supplemented’ with CG elements which replace earlier illusionistic techniques such as optical printing, but leave cinema’s unique identity as an ‘art of recording’ intact? Or is a new paradigm emerging in which cinema becomes more like painting or animation?Lev Manovich has recently taken the latter position to an extreme, arguing that, ‘Digital cinema is a particular case of animation which uses live-action footage as one of its many elements’, and concluding: ‘In retrospect, we can see that twentieth century cinema’s regime of visual realism, the result of automatically recording visua l reality, was only an exception, an isolated accident in the history of visual representation†¦ ’. 17 While I suspect that Manovich significantly underestimates the peculiar attractions of ‘automatic recording’ (which produced what Walter Benjamin termed the photograph’s irreducible ‘spark of contingency’, what Barthes ontologised as the hotographic punctum), it is clear the referential bond linking camera image to physical object has come under potentially terminal pressure in the digital era. However, any consideration of ‘realism’ in cinema is immediately complicated by the primacy of fictional narrative as the dominant form of film production and consumption. Moreover, cinema swiftly moved from adherence to the ideal of direct correspondence between image and object which lay at the heart of classical claims to photographic referentiality. ‘Cheating’ with the order of events, or the times, locations and sett ings in which they occur, is second nature to film-makers. By the time cinema ‘came of age’ in the picture palace of the 1920s, a new logic of montage, shot matching and continuity had coalesced into the paradigm of 9 classical narrative’, and cinematic credibility belonged more to the movement of the text rather than the photographic moment — a shift Jean-Louis Commolli has neatly described in terms of a journey from purely optical to psychological realism. 18 Within this paradigm all imaginable tactics were permissible in order to imbue pro-filmic action with the stamp of cinematic authority — theatrical techniques such as performance, make-up, costumes, lighting and set design were augmented by specifically cinematic techniques such as stop motion photography and rear projection, as well as model-making and matte painting which entered the screen world via the optical printer.Given this long history of simulation, the digital threshold is perhaps best located in terms of its effect on what Stephen Prince has dubbed ‘perceptual realism’, rather than in relation to an abstract category of ‘realism’ in general. Prince argues: A perceptually realistic image is one which structurally corresponds to the viewer’s audio-visual experience of three-dimensional space †¦ Such images display a nested hierarchy of cues which organise the display of light, colour, texture, movement and sound in ways that correspond to the viewer’s own understanding of these phenomena in daily life. Perceptual realism, therefore, designates a relationship between the image on film and the spectator, and it can encompass both unreal images and those which are referentially realistic. Because of this, unreal images may be referentially fictional but perceptually realistic. 19I have emphasised Prince’s evocation of fidelity to ‘audio-visual experience’ because it underlines the extent to which t he aim of most computer artists working in contemporary cinema is not simply to create high resolution images, but to make these images look as if they might have been filmed. This includes adding various ‘defects’, such as film grain, lens flare, motion blur and edge halation. CG effects guru Scott Billups argues that film makers had to ‘educate’ computer programmers to achieve this end: For years we were saying: ‘Guys, you look out on the horizon and things get grayer and less crisp as they get farther away’. But those were the types of naturally occurring event structures that never got written into computer programs.They’d say ‘Why do you want to reduce the resolution? Why do you want to blur it? ’. 20 10 By the 1990s many software programs had addressed this issue. As Peter Webb (one of the developers of Flame) notes: Flame has a lot of tools that introduce the flaws that one is trained to see. Even though we donâ€℠¢t notice them, there is lens flare and motion blur, and the depth of field things, and, if you don’t see them, you begin to get suspicious about a shot. 21 In other words, because of the extent to which audiences have internalised the camera’s qualities as the hallmark of credibility, contemporary cinema no longer aims to mime ‘reality’, but ‘camera-reality’.Recognising this shift underlines the heightened ambivalence of realism in the digital domain. The film maker’s ability to take the image apart at ever more minute levels is counterpointed by the spectator’s desire to comprehend the resulting image as ‘realistic’ — or, at least, equivalent to other cine-images. In some respects, this can be compared to the dialectic underlying the development of montage earlier this century, as a more ‘abstract’ relation to individual shots became the basis for their reconstitution as an ‘organicâ€℠¢ text. But instead of the fragmentation and re-assemblage of the image track over time, which founded the development of lassical narrative cinema and its core ‘grammatical’ structures such as shot/reverse shot editing, digital technology introduces a new type of montage: montage within the frame whose prototype is the real time mutation of morphing. However, while ‘perceptual realism’ was achieved relatively painlessly in digital sound, the digital image proved far more laborious. Even limited attempts to marry live action with CGI, such as TRON (1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984) proved unable to sustain the first wave of enthusiasm for the computer. As one analyst observed: ‘The problem was that digital technology was both comparatively slow and prohibitively expensive. In fact, workstations capable of performing at film resolution were driven by Cray super-computers’. 2 It is these practical exigencies, coupled to the aesthetic disjunct ion separating software programmers from film makers I noted above, rather than a deeply felt desire to manufacture a specifically electronic aesthetic, which seems to underlie the ‘look’ of early CGI. 23 Exponential increases in computing speed, coupled to decreases in computing cost, not only launched the desktop PC revolution in the mid-1980s, but made CGI in film an entirely different matter. The second wave of CGI was signalled when Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) made morphing a household word. 24 Two 11 years later the runaway box-office success of Jurassic Park (1993) changed the question from whether computers could be effectively used in film making to how soon this would happen. The subsequent rash of CGI-driven blockbusters, topped by the billion dollar plus gross of Cameron’s Titanic (1997), has confirmed the trajectory.Cameron is one of many influential players who argue that cinema is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation: ‘Weà ¢â‚¬â„¢re on the threshold of a moment in cinematic history that is unparalleled. Anything you imagine can be done. If you can draw it, if you can describe it, we can do it. It’s just a matter of cost’. 25 While this claim is true at one level — many tricky tasks such as depicting skin, hair and water, or integrating CGI elements into live action images shot with a hand-held camera, have now been accomplished successfully — it is worth remembering that ‘realism’ is a notoriously slippery goal, whether achieved via crayon, camera or computer.Dennis Muren’s comments on his path-breaking effects for Jurassic Park (which in fact had only 5 to 6 minutes of CGI and relied heavily on models and miniatures, as did more recent ‘state of the art’ blockbusters such as The Fifth Element, 1997 and Dark City, 1998) bear repeating: ‘Maybe we’ll look back in 10 years and notice that we left things out that we didn’t kn ow needed to be there until we developed the next version of this technology’. Muren adds: In the Star Wars films you saw lots of X-wings fighters blow up, but these were always little models shot with high-speed cameras. You’ve never seen a real X-wing blow up, but by using CGI, you might just suddenly see what looks like a full-sized X-wing explode. It would be all fake of course, but you’d see the structure inside tearing apart, the physics of this piece blowing off that piece. Then you might look back at Star Wars and say, ‘That looks terrible’. 26Clearly, George Lucas shared this sentiment, acknowledging in 1997 that ‘I’m still bugged by things I couldn’t do or couldn’t get right, and now I can fix them’. 27 The massive returns generated by the ‘digitally enhanced’ Star Wars trilogy raises the prospect of a future in which blockbuster movies are not re-made with new casts, but perpetually updated w ith new generations of special effects. Stop the sun, I want to get off Putting aside the still looming question of digital projection, the bottom line in the contemporary use of digital technology in cinema is undoubtedly ‘control’: 12 particularly the increased control that film makers have over all the different components of image and sound tracks.Depending on a film’s budget, the story no longer has to work around scenes which might be hard to set up physically or reproduce photo-optically— they are all grist to the legions of screen jockeys working in digital post-production houses. George Lucas extols the new technology for enhancing the ability to realise directorial vision: I think cinematographers would love to have ultimate control over the lighting; they’d like to be able to say, ‘OK, I want the sun to stop there on the horizon and stay there for about six hours, and I want all of those clouds to go away. Everybody wants that kind of control over the image and the storytelling process. Digital technology is just the ultimate version of that. 28A direct result of digital imaging and compositing techniques has been an explosion of films which, instead of ‘fudging’ the impossible, revel in the capacity to depict it with gripping ‘realism’: Tom Cruise’s face can be ripped apart in real time (Interview with the Vampire, 1994), the Whitehouse can be incinerated by a fireball from above (Independence Day, 1996), New York can be drowned by a tidal wave, or smashed by a giant lizard(Deep Impact, Godzilla, 1998). But, despite Lucas’ enthusiasm, many are dubious about where the new primacy of special effects leaves narrative in cinema. The argument put forward by those such as Sean Cubitt and Scott Bukatman is that contemporary special effects tend to displace narrative insofar as they introduce a disjunctive temporality evocative of the sublime.Focusing on Doug Trumbull’s work, Bukatman emphasises the contemplative relationship established between spectator and screen in key effects scenes (a relationship frequently mirrored by on-screen characters displaying their awe at what they– and ‘we’ – are seeing. )29 Cubitt suggests that similar ‘fetishistic’ moments occur in songs such as Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, where narrative progress gives way to visual fascination. His example is drawn from a strikingly similar terrain to that which inspired Laura Mulvey’s well-known thesis on the tension between voyeurism and scopophilia in classical narrative cinema: Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative. (Note, however, in the musical song-and-dance numbers break the flow of the diegesis).The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. 30 13 This connection was also made by Tom Gunning in his work on the early ‘cinema of attraction’: ‘As Laura Mulvey has shown in a very different context, the dialectic between spectacle and narrative has fueled much of the classical cinema’. 31 In this respect, a key point to draw from both Mulvey and Gunning is to recognise that they don’t conceive the relationship between spectacle and narrative in terms of opposition but dialectical tension. 32 This is something that other writers have sometimes forgotten.Presenting the issue in terms of an opposition (spectacle versus narrative) in fact recycles positions which have been consistently articulated (and regularly reversed) throughout the century. In the 1920s, avant-garde film makers railed against ‘narrative’ because it was associated primarily with literary and theatrical scenarios at the expense of cinematic qualities (Gunning begins his ‘Cine ma of Attraction’ essay with just such a quote from Fernand Leger). Similar concerns emerged with debates in France over auteur theory in the 1950s, where the literary qualities of script were opposed to the ‘properly cinematic’ qualities of mise-en-scene.In the 1970s, the ‘refusal of narrative’ which characterised much Screen theory of the period, took on radical political connotations. Perhaps as a reaction to the extremity of pronouncements by those such as Peter Gidal, there has been a widespread restoration of narrative qualities as a filmic ‘good object’ in the present. However, rather than attempting to resolve this split in favour of one side or the other, the more salient need is to examine their irreducible intertwining: what sort of stories are being told, and what sort of spectacles are being deployed in their telling? While it is easy to lament the quality of story-telling in contemporary blockbusters, few critics seriously maintain that such films are without narrative.A more productive framework is to analyse why explicitly ‘mythological’ films such as the Star Wars cycle have been able to grip popular imagination at this particular historical conjuncture, marrying the bare bones of fairy-tale narrative structures to the inculcation of a specific type of special effects driven viewing experience. (To some extent, ths is Bukatman’s approach in his analysis of special effects). In this context, it is also worth remembering that, despite the quite profound transformations set in train by the use of digital technology in film making, there has thus far been little discernible effect on narrative in terms of structure or genre. The flirtation with ‘non-linear’ and ‘interactive’ films was a shooting star which came and went with the CD-ROM, while most contemporary blockbusters conform smoothly to established cine-genres (sci-fi, horror, disaster and action- 14 dventure predominating), with a significant number being direct re-makes of older films done ‘better’ in the digital domain. One of the more interesting observations about possible trends in the industry is put forward by James Cameron, who has argued that digital technology has the potential to free film makers from the constraints of the ‘A’ and ‘B’ picture hierarchy: [I]n the ’40s you either had a movie star or you had a B-movie. Now you can create an A-level movie with some kind of visual spectacle, where you cast good actors, but you don’t need an Arnold or a Sly or a Bruce or a Kevin to make it a viable film. 33 However, Cameron himself throws doubt on the extent of this ‘liberation’ by underlining the industrial nature of digital film production. 4 In practice, any film with the budget to produce a large number of cutting edge special effects shots is inevitably sold around star participation, as well as specta cle (as were films such as The Robe, 1953 and Ben Hur, 1926). This point about the intertwining of narrative and spectacle is re-inforced if we look at developments in large-format film, an area frequently singled out for its over-dependence on screen spectacle to compensate for notoriously boring ‘educational’ narrative formats. Large-format (LF) cinema is currently in the throes of a significant transformation The number of screens worldwide has exploded in the last four years (between 1995 and January 1999, the global LF circuit grew from 165 to 263 theatres. By January 2001, another 101 theatres are due to open, taking the total to 364, an increase of 120% in 6 years).More significantly, the majority of new screens are being run by commercial operators rather than institutions such as science museums. These new exhibition opportunities, coupled to the box-office returns generated by films such as Everest (the 15th highest grossing film in the USA in 1998, despite ap pearing on only 32 screens) has created significant momentum in the sector for the production of LF films capable of attracting broader audiences. For some producers, this means attempting to transfer the narrative devices of dramatic feature films onto the giant screen, while others argue that the peculiarities of the medium means that LF needs to stick with its proven documentary subjects.However, most significantly in this context, none dispute the need for the sector to develop better narrative techniques if it is to grow and prosper, particularly by 15 attracting ‘repeat’ audiences. In many respects, the LF sector is currently in a similar position to cinema in the 1900s, with people going to see the apparatus rather than a specific film, and the ‘experience’ being advertised largely on this basis. While it would be simplistic to see current attempts to improve the narrative credentials of LF films as a faithful repetition of the path that 35mm cinema took earlier this century, since most production is likely to remain documentary-oriented, it would be equally as foolish to ignore the cultural and commercial imperatives which still converge around telling a ‘good story’. 5 Distraction and the politics of spectacle Despite the current rash of digitally-inspired predictions, narrative in film is unlikely to succumb to technological obsolescence. But nor will spectacle be vanquished by a miraculous resurgence of ‘quality’ stories. A corollary of a dialectical conception of the interrelationship between narrative and spectacle is that neither should be seen simply as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ objects in themselves. For Mulvey, spectacle (exemplified by close-ups which turn woman’s face and body into a fetish), as well as the more voyeuristic strategy of narrative, were both attuned to the anxious imagination of patriarchal culture in classical cinema.Both were techniques for negotiatin g the threat of castration raised by the image of woman, an image classical cinema simultaneously desired and sought to circumscribe or punish. Nevertheless, even within this heavily constrained context, ‘spectacle’ could also assume a radical function by ‘interrupting’ the smooth functioning of narrative, disturbing the rules of identification and the systematic organisation of the look within the text. (This is the gist of her comparison between the films of von Sternberg, which privilege a fetish image of Dietrich over narrative progress, and those of Hitchcock which more closely align the viewer with the male protagonist). Can spectacle still exert a ‘progressive’ function in contemporary cinema?While most critics answer this question negatively without even posing it, Paul Young is unusual in granting a measure of radical effect to the renewed primacy of spectacle. Young draws on Miriam Hansen’s account of the ‘productive ambi guity’ of early cinema, in which the lack of standardised modes of exhibition, coupled to reliance on individual attractions, gave audiences a relative freedom to interpret what they saw, and established cinema as (potentially) an alternative public sphere. He takes this as support for his argument that contemporary ‘spectacle’ cinema constitutes an emergent challenge to ‘Hollywood’s institutional identity’. 36 16 Young’s analysis contrasts markedly with Gunning’s earlier description of the ‘cinema of effects’ as ‘tamed attractions’. 7 Nevertheless both share some common ground: Young’s reference to the ‘productive ambiguity’ of early cinema, like Gunning’s rather oblique and undeveloped reference to the ‘primal power’ of attraction, draws nourishment from Siegfried Kracauer’s early writings on the concept of distraction. In the 1920s, Kracauer set up Ã¢â‚¬Ë œdistraction’ as a counterpoint to contemplation as a privileged mode of audience reception, seeing it as embodying a challenge to bourgeois taste for literary-theatrical narrative forms, and also as the most compelling mode of presentation to the cinema audience of their own disjointed and fragmented conditions of existence. 38 While distraction persisted as a category used by Walter Benjamin in his ‘Artwork’ essay of the mid1930s, by the 1940s Kracauer seemed to have revised his position.As Elsaesser has pointed out, this re-appraisal was at least partly a re-assessment of the ‘productive ambiguity’ which had characterised social spaces such as cinema; by the 1940s distraction and spectacle had been consolidated into socially dominant forms epitomised by Hollywood on the one hand and fascism on the other. 39 If Kracauer’s faith that the 1920s audience could symptomatically encounter ‘its own reality’ via the superficial glamour of movie stars rather than the putative substance of the era’s ‘high culture’ was already shaken by the 1940s, what would he make of the post-pop art, postmodern 1990s? The extent to which surface elements of popular culture have been esthetically ‘legitimated’ without any significant transformation of corresponding political and economic values suggests the enormous difficulties facing those trying to utilise spectacle as a ‘progressive’ element in contemporary culture. However, it is equally important to acknowledge that this problem cannot be resolved simply by appealing to ‘narrative’ as an antidote. While the terms remain so monolithic, the debate will not progress beyond generalities. In this respect, Kracauer’s work still offers some important lessons to consider in the present. Here, by way of conclusion, I want to sketch out a few possible lines of inquiry. On the one hand, his concept of the ‘mass orna ment’ indicates that any turn, or return, to spectacle in cinema needs to be situated in a wider social context. 0 Spectacle is not simply a matter of screen image, but constitutes a social relation indexed by the screen (something Guy Debord underlined in the 1960s). Developments in contemporary cinema need to be related to a number of other trajectories, including cinema’s on-going endeavours to distinguish its ‘experience’ 17 from that of home entertainment, as well as the proliferation of spectacle in social arenas as diverse as sport (the Olympic games), politics (the dominance of the cult of personality in all political systems) and war (the proto-typical ‘media-event’). On the other hand, the specific forms of spectacle mobilised in contemporary cinema need to be examined for the extent to which they might reveal (in Kracauer’s terms) the ‘underlying meaning of existing conditions’.Kracauer’s analysis of cinem a in the 1920s situated the popularity of a certain structure of viewing experience in relation to the rise of a new class (the white collar worker). In contemporary terms, I would argue that the relevant transformation is the process of ‘globalisation’. While this is a complex, heterogeneous and uneven phenomenon, a relevant aspect to consider here is Hollywood’s increasing reliance on overseas markets, both for revenue, and, more importantly, for growth. 41 In this context, the growing imperative for films to ‘translate’ easily to all corners and cultures of the world is answered by building films around spectacular action setpieces. Equally as ignificantly, the predominant themes of recent special effects cinema— the destruction of the city and the mutation or dismemberment of the human body — are symptomatic of the underlying tensions of globalisation, tensions exemplified by widespread ambivalence towards the socio-political effect s of speed and the new spatio-temporal matrices such as cyberspace. 42 The most important cinematic manifestations of these anxious fascinations are not realised at the level of narrative ‘content’ (although they occasionally make themselves felt there), but appear symptomatically in the structure of contemporary viewing experience. The repetition of awe and astonishment repeatedly evoked by ‘impossible’ images as the currency of today’s ‘cutting edge’ cinema undoubtedly functions to prepare us for the uncertain pleasures of living in a world we suspect we will soon no longer recognise: it is not simply ‘realism’ but ‘reality’ which is mutating in the era of digital economy and the Human Genome Project.If this turn to spectacle is, in some respects, comparable to the role played by early cinema in negotiating the new social spaces which emerged in the industrial city remade by factories and department stores, el ectrification and dynamic vehicles, it also underscores the fact that the ‘death’ of camera realism in the late twentieth century is a complex psycho-social process, not least because photo-realism was always less an aesthetic function than a deeply embedded social and political relation. 43 18 Finally, I would argue that it is important not to subsume all these filmic headings under the single rubric of ‘digital’. There is a need to acknowledge, firstly, that digital technology is used far more widely in the film industry than for the production of blockbusters and special effects (for example, it is the new industry standard in areas such as sound production and picture editing).Moreover, as Elsaesser has argued recently, technology is not the driving force: ‘In each case, digitisation is ‘somewhere’, but it is not what regulates the system, whose logic is commercial, entrepreneurial and capitalist-industrialist’44 What the digit al threshold has enabled is the realignment of cinema in conformity with new demands, such as ‘blockbuster’ marketing blitzes constructed around a few spectacular image sequences of the kind that propelled Independence Day to an US$800m gross. It has rejuvenated cinema’s capacity to set aesthetic agendas, and, at the same time, restored its status as a key player in contemporary political economy. In this context, one aspect of the digital threshold deserves further attention. In the 1990s, product merchandising has become an increasingly important part of financing the globalised film industry.While some would date this from Star Wars, Jurassic Park offers a more relevant point of reference: for the first time, audiences could see on screen, as an integral part of the filmic diegesis, the same commodities they could purchase in the cinema foyer. As Lucie Fjeldstad (then head of IBM’s multimedia division) remarked at the time (1993) : ‘Digital conten t is a return-on-assets goldmine, because once you create Terminator 3, the character, it can be used in movies, in theme-park rides, videogames, books, educational products’. 45 Digital convergence is enacted not simply in the journey from large screen to small screen: the same parameters used in designing CG characters for a film can easily be transmitted to off-shore factories manufacturing plastic toys.

Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue

Anthony B. FieldingUtilitarian, Deontological, and Virtue ethics The concept of utilitarianism is closely related to the philosophy of consequentialism. Basically this means that the moral and ethical value of a person’s action should be judged by the consequence of that action. Utilitarianism is believed to be the most important of the three ethical theories because it has helped shape our world’s politics, economics, and public policy. This ethical theory explains to us that we can determine the ethical significance by judging the consequence of that act.So basically I understand utilitarianism as; what is good for the majority is just and that happiness is the ultimate goal. An example of my own would be; the utilitarian would say that if six people were trapped on an island, two adult males and four small children with enough food to last two days if they all ate, but if the men did not eat, there would be enough for the children to eat for a week, it is ok for two men to starve to death if it meant that four children would live long enough to be rescued.Bound by our duties, walk the walk, and practice what you preach, the deontologist’s view of ethics. Contrary to utilitarianism, deontology says that there are some things that we should or should not do regardless of the consequence. Law enforcement officers wear a badge of honor ‘To serve and protect. ’ This motto is definitely one that describes deontology. Another popular slogan we hear is â€Å"Be all you can be. † This duty is demonstrated by our U. S. Army. A bodyguard’s duty is to protect his employer to the extent of endangering his own life.Virtue ethics questions how we should live our lives. A person is judged by his character and not by the actions he may uncommonly choose. Character building takes a lot of work. Character is introduced to us at a very young age by many sources, parents, grand-parents and teachers just to name a few. To me, virtue ethics can be confused as ‘do as I say and not as I do. ’ A person that practices virtue ethics may work for a company that sells automatic machine guns, but teach in his home that guns are bad.

Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory and Hong Kong Essay Example

Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory and Hong Kong Essay Example Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory and Hong Kong Paper Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory and Hong Kong Paper Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory focused on the affect of the surroundings, namely the culture, peers, and adults, on the developing child. Vygotsky proposed the â€Å"zone of proximal development† (ZPD) to explain the influence of the cultural context. ZPD refers to the range of tasks which a child cannot finish alone since they are too difficult, but such tasks can be completed with guidance and aid from more-skilled individuals. The lower limit of ZPD is the level of skill that the children can reach alone, and the upper limit of ZPD is the level of skill that the children can reach with guidance from a more skilled individual, such as teachers, parents and more-skilled peers. Imagine a child is having difficulty writing book reports. With suitable aid from teachers and parents, this child can improve in writing book reports and eventually he/she can finish a detailed book report after reading on his own. In this example, the upper limit of the ZPD is to finish a book report and the assistance provided by the adults is called scaffolding. The assistance provided by the more-skilled individuals will act as a scaffolding to help the children to develop into their upper limit of ZPD. As the children are making progress, the assistance will gradually reduce and removed when the children can complete the task in their upper limit of ZPD on their own. Vygotsky also emphasized on the importance of language in a child’s development. The use of language by children to self-regulate is called private speech. According to Vygotsky, private speech, which Piaget deemed egocentric and immature, is crucial during early childhood years as children use it for planning, guiding and monitoring their actions and help them finish tasks. Vygotsky suggested that children who use private speech will be more socially competent as children must be experienced in using language to communicate with others before making the transition from external to internal speech. In the past, the main emphasis of education of Hong Kong is to get good grades in public exams, as they provide more opportunity towards success. This results in schools focusing on instructing knowledge to students like feeding chickens in a farm and doesn’t really care whether the students understand the knowledge instructed or not. This exam-oriented style of education ignores the students’ development as a whole, and generates many graduates with good grades in school and struggled in workplace. The old educational style of Hong Kong seems not to fit with Vygotsky’s theory. Nowadays, the emphasis of education in Hong Kong seems to be starting to shift from instructing knowledge to assisting students to construct knowledge. As teachers will not only instruct knowledges, but also guides students in finishing tasks such as laboratory exercises and group projects. This implies the ZPD as teachers will now try to dig students’ potential and help students to reach them. Peer mentors are also very common in secondary schools nowadays. Senior form students will volunteer or be recruited by teachers to assist junior form students to finish assignments or group projects. Cross-age mentoring is more common than same-age mentoring. Same-age mentoring will only occur in class, as students with better understanding on the subject will help explain the concepts to other students and assist them in finishing in-class assignments. The peer mentors are suggested to adjust the amount of guidance according to the progress of the tutees. This implies the scaffolding concept and that culture is important in learning as the tutees are making progress, the peer mentors will reduce the amount of assistance by allowing the tutee to think on his own. Also, the mentors can act as a guide to the tutees so that the tutees can learn from both the teachers and peer mentors. This can also stimulate thinking and the mentors can learn from tutoring as well. The idea of private speech is not very popular in Hong Kong, as children exercising it will be deemed stupid and immature, and parents will feel embarassed and think their children have mental issues. In Hong Kong, a â€Å"good† child should be quiet when working. Therefore, the use of private speech when working on tasks are not encouraged. Students in Hong Kong are now encouraged to take part in various activities such as field trips and museum visits. These activities implies the key concept of Vygotsky’s theory: the importance of culture in learning by creating simulations of real-world circumstances and help students to construct the knowledge the teacher desired. However, such activities are not very popular among Hong Kong students as they tend to think such activities as a waste of time and money. In Hong Kong, the culture emphasizes on creating good results with the least effort. This results in students attending expensive tutorials just to get desired grades and attend desired universities. It seems to me that all the effort from the Education Bureau and schools to turn an instructive, exam-oriented education ystem to a more constructive, all-rounded system are ineffective as the students consider this as redundant. It’s very common for students in Hong Kong to say things like â€Å"I prefer past papers to field trips† as past paper will help students get good grades but field trips won’t. To conclude, implications of Vygotsky’s theory can be found in traditional schools in Hong Kong. In my opinion, the key concept of Vygotsky’s theory and other social constructivists’ theory is to stimulate thin kning and construct knowledge through sociocultural activities. This can definitely help students to develop a better understanding of knowledge and stimulate all-round development as a person. However, the education system in Hong Kong, even with addition of elements to exercise Vygotsky’s theory, is still very exam-oriented. This is mainly due to the reluctance of the students and teachers. As students find these additions of elements redundant and a waste of time, some teachers may also find these additional workload is tiring and ineffective.

Unit Three Critical Discussion Blog Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Unit Three Critical Discussion Blog - Assignment Example The word rendition means to carry or take something somewhere (with a slightly sinister echo of the word â€Å"render† or reduce and recycle a dead animal). The term as a whole is very abstract. There is no real nonverbal communication in the use of this term, but the body language of people who frequently use it suggests they are hiding something. As is suggested in Chapter 10, the delivery of meaning is very important: if your euphemism is as bad as this one, your body language may suggest you are being dishonest. People should be honest about what they mean. They could say something like international arrest, or extrajudicial arrest, if they want to be more ethical. As the textbook suggests, it is not ethical for members of government to try to hide the truth from citizens by using euphemisms. Another similar euphemism is Enhanced Interrogation Techniques when people mean

Under Armour's global expansion in a foreign market Essay

Under Armour's global expansion in a foreign market - Essay Example This paper recommends that Under Armour carry out an in-depth analysis on its internal capabilities and the unique Chinese market as well as learn from the examples of Coca-Cola and Nike. One of the main challenges in entering China is the political system which has long been influenced by communist thought. In this huge economy, political intervention is very much prevalent in the private and industrial sector thus curbing competition among industry players. The Chinese government is a strong adherent of local industry protection which makes it very much in tuned and sensitive to the concerns of domestic business organizations to the detriment of multinationals. It should be noted that the political system often hinders growth of foreign companies through legislations which protects the interest of the local players. The political environment posts a significant barrier to entry together with Chinese people’s cultural attitudes towards Western or foreign companies. Unlike other Asian countries which are imbued with colonial mentality, Chinese are known for their preference of buying from domestic companies. The experience of Coca-cola and Nike in the Chinese market suggests that Under Armour enters China by forming an alliance with the government and establishing a joint venture with a local player. Coca-cola’s phenomenal success in this country is its partnership with the government and local companies in production and distribution of its products. Another notable strategy is localizing the products to suit the preference of this unique market. Coca-cola undertakes this by introducing tea products which takes into account the market’s penchant for tea. Even Nike creates products which carries Chinese elements like dragon inspired patterns, red-silk accents, and Chinese characters. Under Armour should also