Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring is a nonfictional based movie portraying the infamous activities of a group of California based friends who burglarize celebrities houses looking for fashionable accessories. Mrs. Coppola’s main message throughout the movie examines the power and values their friend group possesses. Examining the scene where Rebecca convinces Marc to rob Evan’s house helps us to break down the movie’s main and underlying messages. Looking at this robbery through Crary’s lens helps the reader to see how her underlying message trumps her more obvious main message. This scene appears to test the values and power of two criminals, but it’s main underlying message addresses the overconsuming lifestyle that Rebecca and Marc possess. …show more content…
Enstad uses her essay, “Toxicity and the Consuming Subject,” to express overconsumption and its correlation with toxins in our environment. She explains that everyday goods are produced to meet continually climbing demands for goods and it’s this over consumption that leads to cheap production and removal of these goods. Enstad says that airplanes, carpets, circuit boards and many other common good contain unsafe amounts of the chemical PBDES (polybrominated diphenyl ethers). Excess of this unsafe chemical in common goods is proven unhealthy. Regardless of the health aspect, the chemical is there because of cheap production. Human overconsumption leads to increased demand for these goods and businesses seek the cheapest producing methods to maximize profit. Enstad’s proof of overconsumption in our modern world “lies in the pudding.” Her factual based studies show the detrimental affects to overconsumption as a whole. Rebecca and Marc illustrate the detrimental affects to overconsumption on a personal level. Their constant addiction to consuming is their own “toxin” infecting them and corrupting them. They continually “consume” and their overconsumption leads them to
Like most things captured on film for the purpose of being marketed, the richness of gangster life, with sex, money, and power in surplus, is glorified, and thus embraced by the audience. And as a rule, if something works Hollywood repeats it, ala a genre. What Scarface and Little Caesar did was ultimately create a genre assigning powerful qualities to criminals. Such sensationalism started with the newspapers who maybe added a little more color here and there to sell a few more copies, which is portrayed in Scarface’s two newspaper office scenes. Leo Braudy denounces genres as offending “our most common definition of artistic excellence” by simply following a predetermined equation of repetition of character and plot. However, Thomas Schatz argues that many variations of plot can exist within the “arena” that the rules of the genre provide.
...pened my eyes to the health risks of the food I consume. There is a lot of health risks associated with the foods on the shelves at the supermarket. A food product I ate as a child was Lunchables. At the time I just thought the food was good. Although, now that I am aware of what I put in my body I try to look at the ingredient and the food products I consume before I consume them. The book also informed me of the deceitfulness of people in order to make a profit. A prime example in Chapter eleven is the Kraft Company. The Kraft Company state they want to decrease the amounts of salt, sugar and fat in their products. On the other hand, Kraft creates new products with an increased amount of these ingredients. Many companies state that they try to fulfill the desires of consumers. This idea is wrong. The consumers study what our body craves and uses it against us.
Some might complain about the guilt they feel knowing they are willingly consuming sodium benzoate and soybean oil. Which, according to Warner, isn’t a bad thing. If one is buying a blueberry muffin, most likely, they’d be interested to know that those “blueberry” pieces are the result of an experiment. If it was common knowledge that out of the 5,000 additives found in food barely a half has been tested, American’s would ponder their diet. While change is never easy, it isn’t hard to spark a movement towards change. This is evident with the shift towards eating better. Perhaps it will amount to no more than a trend, but throughout history, science has never surpassed the natural world. That is why the natural world has survived as long as it can, because, in many ways, it’s the best you can get. Pandora’s Lunchbox possess the ability to spark something more than a general knowledge of cereal factories.
No one really knows the long-term effects of these substances, individually or in unpredictable combination, either on human health or on the health of the ecosystems upon which we, and all life, depend. The chemicals are not the same as the ones Carson indicted in Silent Spring, yet they are produced, sold, and used on an unsuspecting public by the same interconnected complex of profit-driven companies and government authorities. Carson’s words in her “Fable for Tomorrow” still apply, as if we lived in the future that she imagined: “No witchcraft, no enemy action” had produced our “stricken world. The people had done it themselves” (Carson, 1962,
American society has grown so accustomed to receiving their food right away and in large quantities. Only in the past few decades has factory farming come into existence that has made consuming food a non guilt-free action. What originally was a hamburger with slaughtered cow meat is now slaughtered cow meat that’s filled with harmful chemicals. Not only that, the corn that that cow was fed with is also filled with chemicals to make them grow at a faster rate to get that hamburger on a dinner plate as quickly as possible. Bryan Walsh, a staff writer for Time Magazine specializing in environmental issues discusses in his article “America’s Food Crisis” how our food is not only bad for us but dangerous as well. The word dangerous could apply to many different things though. Our food is dangerous to the consumer, the workers and farmers, the animals and the environment. Walsh gives examples of each of these in his article that leads back to the main point of how dangerous the food we are consuming every day really is. He goes into detail on each of them but focuses his information on the consumer.
Through the capitalization of “Movie Stars” in the couplet of the first section of the poem, Barros shows both how movie stars are dehumanized by the media and how the individuals fascination and worship of them dehumanizes themselves. She is showing that even though movie stars are fantasized over and followed through their day-to-day lives we do not really know them for who they are as people. Supporting her idea that individuals must decipher for themselves what societal noise to focus on, Barros places four lines and a couplet of her poem right next to a section of a crime news story. The placement of the poem next to the story is meant to distract the reader’s eye, and show how societies overload of information can affect the reader's attention span and
“Until this century [20th], to consume was considered a bad thing” says Jeremy Rifkin an
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
Have you ever had one of those days that were so bad that you desperately needed a night at the ice cream or candy store? The 1970’s was that really bad day, while the night of self- indulgence was the 1980’s. Americans love to escape from our daily stress, and of all the products that allow us to do so, none is more popular than the movies. Movies are key cultural artifacts that offer a view of American culture and social history. They not only offer a snapshot of hair styles and fashions of the times but they also provide a host of insights into Americans’ ever-changing ideals. Like any cultural artifact, the movies can be approached in a number of ways. Cultural historians have treated movies as a document that records the look and mood of the time that promotes a particular political or moral value or highlights individual or social anxieties and tensions. These cultural documents present a particular image of gender, ethnicity, romance, and violence. Out of the political and economic unrest of the 1970’s that saw the mood and esteem of the country, as reflected in the artistry and messages in the movies, sink to a new low, came a new sense of pride in who we are, not seen since the post-World War II economic boom of the 1950’s. Of this need to change, Oscar Award winner Paul Newman stated,
This fieldwork aims to sociologically analyze gender roles and expectations within the movie White Chicks. In this film brothers, Marcus and Kevin Copeland, play the role of two black FBI agents looking to get back into good graces with their superior after they accidentally ruined a drug bust. They are assigned to escort two rich white females, Brittney and Tiffany Wilson, to the Hamptons for Labor Day festivities. While traveling they experience a minor car accident, leaving the girls with a single scratch each on their face. Because of their socialite status, the sisters no longer wish to continue their trip in fear of humiliation. The agents fear losing their chance of redemption, so they decide to disguise
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Agriculture is the most fundamental resource of society. Without it, humans could not live, especially in the ways we do now where people reside in cities. This means that those cities could not exist without large scale agriculture to sustain them. Since agriculture is such a necessity, people have developed methods to gain more from their land. One of the many solutions besides machinery they have developed to produce higher crop yields is through the use of pesticides. However, those pesticides which have resulted in high crop yields have come at price, and that is human health itself. This seems rather contradictory. Pesticides were designed to help people and society by increased the success of producing high crop yields, and they still do that, but at the same time, those same pesticides have caused unforeseen health risks, primarily to those have had to handle them. The average person would not consider pesticides as being a cause for depression, or in worst case scenario, suicide, but studies have found significant links. Even though California is just one place in the world, it has large agricultural areas which were, and still are, represented in many scientific studies that have found those unforeseen risks from pesticide use. Since pesticides are poisons, producers and safety activities urge several safety precautions to attempt to reduce the effect on human users. However, these precautions sometimes do not prevent long term damages in the people that live and work in such close proximity, which are the agricultural workers. Since the risk are known, policies have been put into place, but despite that, the use of pesticides remains high. Like many of the anthropological readings from this course, there are also added ...
In modern society, humans constantly pollute the environment by using cars, technology, food packaging, and a countless amount of other products. Despite understanding how causing mass amounts of pollution can harm, often there are minimal attempts to correct polluting behaviors, at least until it poses an immediate threat to humans. The idea that the environment is suffering due to our mass consumption through instances of climate change and pollution, is not nearly enough motivation to stop the use of things that may be harmful. In order to address pollution in any respect, there must be an immediate threat to the health and well-being of humanity. Rachel Carson highlights this idea in her
Deep down inside everyone has the same desire – to do what one wants whenever he or she chooses to and to not have to worry about anyone or anything else. Along with this desire to be able to do what ever it is that one wishes to at any given time, a person wants to be successful at what they do. The type of success that a person wants may be measured in money, property, fame, or even the entourage that follows him or her. This kind of lifestyle is only truly lived by a certain kind of people – gangsters and mobsters. For the rest it is just a dream to be able to live such a life, but for gangsters and mobsters this lifestyle is reality. But these gangsters can go around doing anything they want without the fear of consequences, which would, for most people, lead to long-term prison sentences. We are commonly shown in many movies and television shows that gangsters can just walk into an alley and beat up whoever they wish and be able to leave as if nothing ever happened. In “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” by Robert Warshow and “Our Mobsters, Ourselves: Why The Sopranos Is Therapeutic TV” written by Ellen Willis the gangster’s middleclass part of his or her lifestyle is brought out along with this “dream” reality at the same time.
Janwillem Van De Wetering says, “Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.” Guy De Maupassant’s “The Necklace” tells of Mrs. Mathilde Loisel’s longings for the finer things in life. Her desires are so intense she risks her husband’s affections, the friendship of an old chum, and even her mediocre lifestyle to pursue these cravings. One small decision based on an ill-placed desire causes a slow drawn out death of the spirit, body and relationships.