Growing Up in the Age of Technology In a society where it is increasingly common for the perpetrators of violent crimes to cite their favorite movie or song lyrics as the inspiration behind their actions, one has to wonder - are pop culture audiences so mindlessly impressionable that they become victim to any or all media suggestion? Does pop culture have as large an affect on morality as the critics claim, and are current attempts to police pop culture necessary? Not really, says Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason magazine and author of the article "View Masters": "What is on the screen or on the stereo is not irrelevant, of course. But it matters far less than one might suppose." In Gillespie's opinion, viewers are not merely passive receptors of pop culture; instead they use the context of their own lives to create meaning and value in what they watch. Consumers of the pop culture phenomenon have always viewed media technology like the television, the telephone, and the computer as an interactive experience. Through dialogue with friends, station surfing, posting to a show's computerized bulletin board, or even turning off the television, viewers demonstrate the ability to become "what's known in literary studies as 'resisting readers.' " In other words, these reactions demonstrate a mental engagement with what is presented, and not merely an uncomprehending reception of what is offered. "Individuals sitting in a theater, or watching television, or listening to a CD don't always see and hear things the way they're 'supposed' to", says Gillespie, and the variety of human viewpoints are what allow for interpretations and "misinterpretations" of the media's particular message. According to media analysts, most audiences sit passively while, "Hollywood merely projects morality - good, bad, or indifferent - onto us." These proponents of media censorship support the careful supervision of the entertainment industry, chiefly because they do not perceive viewers as intelligent critics, able to form their own opinions or to make independent decisions. To censors, media is capable of only two functions: instilling greater moral and educational ethic in society, or a provoking a craving for chaos and depravity. The government and many skeptics play a key role in this ideology, not only through a belief that good entertainment should be solely didactic, but also by underestimating the viewer's ability to make independent choices, "or to bring his own interpretation to bear on what he sees.
Readers have often seen Holden reminiscing about his brother who passed away, Allie. Salinger exemplifies Holden’s struggles of growing up because he has often never let go of his past childhood memories. At one point Holden was writing a composition, which he seemed to enjoy, and he thought to himself, “My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt” (49). We all have little items from our childhood that we either keep or naturally just let go of them. Considering Holden has not let go of his brother’s death from leukemia, provides him with a mental block of not growing up. Having that part of his childhood erased creates a gap between his feelings of maturity. As people become older, they often do not think about the little things we have to let go of when we get older, but it is a struggle to let go of something, that truly made you feel like you belonged and you had a place to be. Holden also recalls his memories with a girl named Jame by saying, “I thought about her and Stradlater parked in a car somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky's car” (63).This shows that people are not always the same when they grow older, and that is another difficult part of growing up, change. Change for Holden was hard for Holden because for example Jane was a sweet innocent little girl
Sixty-three percent of Iraq’s population is Shia Muslim, thirty-three percent is Sunni Muslim (Lunde, 2002). For the past five centuries the minority, Sunni Muslims, have held political power in Iraq. It was not until recently that the majority, the Shia Muslims, was able to experience political power. The tensions between Sunni and Shia in Iraq are not due to religious differences formed after Muhammad’s death 1,382 years ago and are not inevitable, as proven by the relationships between Sunni and Shia in other countries and in the past (Shuster, 2011). The state of unrest surrounding the Sunni and Shia Muslims of Iraq is due to politics, power, and privilege, caused by the change of attitude in Islamic leaders in government and the discrimination of the Shia by the Sunni minority. This has been partly due to the fact that early in their history Shias were not the majority and therefore lost political power. This unbalance and the differences between the two sects are most unstable and evident during times of political unrest (Hunter, n.d).
“In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam.” Although Johnson chose to enter America into the war, there were events previous that caused America to enter and take over the war. The South Vietnamese were losing the war against Communism – giving Johnson all the more reason to enter the war, and allowing strong American forces to help stop communism. There were other contributing factors leading up to the entrance of the war; America helped assist the French in the war, Johnson’s politics, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and the 1954 Geneva Conference. President Johnson stated, “For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam.”
The media is by far the most influential mean in millions of Americans lives today and can be used to impact behaviors, especially in the vulnerable minds of children and young adults. The media is responsible for the increasing amount of violent crimes and desensitizing society with explicit imagery and the importance of our culture and contributing to negative behavior, society should pay careful attention to the kinds of role models we provide to the youth. Possibly, the most powerful source of role models can be found in every home: the computer or television. Television is a source that has given more knowledge in the past several years than any other kind of knowledge distributor, including books and newspapers. Television is the most dominant invention of the twentieth century and has created more public figures than radio, books, and magazines combined. However, the role models that are created through the television are not always upstanding citizens like Barrack Obama or Steve Jobs, but instead psychopathic murderers such as Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. Not only is society fascinated by the media attention that certain types of citizens receive but they are also mesmorized by films that make these people look like tough fighters who can kill people with the snap of a finger. Actors such as Steven Segall, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis have have capitalized in violent films because of the media exposure as killers and murderers.
The Vietnam war is such a controversial topic in America’s history. Some veterans that served in the war won’t even talk about it still to this day. The Vietnam war was a war that started in 1954, and lasted for about 20 years until 1975. America decided to join this war because they did not like the spread of communism and wanted to stop it at all cost. During this war, America had 4 different Presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Many people believe that the United States should have gotten involved in the war, while other people believe that the United States should not have involved themselves in the war. The three topics this essay will discuss are the problems that the United States created in Vietnam and also the
Is it morally permissible to eat meat? Much argument has arisen in the current society on whether it is morally permissible to eat meat. Many virtuous fruitarians and the other meat eating societies have been arguing about the ethics of eating meat (which results from killing animals). The important part of the dispute is based on the animal welfare, nutrition value from meat, convenience, and affordability of meat-based foods compared to vegetable-based foods and other factors like environmental moral code, culture, and religion. All these points are important in justifying whether humans are morally right when choosing to eat meat. This paper will argue that it is morally impermissible to eat meat by focusing on the treatment of animals, the environmental argument, animal rights, pain, morals, religion, and the law.
The historical foundation of the split between the two sects of Islam happened in the 7th century on who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. The Sunnis believed it should be the best-qualified leader. On the other hand, the Shiites believed Muhammad’s blood descendants were his rightful successors.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through such treatments. Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" loosely on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the popular rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the subtext of this story lies the theme of oppression: the oppression of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman/women behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue.
Violence, along with pornography, is one of the largest topics of the censorship debate, as well as the effect of exposure to violence. “Until age nineteen, children and teens exposed to media violence are more likely to view violence as a normal behavior and to become criminals themselves,” says New Republic editor Gregg Easterbrook. People, mostly children, who are still in the formative stages of their lives will be much more influenced by maliciously aligned media than those who are older, and have already established their core values and beliefs. However, it has also been shown that the acts of violence and murder frequently shown in movies (and seemingly replicated by some few children) have also occurred in children before the invention of television, or film - such as in the Leopold-Loeb “Perfect Crime” murder case of 1924, which was in fact later adapted into its own violent media five years later (Easterbrook 1). In the Leopold-Loeb murder case, Nathan Le...
A preoccupation with crime and stories of criminality pervades society. Everyday, audiences are bombarded by print media, television news, Internet, video games and film with an overwhelming amount of depictions of crime - from murders and kidnappings to drug smuggling and financial fraud. Crime is thus inseparable from modern society. Our civilization is saturated with representations of criminality, a form of behavior, in sociological terms, that is in conflict with the moral codes and practices prescribed by society. Cinematic portrayals of crime have materially influenced the modern conceptions of criminality. People are simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the criminal on screen. Watching crime has become a staple of our cultural diet, and this immersion in crime both supports and contradicts the dominant social perceptions of criminality. It is through genre codes and representational techniques of narrative and stereotypes that society manufactures notions of criminality.
Censorship involves the restriction of material that the government believes may be harmful to society. However, censorship in film is controversial because it can either create safe boundaries for movies or hinder the film industry’s freedom. Those who support censorship believe that it prohibits unnecessarily explicit content from being freely shown in films. Those who are against censorship believe that censorship conflicts with constitutional freedom and can be used as a tool for manipulation. Although, both sides of the argument have valid points, censorship should not apply to films at any extent because it impedes societal progress.
3. “The Shiite-Sunni schism in Islam has largely resulted from a dispute over who should have been the true successor of Prophet Mohammad’s societal leadership.” Critically discuss.
Movies, TV programs have been a major part of our life entertainment, as watching films in the cinema or on the living room couch with friends or families at leisure, while actually, the impact that the movies and TV programs have on this society has already reached further than just entertainment. Some people might conceive that the movies are just made for divertissement, which should not be taken seriously, and that a movie needs stereotyped characters to make it looks interesting, representative, and attractive. However, the fact is a diametrically opposite that the so-called entertainment media is exactly molding people’s mind and attitude towards social issues and towards the
As we can now observe, vegetarianism has become something fashionable, and the number of people who reject eating meat is constantly increasing. In Britain, for instance, over 5 million people have done it so far. It is obviously connected with the recent animal diseases, but this tendency is likely to spread on the other regions of the world. However, it is not only a fashion or fear of illnesses. I myself became a vegetarian about 2 years ago, and I can see a number of reasons why people should stop eating meat. They are mainly of ethic, economic and health type. Those who think in an ecological way should also be aware of how this meat consumption ruins our environment. I don’t have an intention to force anybody to become a vegetarian, but I hope that my argumentation would be strong enough to make some people think about it, at least. In this essay I will try to present this point of view, expressing my personal feelings and showing scientific facts about the problem.
I roll around on my bed, tossing and turning. The blare from my alarm clock deafens my right ear, and I quickly throw an arm over to it and slam on the snooze button. It is 6 o'clock in the morning, and already technology has affected my life. I fall to my feet and walk towards the showers. Another form of technology is about to take over my life. Well, at least for the next ten to 20 minutes.