Alienation in Modern Society
I will compare and contrast Mike Newell's Dance with a Stranger and Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave in terms of alienation. The reasoning behind my choice is that these two films have explicit characteristics in the frame of alienation. Both highlight modern alienation in terms of alienated sexuality, isolation, normlessness whereas Newell
discusses alienation also in class and gender difference perspective; Boyle discusses alienation in the working place as an alienated labour.
To begin with, when we examine Dance with a Stranger, we see Ruth, David, Desmond and Andy as film's main characters. Ruth is the most alienated character in this film. Firstly, she was a manager of a night club, she was taking care of the customers, singing, dancing and seemed all right but after having met David, her life was totally
changed she lost her job and she began to have obsessive feelings about David. She sheltered near Desmond with her son Andy and day by day she started to get distant from the world. She began to feel despair and disconnected from social world. The scene in which Andy was watching the television, in the background she was drinking and
looked like a ghost then in the next shot Desmond entered the room shouted at Andy, and the child goes to another room without knowing what he is going to do, and then cuts to the Desmond and Ruth's alienated making love scene. Because of Ruth's powerlessness situation she couldn't sustain anything her self identity became normless, so
her bad experiences alienates her.
Secondly, at the beginning of the film David describes nightclubs as "glorified brothels", and Ruth ironically introduced herself "glorified brothel keeper", in the film characters' relationships are cheap and rough like in glorified brothels. Sexuality in these places are alienated and uncertain, there is lack of love. Also the
relationship between Ruth and David is uncertain and cheap. Ruth fancies David and David likes the way she looks like, there is no sign of an ideal relationship among them also David hit Ruth, treated violently and Ruth as an alienated one has no power over him accepted his attitude. Moreover, David has a fiancée however he was interesting
in Ruth to fulfill only his sexual needs. Thus, this whole situation provides alienated sexuality with violence.
A further indication that, in the ballro...
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... cannot put herself into neither David's world nor her past, she again alienates from social world because not having any clear social strata.
On the contrary, in Shallow Grave there is no class alienation and difference. Juliet is a doctor, Alex is a journalist and finally David* is an accountant. There are shots in film from David's boring workplace. There are other people like David who work for a man to make him richer without gaining any personal fulfillment while doing their jobs. They are just a wheel in the machine, they don't know the whole job so they generate false consciousness they don't find do display their talents. So David as an accountant shows us alienated labor in modern society.
Thus, the modern alienation in Dance with a Stranger and Shallow Grave is similar in terms of losing self identity, normlessness and isolation and apart from these norms each film come up with a different type of alienation. Alienation which caused by class
difference is discussed in Dance with a Stranger, on the other hand there is no class difference in Shallow Grave but there exists another type of alienation which is caused by modern work places that leads to alienated labor.
The theme of alienation has been depicted by two different characters in a resembling series of events. The two protagonists were alienated by their peers, inflicting negative consequences they must undergo. Both characters are finally pushed to alienating themselves rather than being alienated. In conclusion, the struggles both characters undergo are practically identical to one another. They have experienced alienation in such similar ways that you must ask yourself: are all those who suffer from alienation alike in more ways than one?
With the emergence of an industrial working class that arrived from the farms and countryside new theories and ideologies about the political economy began to appear. Karl Marx, a political philosopher during this time, introduced the idea of "alienation of labor". His theory proposed that labor has the ability to create a loss of reality in the laborer because the laborer himself becomes a commodity or object due to the nature of work. In terms of the roles of women it can be argued that the effect is even greater due to the limited choices of work available. This theme is expressed in literature through the writings of Gilman and Alcott.
Anatole France said, “An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.” Through the No Child Left Behind program students are being tested in a manner that does not accurately measure learning. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB or The Act) Act was proposed in 2001, an addition to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to assist students who have a disadvantage or are a minority. Through this Act students were required to take standardized tests. One main reason of implementing the standardized testing as a part of NCLB was to raise schools AYP, adequate yearly progress; this measures a schools progress in reaching certain standards set by the Federal Government. The Federal Government should eradicate the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 because it is creating substantial problems, limiting learning, and has proven to be ineffective.
Forced into isolationism, due to segregation, alienation becomes Crooks’ companion. On an attempt for his
The first type of alienation is from “product of labor”. This is where the worker is separated from their work. This is basically saying that the work that the worker is creating does not necessarily show their creativity. Marx wrote:
In order to determine whether or not the No Child Left Behind Act is doing its job successfully and efficiently, one must first understand exactly what is involved in the act. This act is the most recent renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Similar to laws in the past, this particular act has been revised and added to numerous times to make sure it encompasses everything necessary for the education system and the students. The No Child Left B...
The current debates surrounding the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 are both positive and negative. Many politicians and people that previously supported the Act are now standing against it. In the beginning many supported the new Act because everyone was aware that a change needed to happen in the education system and the proposal of No Child Left Behind seemed like the answer we were looking for. As the No Child Left Behind requirements began to be felt in the school systems across America and the assessments results started coming in, everyone took a step back and really began to look at the new law. The results were not what everyone expected, what was once considered an answer was now becoming the problem.
The No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001. It was not written by teachers, educators, or parents, but by legislators who did not have experience in education. The act was written because the government felt that students were not proficient enough in basic skills, such as reading level, fundamental math skills, as well as other subjects. The writers believed that every person should have the same education, which would produce the same outcome in each child. NCLB changed school curriculums to focus on their standardized tests, which would ultimately evaluate how well the teachers, school districts, and students are performing. Arne Duncan, an American education administrator, believes that “…NCLB holds all students to the same, challenging standards…” is the best way to explain the program in an unbiased perspective. To put it more harshly, “No Child Left Behind is a test-and-punish scheme that fails to deal with real problems in schools,” says Michelle Rhee, a chancellor in Washington, D.C. “[It] ends up dumbing down educational quality.”
individuals, society, or work. Some sociologists believe that alienation is inevitably produced not by the individual but by the shallowness and the lack of individuality in modern society. The concept of alienation has been held to account for behaviour patterns. as diverse as motiveless violence and total immobility. Alienation is a state in which the creations of humanity appear to humans as alien objects.
As students in a Structure & Philosophy class, one of the main components has been to introduce and familiarize us with the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush passed this legislation on January 8, 2002. The NCLB Act was designed to ensure each and every student the right to a fair education, to give parents more options in their child’s education, and to guarantee all teachers are highly qualified. By highly qualified, the act means teachers must have at least a bachelor’s degree, have full state certification or licensure, and have demonstrated competence in their subject areas (US Dept. of Education).
Torkildsen (2011) stated that the nature and definition of 'social class' is generally regarded as being problematic, as class not only relates to income or occupation but also upbringing and family background. "social class is often regarded as grouping on the basis of occupation, which is 'socioeconomic class' rather than social class" (Torkildsen, 2011 p.49). divine
THE TERM "alienation" in normal usage refers to a feeling of separateness, of being alone and apart from others. For Marx, alienation was not a feeling or a mental condition, but an economic and social condition of class society--in particular, capitalist society.
...nvironment. Ultimately, humans are creative, hardworking and productive beings. As we spend the majority of our day at work, we want it to be rewarding and fulfilling. In this theory of alienation, being a worker comes first and being a person comes second. Alienation makes people spend their lives working on things they hardly care about while they make money for someone else as they sacrifice their own interests and goals. Capitalism turns workers into machines and alienates them from their full potential. Workers are not content as they are unable to determine their own paths as they are at the mercy of their employers. Alienation produces boredom, stress, unhappiness, misery and low productivity.
The No Child Left Behind act is the most recent restatement of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 put in place by President Johnson to assist with the War on Poverty campaign. Originally, the law was meant to improve educational equity to lower income families, which still remains today. However, since the bill was passed in 1965, it has been reauthorized several times. The most recent being January of 2002 with the “No Child Left behind Act.” Despite the numerous amount of changes the...
There are many important aspects of the “No Child Left Behind” Act. I think the most important area of the act is the parents. Parents play just as an important role to the educational system as anyone else. NCLB expands parental options. NCLB supports learning in the early years, thereby preventing many learning difficulties that may arise later in the student's life. In fact, research shows that most reading problems faced by adolescents and adults are the result of problems that could have been prevented through good instruction in their early childhood years (Snow, Burns and Griffin 1998). NCLB provides more information for parents about their child’s progress. Reading and math assessments are done several times and provide parents with objective data on where their child stands academically. NCLB requires states and school districts to give parents easy-to-read, detailed report cards on schools and districts, telling them which ones are succeeding and why. These report cards are detailed with extensive data. NCLB ensures that parents have important information regarding the schools their children attend and whether they are performing well or not. In addition, under NCLB, such schools that are considered low-performing must use their federal funds to make needed improvements. In the event of a school’s continued poor performance, parents have the option to ensure that their children receive the high-quality education to which they are entitled. This...