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Hollywood influence on global culture
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‘A Stranger in the Mirror’ written in 1976, is one of the earliest work’s by Sidney Sheldon. The book is about the life of two protagonist – Toby Temple and Josephine Czinski a.k.a. Jill Castle, before and after they enter Hollywood. This book narrates the different ways in which the Hollywood and civilian life influence each other. Toby Temple is the Superstar of Hollywood and is world’s best comedian. He gets everything he wants, but is unable to find a person who can understand him and love him. Jill Castle is beautiful and sensuous starlet. She has dark and arcane past, but her desires are even greater than Toby’s. A hunger for recognition, fame and prominence drives Toby Temple and Jill Castle to marry and together they rule the empire of Hollywood. But, with time, the emotions of love, lust, jealousy and revenge turns their victory into disastrous nightmare that rolls inexorably on to a climax, devastating several lives. The prologue begins with the captain of the cruise Bretagne checking the names of the V.I.P.s when a series of arcane events takes …show more content…
He was very close to his mother and never left any opportunity to entertain his mother and make her happy. During his teenage, toby entertained himself with number of sexual encounters with girls, which later landed him in distress but also provided an opportunity to fly far away from that place. Toby starts working as a stand-up comedian in small bars, then moves on to doing stage plays, where he tricks Hollywood’s best agent Clifton Lawrence to come and witness his performance. Later, Clifton Lawrence takes up Toby as his agent and converts the Toby’s raw talent into a superstar personality. Soon, Toby becomes the most popular comedian and most loved actor of Hollywood. Working his way from the bottom to top, Toby Temple knows the glamour world of Hollywood better than any other
I will begin my essay by looking closely at the narrative of Sunset Boulevard to see where and how the film represents the Hollywood Studio System. At the beginning of the film the audience is introduced to Joe Gillis, a script writer who is struggling to pay his rent as he in unable to sell his scripts to the ‘majors’ of Hollywood. The film follows Joe to ‘Paramount Pictures’ one of the major studios in Hollywood, which the film pays a large self reference to as the producers of Sunset Boulevard as well as representing the studio system.
Ronald Takaki is one of the foremost-recognized scholars of multicultural studies and holds a PhD. in American History from the University of California, Berkeley. As a professor of Ethnic Studies at the same university, he wrote A Different Mirror: a History of Multicultural America as a fantastic new telling of our nation’s history. The book narrates the composition of the many different people of the United States of America.
Steven Gregory’s book entitled The Devil Behind The Mirror is an ethnographical study of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is in the Caribbean, it occupies the Western half of an island, while Haiti makes up the Eastern portion. Gregory attempts to study and analyze the political, social and cultural aspects of this nation by interviewing and observing both the tourists and locals of two towns Boca Chica and Andres. Gregory’s research centers on globalization and the transnational processes which affect the political and socio-economics of the Dominican Republic. He focuses on the social culture, gender roles, economy, individual and nation identity, also authority and power relations. Several of the major relevant issues facing Dominican society include racism, sexism, and discrimination, economy of resort tourism, sex tourism and the informal economy. The objective of Gregory’s ethnographic research is to decipher exclusionary practices incorporated by resort tourism, how it has affected locals by division of class, gender, and race, increasing poverty and reliance on an informal economy.
In the article “What Your Selfies Say About You” by Peggy Drexler, she talks about self-portraits also known as the “selfie”, and how it has taken over social media and added a manifestation to society’s obsession with looks. Taking a self-portrait can be positive in the sense that you are proud of your image and are not scared to share it with others helping boost up your self-esteem. Although this may help others by persuading them to not be ashamed to share their true image, Drexler believes this can also affect other individuals whose focus is only on looks making them feel self-conscious about their looks. A recent study out of the UK found that the selfie phenomenon may be damaging to real world relationships, concluding that both excessive
overcome before he can move up in the Hollywood society. Todd’s life begins to go downhill as he
Rowe, Lawrence. "Through the Looking Glass: Reflexivity, Reciprocality, and Defenestration in Hitchcock's"Rear Window"." College Literature 35.1 (2008): 16-37.
Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust is said by many to be the best novel to be written about Hollywood. When we immediately think of Hollywood, we think of a glamorous story, in the picturesque setting of Los Angeles, full of characters with abundance of talent living the much sought after American dream. This is perhaps what sets West’s novel apart from the rest. The story is full of characters that have a vague impression of the difference in reality and fantasy in life. The characters are submerged in their lives in Hollywood, with what seems to be a false reality on how the world works. The untalented would-be actors, withering vaudeville performers and prostitutes place a certain grotesque over the novel from the beginning, and in a world of certain fantasy and chaos like this, violence is bound to come to the fore as a theme in many different forms. The protagonist of the story, Tod Hackett, is different to the rest of the characters in the novel. Tom is a talented artist, but still has a good view of reality by times, so Tom can act part as an observer in the novel. Tom however has been sucked in to the fantasy world also life has become somewhat submerged in the fantasy world.
Society has always judged its inhabitants for its outwards appearance; not taking in to consideration how a person has a deeper part to them. When just taking the superficial into consideration, we find ourselves looking at the blemishes and not the beauty. Judgment is thrown on those whom get old, although they cannot halt times effects. Judging those that were born with defects mental or physical that are portrayed in their visible areas. All these individualities are read into more than they should be. A mirror, on the other hand, shows what is standing in front of it and nothing else. Sylvia Plath’s poem Mirror does expresses the defects within society that judges those for their presence, it will lie to make a person’s thoughts of their appearance get altered, and that a mirror is clear looking at one with what can be compared with a gods eye; perfect, but even though the mirror sees one as unadulterated time still passes.
Each couple goes through a different scenario that affects marriage during their retreat and individual life journey. Through the scenarios, the audience can tell that money, lack of trust, closed feelings, and cheating breaks marriages apart; Tyler Perry’s writing about these problems creates a message for his audience. Tyler Perry’s combination of comedy and melodrama displays an unexpected climax leading to a soothing or a sad ending for the characters (Hale). This leaves the audience gasping to know what happens next; it introduces new drama for the characters. In addition, The plot structure focuses on “emotional affairs, domestic abuse, near-nervous breakdowns, cancer, and death” (Robeldo). In summary, Tyler Perry’s writing displays the connection between him and the audience, sharing a common lesson learned from watching the
In A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki’s tenth chapter Pacific Crossings he talked about the Japanese immigrants entering in American soil. Like every other group, their purpose to come to America was for a better life and away from overbearing economic hardships. Unfortunately, the Japanese were instead faced with long hours, racial discrimination and low wages. On page 260, “Monica found that the Japanese were not welcome in America. She heard whites call her father “shorty” and “Jap” (Takaki 260). Even the second generation Japanese, painfully noticed, were denied a claim to the land of their birth. As stated in the chapter, the Japanese had a stronger and a more organized central government.
Not all films which adhere to the classical Hollywood paradigm eschew issues. The film Singin’ in the Rain follows Don Lockwood, a popular silent film actor, as he attempts to maintain his star status during the advent of “talkies”. Lockwood’s journey manifests fame’s capricious temperament, the studio’s commercial interest, and the influence of outside variables on a film. Singin’ in the Rain uses Lockwood’s struggle with celebrity to expose the importance of public image and self esteem.
The Classical Hollywood style, according to David Bordwell remains “bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern.” Every element of the film works in the service of the narrative, which should be ideally comprehensible and unambiguous to the audience. The typical Hollywood film revolves around a protagonist, whose struggle to achieve a specific goal or resolve a conflict becomes the foundation for the story. André Bazin, in his “On the politique des auteurs,” argues that this particular system of filmmaking, despite all its limitations and constrictions, represented a productive force creating commercial art. From the Hollywood film derived transnational and transcultural works of art that evoked spectatorial identification with its characters and emotional investment into its narrative. The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor in 1940, is one of the many works of mass-produced art evolving out of the studio system. The film revolves around Tracy Lord who, on the eve of her second wedding, must confront the return of her ex-husband, two newspaper reporters entering into her home, and her own hubris. The opening sequence of The Philadelphia Story represents a microcosm of the dynamic between the two protagonists Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Through the use of costume and music, the opening sequence operates as a means to aesthetically reveal narrative themes and character traits, while simultaneously setting up the disturbance that must be resolved.
Written and composed by Siedah Garret and Glen Ballard. Performed by Michael Jackson, Featuring Siedah Garret, The Winans and The Andrae Crouch Choir.
that as it may, Sir Toby alone has the ability to alter the audience’s attention ...
I had the opportunity to watch the movie “Kinsey.” In the process of watching this movie, I had different reactions when some scenes were presented. First of all, in the movie it showed that Kinsey’s father who was the preacher of a church was close minded about the topic of sex. However, I felt that this movie generalized that all pastors or preachers are close minded to talk about topics that refer to sex. In my experience, my pastor is very open to talk about sex, he would teach teenagers about what sex is about and he would talk to couple about that topic openly. However, it is true that keeping teenagers from sexual encounters before marriage is one of the goals preachers have.