In the DJ Floppyfeet and MaxxJamez song “Firework”, the artists display a braggadocio attitude towards a luxurious life and relate the flashy lifestyle to the bright and captivating visuals of fireworks. The pair uses the juxtaposition of dazzling fireworks to the extravagant lifestyle they wish to lead to exemplify and paint a vivid picture of exactly what they want. DJ Floppyfeet and MaxxJamez detail what kind of life the common person wishes to lead in their excessive use of onomatopoeia, hyperboles, and imagery. In “Firework” the speakers, being the two featured artists, describes their inner conflict with wanting to succeed and having a lavish life, all the while keeping the societal values, which are most usually and stereotypically
Daniel Felsenfeld reveals a positive, impactful significance — one that has completely changed his life — in his literacy narrative “Rebel Music” by drawing upon what his early adolescent years of music were like before his shift into a new taste for music, how this new taste of music precisely, yet strangely appealed to him, and what this new music inspired him to ultimately become. Near the beginning of his narrative, Felsenfeld described his primal time with music in Orange County, Calif. He had developed his musical skills enough to jumpstart a career around music — working in piano bars and in community theater orchestra pits. However, Felsenfeld stated that the music he worked with “... was dull, or at least had a dulling effect on me — it didn’t sparkle, or ask questions,” and that “I [he] took a lot of gigs, but at 17 I was already pretty detached” (pg. 625). Felsenfeld easily
In Fires in the Mirror, people from different communities in Crown Heights are interviewed on various subjects after the riot that erupted in 1991 between Jewish and Black groups, and in these interviews it is obvious that specific communities develop unique styles of language in order to unite all the members of their particular group. In several of the interviews a poetic form of language, rap, is used between members of the African American community to express feelings and emotions. Monique Matthews (Big Mo), an African American student interviewed in Fires says that she is trying to send out positive messages to the members of her community, and comments that the people who are sending out damaging messages “don’t understand the fundamentals of rap” (Smith 38). For example, in response to a supposed rap song by Big Daddy Kane called “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy,” Big Mo writes, “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy, But Whorin’ Ain’t Proper. Respect and Cherish the Original Mother” (Smith 37). With her rap, Big Mo is hoping to cause the men and women in her community to respect themselves and each other. Sonny Carson, another African American interviewed in Fires says that he is able to communicate with the young people in his community because he understands their rap culture. He says, “I understand their language…I speak their language. They don’t even engage in long dialogue anymore, just short words” (Smith 104). Carson’s ability to participate with the young people through rap allows him to have a better perspective on the tensions in Crown Heights. ...
In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.
Throughout history, music has been the artistic stage of philosphoical output of both ideas, emotions and stories, enducing emotional and cogitational responses from the audience, through it’s representation of ideas and through ‘words in music’. Victor Hugo says- “Music expresses…. that which cannot remain silent” (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885), and is a predominant feature in the early 1990s ‘Riot Grrrl’ movement, in which female-empowerment bands would address modern issues of sexual abuse, racism, and the patriarchy through their underground, punk rock music.
Fire has become less a means of human survival and more of a form of entertainment. This world of shallow hedonistic people strives to be the same and the word “intelligence” is considered a dirty word. This society maintains a focus on a certain equality, where people born unequal made equal. Funerals for the dead are eliminated due to the sadness they bring and death is forgotten about quickly, with bodies being incinerated without a proper ceremony. Fire is idolized by this society and is considered the means to cleanliness.
The Wiz is a musical/movie released in 1978 that was an adaptation of the popular film “Wizard of Oz”. It included several very popular stars of the time, which were Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Nipsey Russell. The movie set place in New York City where the main character, Dorothy, suddenly is swept by a tornado in the middle of a snowstorm. She later then found herself lost in a city she had no clue about and curious as to how she could return home. After meeting 3 other characters during her journey that share similarities, they all embarked on a trip to OZ to fix each of their problems. Throughout the movie characters apply their own soundtrack through singing songs in harmony that compliment the mood of each scene.
Even though the speakers are identified as the authors, they can more accurately be described as characters based on themselves. We know that this type of lyric was most likely performed in front of an audience probably set to music. The public’s relationship to such work can be likened with dramatic performance of today such as a musical or a...
The music video for the song Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim depicts an older man played by Christopher Walken who at first is slightly nodding off in the corner of an empty hotel lobby. As soon as the music begins Walken begins coming to life.
One boy juggles three grey tennis balls while the other somersaults between the juggler?s legs and then jumps to his feet smiling and clapping his hands between the flying balls in a comic attempt to distract his partner. The acrobat climbs atop the juggler?s shoulders, and one by one intercepts the balls until he is now the juggler, though he lacks the control of his partner. A ball falls to the ground before the light turns green, and the boy leaps off his partner?s shoulders and scrambles to fetch it. Despite the error, the boys still grin and take a bow. A lady in a fuming Mazda lets a wrinkled bill flutter out her window, and the boys pounce on the money before it PAQUETE - 3 - floats away. While jugglers and acrobats are entertaining, Paco dreams one day of pouring gasoline in his mouth and spitting it over a lighter?s flame, producing a glamorous fireball. These teenage fire-spitters are magnificent like dragons and inspire the most awe?and tips?from spectators. There are other performers Paco admires, like this toothless man sitting on the bench playing his rondador. He blows out a familiar tune? El Chulla Quite?o. It?s the only song he ever plays, but people don?t seem to notice or
In Don DeLillo's satirical novel White Noise, we become acquainted with what we might call a "postmodern family" - a group of people loosely bound together by birth, marriage, and common residence. But as we observe this family, we notice that the bonds between them are strained at best, and that their lives have been taken over by some insidious new force. This force is popular culture. For better or worse, pop culture has infiltrated the lives of our fictional family just as it has the lives of real human beings. DeLillo's purpose in the book is best illuminated by Heinrich's comment after the airborne toxic event: "The real issue is the kind of radiation that surrounds us every day." In other words, DeLillo states that popular culture is ruining - or, perhaps, has ruined - us all.
In “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” Rat Kiley recounts the time when Mark Fossie brought in his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, from Ohio to Nam. Mary Anne is a curious and very friendly seventeen-year- old girl who just graduated from high school. She constantly asks questions about the war. Tension grows between Mary Anne and Mark when Mary Anne starts to become more involved in the war. She helps with taking care of the injured soldiers and learns how to operate an M-16. Mark suggests that the two of them go back home, but Mary Anne refuses. She begins to return to the camp late at night, or not at all. One day in the early morning, Mark cannot find Mary Anne and panics, only to discover that she is out on an ambush with the Green Berets. Mark has a talk with Mary Anne in which they make plans to get married. However, over the next several weeks, an undeniable tension grows between the two. Mary Anne suddenly disappears after Mark starts to make plans for her return home. After about three weeks, Mary Anne returns to the camp and disappears into the Special Forces area, and Mark waits for her there. He hears a woman, Mary Anne, chanting along with strange music and bursts into the hootch to confront her. O’Brien uses disturbing imagery to emphasize how the war takes away one’s innocence and changes one forever.
The music and the musician: neither one of these can kill a human being; if the violence is as the violence does then the on...
Words Without Music chronicles Philip Glass’ colorful life and affirms the power of music, a power that can change the world. It has been said, that it allows readers to experience that sublime moment of creative fusion, when life merges with art. Legendary film maker Martin Scorsese was quoted as saying “I came to Philip Glass’ music very simply, without any `critical prodding or guidance I listened and transfixed. The music was dynamic and colorful and mysterious all at once, and it put me in a mind of the Zen exercise of sitting before a blank wall and contemplating the question, “what is this?” It’s music that seems to go beyond music. It doesn’t just stay with you, it infuses and energizes and haunts you, and carries a sense of being alive, a perception of existence itself. The rhythm of living this
In High Fidelity, Rob, the protagonist and narrator, says “I find myself worrying away at that stuff about pop music again, whether I like it because I’m unhappy, or whether I’m unhappy because I like it” (168). It is obvious to the reader that Rob has a very strong relationship to pop music but also that this relationship is not as simple as the either-or dichotomy he describes it as. At first, it is an obsession that is almost pathological; by the end, it is an aid to his relationships and his idea of who he is. Rob’s relationship to music helps us understand Rob as a character through the different ways he uses it to interact in his environment – either as a crutch inhibiting his growth or as a way to aid his self-development.
In this essay I ultimately want to address the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More with Feeling" (season 6, episode 7). However, I do not want to look at this episode in isolation from the remainder of the Buffy franchise but rather argue that it exemplifies a certain entertainment strategy that courses through the Buffyverse. Now it seems to me that entertainment is either too often denigrated as a specific ideological formation that produces negative effects of audience passivity as against more overtly challenging texts, or, alternatively, entertainment is celebrated within a postmodern theoretical framework that views the multiplicity of pleasures afforded as inherently productive and even oppositional. Alternatively I want to concentrate on entertainment for entertainment's sake which is to say as a dialectical operation that in Fredric Jameson's terms intermingles wish fulfilment and repression by arousing radical fantasies in order to contain them (Jameson, 1990: 25).