Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Elton John and the Loss of Sexual Autonomy
The past three decades have been filled with contrasting types of popular music, which reflect an evolving culture. What was popular in the Seventies provides a sharp contrast to what appealed to audiences in the Nineties. Ironically, the earlier decade was filled with ideas of freedom and non-conformity, while ideas of clear categories and cautionary reluctance dominate the latter. Despite the supposed 1970’s ‘revival’ in the 1990’s, symbolized by Volkswagen Beetles and Madonna’s retro hairstyle, certain perceptions and ideas from the seventies did not survive into the nineties. These lost concepts made it hard for the nineties culture to accept a more expansive sexual liberation. One song artist who lived through all three decades and was part of the force, which created the sexual liberation of the seventies, was Elton John. John serves as an ideal case study to illustrate the loss of this sexual freedom into the nineties. Though one would think that it would be impossible for one performer to be popular throughout these times, he seemed to soar. In addition to being a popular musician and singer, his reputation ranged from being named "worst dressed woman" by a popular magazine to being knighted by the Queen of England. This change is clearly represented in the pictures displayed here. In the seventies, Elton John is seen in cat suits and sparkles. In the recent pictures, he is wearing traditional suits and glasses. It is easy to generalize that there must have been some sort of conscious conforming to the times by this man, since he fits in so well throughout the decades. However, the truth may be that he conformed only at the end of this time period, w...
... middle of paper ...
... of what happened from the seventies to the nineties. We went from liberal ideas of ways to dress and live our lives to conservative ideas of clear defining lines between sexual categories and more conservative styles of dress; boys dressing like boys and girls dressing appropriately as girls. People of the nineties were not able to accept the fluidity of bisexuality because it does not fit in a clear-cut category; it entails all of them instead. Perhaps as we venture into a new century and millennium our society should start learning from the past so we can continue making steps forward instead of backtracking into the close-mindedness of the past. Freedom should be something embraced and not stepped over. This freedom can help us to remember, "…In the end, it is really about the simple mysterious pull between warm human bodies when the lights go out." (Newsweek, 50)
In Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America, the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the years since the 1970s gay liberation movement are described as a time of transformation and growth. The antigay movement, threatened, now more than ever, created numerous challenges and obstacles that are still prevalent today. Many of the important changes made associated with the movement were introduced through queer and queer allied individuals and groups involved in politics. Small victories such as the revision of the anti discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation”, new propositions regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, were met in turn with growing animosity and resistance from individuals and groups opposed to liberal and
Rock n’ roll gave people the voice they did not have in the early years. As the genre of music became more wide spread, people actually began to speak out. Altschuler touches on the exploration of how the rock n' roll culture roughly integrated with replaced and conflicted with preceding cultural values. Many of these values were very touch topics. Besides black civil rights, sexuality were one of the most sensitive t...
Either element of the conclusion is damaging to the traditional understanding of a Judeo-Christian God. It seems simple enough. A benevolent Creator appears incompatible with what we understand to be the existence of evil. Evil is opposed to God’s will, eventually cumulating in the crucifixion of God’s son, Jesus. One must then wonder how an all-loving and all-powerful God would allow such pain to occur to both his creation and Jesus. A perfect God’s world should be similarly perfect. The world is not perfect so it seems that God must not be all-loving or He must not be all-powerful. Rejecting the existence of evil, immediately rejects too much of the Judeo-Christian tradition to be considered, though some philosophers have considered it.
In this paper, I will use the writings of John Hick and Richard Swinburne to dispute the problem of evil argument. After I first elaborate on the P.O.E., I will give support for God’s existence with regards to the problem of evil. Then, I will address further counterarguments
Inwagen sets the basic format for the problem of evil as thus: God has “non-negotiable” properties of omnipotence and moral perfection, there is evil in this world, if an omnipotent and morally perfect being created this world there shouldn’t be evil in it, therefore, there is no God. (Reason and Responsibility, 108) Omnipotence meaning able to bring about anything that is not a contradiction and moral perfection meaning never – not even once- doing something that is morally unacceptable. (Reason and Responsibility, 108) Inwagen’s objective in the essay, The Argument from Evil, is to present a “defense” against the problem of evil. Inwagen’s defense is not trying to prove he knows the reason why evil exists; rather, only to show that there may be “a very real possibility” that God has a morally acceptable reason for allowing evil to exist. (Reason and Responsibility, 109) Inwagen’s reasoning behind this is as follows; from the premises of the problem of evil the conclusion, God does not exist, does not necessary follow because He may have a morally acceptable reason for allowing evil to exist. Inwagen makes a case for the above reasoning by using an analogy that shows human do not always act on their wants, that they are able to bring about, because they have reasons not to and this can be extrapolated to God. (Reason and Responsibility, 109) The next question then is: what this reason, or reasons, to ...
There is evil. 3. So, God does not exist”. Since there is evil, then that means God does not exist. So there is no loving and powerful God. However, if there is a God then he is not all loving and powerful. Daniel Howard-Snyder states in his article “God, Evil, And Suffering,”: “We would have to say God lacks power and knowledge to such an extent that He can 't prevent evil. And there lies the trouble. For how could God have enough power and knowledge to create and sustain the physical universe if He can 't even prevent evil? How could He be the providential governor of the world if He is unable to do what even we frequently do, namely prevent evil?” (5). This statement argues that God is not all powerful because he is unable to prevent evil in the world. Daniel Howard-Snyder then argues that: “Would a perfectly good being always prevent evil as far as he can? Suppose he had a reason to permit evil, a reason that was compatible with his never doing wrong and his being perfect in love, what I 'll call a justifying reason. For example, suppose that if he prevented evil completely, then we would miss out on a greater good, a good whose goodness was so great that it far surpassed the badness of evil. In that case, he might not prevent evil as far as he can, for he would have a justifying reason to permit it” (5). Even if God had a reason to allow evil, he who is all loving and powerful would want the least amount of people to suffer and feel pain. Since God knows
...n Duberman, and Martha Vicinus, eds. Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian past. New York: Penguin Group, 1990.
military post and befriends a local Sioux tribe. It shows how life was in times of the Civil
“We pluck and marvel for sheer joy. And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs…” (14-16). This emphasis on nature reflects the respect and connection to the natural world the culture was trying to convey in their poetry. The colorful and illustrative descriptions of the physical world are indicative of the mindset and focus of these poems. Namely the fact that they were concerned with the world around us and the reality we experience as opposed to that of abstract concept of god or the supernatural as seen in other historical texts. This focus on nature is important because it sets the context in which the major theme of loss and separation originate from. In this poem the poet chooses to emphasize the passing of time in the choice of comparing the two seasons. Spring, in which life begins a new, and fall, in which the leaves begin to fall off and die. The poem reads “And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs- Those are the ones I hate to lose. For me, it is the autumn hills” (15-18). This juxtaposition of these two
The history of the gay rights movement has been a hard fought battle within the United States. In fact the first gay rights movement dates back to 1924 with the creation of The Society for Human Rights in Chicago, Illinois. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that gay rights started to make progress. In the year 1969 The Stonewall Riots took place when gay, lesbian, and transgender patrons of a New York bar were raided by the police. This forever changed the movement from isolated incidents to a world wide phenomenon.
Terrorism can be specifically classified as asymmetric conflict, or a ”war between political actors of equal strength, in which the weaker party tries to neutralize its opponent’s strength by exploiting the opponent’s weaknesses” (A16, Glossary, Mingst.) Terrorist groups pose a great security threat, on an international scale (278, Mingst.) As terrorist groups increase in size and influence, the threat on security grows as well. The question then arises as to how to eli...
At the end of the `Cold War', the early years of the 1950's represented all that was wholly good and traditional about family life. Women were homemakers, men lived up to the expected strong masculine role of the provider and a conventional family with children, was normality. Morality and values were of key importance and were inbuilt and represented through family life. Therefore it is imperative to examine the social history of post World War II America, to understand and emphasise the impact of the Beat Generation writers on this era at that time. It is then possible to see the acute disparity of style and attitude between the Beats and that of the 1950's "family values" epoch. Oliver Harris argues that the fundamental reason Beat culture "seized centre-stage in the theatre of early Cold War America...is because its major figures worked on a very particular range of margins." The contentious question, however is where does the margin of homosexuality stand in relation to Cold War ideology and Beat Cultural po...
“Dances with Wolves” is a movie that seeks to deliver a message of the need for cultural diversity. The story follows the main character Lt. John James Dunbar, played by Kevin Costner, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the barely touched western frontiers that house the Sioux people. Once Dunbar arrives at his post, Ft. Sedgewick, he sets out to find his place in his new home. However, due to two plot moving events, the suicide of the officer who dispatched Dunbar to Fort Sedgewick and the murder of the coach driver who took him there, no one else is alive that holds knowledge of Dunbar’s placement.
Forester, Tom. The Information Technology Revolution. Edited and introduced by Tom Forester. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985.
An issue that has, in recent years, begun to increase in arguments, is the acceptability of homosexuality in society. Until recently, homosexuality was considered strictly taboo. If an individual was homosexual, it was considered a secret to be kept from all family, friends, and society. However, it seems that society has begun to accept this lifestyle by allowing same sex couples. The idea of coming out of the closet has moved to the head of homosexual individuals when it used to be the exception.