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Film industry big 5 and the great depression
Film industry during the great depression
Cinema and the great depression
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The film Modern Times came out in 1936 and was directed, produced, written, scored, and starred by Charlie Chaplin. It was filmed between 1932-1936. During this time The Great Depression was taking place in American and affecting millions of people. It was a silent film and Chaplin’s last silent movie. Chaplin brought humor to the struggles that a man faces during this time. This man in particular is very comical and likes a lot of things that most people would find as disadvantages. It is very interesting, because the dialogue is not in synch with the film. At first the movie was going to have sound, but it was switched so the camera frame speed could be at whatever. Not having a voice gives The Tramp a likeable characteristic. He never tries to be somebody he is not through his words, and his physical humor is universally enjoyed. One of the best scenes in the film is the conveyor belt sequence at the Electro Steel factory. The conveyor belt sequence shows how Henry Ford’s “Fordism” was taking over America. The Tramp is working on screwing bolts on tight as they go by on a conveyor belt with a wrench in both hands. He has to work very fast and rhythmically or else he will miss one. The president of the company is watching the workers up above. Giving orders to each section telling them to work harder or faster. One of his bosses, or one of men that over sees the factory workers, goes up to the Tramp and tells him to speed up. While the boss is talking to Charlie he takes a second to shoo away a fly. During this distraction, he messes up the entire assembly line. He has developed terrible tick of moving his arms in a jerking fashion. Time for rest will not be tolerated as shown Grace LaFrossia in the scene with... ... middle of paper ... ...tightening people’s noses. The men try to tell him that hurts but The Tramp is blissfully unaware and simply crazy now. He chases after a woman trying to tighten her buttons. Once he is in the control room he starts switching on and off switches. This creates ciaos in the factory and machines start breaking down, catching on fire, and smoking. He is then whisked away to psychiatric hospital and treated. Falling into the machinery does show how dangerous factory’s workers lives were physically, but the effects he experiences after the machinery shows what the factory line did a person’s psyche. The Tramp believed he was part of the machine and couldn’t stop screwing. His brain was brainwashed into believing he was just a machine and nothing more. That is how so many of the factory employees were treated, because they are working for supply and demand.
After the Bomb written by Gloria Miklowitz is a thrilling novel that takes place before, during, and after a bomb which supposedly was sent from Russia by accident. L.A. and surrounding cities are all altered by the disastrous happening.
Taking place in the jungle of meat packing factories during the early 1900s in Chicago, a journalist by the name of Upton Sinclair dissects the savage inner workings of America’s working class factory lifestyle. Sinclair portrayed the grim circumstance that workers faced and the exploited lives of factory workers in Chicago. He became what was then called a mudrucker; a journalist who goes undercover to see first hand the conditions they were investigating. Being in poor fortune, Sinclair was able to blend into the surrounds of the factory life with his poor grimy clothing. The undercover journalist would walk into the factory with the rest of the men, examine its conditions, and record them when he returned home. It is the worker’s conditions
This group of soldiers, led by Theodore Roosevelt, was one of the most memorable army units in United States history. Consisting of sheriffs, outlaws, students, and Native Americans this unit was definitely a miss-match of people, yet what they had accomplished brought them fame in America. Fighting in battles like that of Las Guasimas and San Juan Hill had been key points throughout the campaign in Cuba against Spain, and grew the notoriety of the Rough Riders. This reputation would eventually lead the Rough Riders into the history books and Theodore Roosevelt into the White House.
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
Another aspect of the dull factory work highlighted in the film is the grim, stern boss/CEO of the factory, an authority figure who despite his supposed great wealth and success, spends all his time dismally watching his gloomy workers and ensuring they never veer off their given tasks. After his invention of the Bliss Glasses, the main character is named Greatest Invention Ever, and lauded as a hero in his community as he grows wealthy and ascends to CEO of his own company. Despite his honorable intentions to translate his inspiration into something meaningful, the protagonist, once a lowly worker, became the menacing boss who spends all his time dreadfully keeping watch and yelling at his employees. This ironic twist of fate proves once again that in order to realize his dream, once the momentary happiness he attained through his invention and success has fled, he has lost his true self and, as a result, transformed into the authority figure he once
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
The novel Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe highlights the many important historical events that happened during the period of colonialism, spread of religious fervor to Africa from Europe, and the importance of the native religion among African societies. Achebe shows that religion holds a major influence in many African societies and influences the daily life of the natives. Furthermore, the novel introduces a major event that happen during pre-colonial Africa, the spread of the Christian faith, which forever changed and affected the natives in Africa, more specifically the Igbo society located in Nigeria. Things Fall Apart vividly describes and explains how the Christian faith that arrived in Africa changed both the individuals in the Umoufia and society. To add on, the novel shows how the spread of Christianity ultimately leads to the destruction of the many native African cultures, and shows what redeeming qualities that arise from the destruction of their culture. Achebe describes how the Christian faith acts as a guide to the Igbo society and at the same time acts as the inevitable downfall of the Igbo society.
The struggle between custom values and conversion is a universally applied theme to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The fable like, tragic tone of the work was set off from the very first page. The verb FALL APART has 4 senses to lose one's emotional or mental composure, go to pieces, break or fall apart into fragments, and to become separated into pieces or fragments. These are all exemplified in the novel Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the traditional sense. His fate was decided for him and was unavoidable. Okonkwo’s inability to act rationally and express his feelings in a anthropological manner leads to his inescapable demise. Okonkwo exhibits the characteristics of a tragic hero not only by encompassing an unexceptional flaw. Okonkwo not only developed this flaw because of his erroneous equivalence of masculinity with being filled with relentless fury, vehemence, and impetuousness, but also because he leads to his own self-annihilation.
In the short story “Being There”, by Jerzy Kosinski, there are multiple examples of satire that are displayed throughout both the book and the movie. A few of them are: media, death, politics, and racism. The satire of the media was very similar in the book and the movie. Media played a big role in society and still does to this day.
Norma Rae a loom operator in the weaving room is an outspoken individual and is very out spoken about her poor working conditions such as excessive noise, long hours with short breaks, physical stress from standing for long periods and abnormally high temperatures in the work areas. Added to all this is management¡¦s apathy for the working conditions, as seen when her mother looses her hearing temporarily with little or no sentiment from the company doctor, who knows this is a common problem for the workers. With this setting, the film progresses through most of the stages for employee organization. While management tries to get the workers support to keep the union out, and labor struggles to get a foothold to develop worker unity and get the union elected as the official bargaining agent both sides violate federal laws or come precariously close. First the Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) of the union will be examined.
Everyone is going to die; it is a fact of life. Every living thing on this planet will cease to exist at one point or another. John Donne, Walt Whitman, and Mary Oliver all acknowledge this fact in their poetry, but they go beyond the reality of the situation. In “Death Be Not Proud”, John Donne tells Death that it is a slave and eventually it will not be needed. Walt Whitman says that death does not exist and the soul is immortal in “Song of Myself”. Lastly, in “When Death Comes” Oliver describes a vision of life to avoid fearing death. Although everyone dies, death is not powerful or something to be feared because the soul lives forever. Death is not authoritative or compelling; it is a slave to mankind. Drugs and medicine make humans sleep
Our world is often referred to as our home. We need it to survive, and it provides us with the resources that we need to live our lives as comfortably as we do. Yet, we don’t often take the time to consider our impact on our environment. Let’s say our earth is “literally” a house, could you live in a home that has been routinely and permanently damaged, sprayed full of insecticides, and even torn apart for someone’s personal use? This Idea is represented in Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”.
From a scholarly point of view, the film accurately depicts the lifestyle of a factory worker in the timeframe. Workers would stand on an assembly line and repeat the same action day in and day out. The film also depicts the transition of the human dependency of machines very well. The workers would work at the pace of the machines. The film also had metaphors of humans being controlled by machines when the main actor was sucked into the pulley system of a machine. The film also has a scene where there is a machine that automatically feeds humans.
“The Great Dictator”, an elegant speech composed by the magnificent Charlie Chaplin, was a particularly moving one that has gained widespread recognition and praise since it was given back in the 1940s. On the surface, it appears as if Chaplin is directing soldiers to think for themselves and to break away from dictators’ indoctrination, as “dictators free themselves but they enslave the people!” is a line that is reprehended throughout the speech. Further analysis of Chaplin’s speech seems to reveal, however, that he rather wants the soldiers to break away from the deeper aspect of tyranny that has been embedded within them, essentially controlling them. Chaplin wants the audience to take action and think for themselves; to help one another and to save humanity from war using three key rhetorical tools: ethos, organization and pathos.