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Expression of emotion through music
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Music, Ethos and Pathos
Ethos: The credibility of Anti-Flag, as of right now, is growing enormously. All the other punk bands look to these guys and marvel at how much they are defending their beliefs. For example, a person is watching his or her favorite band play and he or she begins to talk of how great Anti-Flag is. Immediately one could pick up on that and want to get to know more about Anti-Flag. It is a chain reaction of learning about other bands through bands that he or she already knows. If Anti-Flag are respected by bands that were the original punk-rockers such as Bad Religion, NOFX, and The Clash, then they will be admitted into the fan base of such bands. As long as a band can get a well known band to show favor, the band will be more accepted by the fan-base community. This is ironic because the band does not have to make good music as long as a respected band likes them.
Pathos: The emotions that are really being played on the most are anger. People have so much anger when they can not understand the world or what is going on in it. The audience becomes furious to all the killing and death in the world and they need someone there to sympathize with them. Anti-Flag gets the listener angry by exposing the faults of the world. The listener appreciates this because Anti-Flag will not sell into the wrongs of the world. It uses the emotion of finding comfort in that there is someone else out there that has the same views as the listener does. The band uses punk rock music as a common ground with the listeners and expresses their views through their songs. This relates back to the author because this is a great way to protest through music.
In the short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, one of the dominant themes is the passage of time. In this short story time seems to pass as reality does with us unaware of its passing. The main character is the protagonist hero, Neddy Merrill who embarks on a traditional theme of a homeward journey. The scene opens on a warm mid-summer day at an ongoing pool party with Neddy and his wife Lucinda. The pool is “fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green.
Documentaries serve to draw a response through the use of literary techniques in order to present a particular point of view. Michael Cordell’s Music and Murder subscribes to this principle, the documentary focuses on three men serving prison sentences for taking a life and how music has changed and shaped their outlook on their own lives. Music, structure, verbal language and selection of detail all work on the viewers emotions which serve to draw a positive response towards rehabilitation in prisons.
Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. “An Historical Allusion In Cheever's 'The Swimmer'.” Studies In Short
...his story the main message that life is short and he succeeded by using point of view, setting and symbolism. “The Swimmer” can teach many readers not to waste valuable time like Neddy did when drinking, caring about insincere relationships among social status, and taking his family for granted. Cheever’s usage of literary elements not only displays the theme of “The Swimmer”, but also organizes passages of events for the reader to experience throughout the story. John Cheever once said, “The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness” (Good Reads). He perfectly illustrates this objective in “The Swimmer.”
John Cheever uniquely crafted the story “The Swimmer” by using a mix of surrealism and realism throughout the story. Most people when they read “The Swimmer” they have to reevaluate it to comprehend what is happening. The reason for that is because Cheever shifts between surrealism and realism so much that the reader does not even notice. The story starts out with Neddy being so strong and youthful, but as the story goes on he weakens and ages. When he was youthful Neddy decided to swim every pool in his neighborhood. As he ages and weakens, the pools get harder to swim and the seasons pass without him even noticing.
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Northon Anthology American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Canadian filmmaker and cinephile, Guy Maddin once said, “I do feel a bit like Dracula in Winnipeg. I’m safe, but can travel abroad and suck up all sorts of ideas from other filmmakers… Then I can come back here and hoard these tropes and cinematic devices.” Here, Maddin addresses his filmmaking saying that he takes aspects from different film styles and appropriates them into his own work. In The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Maddin uses a combination of French Surrealist filmmaking and classical American Hollywood cinema, specifically melodrama, to create his own style. In an article by William Beard, Steven Shaviro talks about Maddin’s filmmaking, and he links Surrealism and melodrama together saying, “Maddin’s films are driven by a tension between romantic excess [melodrama] on the one hand and absurdist humour [Surrealism] on the other.” In regards to The Saddest Music in the World, the relationship between Surrealism and melodrama is not one of tension, as Shaviro suggests, but one of cooperation. This paper will analyze two films by filmmakers Maddin was familiar with —Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali on the Surrealist side, and All That Heaven Allows (1955) by Douglas Sirk on the melodrama side—to showcase the important elements of each, concluding with an analysis of The Saddest Music in the World in conjunction with both film styles. Ultimately, it will be shown how Guy Maddin combines French Surrealist cinema and Hollywood melodrama in The Saddest Music in the World, to create his own unique film style.
Cheever, John W. “The Swimmer.” Charters, Ann. Story and Its Writer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.
John Cheever in “The Swimmer” uses much symbolism for his character and the voyage that this story must take. Neddy Merrill, the speaker of “The Swimmer” represents in the beginning of the piece the model of the American male of the time period in which the story was written. As the story progresses, however, symbolism is substituted for references to the nature of Cheever’s character. To be more specific, Neddy Merrill is the perfect example of the wealthy, suburban man of high status. As the story unravels, however he becomes none of those things and instead undergoes a transformation and tragedy that give insight, through symbolism and surrealism, the American’s male’s conception of life and legacy.
I think the message that John Cheever is trying to make in this short story is that if a person is in total concentration of a single goal, then it may result in ignoring or losing treasures that enrich our everyday lives. Some of these lost treasures are friendships, respect, family, and possessions. “The Swimmer” is written in third person omniscient, but focuses more on the main character Neddy. “Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble, and that his friend had been ill? His eyes slipped from Eric’s face to his abdomen, where he saw three pale, sutured scars, two of them at least a foot long.” With Neddy as the main character, the reader has the ability to form his or her own opinion of Neddy, due to the fact that we as readers do not know his actual thought process. Cheever mostly likely wrote “The Swimmer” in third person omniscient to allow the reader to create their own ideas as to what is going on in the character’s mind. Cheever already put ideas in our heads to describe Neddy as being selfish, cold-hearted, self-centered, and rich. I
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer.” Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
The American rock band Nirvana impacted American culture and society by paving the way for the punk rock subculture into mainstream corporate America. Punk rock music stems from the rock genre but has its own agenda. The crux of punk rock is that it is a movement of the counterculture against the norms of society. Punk rock in itself is made up of a subculture of people who rejected the tameness of rock and roll music during the 1970s. (Masar, 2006, p. 8). The music stresses anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian ideas in its lyrics as well as scorns political idealism in American society. Before Nirvana unintentionally made punk rock a multi-million dollar commercialized genre of music, underground rock paved the way for the punk rock genre by creating core values that punk rockers drew upon.
When watching this I caught on to the meaning of the storyline, and how yeah everything may be all happy and nice because everyone got what they wanted in the end, but that only fixed their problems, not the world, not the reality of what was really happening behind all the glitz and glam that was occurring in their own world. Throughout the song the scene shows American soldiers getting shipped off to war and everyone is so happy and proud that America is in the war and going to win, it then changes to the soldiers marching in the rain trying to stay strong and hold on for dear life as they get battled down. Eventually those who have made it out through the war alive, they become veterans with medals that don’t do much justice to recognize the sacrifice they have made and then turn into forgotten men of the war. I found connections with the economy and war which showed how the president failed his country even with bringing in ideas such as The New Deal that clearly did not work out according to plan. Poverty was a common thing during the depression, and reflecting back to the girls in the scene where they are in their conjoined beds due to lack of furniture and stealing milk from neighbors and soldiers
The issue of race is something the world faces in almost every element of life. In todays society there are issues of racism in politics, crime and media. One form of media that can be looked into specifically is music. Kembrew addresses this in lecture by stating, “Music and culture flow across racial, socioeconomic, and geographic boundaries” (McLeod Week One). Recently a particular Brad Paisley song featuring LL Cool J has sparked some controversy for acknowledging racism in a country song. The song is titled “Accidental Racist” and is featured on Brad Paisley’s new album Wheelhouse. The song brings up racism in a genre that tends to avoid controversy and typical does not discuss race. The way this song is being viewed brings up many interesting cultural questions about todays country music and the history of the genre.
How can different types of music affect people’s emotions? Music has many different ways to affect people. In some ways, it is good for the body both physically and mentally. In other ways, people think it is nice to listen to. More detailed, music has personalities, which can express what people feel. There are many observations involving different ways to express human emotions. Emotions are very interesting things, especially when they involve music. Music can have many personalities, affect people’s emotions, and be used as therapy.