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How media shape public perceptions
How media shape public perceptions
How media shape public perceptions
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The old building.
Created out of wood, bricks and stone.
Remembers the forest that became a field that became a city.
Remembers every moment, every story, that it was told.
Listen to the old building.
Listen to the tales, that are recorded in the walls.
To the stories trapped in the bricks.
It has much to say.
Much to show.
Los Angeles: the city of illusions,fakes, fantasies, and dreamers. The building in Los Angeles resemble the different ethnic people who live in this strange city, they are Unique and Imaginative. Much of the buildings located in Los Angeles are constructed to look contemporary, bizarre, and/or shaped to resemble something entirely different, for example a cupcake. The buildings, like some of the people who inhabit the city of Los Angeles, are there to entertain the audience. Each unique building represents bits and pieces of what Los Angeles is. However, which one reveals what Los Angeles is known for? What represents the immense amount of culture, the beautiful (fake) people, the expensive taste, and the eccentric architecture. Which building shows a city constructed out of people’s dreams. The Fowler Museum, Griffith Observatory, The Staples Center, Bradbury Building, Stahl House, and Grauman’s Chinese Theater; all capture the image that Los Angeles shows.
Hundreds of thousands of Hollywood's most famous celebrities have graced the halls of the Chinese Theatre, at movie premieres and ceremonies. In the Book Hollywood Cinema written by Richard Maltby, he says“it was once stated ‘To visit Los Angeles and not see the Chinese Theater is like visiting China and not seeing the Great Wall’ [Grauman’s] Chinese Theater has been a part of Los Angeles history for over seventy five years”. The Chinese Theater, in Holl...
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...From the movies that are shown, to famous cemented handprints of celebrities, to the building itself, shows how this city has been constructed out of dreams, illusion, and fantasy. The pictures, movies and celebrities-that were produced by the media, and shown in the Grauman’s Chinese Theater- made people start thinking,acting and looking a different way. The media drilled into the populations mind that the civilians of Los Angeles should be like the people the had created in their work. The media created the perfect guideline of what every person in this city should have, should look, and act like, creating the beautiful fake people we have today. The Grauman’ Chinese Theater best captures Los Angeles. It Shows exactly what the city and the people of Los Angeles is, a perfect movie.
“La-la-land: A place or state that is out of touch with reality.” (dictionary.com)
The mission of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes is a non-profit organization/museum founded to celebrate and cultivate an appreciation for the enduring and evolving influence of Mexican and Mexican-American culture, with a specific focus upon the unique Mexican-American experience in Los Angeles and Southern California. The museum itself is near where Los Angeles was founded in 1871 and includes a 2.2 anchor campus that includes two historic and renovated buildings (Vickrey Brunswig Building and Plaza House). All surrounded by beautiful public gardens. La Plaza is also located near the heart of Los Angeles surrounded by other ethnic sites like Little Tokyo. (However after visiting one can 't help to realize the homeless problem in the Los Angeles area, and realizing some are even Chicano.)
Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder in 1950 is based on how Norma Desmond, a huge Hollywood star, deals with her fall from fame. The film explores the fantasy world in which Norma is living in and the complex relationship between her and small time writer Joe Gillis, which leads to his death. Sunset Boulevard is seen as lifting the ‘face’ of the Hollywood Studio System to reveal the truth behind the organisation. During the time the film was released in the 1950s and 60s, audiences started to see the demise of Hollywood as cinema going began to decline and the fierce competition of television almost proved too much for the well established system. Throughout this essay I will discuss how Sunset Boulevard represents the Hollywood Studio System, as well as exploring post war literature giving reasons as to why the system began to crumble.
Hollywood is not simply a point on a map; it is a representation of the human experience. As with any other location, though, Hollywood’s history can be traced and analyzed up to present day. In 1887, Harvey Henderson Wilcox established a 120-acre ranch in an area northwest of Los Angeles, naming it “Hollywood” (Basinger 15). From then on, Hollywood grew from one man’s family to over 5,000 people in 1910. By then, residents around the ranch incorporated it as a municipality, using the name Hollywood for their village. While they voted to become part of the Los Angeles district, their village was also attracting motion-picture companies drawn in by the diverse geography of the mountains and oceanside (15). The Los Angeles area continues to flourish, now containing over nine million people, an overwhelming statistic compared to Wilcox’s original, family unit (U.S. Census Bureau 1). However, these facts only s...
"Love in L.A.," written by Dagoberto Gilb, is a story full of irony and multiple themes. The story is set in Hollywood during the summer time. Written in third person objective, "Love in L.A." guides the reader along through the story as opposed to an omniscient point of view.
While there are many different ways to classify a Neo-noir film, Roman Polanski’s, Chinatown captures many. The 1974 movie consists of many of these elements, including both thematic and stylistic devices. One of the main themes of neo-noir film that is constant throughout the film is the deceptive plot that questions the viewers’ ideas and perceptions of what is actually happening in the film. Every scene of Chinatown leads to a twist or another turn that challenges the practicability of the film’s reality. All of the never-ending surprises and revelations lead up to the significant themes the movie is trying to convey in the conclusion of the film.
In Dialogue: Theatre of America, Harold Clurman said, “we make theatre out of life” (27), and it was precisely this view that motivated him to help create a uniquely American theatre. Clurman, considered one of the most influential directors of the modern American theatre, had a unique vision of what the American theatre could become. One of the founders of the quintessentially American troupe, the Group Theatre, Clurman was a contemporary of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, and even married to Stella Adler for twenty years. At a ceremony honoring Clurman, Elia Kazan stated that Clurman’s “greatest achievement [was] himself” (Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre). An important figure in our theatrical past, Clurman’s theories on theatre and directing require close attention. In this paper, I will first provide a brief biography of Clurman, second, examine his theories of theatre and directing, and lastly, I will explore his criticisms of the then-contemporary theatre, and draw conclusions to the current state of the Broadway theatre.
The noir style is showcased in Sunset Boulevard with its use of visually dark and uncomfortable settings and camera work, as well as its use of the traditional film noir characters. In addition, the overall tone and themes expressed in it tightly correspond to what many film noirs addressed. What made this film unique was its harsh criticism of the film industry itself, which some of Wilder’s peers saw as biting the hand that fed him. There is frequent commentary on the superficial state of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering, which is still a topic avoided by many in the film business today. However, Sunset Blvd. set a precedent for future film noirs, and is an inspiration for those who do not quite believe what they are being shown by Hollywood.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Ever since the establishment of cinema in the early 1900s, Hollywood has continuously recreated elements of history to reenact for its future generations. In order to clearly broadcast a specific theme or message to relay to viewers around the world, Hollywood executives tend to embellish real life events, in order to provide a “fairytale” aspect to a seemingly not so “happily- ever-after” story from history. As part of this “fairytale” aspect, Hollywood tends to delegitimize as well as provide a more disrespectful and more comical version of societies and cultures in the specific time frame that the film is being set. Through the art of story telling, the movies Mulan and Kung Fu Panda, depict the two sides of Hollywood, the falsifying and mockery making of Chinese people, their society, beliefs and true events of history and that of an accurate portrayal.
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.
In my essay I will discuss the differences between national cinema and Hollywood cinema by using Rio de Janeiro¡¯s famous film City of God. There will be three parts in my following main body, the first part is a simple review of the film City of God, I will try to use the review to show the film structure and some different new points from this, show the how did the ¡®Shocking, frightening, thrilling and funny¡¯ (Nev Pierce) work in the film. The second part is my discussion parts; I will refer some typical Hollywood big name films such as Gangs in New York, Shawshank¡¯s Redemption, and Good Fellas to discuss the main differences between City of God and other national films. The third part is my summary, I will use my knowledge to analyse why there have big different between both kind of films and their advantages.
Marchetti, Gina, and Tan Kam. Hong Kong film, Hollywood and the new global cinema no film is an island. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Unlike other cities in the world, what differentiates Los Angeles from other cities across the world is its architectural novelty. Lacking ancient ruins or cathedrals, Los Angeles instead hosts a variety of different styles to reflect the city’s character or the waves of immigrants who helped shape the city’s history: Getty’s contributions to the city both comply and disobeys Los Angeles’ architectural standard. As demonstrated by
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
Somehow tourists still seemed drawn to this place, possibly because they had constructed a romanticized view on Hollywood. This is due to popular and academic literature developing an image of Hollywood that is defined solely by the glamour of the motion picture industry (Curti, 2007, p. 52). In order to live up to those prospects the Hollywood Redevelopment Project was put into effect in 1986. Its main goal was to “to facilitate the construction of mixed-use developments, luxury condominiums, bars and clubs, retail centres and a renewed emphasis on tourist-oriented activities” (Reynolds, 2012, p. 101-102). These civic and private institutions only take into consideration the commerce that can help Hollywood’s economy, but they forget about the toll this reconstruction can have “on the small enclave of residential housing” (Christiansen, 1991, p. 2). It seems as though the revitalization of this region is wiping away Hollywood’s cultural identity in order to emphasize the movie-esque aspect of