Addiction to Chaos: The Monster that Lay Dormant Inside Chaos is a term used to describes situations that are erratic and lack order. This lack of order is something everyone to a certain degree has in common. All the people in the world have some form of chaos in their lives, but with authors like Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) and Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). A common motif that both of these books share is romanticism. By expressing a sense of rebellion against norms in society.
In dystopian society, technology, social manipulation, and control are all factors used to maintain oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society, even at the expense of universal human values. The film Metropolis by Fritz Lang and the novel 1984 by George Orwell offer a variety of social and political perspectives that allow the audience to gain insight into the oppression of freedom, truth and love within their context. Both address loss of these values within society through control and oppression, but they differ in perspective, due to the contrasting views of each composer. Lang made Metropolis during the era of the Weimar Republic. This was the country's first attempt at creating a democracy in the very difficult years following the first world war, as he tapped into Germany's power struggles, issues of poverty and conflict.
Rob White: Antichrist is already making headlines because of the explicitness of its sexual violence (especially two acts of genital mutilation). There are comparisons to be made with the current vogue for “torture porn” horror, but a better initial reference point is a group of 1970s films: The Night Porter, In the Realm of the Senses, and Salò, all of which relate sexual violence to mid-century fascism. Antichrist’s concerns are contemporary—gender, ecology, science—and its accomplishment, easy to recognize so long as one is not too distracted by the gore, is to explore these philosophical themes cinematically. Antichrist is also a carefully plotted thriller. Recalling Don’t Look Now, it begins with a child’s death while mother and father (simply credited as “she” and “he,” played by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) have sex.
Centrism in Films Though times have changed a bit, some basic themes in movies have not. First we read Peter Biskind’s description on centrism and how he believed men and women to be portrayed. According to Biskind, “centrist films [are] often defined and negated the extremes, the limits of behavior, leaving it to the audience to negotiate an acceptable compromise within those limits” (133). Movies of a centrist nature “tend to dramatize consensus” (Gomes). Though Phillip Gomes’ paper focuses on science-fiction films he makes a good point with his view on consensus.
In Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz’s book, Everything's an Argument, a strong case is made that even getting dressed is a rhetorical act. Conversely, propaganda exists on a far more particular platform. The conditions with which propaganda operates are more hostile, aggressive, blatant and in-your-face than that of rhetoric. Typically, propaganda flourishes in societies where despair and desperation are present. These hopeless societies are easily indoctrinated by the persuasive tools of propaganda as their fears, anxiety and anger cloud their ability to use logic and reason.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a compelling novel about the repercussions of guilt and “sin”. While this story takes place in a strict Puritan community, one can see the relation of Sigmund Freud theories of libido that can be compared to this novel because it discusses the passion that exists as a natural part of human nature which criticizes that community’s strict ways. Pearl, Hester’s child comes into the story at the very beginning; “a great law had been broken; and the result was a being, whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder.” (62). Pearl represents the innocence of the natural human desires. Hester named Pearl Pearl because she gave all she had for her and so she is of great value such as a pearl.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton describes exactly what happened in George Orwell's world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In today's modern society one can see some of the characteristics of Orwell's dystopia. These characteristics suggest that while many saw novels like Nineteen Eighty-Four as, "attractive to the primarily fringe thinkers" (Science) they are still relative to this day. In essence Orwell gave signs through his novel so that people of the world can avoid destruction brought on by their own government like that of Hitler and Stalin. Gwyneth Roberts says in her article about Nineteen Eighty-Four that, “Some of Orwell’s Newspeak vocabulary (Newspeak itself, Big Brother, doublethink) has entered the English language; certainly his vision of a drab totalitarian future has entered the general consciousness, although it is difficult to know whether his warning [have] been fully understood” (Roberts).
Moral strain results when we have to do something we believe to be immoral in order to function as an agent of authority and benefit society. Denial was found to be particularly common in participants in the Milgram experiment and the Holocaust. Agency theory explains a wide range of social behaviours, ranging from how we act at work to the way in which peaceful people can go to war, and how normal people can get involved with atrocities. The idea of moral strain explains Milgram's findings that the minority of participants showed signs of stress. Agency theory is also supported by studies such as Blass and Schmitt, they showed a film of the Milgram study to
Unorthodox Through and Through By ANAM ZAMAN 10B The Dead Poets Society, written by N.H. Kleinbaum, was truly a movie like no other. It exemplified what a difference and impact an idea which is poles apart from a contemporary one can have on young, developing minds. It was extremely interesting as it illustrated a contrast between two very different philosophies of teaching, a struggle between a belief of ‘discipline’ and one of ‘humanity’ or one where a man can be a man, and not someone he is not. The movie also demonstrated the common idea of tyranny; oppression of not being able to express yourself. Mr. Keating encouraged the students to rebel against conformity and to stand up for one’s beliefs throughout life no matter how difficult it may prove to be.
But unexpectedly its ending is totally brutally violent and what we didn’t expect for a love and crime movie like Bonnie & Clyde. This is the same brutal violent unhappy ending of the Easy Rider. As we expected them to arrive together in their destination, but they could not because of their journey had to come on an end by both their death. 2. EDITING According to (Mast & Kawin; 1996, p.461) films of this period has to “…contain some seeds of the period’s values: the offbeat antihero protagonists; the sterile society that surrounds them; the explicit treatment of sexual conflicts and psychological problems; the slick but tawdry surfaces of contemporary reality; the mixing of the comic and the serious; the self-conscious use of special cinematic effects (slow motion, quick cutting, ironic juxtaposition of picture and sound, stylized memory and