In her essay, “Behind the formaldehyde curtain” Jessica Mitford explain what embalming really is and how the steps of embalming are ridiculous and grotesque. She uses an informative and scientific tone to show what happens when a body is left in the hands of a mortician. The author’s use of vivid imagery and complex diction shows that she know what she is talking about and gives the reader an image of what really is going on. Mitford’s purpose is to show the audience that nothing is pretty when the embalming process begins. Mitford begins her essay by using a metaphor; she compares the process of embalming to a drama.
During my online research on Mary Rowlandson’s negative stereotyping of Native Americans, I came across this site: http://eng307womenwriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/the-captive-and-the-heathen-demonizing-native-americans-through-religion-in-captivity-narratives/. It is titled, “The Captive and the Heathen: Demonizing Native Americans through Religion in Captivity Narratives”. It is compares Susannah Johnson and Mary Rowlandson’s captive narratives. They both demonize the Native Americans using references and imagery of hell to describe them. In the end, though, Johnson had a different experience from Rowlandson.
Which is a main feature behind the ‘Power of Horror’, an essay on abjection by Kristeva. Kristeva herself commented 'refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live'.  When I have looked at the abject in the past I have always been fascinated with the artwork that causes the most controversy, and I felt that from the knowledge that I have learnt from only a few years practise, that Andres Serrano’s piece ‘ Piss Christ’ is up there with the most controversial. I will be looking at that piece in more detail through out the essay. Andres Serrano, born in 1950 in New York City.
Master criticises and attacks 4WD’s and the owners themselves, in attempt to position the audience to feel as though the people who drive them are only thinking about their own safety and disregarding other driver’s. ‘It’s only their own safety they’re worried about.’ She intentionally uses a series of attacking words at the beginning of the article to convey that 4WDs are the ‘monsters of the road’ and are highly hazardous. The words ‘Killer cars’ and ‘Death Machines’ implies that it’s not only the owners who are responsible for deaths, but also the cars themselves. This is followed by a research report from MUARC which found that ‘4WDs are the most aggressive vehicle type, killing or seriously injuring an average 5.89 unprotected road uses or drivers per 100 crashes.’ This makes the audience feel insecure and scarse that they could possibly contribute to those statistics and be the next victim of this ‘Killer car’. Master repeatedly faults 4WD owners for causing havoc on the road, and furthers to create a sense of concern and worry in the audience, especially parents by sharing a case study of a 5 year old child who was killed in the driveway of her school by a mother who was a 4WD owner.
Mary Shelley uses different narrators to manipulate our views back and forth. For example if Frankenstein was narrating the story he would be against the ‘creation’. Frankenstein clearly hated how ‘delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains’ he had created. His emotions strongly influence our response to the ‘creation.’ Whereas if the story was being narrated by the ‘creation’ we would feel empathy and sympathy for the creation. ‘My heart sank with bitter sickness, as I
This is important; however, if cinema pretends to communicate any worthwhile truths about the human condition. Dehumanizing One of the more interesting aspects of civilizations as a whole, but cinema for our purposes, is the ability to dehumanize individuals or in some cases entire groups of people. We’ve seen it multiple times during our screening so far. In Strike we saw mass dehumanization toward the end of the film when a stampede of people was gunned down and it was visually likened to the slaughter of animals by the intercuts of the killing of a cow. The TV show Dexter also serves to dehumanize but on a more individual level and in a somewhat different style.
According to what she wrote about Extreme Makeover in her essay Why Do We Hate Our Bodies? The show picks two friends and gives them plastic surgeries to make them look how they are “supposed” to look. I agree with Gillianne when she explains how this is affecting people’s views in society in the sense that we are given a standard of looks to follow instead of love our bodies
Unlike most American horror movies, Funny Games ends with the death of all of the protagonists, and the final scene alludes to a murderous killing cycle throughout the community. The most prominent theme discussed and displayed throughout Haneke’s film is the display of the fine line which distinguishes the difference between reality and nonreality. Haneke argues that we observe nonreality in a similar way to how we actively observe reality - making it difficult to distinguish between the two. This, he quips, has resulted in the desensitization of American audiences to violent images and concepts. While many artists have argued in the name of anti-desensitization in the media, Haneke’s approach emphasizes the importance of human observation.
In Getting Dirty with the Body; Abjection in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Panagiota Petkou argues that Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, has “upset the tradition of anatomy”. In that time period, corpses were seen as something unclean. The only attention, if any, was brought upon corpses was for burial (to dispose of the flesh) or for scientific discoveries. Panagiota first brings up an image by the name of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolas Tulp. When Francis Barker observes the painting, he points out that “no eye within the painting sees the body”.
Daniel Dennett (philosopher and cognitive scientist) likens religion to cancer – it grows and is destructive. The late Christopher Hitchens (literary critic and journalist) wrote an entire book denouncing religion titled God is not great: How Religion poisons everything. In it he argues that religion is immoral, man-made and is grounded in nothing more than wish fulfilment. What do all these writers have in common? They are the leading figures of the so-called New Atheist Movement and they want to abolish religion from the face of the earth.