Treatment of Mental Disorders Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper

â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called â€Å"rest cure.† This therapy was used to treat women who had â€Å"slight hysterical tendencies† and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label â€Å"slight hysterical tendency† indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not â€Å"slight† by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has fabricated that includes a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator of this story grows obsessed with the wallpaper in her room because her husband minimizes her exposure to the outside world and maximizes her rest. Academic essayists such as Susan M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Elaine Showalter have a feminist reading of the story, however, this is not the most important reading. The author experienced the turmoil of the rest cure personally, which means that the story is most likely a comment on the great mistreatment of depression, hysteria and mental disorders in general. Despite the claims of Gilbert, Gubar, and Showalter that â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is solely feminist propaganda, their analysis is often unnecessarily deep and their claims are often unwarranted, resulting in an inaccurate description of a story that is most importantly about the general mistreatment of psychosis and the descent into insanity regardless of gender. When things are stretched too thin, they become less sturd... ...show that it is a feminist reading, which is unconvincing. In the end, there is more information supporting the fact that it is not about women, and is about all people dealing with this issue. The message of the â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is concerning the unfair and wrongful treatment of mental disorders. Works Cited Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. Print. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. â€Å"A Feminist Reading of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.† The Story and Its Writer. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 1629-1631. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†. The Story and Its Writer. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 462-473. Print. Showalter, Elaine. â€Å"On ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.† The Story and Its Writer. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 1631-1636. Print.

Dramatic Dialogue Analysis Essay

Language is a natural process of living. It plays a great part in our lives. Its effects are remarkable, and include much of what distinguishes man from animals. We use it to interact with one another, to construct and maintain our interpersonal relations and order. In doing so, we interpret and represent the world for one another and for ourselves. Language is used to store the experiences built up, both personal and collective. It is a tool for constructing knowledge and for constructing meaning. The study of language is an inquiry into the nature of mind and thought on the assumption that languages are the best mirror of the human mind (Stainton, 1999). Analysis of everyday language use affirms that it is in the realm of art that their challenges are most evident and tangible (Gerbig and Muller-Wood, 2006). Linguistics shares a common tradition with literary study. Not so long ago, language and literature were studied together by philologists, who saw the study of both areas as mutually beneficial. Later development and the advent of specialization in both fields have oven produced scholars whose work does not cross over form one field to another (Oaks, 1998). Even so, scholars in either discipline regularly voice the truism that there is natural conjunction between literature and linguistics. After all, both fields deal with the raw material of human communication and expression – language. There is a need for interdisciplinary cooperation between the disciplinary identity of linguistics as empirical and descriptive while literary study being interpretative and analytical (Gerbig and Muller-Wood, 2006). Linguistics helps us to â€Å"trust the text† (Gerbig and Muller-Wood, 2006), to interpret the text, rather than impose interpretations upon on it. Application of linguistic empirical tools to literature may not lead to ultimate truths. It can nevertheless bring precision to otherwise often impressionistic treatment of text. There is a need to treat text as interchangeable products of a discursive system. Mogliola (1981) posed the question: â€Å"what are the structural conditions for the valid reading of a text, in so far as these conditions are revealed by a phenomenology of interpretative experience? † Heideggerian hermeneutics takes as its origin the pre-objective oneness of interpreter and phenomenon (be the literary text) – sees in interpretation a reading that is faithful to this oneness. Interpreter is never neutral, but always approaches a text with an explicit or implicit question. Interpretative activity manifests three functions: the interpretative question, the textual aspect, and the interpretation which is the meaning. Any given interpretative question should select and illuminate its affiliated â€Å"textual aspect†, an aspect which is there is the text. Linguistics can place literature more firmly and credibly in its context for other aspects of meaning depend more on the context and the communicative intention of the speakers. Communication clearly depends not only on recognizing the meaning of words in an utterance, but recognizing what speakers mean by their utterances. The principles and rules of grammar are the means by which the forms of language are made to correspond with the universal form of thought. The study of generative grammar represented a significant shift of focus in the approach to problems of language. The shift focus was from behavior or the products of behavior to states of mind/brain that enter into behavior, the central concern becomes knowledge of language: its nature, origins, and use. The three basic questions arise: ‘What constitute knowledge of language? ’, ‘How is knowledge of language acquired? ’, and ‘How is knowledge of language put to use? ’. The answer to the third question would be a theory how the knowledge of language attained enters into the expression of thought and the understanding of presented specimen of language, and derivatively, into communication, an other special uses of language (Stainton, 1999). The third question takes an important part in this study, particularly in the performance of the language which main purpose is communication. Communication is conceived as a relation that binds together the three elements: sender, receptionist, and topic. Corresponding to the three elements are three distinct functions: expression, appeal, and representation. These functions consist communicative function depending on what takes the center-stage. The function does exclusively what is represented or depicted in the communicative act. The three functions become the explicit focus of conversation (Medina, 2005). Alongside communication is conversation. Smith (2001) describes conversation as a process of two people understanding each other. Thus it is a characteristic of every true conversation that each opens himself to the other person, truly accepts his point of view as worthy of consideration and gets inside the other to such an extent that he understands not a particular individual, but what he says. The thing that has to be grasped is the objective rightness or otherwise of his opinion, so that they can agree with each other as a subject. Furthermore, in conversation, knowledge is not fixed thing or commodity to be grasped. It is an aspect of process. It arises out of interaction. In conversation, there is a to-and-fro play of dialogue. Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. It is culturally and historically specific way of conceiving certain verbal transactions and as such has considerable rhetorical force (Maranhao, 1990). The root sense of dialogue is that of talk (logos) that goes across or back and forth (dia). In contemporary English, dialogue is a conversation of two persons. At formal level, it is an economics of verbal exchange. In the functional usage of dialogue, a text or social interaction is treated as a social field across which multiple voices and multiple cultural logics contend with each other (Tedlock and Mannheim, 1995). What makes something as dialogue? The spirit of its participants of the form its utterances take? In Plato’s inception, dialogue has always been and continues to be programmatically liminal: interstructural, between two states or conditions, essentially unstructured rather than structured by contradictions; because of its deliberate avoidance of closure and finality. It serves perpetually as a vehicle for reformulating old elements into new patterns. Dialogue provides a meeting ground, community, and manifests itself in a variety of spontaneous and ritual modes of discourse in which nature and structure meet. Understood as a conceptualization of a kind of discourse and also a way of viewing and interpreting discourse, dialogue shares with narrative the characteristic of being atemporal, existing in many times and places. As discourse phenomena, it is internally atemporal. It does not talk about events in time; instead it spans in ‘dialectic event (i. e, discourse event) and meaning’; it presents utterances, ideas, and undertakings in nonlinear, recursive, diaeretical, and synthesizing sequences (Maranhao, 1990). Treating dialogue as an ideal evidently has an ethical implication. Furthermore, when a particular mode of communication is chosen as a model of dialogue, it becomes identified with the sense of goodness or rightness adhering in the ideal to the exclusion of other modes of communication. (Maranhao,1990). Spoken and written languages are what Maranhao (1990) termed as modes of communication. Although written and spoken languages are very different, they are not easy to separate. In fact, they are closely intertwined, and in daily life people participate in literacy events where reading and writing are mixed with spoken language and with other means of communication. Writing is based on speech in some very real ways; spoken language is the basis for the most people’s learning of written language, for instance, and the very form of written language gets inspiration form spoken language. However, other aspects of communication come into play with written language. Most significantly, it is visual: laid out in some way and displayed. The importance of the role design, layout and other aspect of the physical context should be evident and they form part of what is meant by writing. Writing enables us to go much further than spoken language: its ability to fix things in space and time. Writing results in text. It extends the functions of language, and enables to do different things (Barton, 2006). It is in the realm of art where study of language is evident and tangible. Dramatic dialogue, the interplay between written and spoken language, fits for the study. It is therefore desirous to investigate the workings of dramatic dialogue. Dramatic dialogues usually serve a number of purposes such as developing the plot, and presenting the characters and providing information about them. Playwrights attempt to achieve balance between some features of actual speech and the employment of dialogue by putting not too much closeness to actual speech so as not to make dialogues dull and uninteresting (Al-Rubai’i and Al-ani, 2004). Dramatic dialogues (plays) exist in two ways – on the page and on the stage. It is therefore necessary to adhere to the argument that sensitive understanding of plays (explicitly contains dramatic dialogue) can be arrived at through â€Å"mere reading† through linguistic analyses that dramatic text contains very rich indications as to how they should be performed. Dramatic dialogue takes into account that one crucial aspect in which drama differs from poetry and fiction is in its emphasis on verbal interaction, and the very relationship between people are constructed and negotiated through what they say. It is where linguistics takes into its own. Linguistics, and the techniques of discourse analyses in particular, can help analyze the exchanges between characters, in order to: help us understand the text, help us understand how conversation works, and allow us to appreciate better the skill demonstrated by the playwright (Thornborrow and Wareing, 1998). Chapter 2 Dialogue as discourse is characterized by a fundamental structural principle: it is interactive and interactional. It is a mode of speech exchange among participants, speech in relation to another speech not merely the verbal expression of one character or actors’ part. In the study of dialogue as interaction, the dramatic text as written text, addresses a context of performance which requires a change in mode of discourse – the transformation and transmutation of the written lines into dynamics of speech, which involve more than recitation of the lines by the actors (Herman, 1995). In the study of dramatic dialogue, understanding the workings of the dialogue as interaction and conversational speech versus dramatic speech are taken into account. It is also important to note that dramatic dialogue, taking part in the speech exchange system, must be safeguarded from conversation in order to preserve the formers’ ‘literary’ quality (Herman, 1995). In the construction of conversational practices and actions, participants use co-occurring structures and devices from different levels of linguistic organization as well as the employment of linguistic features in conversation. In the linguistic analyses of dramatic dialogue, Gricean semantics and analyses on the linguistic features: turns, pauses or silences, adjacency pairs, chaining, and back channel support, will be employed. According to Gricean Semantics, in ordinary conversation exchanges, there is much more to the meaning of an utterance than what appears on the grammatical and logical surface: utterances often convey things other than what they literally mean and they often imply things other than what they strictly entail. The adequate understanding of meaning requires the processing of what has been termed as ‘an invited inference’. Grice formulated the maxims as follows: ‘Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as possible, but not more informative or less informative that is required (Maxims of Quantity); ‘Do not say what you believe to be false’ and ‘Do not say that which for you lack adequate evidence (Maxims of Quality); ‘Avoid obscurity’, ‘Avoid ambiguity’, ‘Be brief’, Be orderly’ (Maxims of Manner), and ‘Be relevant’ (Maxims of Relevance). According to Grice, all these different maxims are corollaries of the most fundamental principle of communication that governs all conversation. This is what he called as Cooperative Principle which read as follows: ‘Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk-exchange in which you all engaged. ’ (Medina, 2005). The central premise of the Gricean approach is that the communicative intention of a normal speaker under normal circumstances conforms to the cooperative principle and the conversational maxims that derive from it. For Gricean semantics, the speakers’ conversational contributions are governed first and foremost by these general rules of cooperative communication, rather than by the semantic conventions that fix word-meanings and sentence-meanings. It is also important to note that intended meanings of speakers can depart sometimes even wildly like that of ironic utterances. Grice’s analyses of intended meanings put a lot of weight in the speaker’s communicative intentions undermining the traditional emphasis on linguistic conventions, which on his view become mere tools to be used and bent in all kinds of ways (Medina, 2005). One of the linguistic features in conversation which tends to be modified in dramatic dialogue is the way turns are taken, the way people having a conversation organize who is going to speak next. Schegloff (1995) had the idea that syntax of spoken language in interaction should be looked upon as resource that is deployed and exploited for the organization of turns and sequence in conversation. Turn-taking is one important communication skill emerging during preverbal routines. It is a mechanism use to reorganize conversation so that interactants smoothly exchange speaking consequences. Through turn-taking, participants coordinate their conversational contributions to each other. Turn-taking works as the onset of dialogue and is a prerequisite for latter emergence of communicative rule (Haslett and Samter, 1997). In general, for the construction of conversational practices and actions, participants use co-occurring structures and devices from different levels of linguistic organization, not only from prosodic, phonetic-phenological, but also form morpho-syntactic and lexico-semantic structures in turns-at-talk in their sequential context. The possible types for turn constructional units (TCU), for English, are sentential, clausal, phrasal, and lexical. Syntactic units are important resources for the construction of TCU and turns. TCU is a linguistic unit in talk constructed in the interplay of syntax and prosody in its sequential context. For spoken language in interaction, syntactic entities like sentences are not to be conceived as static or fixed, but flexible. That is why when talking about transmission relevance placed as the relevant loci for the negotiation of turn-taking; ends of sentences, clauses or phrases etc. are not talked about but the ‘possible completion points’ of sentences, clauses, phrases, and one-word construction. It is the flexibility of the possible syntactic unit that enables them to be used for the organization of turn-taking in conversation (Hakulinen and Selting, 2005). In the construction of conversation, participants are not concerned with the construction of units as such, but the construction of units is contingent upon practices or activities such as holding, organizing, and yielding the turn. TCUs are not themselves relevant for participants, but for the practices and activities of turn-taking and activity constitution (Haslett and Samter, 1997).

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Sister Elizabeth Ann Seton was born Elizabeth Ann Bayley on August 28th, 1774 in New York City to wealthy parents. Elizabeth suffered many losses early in life starting with the loss of her mother when she was just three years old, and a younger sister two years later. She was raised Episcopalian by her mother and stepmother. Her father was a humanitarin who taught his daughter to love and be of service to others. Elizabeth had a great interest in reading and particularly liked reading the bible and scriptures in which she found great comfort.In 1794 at the age of 19, Elizabeth married William Seton and together they had five children. Four years into their marriage William's father died leaving Elizabeth and William in charge of caring for his many brothers and sisters. A few years after that, Elizabeth's father died. Not long after that, William's business began to fail along with his health. William and Elizabeth thought that a sea voyage to Italy would h elp him to feel better. William died while in Italy and Elizabeth became interested in the Catholic faith during that time to which she later converted.She felt a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin having lost her own mother at such an early age. To support her children Elizabeth opened a school for girls in Baltimore. After joining the Catholic Church in 1805 Elizabeth devoted her life to God's will for her. In 1809 she took her religious vows and became known as Mother Elizabeth Seton. She formed a community of sisters called the Sisters of Charity which included one of her daughters. Mother Seton died on January 1st, 1821 from tuberculosis the same thing that killed her husband.She was just 46 years old when she died. Elizabeth is known as the patron saint for the loss of parents. Her feast day is celebrated on January 1st. Mother Seton became the first american saint to be beatified in 1963 and then later canonized in 1975. Mother Seton told her follow sisters, â€Å"The fi rst end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly, to do it because it is his will. †

A study of anatomy and physiology of movement of upper limb

The procedure in lifting the hand to drink water is a complex one which involves a huge amount of technology inter-transfer between the brain and the eventual skeletal muscle.There is initiation of the movement at the brain which is transmitted via specialized white fibre tracts to the hip flexors via the intermediate spinal cord, involving a very complex mechanism at the cellular levelThe initiation of the   process is at the motor cortex (Ms I) of the brain. The primary motor area is located at the precentral gyrus of the frontal lobe. The area controlling the motion of the lower limbs lies towards the superior surface of the brain. Within this area lies the cell body of the primary neuron. These neurons are known as upper motor neurons (UMN).These UMNs receive modulating impulse from the inputs from the cerebellum and the basal ganglia via the extrapyramidal pathways. These tracts modulate the gross movement initiated at the frontal cortex. In turn these areas are modulated by a fferent signals from ascending spino cerebellar, and spino-thalamic pathways.   The signal initiated at the nucleus of the cell body is transmitted electronically via the axon of the myelinated neuron via the mode of salutatory conduction.The myelin sheath which surrounds the axon of nerves that involve fast transport, breaks at intermediate regions known as Nodes of Ranvier. The electrical impulse moves in   a jumping manner at these nodes nerve transmission as a neural impulse, generated by the formation of a nerve action potential. Like all excitable tissue, nerves maintain a resting membrane potential that is the difference of voltage across the membrane of the neuron. In neurons this value is   – 70 mV.This voltage difference is maintained by the Na/K pump on the membranes. This impulse generated at the axon hillock is transmitted via the depolarizing phase which allows sodium ions ingress into cells via opening of the Na channels. This entry of Na in one portion a llows activation of other Na channels, causing depolarization of the adjacent region of the neuron. Subsequently repolarization occurs via the opening of K channels, which restores the membrane potential.Thus this process continues which allows the transmission of impulse. Many such nerves together descend as the descending cortico spinal tract in the pyramidal system, which travels through the midbrain into the spinal cord, decussating at the level of midbrain( 90% of the fibres decussating and forming the lateral spinothalamic tract) and again at the level of spinal cord ( the other 10%, forming the anterior spinothalamic tract) .It is the former which is responsible for the upper limb movements. The cortico-spinal tract travels in the anterior horn cell of the spinal cord till the brachial plexus where they synapse with the spinal ventral root neuron (lower motor neuron). A single post-synaptic neuron receives signals from many neurons. At the axon terminal, the propagation of im pulses leads to release of neurotransmitters, which are stored in specialized vesicles.The released Ach diffuses into the synaptic cleft and binds with receptors on the post synaptic membrane to produce excitatory post synaptic potentials. This leads to generation and propagation of impulse in nerves which are destined to innervate the neuro-muscular junction. At the neuro-muscular junction, Ach is released, which diffuses into the synovial cleft and binds to receptors in the motor end plate, and triggers a muscle action potential.The released Ach is destroyed by the acetylcholinestrase. At the level of the sarcolemma of the muscles, the muscle AP travels along T-tubules, opening Ca release channels in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Ca binds to troponin-tropomysin complex, which releases the myosin heads, these then bind to the actin thin filaments, and draws them closer to the M line. Meanwhile bringing the Z disc closer.This leads to muscle fibre contraction. This is a self propagati ng sequence eventually leading to the contraction muscles involved in the movement. Each nerve fibre innervates many musle fibres ( about 150). This is the motor unit.The greater the number of motor units recruited by the nerve action potential, the greater the force of contraction of the muscles. In the spinal cord, nerve impulse travels along the brachial plexus (C5 – T1) to innervate the Pectoralis major (Arm adduction and flexion – reaching out to hold the glass), Flexor digitorum superficialis and profundii of all fingers, the interossei and the lumbricals of all digits, opponens pollicis, flexor pollicis brevis , adducor pollicis and abductor pollicis brevis ( gripping of the glass by the fingers flexion at metacarpophalangeal.Proximal interphalangeal and the distal interphalangeal joint of the fingers; the carpometqcarpal joint, metacarpophalangeal and the interphalangeal joint of the thumb); then contraction of the biceps brachii ( elbow flexion) and the supina tor ( supination at the elbow joint); finally the contraction of the triceps muscle ( elbow extension, to put the glass back).This excitatory impulse is also associated with the production of inhibitory action potential ( hyperpolarizing impulse) in the antagonists (eg triceps during elbow flexion, and biceps during elbow extension)   

Obesity in Children Essay

What parents allow their children to eat can affect their bodies and their life. Most children don’t realize the effects of long term illnesses such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart condition and high blood pressure. Taxing unhealthful foods and beverages could prove an important strategy to overconsumption and potentially aid in weight loss and reduced rates of diabetes among children and adults. Junk food should be taxed because it will reduce obesity, type 2 diabetes, and health care costs. First of all, taxing junk food will lower obesity among Americans. The increase in both soda and pizza found that many Americans would still buy junk food regardless of a price increase. Taxing of sugary beverages at a penny-per-ounce rate with the goal of decreasing consumption of obesity caused in drinks. The junk food tax would fund obesity related health initiatives such as diabetes care. Obesity has been acknowledged as a national problem, notion of taxing junk food doesn’t seem so bad. Secondly, Americans need to take better control over what they eat and what they feed their children. We must take a stand against obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease in children and young adults. Most fast foods contain process meats and considered unhealthy in children. Americans don’t have an ideal what they are eating in fast food restaurants. How the government determined what foods should be served in schools. A couple of school systems such as Texas and California had a great idea to remove soft drinks, pop, soda, energy drinks and cola from the schools lunch rooms along with fast foods such as burgers, French fries, hot ogs and convenience stores, too fight the obesity epidemic among the United States and children. Replace drinks with orange juice, and water. Replace fast foods with fresh fruits, vegetables, salads and exercise. Obesity in the United States has risen from 48 percent to 65 percent within the last thirty years and so has health care which has sky racket. We need to be more proactive in saving our children by eating healthier f oods in the home and school. Schools need to change the vending machines to reflect eating healthy will help the body to become healthier. The school environment, nutrition, organizational support groups, school policies that take away things such as sweetened beverages, and replace them with water, juice, fruit, vegetables and less junk food. Availability of less healthful food and beverages in schools is worldwide. Despite changes in improving school food environment, availability of high fat food such things as pizza and hamburgers remain high in United States schools. Canadian elementary schools seem to have fewer vending machines, but less healthful food and beverages are available to all grades as they are made available through outlets such as cafeteria, school stores. It is said that schools may influence students into eating unhealthy by the lunches they provide and the vending machines that are in schools. Lastly, fast foods are not good because they have no nutrition value, most children that consume fast foods on a daily basic start to gain weight due to lack of exercise. Children watch more TV and play more video games than exercising. Less exercise in schools, have also been a major factor contributing to obesity in children. Fast foods make children tired, the more you eat the less energy you have. When you walk into a store whether it’s a large grocery store or a small convenience store the lack of fruits and vegetables are small. Most children and adults are unaware that they have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Most children who suffer from obesity also have a high rate of asthma. It would be a good idea if governments would rate schools on lunches they are providing to students. The school should prohibit advertising of fast foods, sweets and pop, prohibit use of less healthful foods , provide advertising that deals with eating healthy and healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, seek educational requirements for school food and include requirements for nutrition education. Include exercise in the diet each day that way children won’t feel tried after eating lunch. They will burn off fast and their bodies will feel better and become better in the long run. We need our children to be healthy. We need to avoid sickness, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Americans need to limit the intake of fast foods and start looking at healthy choices for themselves and their children. Medical bills have sky racket. If we plan to keep our generation of children around we better start looking at better ways of eating and providing nutrient in our everyday diet. Most people have cars, less people walk, ride bikes, or exercise. We have become lazy when it comes to exercise and eating healthy. Look at your children and ask yourself, do I want my child to continue looking like this, obese, sick and unhealthy.

American Popular Culture Essay

American popular culture has brought entertainment to many for the past two centuries. However, very little people know the extent to which American popular culture has shaped the historical relationship between marginalized social groups and dominate American society. Traditionally, the term popular culture has denoted the education level and general â€Å"cultural-ness† of the lower classes, as opposed to the â€Å"official culture† and higher education emanated by the dominant classes. This separation of upper class and lower class became even more pronounced towards the end of the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century the was a strong need for one to express their intellectualism as well as further their education in order to gain a higher status in society. Due to the need to denote other races, we have the arrival of black face minstrelsy in American popular culture, which allowed for inferior white races such as the Jewish of Irish to gain approval from the dominate white culture. However, black face minstrelsy also forced African Americans further into segregation from American society. During the period of Modernity from 1870 to 1930, there was a strong fascination with the Wild West and Manifest Destiny. During this time there was the formation of the Boy Scouts, which was the true depiction of what Americans thought it was like to be Native American. Due to irrational fears and anxieties, American popular culture took comfort in â€Å"playing Indian† because it allowed them to express these worries in American mainstream media. From the end of World War I, following major cultural and social changes brought by mass media innovations, the meaning of popular culture began to overlap with those of mass culture, media culture, and culture for mass consumption. Because of World War II, many women were put to work in order to fill the jobs of the men at war allowing them to gain a sense of independence. However, other events in history such as Vaudeville, and the idea of the New Woman also allowed women to gain a sense of power during the 19th century with pioneers such as Sarah Bernhardt. American popular culture was the gender revolutions biggest supporter as well as its biggest critic. Throughout American history, popular culture has been an entry way for marginal social groups into the political, economic, and social mainstream of American society. With Irish and Jewish males finally being accepted by dominate white society through the performance of black face minstrelsy as well as women being able to control their own being through expression in Vaudeville. However, while these minorities are able to further their social hierarchy through performance, African Americans and Native Americans were often exploited as a way of making profit. While American popular culture has its positive social constructions, I believe the negative effects that American popular culture has had on the historical relationship between marginal social groups and American society has caused too much damage to repair. Through acts such as the minstrelsy shows, the Buffalo Bill Show as well as films and plays of the time, minorities are depicted in a subordinate role to the Anglo-Saxon male. These acts within popular culture spilled over onto American society and allowed for the prejudice and racism of the 19th and 20th century. The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American popular culture entertainment consisting of comedy skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performed by white people in blackface. Blackface was when a White American would paint their face with black makeup and exaggerate their lips and being to impersonate an African American male. Minstrel shows caricatured black people as poor, lazy, dim-witted, buffoonish, happy-go-lucky and violent. The minstrel show began with brief parodies and comic entr’actes in the early 1830s and emerged as a full-fledged form of mass entertainment in the next decade. In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national art of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. Minstrel songs and sketches featured several run-of-the-mill characters; the slave and the dandy in nice clothes quickly began the crowd favorites. These were further divided into sub-archetypes such as the mammy, her counterpart the old darky, the provocative mulatto wench, and the black soldier. Minstrel performers claimed that their songs and dances were authentically â€Å"black†, although the extent of the black influence remains debatable. The depictions of African Americans as these â€Å"token† characters, allowed for the ignorance of White America to be validated through the representation of minorities through stereotypes. African Americans were seen as bumbling fools who couldn’t take care of themselves and needed a White master to explain the world to their simple minds. African Americans were seen as people who needed someone to represent them; they needed someone with power to gain control of an â€Å"untamed† culture. A certain version of a black identity can be created through things like the minstrel show and other forms of popular culture, and that understanding has led to material practices like racial segregation and social inequality and educational deprivation. Americans use to believe that race could be distinguished biologically and that different ethnicities had different DNA coding than others. American popular culture is how most people learn about other identities and allowed them to understand the practices of another culture. As Professor Avila stated in lecture â€Å"the minstrel show is one of the sites in history where this could be found. The 19th century was a time where people saw racial difference and were terrified by it. The existence of slavery and its uncertain future promoted a mixed range of responses by Americans and they were acted in a variety of ways† (Avila Lecture January 15th 2013). The minstrel shows are a perfect example of how White Americans acted out their own prejudice to enact their own culture in 19th and 20th century America. The Minstrel performers were often men of Jewish or Irish descent, which were two groups of people who were discriminated against even though they were White. Often, Jewish and Irish men took comfort in dressing up in Blackface for the minstrel shows because it allowed them to relate to the audience as well as the character they are portraying. These performers used minstrelsy as a platform to gain social hierarchy in American popular culture by bringing comic relief to a working class audience. Also, they often were able to finally express themselves once they put the Blackface make-up on because it served as a mask which hid their actual identity from the audience. These minorities were able to use their performances to gain acceptance from the dominant White American society. However, this upward social mobility came at a large price for African Americans during the 19th century. The depiction of African Americans as fools or grime savages in the minstrel show furthered the discrimination and stereotypes upheld by Anglo-Americans. Minstrels were not shifty in their theft of black cultural expressions and practices. The performers depicted these expressions quite brazenly, acknowledging and emphasizing the speeches and songs they created. At the same time, black face minstrels were the first self-conscious white entertainers in the world. While they told themselves they were only playing the role of an African American in American society, they often found their life struggles were very similar to those of the characters they portrayed. This mutual discrimination by dominant White America, allowed for African Americans and the White Americans portraying them in minstrel shows to bridge a formerly segregated gap in American society. Blackface minstrelsy was the first distinctly American theatrical form, and deeply rooted in American popular culture. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was at the core of the rise of an American music industry, and for several decades it provided the lens through which white America saw black America. On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects and furthered discrimination of minorities in America; on the other, it afforded white Americans a singular and broad awareness of what some whites of the time, considered significant aspects of black-American culture to be. Although the minstrel shows were extremely popular, being â€Å"consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group†, they were also extremely controversial. Racial integrationists decried them as falsely showing happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were â€Å"disrespectful† of social norms, portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would undermine the southerners’ â€Å"peculiar institution†. With Irish, German, Polish, Italian, Russian-Jews, and Native stock within the audience, the minstrel show provided a relational model by which those in audiences could unite in whiteness. And although the minstrel show sometimes did highlight interethnic diversities, they all could share in this particular joke – the laziness and stupidity of black people. African Americans were not the only minority group to suffer social, political and economic discrimination during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Native Americans who are the rightful owners of our beautiful land have faced harsh and cruel discrimination from dominant White American society. Throughout early American history, there was a strong push for Manifest Destiny, or the wide held belief that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. This ideology was upheld by most Americans because they believed that God had told them it was their destiny to settle on this land. Due to the fact that they believed it was their destiny, the settlers took little to no pity on the people who already inhabited the land they were seizing. The concept of Western expansion seemed to be on the forefront of every Americans mind during the late 19th century, allowing for new fears and anxieties to form about Native Americans. With leisure time becoming a strong part of American culture, there became a strong pull to produce shows to entertain the masses after a hard day’s work. Showmen such as William F. Cody began to produce shows like the Buffalo Bill show, which featured relations between cowboys and Indians. For 23 years, the show featured a skit called â€Å"attack on setter’s cabin† as the grand finale show. This skit would start by showing a frontier home which was set on fire by savages, each time the encircling group of Indians came close to the cabin, Buffalo Bill would ride out on his horse to the rescue and save the day. The common theme of the Buffalo Bill show was to reinforce the heroic image of the Cowboy who expanded the land from sea to shining sea, saving the lives of White Americans and killing the enemies who stopped their destiny. While William F. Cody would sometimes depict a Native American in some of the skits, he was often the heroic cowboy everybody was waiting to see. However, working as a Native American in the production of the Buffalo Bill show had its upside. William F. Cody did not adhere to government demands as often fought to resist them to gain rights for his employees. One example of his resistance is allowing his Native American actors to keep their long hair instead of assimilating to dominate society like the government demanded. Also, the Native Americans in the Buffalo Bill show were offered a unique opportunity that many minorities didn’t have during the 19th century in America. Cody offered the Native Americans the chance to travel the country and make an income that was sizable. Taking part in these reenactments of American history also allowed for Native Americans to hold onto a sliver of their culture in a society who is try to diminish their practices. However, the overall goal of the Buffalo Bill show was not to inform the public about the cultural and social practices of Native Americans, but rather a remedy for the fantasies and fears that flooded American society during the late 19th century As stated by professor Avila â€Å"the image of the Indian has this degree of symbolic flexibility to be able to contain the projected fantasies and anxieties of Native Americans† (Avila, Lecture, January 29th 2013). The onslaught of Modernity challenged the concept of identity for everyone in America. The anxieties of the upper class about a minority revolt were enhanced by the acceleration of modernity (Lawrence, American Culture). Modernity brought a deep sense of transformation from an old world order to a new society. â€Å"However, this allowed for the objectification of people and products alike, with things becoming abstract commodities, like people becoming cogs in a machine, rather than being an independent human† (Nasaw, Going Out). Suddenly during the late 19th century there was a strive for authenticity, or a culturally-constructed category created in opposition to a perceived state of inauthenticity; a way to imagine and idealize the real, the traditional, and the organic in opposition to the perceived inauthenticity of modern commercial life. Inauthenticity was beginning to plague the youth of America and there was a strong push toward needing to be authentic. One of the urban responses about the corruption of youth was the invention of boy scouts, which wanted to introduce frontier experiences to youth, with an emphasis on scouting, camping, exercise, and a wholesome relationship with nature. The concept of the Boy Scouts takes the idea of â€Å"playing Indian† to its fullest extent. The actual image of the Indian was important to the Boy Scouts understanding of nature and the things that inhabit it. The Boy Scouts idealized the image of a Native American because it represented the human removed from modern life, who is retaining virtues from nature by living in it. White Americans use â€Å"playing Indian† as a way of projecting their fears and anxieties about the unknown onto the lives of Native Americans. Although it is not a strong point of the Buffalo Bill show, William F. Cody was known for his performances as he heroic cowboy, but he sometimes depicted the â€Å"Indian† in some of his skits. The audience at the shows seemed to like when the White actor would dress up as Native Americans, because they felt like they could connect better with that actor and his struggles. The idea of â€Å"playing Indian† in American popular culture can be seen both negatively and positively. Unfortunately, â€Å"playing Indian† led to the development of new stereotypes and anxieties, as well as reinforced old stereotypes about Native Americans. This caused a lot of tension and fear between the White settlers and the Native inhabitants of the land. On the other hand, â€Å"playing Indian† allowed for a previously intolerant society to gain a better understanding of the cultures and societies around them. Through experimenting with â€Å"playing Indian† American popular culture has both hampered the historical relationship between marginalized social group and American dominate society as well as strengthened the bond between two previously segregated groups. The American concepts of Manifest Destiny and Western expansion created many fears and anxieties for the White settlers of the land. After the closing of the frontier in 1890, Americans began to face new anxieties that European settlers would come from all parts of Europe and demolish the democracy that America had worked so hard to create. We can accredit most of the need in America for White Americans to portray themselves as Indians to the concept of Modernization. With Modernization came the invention of the railroads and the automobile which gave a stronger push toward urbanization. White Americans felt the need to seek simpler times like they had before industrialization and modernization took their course on American popular culture. Throughout American popular culture, there has always been a need to enforce a social hierarchy to make sure that minority groups don’t gain any power. This has proven to be true throughout America history with different racial groups, but minorities do not stop at race. During the 19th and 20th century, women were seen an inferior to men in America simply because they are a different gender. The concept of gender identities is often visited in American popular culture. In lecture, we have discussed how gender roles play out in public spheres of the modern city such as dance halls where women were given freedom to dance and the creation of department stores which gave women the option to work and be part of something outside the home. However, prior to the mid-19th century, women were meant to adhere to tradition gender roles placed on them by society. The rise of the theater and vaudeville house, between 1820s and the 1900s, allowed for popular theater to emerge in the conversation of sexual identities. The female performers in Vaudeville became the agents and metaphors for ancient social roles. This was the era associated with the â€Å"new woman†, who became perceived by the public eye as non-traditional. The new woman was both a social reality, as depicted by Sarah Bernhardt and a cultural concept, as shown by the feminist revolution. It was coined at the end of the century, and described a woman changing her public behavior and adopting new roles within a previously bias society. At the turn of the 20th century, American had a new league of ambitious, educated women who often put off or refused marriage, and dedicated themselves to political causes and social reforms – these women were part of what was labeled as the new woman of the 20th century. By the time of World War I, women demanded political and economic equality with men. Most historians have seen the rise of the political women, but particularly in urban slices of society, an important venue of acceptance was seen. Sarah Bernhardt embodies this idea of the â€Å"new woman†, or a woman who doesn’t see her gender as a limitation to her life. Sarah Bernhardt formed her own theater company, and she was the first actor to tour on an international circuit. She often played the roles of women, many of which were familiar to American audiences. She also accredited for pioneering the form of the woman torn between power hungry aggressions and passive submissions. Onstage, she was usually very dramatic and could perform hysteria without shame, which was usually considered not ladylike. She caused many scandals by playing the roles of men in her plays, like in 1899 where she played the role of Hamlet. She upstaged men performing alongside her, jumping across masculine and feminine roles at the same time, blurring the lines between men and women, and blurring the line between a bad woman and a good woman. Whatever the case, her personality always dominated the characters she played. â€Å"She had an immodest presence and was known for shameless and bold publicity stunts. She could seize the possibilities for self-construction afforded by mass culture and spectacle† (Kasson, Amusing the Millions). She invented the farewell tour, and each tour was loaded with drama and tears. She did this to heighten a dramatic sense of finality, and was a master of advanced publicity and that of her own self-image. She was in control of her own self-image, not unlike women promoted by PT Barnum. Unlike Jenny Lin, Bernhardt called the shots for her performances, and that image was that of a high-strung and egotistic person. She took ownership of her public image, and though she was adored, she was criticized by males for being too unladylike. This could have suggested gender confusion at the time. Nonetheless, she contributes to the large visibility of women, and showed how women could change the terms with public culture. This created new examples of women that were willing to stand for their rights by asserting their demands for political equality. In contrast to the Bernhardt image, there were images in the 20th century American popular culture, which reinforced women as ornaments which were to be produced and handled by men. The creation of the chorus line gave birth to a new type of objectification. The amusement of the line resided with the ability for women who were the entire same image to show their ability to synchronize and choreograph their movements together. The line symbolized the application of the principles of scientific management to mass entertainment. These women who danced in the line all looked the same and held the same facial feature throughout the show almost as if they were wound up robots with someone controlling their every move. The idea is to synchronize limbs and bodies to a series and different steps, and in turn it reflects a faith into human engineering as entertainment. The chorus line was referred to a small army of femininity where women worked rigorously into being part of the crowd, and not an individual. They are parts of a whole, and are theatrically useless when they are separated from each other. They were displays of mechanical awareness, and that also broke the body to eroticize particular parts of the body, exposing these previously well hidden body parts to the public gaze. Historians argue that the chorus line is a perfect example of how men view women within a society; they are just pieces of a machine waiting to comply with a strong males command. These two different types of women that emerged in the 19th and 20th century in America show the strong influence that males had over women during this time period. The â€Å"new woman† was a rebellion against traditional gender roles, while the chorus line depicted a submissive woman who needs male guidance. Throughout 19th and 20th century American popular culture, there has been a lot of discrimination towards this idea of the â€Å"outsider†. In the minstrel show the outside is shown as an African-American male and the â€Å"insider† is the White family who paid to see the show. The creation of The Buffalo Bill show painted Native Americans as the â€Å"outsiders†, even though they inhabited the land before Americans even got here. Finally, American popular culture allowed for women to be depicted as the â€Å"outsider† and males to be presented as the â€Å"insiders†. However, even though these tragedies plague American popular culture minorities still find ways of resistance. Whether it be through Irish and Jewish culturally subordinate groups depicting the stereotypes of another minority to try to fit into mainstream American, or women like Sarah Bernhardt who don’t set limitations to their ambitions due to their gender, American counter culture has always found a way to strike back and its oppressor. I believe that American popular culture has allowed naive Americans to get a better perspective of the hardships faced every day by someone who is considered a â€Å"second class citizen†. American popular culture as both provided a gateway for minorities to fit into modern American society, as well as crumbled any hope for a sensitive bridging of gaps between social, political or racial groups within America. Works Cited Kasson, John. Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. Hill and Wang; First Edition edition, 1978. Print. Levine, Lawrence, â€Å"American Culture and the Great Depression,† The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History Oxford University Press, 1993. Print. Nasaw, David, and . Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements. Harvard University Press, 1999. Print.

Security Design Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Security Design - Research Paper Example that critically need fool proof security solutions include battlefield defences systems, money transaction system, international telephone system, etc. With the lapse of time, system complexities in such environments are rapidly increasing and traditional security paradigms are becoming insufficient. The authors remark that although the â€Å"common V model† (108) framework of determining a system’s lifecycle can still be used as a general starting point, systems thinking must be inducted widely. In order to develop and implement systems thinking to the sphere of complex systems, the systems designer must have a thorough understanding of his/her operational environment. Understanding the subsystem components, hierarchy situation, functional constraints, etc. are also equally important. To achieve this, Alston and Campbell also suggested that the systems designer should develop a range of potential solutions (110). This action can be achieved when divergent thinking and convergent thinking are coalesced with the help of spray diagrams, multiple cause diagrams, etc. Next, systems level designs and techniques must be produced. After that, the implementation scheme must be verified with the help of the techniques like software and hardware testing, validation, etc. Finally, the designing team must adhere to the most flexible â€Å"Systems Engineering policies, processes and tool sets† (Alston and Campbell, 112) that can be used and modified during security emergencies. Alston, Ian and Simon Campbell. â€Å"A systems engineering approach for security system design.† Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on Emerging Security Technologies. New York: IEEE, 2010. 107-112.