Effectiveness of movies: The example of "Kids" by Larry Clark
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Ever since the creation of the first motion picture, there have been numerous debates over the “effectiveness” of a vast multitude of movies. The term effectiveness is a very broad expression and can be used to cover a huge variety of areas. On a generic basis, did it make the viewer...
Gender Inversion and Spectator Identity in Silence of the Lambs
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Jonathan Demme's 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs centers on a young FBI trainee's attempts to catch a deranged serial killer before he kills again. Clarice Starling is a young woman determined to rise through the ranks of the male FBI. Already at a social disadvantage due to her sex, she...
The Art of Graffiti
Tutorials/exercises - 4 pages - Arts and art history
A young boy is standing in a dark, subway tunnel with a can of spray paint in his hand. His intentions are clear. Instead of being traditional and painting at home, he is using the world as his canvas. Vandal or not, he is still an artist. Even though he may just paint his name on the wall, it is...
Making music with music: Kool Herc and the evolution of sampling
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Arts and art history
Kool DJ Herc is a Jamaican American musician and producer, who is credited as a pioneer of hip-hop during the 1970s as a result of his trendsetting musical technique and influence on hip-hop culture as a whole. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1955 as Clive Campbell and he immigrated to the...
Christ in Majesty
Tutorials/exercises - 2 pages - Arts and art history
While monumental figure erecting was hindered during the Middle Ages, illuminated manuscripts and mural paintings were given momentum as a result. Both media allowed for mass productions, many of which have lasted to this day. A fine example of a mural fresco from the Romanesque Period,...
Communication Competence: The Core
Essay - 3 pages - Journalism
Communication competence is the concept or framework that defines communication as we know it. It covers the all of the bases of communication, from talking to a person individually, to specific cases where logistics and demographics come into play. In order to be able to communicate over a large...
12 Angry Men: Analyzing the Jurors
Case study - 2 pages - Film studies
The movie 12 Angry Men systematically altered the views of the jurors by eliminating the bias, ignorance, and fallacies. Many of these men held predetermined points of view in which there minds were made up before analyzing the defendant. Through the process of reviewing factual information and...
The Americanization of High Fidelity
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Many feel that a film adaptation needs to be completely faithful to it original written format. “When viewing the film version of a novel or play they know, they want to find in the film what they valued in the literary work, without asking whether this is the sort of thing film can...
Stage vs. Screen
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Films are often adapted from plays, and at times they are nearly identical. At other times they have almost nothing to do with one another. In films you can do things that are not feasible and at times not possible on stage. This is not to suggest that the film Crimes of the Heart is in any...
DVD: Downright Video Dominance
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Film studies
In 1997, a product was released that would do what nothing (not Betamax, Laserdisc, nor various projector systems) seemed to be capable of: conquering the VCR/VHS system. This product was the DVD (Digital Video or Digital Versatile Disc). As soon as it hit stores in the United States, it was...
What Do You Expect?
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Tony Kuschner's play Angel in America is full of contrasts, disparities, and opposite views. Many things are shown at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. There are many differing opinions and complete disagreements that not a large number of things that are constant and similar in the...
Short Forms in Film
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant (1917) is a slapstick comedy that also addresses social issues. The film has a simple plot with four main characters, one of them Charlie Chaplin. He plays a penniless foreigner who wins money from playing cards on a ship to America. He then meets Edna...
True West: Identity
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
One acquires his own identity through his inner self and his milieu. His interpretation of his own needs and desires plays a big role in whether he decides to abide by society's norms or to completely disregard his ego by complying to the inner beast (or what psychologists refer to one's ID). Sam...
The Taste of Peace and Practice of Love in North Indian Drumming
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Arts and art history
The knowledge gained by practicing the North Indian tabla drums situates the musician within two spiritual modes of the Hindu tradition: the tantric, via rasa, and the yogic, via bhakti. Is there a limit to the spiritual efficacy of such musical practice? Citing the lack of “common measure...
Egyptian versus Greek Sculpture
Essay - 2 pages - Arts and art history
The Egyptian culture consistently maintained a powerful belief in the afterlife. As a result, tombs were lavished with clothing, furniture, and paintings to nourish the Ka or soul. Most importantly, statues were erected should anything happen to the body in which the soul must inhabit. The...
Avoiding Disaster: The Day the Earth Stood Still
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Disaster movies are often associated solely with cheap thrills; nothing more than vehicles for big explosions and even bigger budgets. The modern perception of this film genre (as well as its subgenres) seems to be nothing more than that of a means for movie studios to spend a lot of money, and...
David Lynch
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Storytelling, since the dawn of time, has served as an invaluable means in which human beings are able to create, sustain, and relay emotion, identity, and ideology. The stories people tell allow them to simultaneously connect to, and differentiate themselves from one another. Arguably more...
The Blame Game
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
In modern times, and namely in Western culture, identity has become a wholly introverted principle. People strive to define themselves solely as individuals; identity is thought of as exclusively self-contained. American culture, for example, celebrates above all else the “individual;”...
The Wicker Man: Challenging the Audience, Transcending the Genre
Thesis - 5 pages - Film studies
A horror movie does not work unless it is frightening. A meek horror film is as ineffective as an unfunny comedy or an uninteresting drama. If a horror film succeeds at being scary, then, by definition, the filmmakers behind it have accomplished what they set out to make. The difference between a...
Controversy Within
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
In the last century alone, the United States of America has witnessed dozens of “equal rights” movements. Some of the most significant rights Americans currently enjoy have come out of great struggle and controversy. Whenever a group of citizens protest the way their society views them,...
Stranger Than Paradise: Meaningful Minimalism
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
The term “independent film” is extremely malleable in the realm of American cinema. A film may be considered “independent” if it is financed and/or distributed outside of a Hollywood studio, or if it bends and/or breaks the conventions of mainstream American movies. There are...
Home Movies
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
Nothing can create nostalgia like a movie camera. There is something about the moving image that can trigger emotions like few other mediums can. It is easy to get lost in a film; they have the awesome ability of capturing and recreating the past. The nostalgic value of the cinema is immense, but...
Subverting the Mainstream: The Postmodern World of David Lynch
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
During the first half of the twentieth-century, a movement known as “classical Hollywood cinema” thrived; this was the dawn of truly “mainstream” films. The movies created during this time operated largely within metanarratives; all-embracing laws which governed human...
Fellini's Otto e mezzo
Thesis - 5 pages - Film studies
Since the dawn of cinema, there have been numerous film directors who have garnered the reputation of innovator, auteur, even genius of the medium. Only three directors, however, have created such unmistakably identifiable styles as to warrant film terminologies based on their very names. Alfred...
They Live: Underestimating Camp
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Distinguishing a film as “campy” is, arguably, as difficult as determining whether or not a film is “good.” The definition of “camp” is utterly malleable and, moreover, exists almost purely in the eyes of the beholder. Similarly, a film is rarely definably solely as...
Robert Frank's America: "Political Rally - Chicago"
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
The United States of America is often referred as “the great melting pot”; a place where people of all ethnicities, backgrounds, and plights exist under a single title “American”. The title is simple; those living in The United States are, by definition, American. And yet,...
Georges Melies: Movie Magic
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
As is the case with many art forms, the exact origin of Cinema is tainted with controversy. While numerous innovators played important roles in the dawn of the medium, the Lumière brothers (Louis and Auguste) of France are most directly accredited with creating the first “films”....
Danger at a Distance
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
The nomenclature of “disaster movie” is as difficult a classification to place upon a film as any; for its definition is extremely malleable. Many movies incorporate a disaster, or even numerous disasters, and are still not known as “disaster movies”; the definition is not...
Acoustic Mythologies of The Natyasastra: Text of Celestial Music
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Concerning the use of musical rhythm as a sadhana, a path to liberation, one preliminary distinction to make is between the tantric means of rasa and the yogic means of bhakti; The mythological tradition inherited by Hindustani music distinguishes between gana (music for pleasure) and gandharva...
Adorno and Fiske Pop TV
Essay - 2 pages - Journalism
To a certain degree, the actions of individuals have an effect on their environment. However, our surroundings more dramatically influence our everyday experiences and shape our personalities. Two of the most popular cultural mediums, film and television, extend to mass audiences who eagerly...
