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The development of silent film
The silent film era
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More handpicked essays just for you.
The development of silent film
The silent film era
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Recommended: The development of silent film
True humor is supposed to be used as way to make people look at situation from a different perspective and to laugh about it. An example of this is from the reading “SantaLand Diaries” where David realized that life was not going as expected. He is thirty –three years old and applying for an elf job. He tries to imagine a whole new world where he is able succeed and accomplish his dreams within three weeks of being in New York. In the reading he says “I’m trying to look on the bright side” he is using this imaginative world to help him get through a really tough time within his life.
Looking at the Dakota prisoner of war letters we can see society through a lens that is often hidden in historical records, that being the perspective of Native Indians. The Natives, who occupied the land now known as the Midwestern United States, were treated like animals and savages by the European settlers who were continually moving west. The Dakota POW letters show that much like the European settlers, the Natives were a society with families and values that shouldn’t be treated different because of their heritage. David Faribault Jr. (also known as Four Lighting) argues that the Dakota people deserve to be treated as equals and human, and shouldn’t be prosecuted for “bad deeds” committed by other tribal members. The Dakota POW letters
In his 4th-century autobiography, Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo describes his path from wickedness to righteousness. Knowledge of the self, he learned, facilitates one 's knowledge of God; comprehending the all-powerful demands self-assessment (Burt). How one may come to know oneself, and thus know God, preoccupied early American writers, who explored human transformation and perfectibility through a range of theologies and philosophies. Jonathan Edwards paved the way with "A Divine and Supernatural Light." With The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine abandoned Edwards 's mysticism in favor of rationalist principles, though Edwards 's belief in direct communication with the divine through subjective experience recrudesced in Ralph Waldo Emerson 's Nature.
“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can convey emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.” The written word and the moving image have always had their entwining roots deeply entrenched in similar narrative codes, both functioning at the level of implication, connotation and referentiality. But ever since the advent of cinema, they have been pitted against each other over formal and cultural peculiarities – hence engaging in a relationship deemed “overtly compatible, secretly hostile” (Bluestone 2).
Many films of the silent movie era are melodramas, which was a term used back then purely as a descriptive word to describe a movie and not a ‘negative’ term the way we use the term today. Chaplin’s film is a melodrama that invokes the emotions of his audience. Some elements of melodrama are present in Chaplin’s film The Gold Rush, the characteristics of a melodrama aid in analysing how melodramatic a silent movie is. An element of melodrama is, a situation - an occurring conflict in the film created by the screenwriter to evoke an intense emotional response from the viewers.
In Burton’s films, lighting is used to show happiness or sadness. For instance, in the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, it is shown how dark and gloomy the town is while the factory is disconnected from society compared to when Charlie's grandfather was younger, working in an upbeat and colorful environment. Nevertheless, the lighting in his movies are manufactured for you to think a certain way of something when it could actually mean something else. With the accompany of lighting, Burton’s films
In The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the French Revolution is painted in contrasting shades of light and dark. Light represents the good in characters and the overall setting, while darkness is used to convey the increasing malice in France during the French revolution. As the novel continues, the darker elements of the book begin to show themselves in the main protagonists. The French revolution brings about “circumstantial darkness”, affecting the mentalities and behaviors of the participating characters to take drastic measures to protect themselves and the ones they love. The revolution affects Dr. Manette, Madame Defarge and Carton’s psyche, highlighting their inner “darkness”.
In “Aesthetic of Astonishment” essay, Gunning argues how people first saw cinema, and how they are amazed with the moving picture for the first time, and were not only amazed by the technological aspect, but also the experience of how the introduction of movies have changed the way people perceive the reality in a completely different way. Gunning states that “The astonishment derives from a magical metamorphosis rather than a seamless reproduction of reality”(118). He uses the myth of how the sacred audience run out the theater in terror when they first saw the Lumiere Brother Arrival of the train. However, Gunning does not really care how hysterical their reaction is, even saying that he have doubts on what actually happened that day, as for him it the significance lied on the incidence--that is, the triggering of the audience’s reaction and its subsequence results, and not the actual reactions and their extent. It is this incident, due to the confusion of the audience’s cognition caused by new technology, that serves as a significant milestone in film history which triggered in the industry and the fascination with film, which to this day allows cinema to manipulate and
Darkness can be a comfortable place for anyone. Without having to look at yourself or have people see you, one may not feel as judged or insecure. Light is revealing. In a bright room, you can’t hide tears, blemishes, or emotions. Blanche, from A Streetcar Named Desire, knows the pain of light all to well.
Though in his autobiography Chaplin says that entertainment rather than social or political commentary was his primary motivation, a close analysis of his films clearly display a pattern of socio-political advocacy (Howe 46). In the “Modern Times” which was released in 1936, Chaplin used
One of the most valuable aspects of personality is humor – we value one’s sense of humor and make friends often based on finding certain things funny. But how and why do we consider things to be funny at all? Human beings have strived to uncover fundamental truths about human nature for centuries – even millennia – but humor itself is still yet to be pinpointed. Henri Bergson is only one of many who has attempted this feat, and his essay Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic from 1911 breaks down comedy into what he believes to be its essential forms and origins. While Bergson makes many valid points, Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times that was brought to screens only twenty years later seems to contradict many of Bergson’s theories, while Bergson seems to contradict even himself over the course of his essay.
The conception of humor as an expression of superiority is further developed by Thomas Hobbes (1651). Hobbes identifies humor with sudden glory and stated that “The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” (Feinberg, 1978; Berger, 1993). This statement on humor formed the benchmark of Superiority theory of humor. Hobbes’s idea of humor built on the ideas of Ludovici (1933) and Rapp (1951). Ludovici proposed that superiority humor results from the awareness and recognition of having adapted to the societal norms in a better way in comparison to the others person who is being laughed at.
Stephany Seth Professor Mary Dodson ENGL 1302-013 01 October 2017 A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Keeps Away the Darkness A Clean, Well-Lighted Place written by Ernest Hemingway was originally published is 1933 by Scribner’s Magazine (Britannica). In the short story, Hemingway tells about a conversation between two waiters who work in a café. The pair talks about a customer, an old man who regularly comes into the café.
Baz Luhrmann is widely acknowledged for his Red Curtain Trilogy which are films aimed at heightening an artificial nature and for engaging the audience. Through an examination of the films Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby, the evolution and adaptation of his techniques become evident. Luhrmann’s belief in a ‘theatrical cinema’ can be observed to varying degrees through the three films and his choice to employ cinematic techniques such as self-reflexivity, pastiche and hyperbolic hyperbole. The cinematic technique of self-reflexivity allows a film to draw attention to itself as ‘not about naturalism’ and asks the audience to suspend their disbelief and believe in the fictional construct of the film.
Zoe Wicomb’s novel, Playing in the Light (2006), is set in the 1990s in Cape Town, South Africa, post apartheid. The novel revolves around Marion, the protagonist, and her intricate relationship with Brenda, the first person of color she has ever employed at her travel agency business. This post apartheid novel offers interesting and an insightful viewpoint of South Africa following the fall of apartheid. By analyzing the passages in this novel, one will be able to better understand race in the context of South Africa.