Michael Landy's "Scrapheap Services" is a 3D sculpture on display in the Tate Modern Gallery. It shows 3 men in boiler suits, their heads bent, as they are intent on their work in the disposing of `people who no longer play a useful role in society'. The room is scattered with little people cut out of discarded material such as aluminium cans, cigarette boxes and fast food wrappers. Uniformed mannequins are in the process of sweeping up the figures, gathering them into bins, and consigning them to a shredding machine called "The Vulture", as vultures clear aware rotten carcasses the machine will do similar. The company's logo `Scrapheap Services' appears throughout the installation as a written notice of what is happening. My initial feelings of the model are ones of curiosity. How long have they been working? How do they feel about the work? And will they ever totally dispose of `people who no longer play a useful role in life'? I like this piece because it is very thought evoking regarding the survival of the fittest. I think that the disposal men could also replicate world leaders trying to dispose of something in their endeavour to better the world i.e. Adolf Hitler's ethnic cleansing in order to create the perfect human race. I think that Landy made the disposal men wear red because the colour is often associated with danger, and he could be trying to warn us that this is what society will do to those who's role has been fulfilled and no longer have a use. The white in the room could represent the nothingness or pureness that is left after the work is done. After everyone has fulfilled their main role and been cleared up (including the cleaners) there is nothing left to achieve so there is nothing in the landscape and nothing left in the world. Posters displaying landscape pictures in the room could be an incentive to show the workers what they are working towards, what they are trying to achieve is a perfect world by cleaning away the debris (the people that have no more use). The colour created by the waste people on the floor is dark and that could be an indication of the future that is in store for them when they reach the `vulture'. The men cleaning up are manikins and this could have the meaning (with them fulfilling there role) that whilst you have a role in life you are set to that one thing, not moving to another place or role, they are also much bigger than the people on the floor adding to the insignificance and helplessness of those being disposed of.
In this image, a sewage worker is seen cleaning the drainage system, with his bear hands, without the use of either any equipment’s or protection. On the first glace, the image depicts the idea of health risk, because the man is exposed to such contaminants, which for him is work. He is looking up from a dirty drain, covered in filth, which shows that he is clearly used as the subject of this image, whom we are engaged to more as he is making eye contact with its viewers. This picture only includes one person into the frame, as the other man’s face isn’t available to see in this picture, which is man that is holding the bucket. Holding a bucket either emphasise the idea that he is helping the sewage worker, either to get the dirt out or to put the dirt in the drainage system.
I agree with his assessment about society’s throw away mentality due to the fact that I have seen it myself first hand. Recently I helped my sister move out of her dorm room at NAU and I was horrified to see all the things and edible food she was just dumping and what was worse, she wasn’t the only one. All of the kids were getting rid of perfectly good items in the dumpster, so it’s no wonder that dumpsters near college campuses are one of Eighner’s favorite places to scavenge. In his article on page 3, Eighner elaborates on student’s wasteful habits, “but in the case of discards from student apartments, the answer may be that the item was discarded through carelessness, ignorance or wastefulness.” I believe agree with Eighner that some people have a pack rat mentality while others just throw it away. My parents are a good example of this and I think it has something to do with the way that they were raised. My mom is a pack rat, holding on to everything as long as possible and giving away to charity what she doesn’t want anymore. She squeezes every last drop out of a toothpaste tube or a shampoo bottle, while my dad will throw it away half empty. My mom was raised in a single parent household, where money was tight and you used what you had… my dad however, was raised in a more affluent home and money flowed more freely. In fact, my mom does her own dumpster diving fairly regularly in our garbage can by rescuing stuff out of the garbage that my dad has thrown away, including belts, pants, shirts and hardly worn tennis shoes. She doesn’t keep the goods, but instead gives it to Goodwill or the church clothing drive. My dad is her antithesis and is definitely part of the throw-away society. My dad has little sentiment attached to stuff and like Eichner mentioned on page 6, “knows there is plenty more where what we came from.” After reflecting on
The color red has many significant meanings. It often symbolizes passion and desire but also anger and violence. In the novel Ethan Frome the color red represents not only the desire Ethan and Mattie have toward each other but the anger and stress his current marriage with Zeena is under. It also represents enthusiasm and confidence but in this case the lack of these qualities in the marriage.
Color symbolizes a lot in the story. In the story you see excessive use of colors. The first most clear color symbol is white which doesn't express the purity but the false purity and goodness in the people. The next is gray, valley of ashes, which expresses the lack of spirit in that area. The green shows the hope of a new start, or to work for something. Red is death , or blood. Yellow expresses the corruptness in society and dishonest behavior in society. Also yellow represents the coward image of characters.
Her withdrawal from the world is also presented in this passage. She chooses to move into the white room, now no longer decorated by the previous inhabitant. White can be a very cold, sterile color, and it serves to illustrate her lack of attachment to the room or to her own home.
Later on, Dwight and Jack started painting their house where white paint is used as a primary paint supposedly to symbolize purity and a new start towards Jack’s new life. But this also had an alternate mask covering the false positive pretense. It shows to the reader that Dwight may be covering the true rotten, ill and malice with white paint. Even with w...
The run down atmosphere at Red Sammy's gives the reader an eerie and ominous feeling of what is to end up of the family. The first bit of description that is given about Red Sammy's is that it is a tower. Towers are seen as being large and intimidating, and inside is described as being "a long dark room" (661). This gives the impression of Red Sammy's as being dark, dingy, empty, and neglected. This impression is then reinforced by June Star, saying that she "wouldn't live in a broken down place like this for a million bucks!" (661).Everything about this place is run down. Even Red Sammy's car, which he is seen fixing upon their arrival, is broken. This provides a foreshadowing to the family's car, which will also soon break down after their accident. The color red is also brought up, in Red Sammy's name, bringing to mind what the colour red symbolizes, such things as fire, blood, death, and the devil.
The hands of the men are personified as working men. The work of the men requires skillful hands. The men’s hands are doing all of the work.
...n that something bad is going to happen. That becomes clear when Gatsby’s yellow car stops in the valley of ashes it is those two colors next to each other. Especially because it is Gatsby’s car we know something is going to happen to him.
The color red seems to symbolize death. The beginning of the story presents the pit bank with "flames like red sores like its ashy sides" (2111). However, death is not presented as a dreadful thing in this story. In the end, death is freedom for Elizabeth. Even John says, " I do think its beautiful to look in the fire . . . . It's so red, and full of little caves-- and it feels so nice" (2114). In a way, he is commenting on the mystery and beauty of passing on to the afterlife. When Elizabeth goes to look for her husband, there, again, is "The red smear of the burning pit bank on the night (2117). Finally, she lays her dead husband on "the old red tablecloth" (2121).
Johnson goes into detail about those who made a living dealing with waste by depicting those who gathered human waste as “rakers”.
There is a distinct contrast between the white walls and the darkly tiled flooring. The white background represents purity and innocence, while the black tiles represent the negativity and corruptive nature of the HIV disease. However, it is notable that due to the shadowing, the white walls become less pure, or tainted, in places. The concept of innocence being tainted can be further linked to sex and sexuality.
On the most superficial level, the verbal fragments in The Waste Land emphasize the fragmented condition of the world the poem describes. Partly because it was written in the aftermath of World War I, at a time when Europeans’ sense of security as well as the land itself was in shambles, the poem conveys a sense of disillusionment, confusion, and even despair. The poem’s disjointed structure expresses these emotions better than the rigidity and clarity of more orthodox writing. This is evinced by the following from the section "The Burial of the Dead":
...ck of motivation. It is easy to fall victim to a lack of motivation upon seeing the collapse of the dream that was once the main driving force for people to work at all. The most powerful example of an ingredient missing in the wasteland is love. Love is the ultimate truth and the ultimate motivation, so when Frome has no love at all in his life and is left without any escape from his moral isolation, the wasteland cannot be denied. Likewise, when there is no love for what someone does and he only does it for the sake of living up to the ideal, such as the Lomans', the demise of the fantastic facade, and thus the onset of the wasteland, cannot be stopped. The wasteland inhabits all aspects of society today. It is a dark, gloomy cloud that hovers over the earth, blocking all hope-all life-from making its way into the reality of the world in which we live.
First of all, setting and use of language in this play employs existentialist concepts of despair and anxiety. The setting of the play looks like a partially underground bomb shelter, possibly after the occurrence of a nuclear holocaust and depicts nothingness. Room with bare interior serves as a shelter for the four characters: Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell. There are two windows that are used for nothing because Clov opens it on Hamm's request. He repeatedly searches the horizon with a telescope only to report about waves and sun, but he pronounces, "Zero. . . Gray"(Beckett 778). Zero means nothing, but its deeper meaning is nonexistence or absence and in this play it represents the absence of life. Similarly, gray symbolizes gloominess; it is unemotional, bori...