Various genres of art – specifically novel or fiction – with its portrayal or depiction of cultural constructs such as music, dancing, sculpting, painting and building, “connects” a person with a specific period of time or age and cultural community. In addition, a novel also moulds or gives expression to perceptions of individual as well as social identity. This complex idea of identity and belonging has been illustrated in Keri Hulme’s novel, The Bone People.
In The Kiss of the Fur Queen art is not only demonstrated as having a function, but specific examples are provided. Art in this text functions in three main ways. It functions as education, identity, and cultural formation. Counter to the concept that art can simply exist for art sake is that the meaningful functions of art are encountered in daily life. This novel crystallizes that concept and confirms that preserving and continuing artistic endeavours is needed not just for the sake of art, but for the many profound implications of arts functions.
The reading assigned titled “The Socially Constructed Body” by Judith Lorber and Yancey Martin dives into the sociology of gender with a specific focus on how the male and female body is compromised by social ideals in the Western culture. She introduces the phenomenon of body ideals pressed on men and women by introducing the shift in cosmetic surgery toward body modifications.
Over the decades, art has been used as a weapon against the callousness of various social constructs - it has been used to challenge authority, to counter ideologies, to get a message across and to make a difference. In the same way, classical poetry and literature written by minds belonging to a different time, a different place and a different community have somehow found a way to transcend the boundaries set by time and space and have been carried through the ages to somehow seep into contemporary times and shape our society in ways we cannot fathom.
Life is like a ginormous puzzle, ergo, as we learn and grow our perspective changes. Clary is taught about the mystical being around her, while trying to save her mother. Resulting in Clary’s mindset to expand as her character changed. For example, on page 422, while Luke and Clary are talking, she claims, “ About Gretel being just a Downworlder. I don't think that” (Clare 422). Whereas, just hours earlier, she was extremely nervous about being in contact with downworlders and other demons alike. Actions such as these represent the prospective change of characters throughout the book City of Bones. Thus proving, that the bigger picture helps us grow into the person we are meant to
I look to other artists for inspiration and affirmation in regards to my work. I am certainly not the first artist to portray ideas of the body and its fragility. Hannah Wilke, whose work dealt with ideas of beauty and vulnerability, is perhaps one of more influential artists for me. While her work greatly differs from mine, I believe that fundamentally she was asking similar questions of society through her work as I am. When I first saw her work, I felt f...
...e multiplicity of meaning embedded in these works suggests the importance of the body as a liminal site, a site of inscription and meaning making, in both historical-contemporary and more recent feminist work. It is, of course, unlikely that Antin or Kraus draws directly upon any singular theory explicated in this essay. Both artists are, however, undeniably interested in the formations, constructions, and shifts of subjectivity. Both Carving: A Traditional Sculpture and Aliens and Anorexia address the body’s uncontained boundaries, exploding the dual Cartesian model of interior/exterior self. As feminist artists, both Antin and Kraus are also surely aware of the complexity of discourses around food, self, and the body. Through the artists may not be speaking “to” or “through” any particular theoretical model, they are contributing to these discourses all the same.
Personification is the best literary device that gives suspense in Three Skeleton Key. My first claim is that personification gives suspense because it reveals the suspenseful location of the story. In the text on pg. 40 it says “The light danced over the stream.” Someone may argue against that saying that the lighthouses light doesn’t make the story suspenseful. After that I would argue that their counter-argument is flawed because the fact that that’s the only light around makes the reader nervous about what’s going to happen to the characters. Then the reader is going to start feeling antsy about whether the characters are going to stay out of danger and in the light.
These cultural strictures come in a number of forms. First, the artist attacks intellectual conformity, choosing art over all other means of self-expression even though it is not widespread in his or her society. Though it is not explicitly stated - and is perhaps even subconscious - the artist chooses art over either academe or high society. The artist questions society's customs, making this choice explicit in their daily actions. The artist rejects ostentatious displays of wealth and the cultural emphasis on money, replacing it with a frugal simplicity more conducive to authentic experience. Finally, the artist calls into question the cultural construct most important to any understanding of human interaction - the binary conception of gender.
Identity is something that many people struggle with. Who am I? Is a common question American’s struggle with. However, the outside world uses our culture, our society and our background to truly shape what we become. This is an idea that many authors throughout the years have realized this and portrayed it in their writings. In most of the author’s works they explore these challenges faced by their characters to help relate to the general public. Kate Chopin, in “Story of an Hour,” discuss feminist concepts in a pre-suffrage American. Similarly in the short story “Winter Dreams,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the raw truth of the American Dream in the post-World War I era. Eudora Welty, in “Petrified Man,” evaluates who really is the monster,
A few days ago I was listening to Taylor John Williams’ song, “The Mates of Soul” in the shower. As I took carried out the exhilarating tasks of lathering and rinsing, I listened to the perplexed artist as he sung of the absurdities people who believe in soulmates fill both their minds and waking hours with. In his pragmatic testimony, Williams paints his verses with a voice of reason, questioning why so many individuals insist on maintaining a strong belief in the permanence of soulmates despite our human nature to inevitably change over time. Yet after my shower, even my quick-dry towel couldn’t quite soak up the droplets of Williams’ words from my skin: “they say to stay together and promise to [love each other] forever, even if forever never really wanted to stay.” Throughout the remainder of my day, I found myself wondering whether Williams was being prudent and wise in his beliefs, or simply illogical and cynical.
The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier is the author’s journey of return to his Latin American root. He tries to decipher the myths and complexity of African identity and achieves it by opening up a new realm of interpretation and representation through literature work.
At the heart of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lies Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive young man concerned with discovering his purpose in life. Convinced that his lack of kinship or community with others is a shortcoming that he must correct, Stephen, who is modeled after Joyce, endeavors to fully realize himself by attempting to create a forced kinship with others. He tries many methods in hopes of achieving this sense of belonging, including the visiting of prostitutes and nearly joining the clergy. However, it is not until Stephen realizes, as Joyce did, that his true calling is that of the artist that he becomes free of his unrelenting, self-imposed pressure to force connections with others and embraces the fact that he, as an artist, is fully realized only when he is alone.
The face is a central organ to personal identity. With it we can communicate human expression, feelings and characters with as little as the blink of an eye. On a deeper level, the face can be an art form that speaks to a universal understanding of the mind. Olivier De Sagazan uses the face to challenge conventions. He exposes human rawness and looks at cultural taboos. Sagazan’s artwork cannot be pinned down by language but by raw emotion. His unsettling performances represent visions of primitivism, agony, occult and other ancient cultural art forms that cover or deform the face in ways that can be both beautiful and confronting. Leading us to question, “What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
... culture and identity. It allows the artist to be an insider and outsider at the same time, crossing the border of points of view at all times. It functions on different levels of society’s social structure, sometimes right on par with current events and other times defying all common everyday needs and resistance.
The issue of identity is of primary importance in the cosmopolitan today’s world characterized by blending of cultures and globalization processes. Identity is a construct: the ways an individual understands what it is to belong to a certain gender, race or culture. As Jonathan Culler says “Literature has not only made identity a theme; It has played a significant role in the construction of the identity of the readers. Literary works encourage identification with characters by showing things from their point of view” (2005: 112). In this regard there is a lot of theoretical debate that concerns the nature of ‘subject’ or ‘self’. The question about the ‘subject’ is ‘what am I?’ and further the question whether the identity of the ‘subject’ ‘something given’ or ‘something constructed’ has