Traffic. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. Michael Douglas, Benicio Del
Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid. USA Films, 2000.
Blow. Dir. Ted Demme. Perf. Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Paul
Reubens, Ray Liotta. New Line Cinema, 2001.
1. Just as the intoxicating sensations of different drugs are
incommensurable with one another, so films about different drugs
tend to have radically different themes and effects. In American
popular culture perhaps the illegal drug with the longest cinema
history is marijuana. From propaganda films of the '30s to Cheech
and Chong's Up in Smoke, or the more recent revisions such as
Half-Baked, these films are, or have become, comedies. Further,
almost all of them celebrate the subversively humorous effect of the
drug for the preterite working classes. Even anti-marijuana
propaganda films have become comedies as new generations receive
them as pure camp. While films about marijuana are comedies, films
about heroin are almost always tragedies, focusing on the way in
which the drug is both a protest against an inhumane world and the
immediate means of the hero's self-destruction. While marijuana
films revel in satire, heroin films explore the complexities of self
and self-destruction. Distinct from both are films about cocaine,
which are almost always evocations of and reflections on the
American dream itself, that is to say, on politics in the most
practical and quotidian sense of the word. Both Steven Soderbergh's
Traffic and Ted Demme's Blow explore cocaine and its relationship to
politics in the American imaginary. However, the reception of both
thes...
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.... Ted Demme. Slate.Com 5 Apr. 2001.
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Porter, Bruce. Blow: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellín Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.
Scarface. Dir. Brian De Palma. Perf. Al Pacino, Steven Bauer,
Michelle Pfeiffer. Universal, 1983.
Scott, A. O. "'Blow': Under the Influence, a Drug Dealer Gets His
Due." Rev. of Blow, dir. Ted Demme. The New York Times 6 Apr. 2001, international ed.: E23.
Stark, Jeff. "Hollywood Kicks the Habit." Rev. of Traffic, dir.
Steven Soderbergh. Salon 20 Dec. 2000.
.
Turan, Kenneth. "The Partying Gives Way to Predictability in 'Blow'"
Los Angeles Times 6 Apr. 2001. .
Based on a true story, Blow tells the story of the main character George Jung. George became one of the largest if not the largest cocaine trafficker in the United States, because of the trafficking of Pablo Escobar`s cocaine, it changed the face of America in the 1970s. Being business partners with Pablo Escobar, George was never in short supply of the cocaine he was trafficking.
South, David. The History of Organized Crime: Secrets of The World’s Most Notorious Gangs. New York: Metro Books, 2013. Print.
Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.
Since it was first discovered by European explorers, Latin America has supplied raw materials and labor to Europe and other locations around the world. Eduardo Galeano writes about the exploitation of native Latin Americans in his 1973 book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Galeano takes a historical approach and examines colonial and post-colonial interactions between Europeans and Latin Americans. He asserts that the native Latin Americans were essentially powerless to fight this exploitation because of the dominance of the European powers. In his 2008 book Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug, Paul Gootenberg writes about the discovery of cocaine and its transition from a regional good to a global commodity. Gootenberg combines history and economics in his view of the relationships between the two powers. Unlike Galeano, he shows a side of Latin American history in which the native people of Latin America had power, however limited, to control their positions in the economic system imposed by the Europeans. Gootenberg accepts Galeano’s theory of dominance as a starting point but complicates it by including the agency of the local people of Latin America, especially Peru. Gootenberg shifts the focus of his book from the national and European players to the local Latin American actors involved in the cocaine commodity chain—from growers and harvesters to refiners and distributors. This theory involves more of the disparate components present in the economies of Latin America; therefore, it is a better way to describe historical relationships between Latin America and Europe.
Pentecostalism is arguably the most important mass religious movement of the twentieth century. Today, this association is the second largest sub-group of global Christianity. It has over 30 million American adherents and a worldwide following of more than 430 million (Anderson, 1992). Pentecostalism’s gloomy beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century make the movement’s growth all the more
Kalant, Harold. “Medicinal Use of Cannabis: History and Current States.” Pain Research and Management 6.2 (2001): 80-94. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
London, William. "Will Legalizing Drugs Benefit Public Health?--Yes." Priorities Volume 7 Number 2. 1995. (Online)
The first decade of the 21st century was a particularly eventful time in history. Recent studies have shown that ...
Pacula, Rosalie Liccardo, et al. "Developing Public Health Regulations For Marijuana: Lessons From Alcohol And Tobacco." American Journal Of Public Health 104.6 (2014): 1021-1028. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 June 2014.
"The Debate Over Medical Marijuana." Marijuana. Ed. William Goodwin. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2002. 75-91. Drug Education Library. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
Drug use has been an ongoing problem in our country for decades. The use of drugs has been the topic of many political controversies throughout many years. There has been arguments that are for legalizing drugs and the benefits associated with legalization. Also, there are some who are opposed to legalizing drugs and fear that it will create more problems than solve them. Conservatives and liberals often have different opinions for controversial topics such as “the war on drugs,” but it is necessary to analyze both sides in order to gain a full understanding of their beliefs and to decide in a change in policy is in order.
Drug policy is a crucial topic in the country today. Substance abuse, as well as drug-related crime rates, are a huge problem. This is a fact. The way to fix the problem of substance abuse, however, is widely disagreed upon. Some think that stricter laws regarding drug possession and use would solve the problem, while others believe that loosening the restrictions would be a better option. The issue of legalizing drugs, especially marijuana, is one that is debated all the time. In fact, in 1995, a survey was conducted on the most important policy issues and eighty five percent of the country placed drugs at the top of the list (Falco 1996). Many states are actually beginning to decriminalize, and even legalize, marijuana use for medical perposes. In fact, two states, Washington and Colorado, have legalized the recreational use of marijuana for anybody over the age of twenty-one since 2012. (Hawken, Caulkins, Kilmer, and Kleiman 2013)
However, plot is carried by a variety of other characters also. Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) is the lead guitarist and the most famous person in the band. He is constantly putting on the appearance that he is better than everyone else in the band and as the lead singer states he was supposed to be, “the guitarist with mystique.” Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) is the leader of the Band Aides. The best description of her was given by Roger Ebert, “She is not a groupie, she explains indignantly, but a Band Aide. She is, of course, a groupie but has so much theory about her role, it's almost as if sex for her is a philosophical exercise.” Penny has a love affair with Russell, who is married, while they are on tour. Penny is essentially William’s guide to the world of rock-n-roll. Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the editor from cream magazine. William has sent him in a couple of articles and Bangs is surprise about their quality. He becomes a mentor for William on how to write a good article. To get a proper ...
“Escaping From the Chain Gang.” October 2000.
...er of evangelical history, in which the Pentecostal-charismatic movement is quickly supplanting the fundamentalist-conservative one as the most influential evangelical impulse at work today”(Carpenter 237). The neo-fundamentalist movement, stemming from Graham and Falwell, is just another story in the rise and fall of influential popular movements, as now Pentecostalism has become the fastest growing form of Christianity in the world, with three to four hundred million adherents(Notes 12/3). The pattern in this rise and fall tends to be pieces that overlap and pieces that change and fundamentalism is no different. This was a movement that survived through hardships and adapted to welcome every human being, but it appears that it will remain mainly a twentieth century phenomenon as new forms of the pattern take its’ place.