Cultural Studies, as the name implies, is a broad and far reaching discipline which takes into account many fields of study, ideas and theories. Popular culture, a branch of cultural studies; looks into the transformation of culture as it is continuously molded through the devices of language, symbols and theories. In today's world, however, globalization has become a major concern as cultures from around the world are becoming meshed together resulting a new world order (or disorder as implied by Barker). The concerns of globalization involve capitalist influence, a rapidly growing dependence on technology, and the possibility of the world entering into a cyber-capitalist era. The ideas of importance in this essay are as follows: Marxism, Panopticism, and Globalization. The movies that shall be examined, in relation to the ideas listed above, are as follows: Beijing Bicycle, The Hunger Games, and Fahrenheit 451. Capitalism, the embodiment of the American dream, is the idea of personal property and the pursuit of personal wealth; but, is Capitalism truly what it promises to represent? In taking a look at the movie, Beijing Bicycle, will the darker side of Capitalism emerge from its illusory pledge?
In the movie, Beijing Bicycle, the lives of two Chinese boys (from opposite social classes) collide over a single bike that one boy claims to have worked for while the other boy claims to have bought with stolen money from a family business. The two boys scuffle over the bike until there is a mutual agreement to share. The movie is a metaphor of the complications that arise out of Capitalism, which include class struggle, fierce competition, and the instability of Capitalism in the long run. Karl Marx, the father of Marxism ...
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...has placed the poor in. In Fahrenheit 451, in the futuristic society of a technological dependent world, knowledge is seen as a threat to those in power. Could it be that today’s controversy over internet censorship is based off of elite fear of public knowledge? Sovereignty is a human right; the ability to govern one’s self is the hope for the future; an egalitarian society.
Works Cited
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: SAGE, 2000. Print.
Beijing Bicycle. Dir. Xiaoshuai WangPyramid. Perf. Lin Chou and Xun Zhou. Pyramid Productions, 2001. DVD.
Fahrenheit 451. Dir. Francois Truffaut. Perf. Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. Anglo Enterprises, 1966. DVD.
The Hunger Games. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. LionsGate, 2012. Netflix.
The theme of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can be viewed from several different angles. First and foremost, Bradbury's novel gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury understood censorship to be a natural outcropping of an overly tolerant society. Once one group objects to something someone has written, that book is modified and censorship begins. Soon, another minority group objects to something else in the book, and it is again edited until eventually the book is banned altogether. In Bradbury's novel, society has evolved to such an extreme that all literature is illegal to possess. No longer can books be read, not only because they might offend someone, but because books raise questions that often lead to revolutions and even anarchy. The intellectual thinking that arises from reading books can often be dangerous, and the government doesn't want to put up with this danger. Yet this philosophy, according to Bradbury, completely ignores the benefits of knowledge. Yes, knowledge can cause disharmony, but in many ways, knowledge of the past, which is recorded in books, can prevent man from making similar mistakes in the present and future.
United States Justice, Potter Stewart once said “Censorship reflects on a society’s confidence in itself” Ray Bradbury used this concept when building the story Fahrenheit 451. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury addresses the subject of censorship, suggesting that the major problem in society is self censorship. Ray Bradbury brings us one specific type of censorship, rather than censorship from ruling authority, he uses self censorship. This censorship is the cause of the many smaller problems in this society. In Fahrenheit 451 the citizens are censored from many things.
Imagine a world full of chaos and fights. With no secrets and everything out in the open. In the twenty-first century, censorship is used everywhere. Even if it is unknown to the public. Censorship is always around, whether it be a certain book the public can read, or internet sites people can visit, to classified documents that could be harmful if gotten out to the open world. Since the dawn of time, censorship has been used. Even in Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 415, censorship is used as a conflict dealing with the main character and what too much censorship is such as the government making books illegal. Bradbury’s book takes censorship to the extreme such as in this statement, “‘Do you ever read the books you burn?” he laughed “That’s
Censorship is defined as the act of taking out unacceptable parts from books, movies, and other content available to the public eye. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, censorship takes over a major part of the citizen’s lives. In the modernistic era, the story is based upon a lot of television and is censored to the important and educational content we have in the present, such as; books, which open doors to infinite amounts of knowledge.
In this essay I will be looking at the topic of the countercultural movement of the 1960’s through counterculture film. The 1960’s were an extremely interesting time in history not only in the United States but all over the western world, as we saw the rise of the counterculture generation. The counter was a group of movements focused on achieving personal and cultural liberation and was embraced in many different ways by the decade’s young people. I have chosen this topic as the 60’s stand out for me as a revolutionary and often misrepresented period in history. The films I have chosen to look at are The Baader Meinhof Complex from director Uli Edel, Woodstock from Michael Wadleigh, Pirate Radio from Richard Curtis, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from director Terry Gilliam. I chose to analyse these films as I believe they clearly demonstrate the social and political issues of the 1960’s and societies response to them.
Imagine a society in which its citizens have forfeited all personal liberties for government protection and stability; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, explores a civilization in which this hypothetical has become reality. The inevitable trade-off of citizens’ freedoms for government protection traditionally follows periods of war and terror. The voluntary degradation of the citizens’ rights begins with small, benign steps to full, totalitarian control. Major methods for government control and censorship are political, religious, economic, and moral avenues. Huxley’s Brave New World provides a prophetic glimpse of government censorship and control through technology; the citizens of the World State mimic those of the real world by trading their personal liberties for safety and stability, suggesting that a society similar to Huxley’s could exist outside the realm of dystopian science fiction.
Ideology is “a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and that makes value judgments about that world.” (Croteau & Hoynes, 2014). According to Sturken (2001), the system of meaning is based on the use of language and images or representation. Therefore, media texts come along and select what is “normal” and what is “deviant” to the extent that this hegemony of constructed meanings in the viewer’s head becomes “common-sense” (Gramsci in Croteau & Hoynes, 2014). From this standpoint, what America claims to be pop culture which is omnipresent in media internationally, is a representation, through “politics of signification” of what is right or wrong (Kooijman, 2008). An example of America’s cultural ‘manifestation’ is Mean Girls,
Inglourious Bastards. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. The Weinstein Company, 2009. DVD.
In Fahrenheit 451, the government exercised censorship supposedly for the purpose of happiness. Through technology and media, the government was able to eliminate individuality by manipulating the mind of the people into believing the propaganda of what happiness is. The people’s ignorance made them obediently abide that they failed to realize how far technology and the media have taken control of their minds. The free thought of characters such as Montag and Clarisse collided with that of Captain Beatty, who strongly believe in and enforce the censorship, and the firemen, whose role was to burn illegal books; these clashes were Bradbury’s way
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was written as a social criticism of 1950s America which was effectively constructed through Guy and Mildred Montag, and Captain Beatty, representing censorship, conformity and alienation. This American classic warns against the dangers of suppressing thought of becoming a totalitarian society, conveying the dangers of censorship and government control is as relevant as today as it was first written. ‘Oppressive government, left unchecked, can do irreparable damage to society by limiting the creativity and freedom of its
Imagine a world of uniformity. All people look the same, act the same, and love the same things. There are no original thoughts and no opposing viewpoints. This sort of world is not far from reality. Uniformity in modern day society is caused by the banning of books. The novel "Fahrenheit 451" illustrates a future in which the banning of books has risen to the extent that no books are allowed. The novel follows the social and moral implications of an over censored society. Even though the plot may seem far-fetched, themes from this book are still relevant today. Although some people believe that banning a book is necessary to defend their religion, the negative effects caused by censorship and the redaction of individual thought are reasons why books such as "Fahrenheit 451" should not be banned.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Dir. Peter Jackson. By Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo Del Toro, and J.R.R Tolkien. Perf. Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan, and Richard Armitage. 2012. DVD.
Bertolt Brecht asserted, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Art, encompassing all popular culture artifacts, both reflects the society that creates it and is itself an agent capable of changing social reality. Popular culture artifacts, like the Harry Potter series discussed in Nexon and Neumann’s work, Harry Potter and International Relations, exert agency, or causal power over the meaning and interpretation of cultural elements, by influencing the way ideas and values are constructed in everyday life. This paper will demonstrate that popular culture artifacts construct meanings and influence interpretations of reality.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dir. Michel Gondry. Perf. Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet. Focus Features, 2004. DVD.
The Pianist. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Emilia Fox. 2001. DVD. Universal Studios, 2003.