Analyzing Sexism In Video Games - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 9 Words: 2771 Downloads: 4 Date added: 2019/04/22 Category Entertainment Essay Level High school Tags: Video Games Essay Did you like this example? From niche counter-culture to a multi-billion supergiant, the video game industry has been launched to the forefront of entertainment. With mainstream attention comes public scrutiny and video games have been at the epicenter of many debates. Previous debates have embroiled the industry, enduring the claims of games causing violence and attempted legislation; the rise of playing video games professionally has brought into question its legitimacy as a sport. When the GamerGate movement gained traction yet another slew of discussions began. The movements goal was to bring ethics to game journalism after rumours surfaced of a video games receiving overly positive reviews because of a relationship between the journalist and developer. Opponents attacked GamerGate for being a sexist movement that was targeting women within the hobby, attempting to force them out. Out of this hysteria came arguments about the sexist nature of video games, its players, and the industry. Within th e scope of my argument, which acts in parallel to other discussions, is the representation of women in video games and perceived sexist portrayals. Video games fairly represent women within the medium, and while sexist portrayals exist they are neither harmful nor the full picture. Fifteen years ago, I started playing video games and have not stopped since. Watching the industry grow as I grew up with it, playing the original Xbox, playstation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, DS, PC, and Xbox One and a whole host of games that accompany these systems. My interest also expanded out into board games and tabletop RPGs, allowing me to meet and connect with more who share the same interests. In recent years, I have moved away from single-player games, holding out for ones that absolutely grab my attention and have transitioned to multiplayer games, competitive or co-op. Online play allows for a vast amount of player interaction and a unique experience separate from single-player games. I have en joyed a great deal of time online within clans or climbing a competitive ranked leaderboard. A great tool of modern gaming is video streaming, which has allowed a great deal of people, myself included, to enjoy a wider array of games by watching content creators play them. My love for the hobby is not blind, as many a scandal has come from the industry and current business practices and weak releases have left me perturbed,however these motivate me, as I hope they motivates others, to change my purchase habits and to go further and join the industry. My hope is to leave an impression on the next generation, a love for games, and to lead change in the industry as a developer. Fair representation is a matter of proportions. The percentage of representation should mirror the percentage of participating members. According to the ESAs 2017 report, the video game market is near 50/50 as 41% of US gamers are women (7). These numbers show that it would be fair to expect half of characte rs to be female in order to represent the playerbase. The report is misleading as the ESA made no distinction between genre or platform and did not clarify what counted as being a gamer, or video game player. Mixing player bases removes the nuance associated with genres. PC/Console gaming is vastly different from mobile gaming and blurs the lines of how they are made, the way they play, player motivations behind play, and even the reputations they hold within the community, mobile gaming very often being looked down upon. It is as unreasonable to compare League of Legends to Call of Duty, a difference of genre, as it is to compare an Xbox player and their games to an iPhone user and their games, a difference in platform. The report is further disingenuous when it claims, woman age 18 and over [31%] represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population than boys under 18 [18%]. The breakdown of demographics is being unequally compared. Woman only represent su ch a large portion because three age breakdowns were combined into a single bracket, it only stands to reason that the larger sample size would beat out the smaller, isolated one. Looked at on a one-to-one basis males under 18 make up the single largest demographic at 18% while females under 18 come in at a low 11% (7). The largest female demographic, woman over fifty, comes in third, at 13%, and even then is still tied with men over fifty (7). Games, and their players, can become so vastly different over minutia with individuals standing out amongst a crowd of clones that leaving out the macro of genres, platforms, and demographics is dishonest to the conversation. Looking into the nuance of the situation, while potentially overwhelming, paints a clearer picture. Nick Yee, co-founder and analytic lead at Quantic Foundry, painted such a picture in a survey that vetted gamers by their core-motivations, this survey was also one most likely to be found by people who identified as ga mers and are invested in video games, and then had participants list their favorite games, breaking the information down by gender. Compared to the ESAs 4,000 participants, the Quantic survey took in 270,000, of which 18.5% was female, a staggering 49,050 respondents. In the methodology Yee explains that the gamers were asked to list up to nine of their favorite games and acknowledges that responses are limited to the favorite games listed by a gamerâ€Å"they are likely playing more games than they are able to list. This means that the percentages of the survey compare the genders of the people who mentioned a game in that genre, not that the numbers are compared to the entire population of the survey. The big takeaway from the article is that the gender gap across twenty-three genres, for female players, averages range from 2% to almost 70%. This is a 35-fold difference, and illustrates why an overall statistic for all gamers (ignoring genre) can be misleading and confusing(Y ee). Female players are just not playing certain genres in large numbers and the top three they are playing: Match 3 (69%), Family/Farm Sim (69%), and Casual Puzzle (42%), are not character driven or extremely conducive to storytelling. Furthermore, those genres are largely played on the mobile platform. On the flip side there are male dominated genres that also do not leave much room for character driven gameplay or storytelling: Sports (2%), Racing (6%), and Grand Strategy (7%) (Yee). Even within the genres the story is not so clear cut, outliers give interesting insight into how the data is playing out. Noticeable outliers are Dragon Age: Inquisition and Star Wars: The Old Republic with 48% and 29% compared to their genre averages of 26% and 16%, respectively (Yee). In fact, DA: Inquisition would come in third amongst the rankings of the other genre averages. So despite some genres having a mostly male audience, certain games are still attracting large amounts of female player s, comparatively. Alongside this there are games where story or characters, and gender for that matter, are less important that have a low female pick up rate. So what motivates a players choice, what drives them to become immersed into a certain experience or story? This is the beauty, the essence, of the medium. There is something for everyone who wishes to enjoy the hobby and they can pick and choose what fits for them, for video games: their genres, casts, and players, offer a diverse array of choices. With all these choices my opposition still wants to focus on portrayals of women that are treated in a harmfully sexualized and sexist manner. This is not the first time video games have caught flak for potentially creating an undesirable trait in a consumer, the first was violence. As many studies have long disproven, video games do not cause violence. Even the crime rates of the past thirty years show a downward trend of violent crimes, including forcible rape, across the bo ard that has coincided with the growth of the video game market (Infoplease). While correlation does not equal causation, the argument at hand should have seen said crimes get worse while games became more prevalent. Outside of this view is sexual assaults as these are hard to accurately pinpoint statistics on, however the pattern likely falls within the framework previously displayed. Lack of social influence continues into societal perceptions and attitudes. Researchers of a longitudinal study for CyberPsychology, Behavior Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal on the effects of social networks, came to the conclusion that, there was no cross-sectional association between sexist attitudes and overall video game use for both men and women (Breuer, Johannes, et al 200). The paper does acknowledge that it is in contrast with studies that found sexist attitude links, but disregards those findings for reasons of short-term application and specific analysis. So yes, my oppositi on is correct that females are often extremely sexualized and have plenty of existing negative and sexist character arcs as Lara Strom and Michelle Zorrilla highlight in their articles. But with no tangible harm being caused by video games, no measurable negative outcomes, the issue turns into subjective feelings that have no ground to force change upon the industry. Subjectiveness and offense come down to a matter of perspective, as not everyone will view something in the same light. Strom complains in her article, a summary of gender research she read, about a binary of vixen or victim under which most female characters fall. This is a disingenuous breakdown of narrative storytelling as victim is a vague term; most, if not all, protagonists and antagonists and even secondary characters are victims as that is how conflict in a story is told, and conflict is what drives the plot. An often criticized stereotype is the Damsel in Distress, the epitome of playing the victim. Using U ntil Dawn as an example, a game I would describe as an interactive drama which holds a female audience of 37% (Yee), there is a cast of twelve characters of which half are female. All the female characters need rescuing at some point throughout the story, but these also all provide great opportunities for character growth and divergence. The failure of saving Hannah and Beth, Joshs sisters, leaves Josh emotionally unstable, setting him up to be the puppeteer of the nightmare which the games plot revolves around and leaves a grim discovery for the characters to discover later. Chris must choose to save either his crush, Ashley, or his friend Josh in a saw-esque death trap. A brush with death allows Chris and Ashley to mature as they share their true feelings for each other and sets Ashley up to later offer herself as a self-sacrifice to save Chris. Emily will constantly present herself as the smartest and most capable person around, but the weak facade quickly cracks when she is placed under extreme pressure and duress, demanding that others come to her aid. This can create an interesting and dynamic strain on the relationship between Emily and Matt leading to future discord within the group as events unfold. Even still are the stories of Sam and Jesse. Further complaints of female misrepresentation extend towards the sexualization of these characters. Michelle Zorilla, who holds a bachelor in Communication Theory and conducts video game research, explains in a compilation of research that [portrayals of] women were more sexy via physical build and attire clothing was more revealing [portion larger than men] were coded as naked often portrayed with large breasts. The observations at hand are demonstrably true. The questions I have for this conundrum are: is this inherently bad to do and what can be done about it? Is it wrong for a visual medium to use a visually pleasing aesthetic? What about the portion of female players that enjoy these depictions , even going as far to dress up as these characters for conventions. In western society, women have the agency to dress as they please. However, video game characters are lines of code on a computer that are told how to act, so what happens when developers are expressing this freedom of agency? In the case of the character Bayonetta, a highly sexualized female, who was designed by a female developers, what happens? My opposition has identified a pattern that holds true and deemed it a problem, but how should the problem be fixed? Voting with ones wallet is the best way to voice an opinion in a consumer market. Battlefield 5 is the most recent release in the Battlefield series; its opening launch week shows how this campaigns votes are shaping up. Leading up to the release, the developers and advertisements pushed hard on the fact the game would feature a strong female character on the frontlines, on top of standard marketing strategies. In his article, Tom Phillips, a games journ alist for EuroGamer, explains [Battlefield 5] sold fewer than half the physical copies Battlefield 1, the previous entry in the series, did upon its launch. He continues on that possible explanations for such a drop could be found in either digital sales picking up the slack or that promised content has not been released yet, leaving buyers to hold out. Speculation can go even further. Other highly anticipated games were released so close to Battlefield 5s launch and there was also backlash to the political agenda that some gamers felt EA was pushing. My personal reason for not purchasing is that I try to avoid EA published games as I disagree with their predatory monetization schemes and releasing half-baked games. A game like this is a godsend for my opposition and should be receiving the support and attention that such a victory would generally attract. If 47 percent of gamers are female [and] arent playing games with hypersexualized representations of themselves then wher e is all the sales for Battlefield 5 (Strum)? Even assuming that half the gaming market is female, perhaps it is unjust to treat an arbitrarily similar group of people as a homogenous entity. Gamers are a diverse cast of individuals even within their own genre. I, for example, enjoyed Battlefield games in the past while not enjoying most Call of Duty titles despite them being the same genre. I implore my opposition, or anyone who wants change, to find those games they enjoy, the ones that are shining examples of their ideas, and share as much love and passion as they can for those games. Let everyone know about these games and show developers that that market is there, and no matter how big or small said market is, nurture it. Amongst my own game library, ranking in as some of my personal favorites and most played, are games like Darkest Dungeon, League of Legends, and Rainbow Six: Siege. These games range from indie, created by a small development team usually for a niche audien ce, all the way to a triple A game, large budget with a large team with the expectation to succeed in a mainstream market, respectively. The games at hand are overly representative for their genres. Darkest Dungeon is a survival roguelike with a 33% female cast compared to the genres 25% female player population (Yee). None of the characters are sexualized and offer a diverse cast of character tropes: Arbalest, the battle-hardened veteran, Hellion, the raging barbarian, Vestal, the divine healer, and a few more. About 35% of League of Legends characters are female, with the female player average for MOBAs, multiplayer online battle arenas, sitting at 10% (Yee). Yes, many of the characters are sexualized in some way or have a cosmetic option that will make them sexier. But for characters like Elise, Evelyn, and Ahri this defines their characters; tapping into age old stories of demons, vampires and sirens that prey upon temptation. For others that have a sexy appearance there is m ore to their stories that more deeply define them and others are not sexualized at all, like the stalwart solar knight, Leona. Tactical shooter Rainbow Six: Siege has operators hailing from all over the globe to fight terrorism, comparing the 36% of operators that are female to the female player average of 4% (Yee). Yet another game with no sexualization where each background rich character offers a unique playstyle. Repetition is key: choice matters. Both consumer and developer choice. An extremely vast array of games across a multitude of genres and all people need to do is find those special few. Whether mainstream, underground, or somewhere inbetween the right game exist, not that the cultural relevance of the game should matter for it is an experience for the individual to enjoy. Who knows, maybe if enough like-minded individuals show change, instead of forcing change, some developers will follow suite. Perhaps all that is needed is a fresh perspective on existing material. However the situation is handled I hope it is approached with a love of video games for video games sake. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Analyzing Sexism In Video Games" essay for you Create order

Analysis Of A Trailer Of A Movie Or Advertisement From A...

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Business Ethics and Government Contracts National Essay Example For Students

Business Ethics and Government Contracts: National Essay Semiconductor Business Ethics and Government Contracts: National Essay Semiconductor Ethics in Business from a business perspective, working under government contracts can be a very lucrative proposition. A stream of orders keep coming in, revenue increases and the company grows. The obvious downfalls to working in this manner is both higher quality expected as well as the extensive research and documentation required for government contracts. If a part fails to perform correctly it can cause minor glitches as well as problems that can carry serious repercussions, such as in the National Semiconductor case. In this paper the reader with become knowledgeable about the practices of National Semiconductor and the importance of ethical practices in business. When both the culpable component and company are found, the question arises of how extensive these repercussions should be. Is the company as an entity liable. Should we look into individual employees within that company? From an ethical perspective one would have to look at the mitigating factors of both the employees and their superiors along with the role of others in the failure of these components. Next you would have to analyze the final ruling from a corporate perspective and then we must examine the macro issue of corporate responsibility in order to attempt to find a resolution for cases like these. The first mitigating factor involved in the National Semiconductor case is the uncertainty, on the part of the employees, on the duties that they were assigned. It is plausible that during the testing procedure, an employee couldnt distinguish which parts they were to test under government standards and commercial standards. In some cases they might have even been misinformed on the final consumers of the products that they tested. In fact, ignorance on the part of the employees would fully excuse them from any moral responsibility for any damage that may result from their work. Whether it is decided that an employees is fully excused, or is given some moral responsibility, would have to be looked at on an individual basis. The second mitigating factor is the duress or threats that an employee might suffer if they do not follow through with their assignment. After the bogus testing was completed in the National Semiconductor labs, the documentation department also had to falsify documents stating that the parts had surpassed the governmental testing standards. From a legal and ethical standpoint, both the testers and the writers of the reports were merely acting as agents on direct orders from a superior. This was also the case when the plant in Singapore refused to falsify the documents and were later falsified by the employees at the have California plant before being submitted to the approval committees (Velazquez, 53). The writers of the reports were well aware of the situation yet they acted in this manner on the instruction of a supervisor. Acting in an ethical manner becomes a secondary priority in this type of environment. As stated by Alan Reder, if they the employees feel they will suffer retribution, if they report a problem, they arent too likely to open their mouths. (113). The workers knew that if the reports were not falsified they would come under questioning and perhaps their employment would go into jeopardy. Although working under these conditions does not fully excuse an employees from moral fault, it does start the divulging process for determining the order of the chain of command of superiors and it helps to narrow down the person or department that issued the original request for the unethical acts. The third mitigating factor is one that perhaps encompasses the majority of the employees in the National Semiconductor case. We have to balance the direct involvement that each employee had with the defective parts. Thus, it has to be made clear that many of the employees did not have a direct duty with the testing departments or with the parts that eventually failed. Even employees, or subcontractors, that were directly involved with the production were not aware of the incompetence on the part of the testing department. For example, the electrical engineer that designed the defective computer chip could act in good faith that it would be tested to .

ITUnes free essay sample

Music Store has permitted the consumer to purchase music and delta books over the Internet with success. By 2005 their shares Increase significantly as a result of their tremendous success. Their product became a platform for the digital music business to explode into the industry it is today. This also made digital music affordable to the consumer who may have gone to illegal downloads in the past which in turn ensured that the music industry was getting paid for their product as well. The $0. 99 cents per song download provided $0. Cents to be paid to the record companies and the remainder ($0. 29 cents) was Apple profit. By August 2005, some of the larger record companies felt that their product was underpinned and requested that flexible prizes were instituted. However, this was not a shared opinion by all, the fear was that the market might not be stable enough to survive a price increase when illegal downloading was widespread. We will write a custom essay sample on ITUnes or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A price increase would encourage this type of activity to continue and no one would be making money. Due to Its power, Apple kept the same prices, however by January 008, Amazon. Mom entered the market place with a similar product without all of the restrictions that were placed on music in the tunes Store. Questions 1) Provide an argument for why a variable pricing policy might increase the sales revenue from Apples Music Store (compared to the flat pricing policy). Life is complicated, but Apple Computer s Tunes store Is pretty simple: Download a song and pay $0. 99 cents. In 2009, Apple announced that for the first time would allow beginning implementing variable pricing on the tunes Music Store. Instead of a absolute $0. Cent price point, record labels would now have the option to charge $1. 29 for more popular songs and $0. 69 for less popular tracks. It was not too long before almost every top song on Tunes Jumped from $0. 99 to $1. 29. While most tracks that saw an increase In price suffered a small drop In sales, the $0. 30 price difference more than made up for that fact, worked to Increase overall revenues. Apples position during the time to increase the price of popular songs was global. Many of Apples products such as the pod and laptops were sold all over the world.The tunes Music Store was highly successful, and has already accomplished large user numbers. The change in price did not suggest a complete renovation in the way people downloaded and listened to their music. Also, Digital downloading of music Is Just one of the many markets that Apple has recruited Into. Under a new pricing plan such a market power, the new pricing strategy was another successful for the company. 2) Discuss other potential pricing policies that might increase the revenue from Music Store sales.With the increase in the demand for online-based music, Apple is keel to increase its prices to gain more from its products. The company cannot however enforce high prices on the consumers because the sale of online music is still in a changing stage. Apple could consider other pricing schemes like a bundle pricing where they combine popular and unpopular music or getting the latest popular music across genres. This could expand customer base to different genres and increase the sales of unpopular songs.The bundling strategy will help in Increasing profits by extracting additional consumer surplus. They also could offer an entire group of songs, as a group, for a single price. The company could resort to sale of large music files such as Amps, JEEP and MPH and other music formats for various consumer needs (Brinkley, Smith, Zimmerman, 2009). 3) What are the risks and potential costs of implementing more sophisticated pricing schemes for the downloaded music? Sophisticated pricing tools are potentially available to provide contrast to the uniform pricing model that used to implement tunes.This sophisticated alternative tools may include song-specific pricing, pure bundling, axed bundling, two-part tariffs among others that could be use to raise revenue. If firms have market power they can raise their prices without losing all customers to competitors. Firms have as ultimate objective to choose the pricing policy that boosts the value of the firm. Managers are trying all the time to devise a pricing policy that captures as much gain as possible catching costumer surplus as company profit.For managers and companies in general, only incremental prices matter in pricing decisions. As this case show, tunes has certain power on their loyal costumers and infringing the risk of some decreases on sales, tunes took the risk when they increase their songs prices and at the end, the most loyal costumers remained whit the company. The potential costs were evident when tunes suffered at the first moments a fall in sales. Was very worrying that people were still able to download free music from other sites.Nevertheless, tunes survived, and the company was still betting on pods sales at the same time. 4) Is Apples pricing objective to maximize the revenue it receives from the sales of the downloaded music? Is this the objective of the major record companies? Explain. (Hint: review the revenue/product data from Apples 10-K) Apple as all companies is interested in maximize its revenues, but it not its objective reach it trough the downloaded music pricing strategies which is the objective of the record companies.Apple is a successful company that has a lot of attractive pr oducts that convert all the costumers in loyal fans of Apple. The Company is confronted by aggressive competition in all areas of its business; the markets for the Companys products and services are highly competitive. The Companys competitors who sell mobile devices and personal amputees based on other operating systems have aggressively cut prices and lowered their product margins to gain or maintain market share.However, Apple is focused on expanding its market opportunities related to personal computers and innovation and integration of the entire solution including the hardware (phone and Pod), software (tunes), online services (cloud), and distribution of digital content and applications (tunes Store). The Companys ability to compete successfully depends heavily upon its ability to ensure a continual and timely flow of competitive routs, services and technologies to the marketplace.The Company continues to develop new technologies to enhance existing products and to expand the range of TTS product offerings through research and developme nt. On the other hand record companies are Just interested in gaining the greatest among of money from each company that distribute the music on which they have rights, they matter is to collect the most possible from every song downloaded. 5)Do you think that Apples ability to control the pricing of downloaded music is likely to change in the future? Explain. My arsenal opinion is that Apple has a huge recognition all around the world.Apple has been able to achieve its position with prodigious skills in the market. Nowadays, as we all know, Apple has the most loyal costumers in the world. Every single time that Apple launches a new product the most loyal costumers excited sleep for nights on the doors of the stores to be the first ones buying the new products that always offer the most cutting-edge advances in technology. I would say that Apples ability to control its prices related to downloaded music would not change too much in the ext future. In deed, Apple has increasingly assumed the control of technological development in the industry.The Company is committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software and services. Apple is pioneered providing its customers new products and solutions with superior ease-of-use, seamless integration, and innovative design, every time getting closer to the wishes of consumers. As part of its strategy, the Company continues to expand its platform for the discovery and delivery of third-party digital content and applications wrought the tunes Store allowing customers to discover and download applications and books through either a Mac or Windows-based computer.The Companys strategy also includes expanding its distribution network to effectively reach more customers and provide them with a high-quality sales and post-sales support experience. As a customer of Apple is very difficult to see that for the near future the company may lose its ability to control the prices of their products. When people become a fan of Apple never more would pay a similar price for another technology more than Apple offers. That is the reality today.

October 15, 2015 Essays - Americas, Politics, Political Philosophy

October 15, 2015 Essays - Americas, Politics, Political Philosophy October 15, 2015 Intro to Afro American Studies Bi-Weekly Essay #3 What are some of the similarities and differences in practices of self-determination of Africans in the U.S. and their counterparts throughout the hemisphere? Abstract: Both Africans in the Western Hemisphere and Africans in the United States practiced self-determination. They practiced self-determination in many ways such as marronage and quilombismo as a means to bring African people together to determine their own statehoods and form their own allegiances. Africans used their difference to fight one another rather than uniting themselves in the 18th and 19th century. However, Africans began to realize that if they wanted to conquer enslavement they would have to overcome the dominating social structure. The Africans in the Western hemisphere used the knowledge passed down from their griots when practicing self-determination. They did this more often than the Africans in the U.S. because they underestimated them and they were uneducated for a while. Africans in the U.S. were more aware of what was happening around them versus the other parts of the world. Although, Africans were divided by suffering from the injustice of slavery. they we re able to preserve their culture and use such as their means to resist. Critical Review of Scholarship: To begin answering this question, I will use the information provided during lectures as well as the readings. One of sources is coming from "Black Self Determination: A Cultural History of the Faith of Fathers. This source will be used to elaborate on what self-determination is and how it evolved. The second source is "Quilombismo: An Afro-Brazilian Political Alternative. This source will be used to further elaborate on what quilombismo is and how it effective in helping the African race as a whole in the practice of self-determination. Another source I will use to elaborate on marronage is the "Black Movements in America by Cedric Robinson. My other evidence will come from class lectures and Dr.Carr particularly from the human social organization and their influence over people and nations. Discussion: To completely understand the practices of self-determination within the African community, you have to define what self-determination is. "Self Determination is the uniqueness of culture" (Dr.Carr). It is the process by which a person or group controls their own life, decides their own statehood and forms their own allegiances. (Franklin P., V. Black Self Determination: A Cultural History of the Faith of the Fathers. Southern Historical Association, 1986. Print.) From the small movements such as spiritual and secular slave songs, the Federal Writers Project and addresses in front of the Congress have demonstrated what self-determination means in the African community. The Western Hemisphere Africans and the U.S. Africans used maroonage to practice e self-determination. Maroonage was a common way Africans resisted throughout the hemisphere. Maroon is a based word from the Spanish culture. Maroons are small private communities that served as a safe refuge for runaway slaves and indentured servants. (Robinson, Cedric J. Black Movements in America. New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.) They were fugitive communities where escapees went. These maroons gave slaves hope of a community where they could have a new home and are apart of a safe haven to rebuild their families. Unfortunately these maroons never lasted so long because of the pressure it created on the Europeans. Regardless of the hardships of slavery, Africans did not let anyone take their culture from them. Their culture is what kept them dehumanized. Abolition always followed the Blacks regardless of where they were from. Because the Africans seemed less than the Europeans, the Africans wanted to create something to become equal with the higher powers. They combined their religion to create Afro Catholicism in hopes in acceptance of their religion to become equal as the Europeans. North Americans began practicing Afro Christianity as a means of resistance and a way Africans could gather publically. Quilombismo significance was "the value in the tactics and strategies of survival, resistance and progress of African communities in contemporary Brazil" (Nascimento Do, Abdias. Quilombismo: An Afro- Brazilian Political Alternative. Journal of Black Studies, 1980. Print.) Quilombismo revealed itself as a factor capable of mobilizing the Black masses in a disciplined manner when the Afro-Brazilians registered the quilombist concept. Quilombismo is in a constant process of renewal

Kevin Kline in Fish Called Wanda essays

Kevin Kline in Fish Called Wanda essays The film A Fish Called Wanda is on the AFIs (American Film Institute) Greatest 100 Comedies list. Although this film features talented actors like John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline easily steals the show. Kline gives a brilliant performance as the pseudo-intellectual Otto. What makes Kline so remarkable is the way that he moves and makes his character dance across the screen. Right from the outset, in one of the films first scene, we see that Klines Otto is no normal jewel thief. Even though Otto is supposed to be working under the guise that he is Wandas (Jamie Lee Curtis) sister, he quickly gives her breast a squeeze in full view of Ken, one of the other robbers. What makes this movement work comically is that Kline does it so lightening fast and that if you blinked you might miss it. He has such control over his arm that he is able to extend it, and withdraw it in a matter of maybe a second. This allows for the suspended disbelief that Ken does not see him do it. Another movement that Kline makes also speaks volumes about his body control. Otto and Wanda are together in what I take to be Ottos quarters. They are speaking excitedly about something and he leaps into the air, grabs a pipe that is suspended from the ceiling, lifts himself completely off the ground and sails on to the bed with the grace of a ballerina. This is so interesting because Klines Otto is supposed to a be a vulgar American bank robber. His graceful movement is evidenced again when Otto and Wanda go to the garage to claim the jewels the stole from a safe. Otto is angered by the fact that the jewels are not there. He goes over to kick a car out of anger. Rather then just kicking the tire, or burying his foot into the car door, Kline leaps into up and kicks the car twice while he is in the air. He takes what is just a ...

MASS MEDIA ASSIGNMENT (Sociology) Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

MASS MEDIA (Sociology) - Assignment Example These types of advertisements frequently make appeals to dark humor as a means of both gaining attention and delivering a specific message that their product or service is uniquely suited to answer. The message is embedded within the rhetoric of the visual and textual elements of the ad. To examine how rhetoric is used in advertising, an ad from the Northern Bariatric Surgery Institute that promotes weight loss with seeming emphasis on delivering a social message will be examined for its intended and perhaps unintended output. There are two basic approaches advertisers might take to the development of their ad -- first, to present a social message for the overall benefit to society with their product or service taking a modest interest through the presentation of a logo or title somewhere on the page and second, to present the product or service as the main focus of the ad with social responsibility considered secondary or not at all. Whether we acknowledge it or not, there is a grea t deal of truth behind the statement that we are what the media tells us we are. â€Å"Much of what we share, and what we know, and even what we treasure, is carried to us each second in a plasma of electrons, pixels and ink, underwritten by multinational advertising agencies dedicated to attracting our attention for entirely nonaltruistic reasons† (Twitchell, 1996: 468). In working to create the ultimate ad, many advertisers forget to consider the unintended impacts their message might have on the greater social front. â€Å"Broadly speaking, the media exist in a very close, sympathetic relationship to power and established values. They favor a consensus view of any problem: they reflect overwhelmingly middle class attitudes and experience† (Hall, 1974). Subtle clues embedded within the action or image of an advertisement such as this one can change the way people interpret and react to specific behaviors such as overeating. This ad is focused on the problem of obesit y and relies mostly upon a dominant image to impart its message. â€Å"Inductive reasoning takes a specific representative case or facts and then draws generalizations or conclusions from them. Inductive reasoning must be based on a sufficient amount of reliable evidence, in other words the facts you draw on must fairly represent the larger situation or population† (Weida, 2007). The image featured is that of a heavyset man holding his shirt open to reveal sticks of butter strapped to his torso like dynamite. It is intended to evoke an immediate negative reaction to the concept of obesity. According to Weida (2007), emotional appeals such as this are usually made to â€Å"paint a more legitimate and moving picture of reality or illuminate the truth.† Rather than relying on a string of text to make this emotional appeal, the advertisement relies almost exclusively on image with only a few small words to help direct the focus of attention. The faceless image is filled wi th the torso of this man and the numerous sticks of butter that have been attached, causing him to appear as a suicide bomber. The most dominant words on the page are â€Å"Obesity is Suicide.† As further analysis reveals, this ad works to encourage negative attitudes toward obesity, indicate an active, willing participant in the creation of an overweight person, elicit associations