Recent orders
The festival of Mardi Gras
Name:
Subject:
Date:
The festival of Mardi GrasHoliday celebrations unite families and community in remembrance of historical events and as a way of ushering in seasons. Mardi Gras also known as the carnival or ‘fat Tuesday’ is one such celebration originally based in Rome (History.com). In this speech, you will learn of the history, origin and statistics of the celebration as well as some cultures that celebrate it.
Chronologically, the Mardi gras festival existed when paganism reigned, thousands of years ago. Amid introduction of Christianity in Rome, the celebration was assimilated into the Christianity (History.com). The celebration preside the Roman’s 40 day lent period characterised by fasting whose start is marked by Ash Wednesday and end by Easter Sunday. The festival was introduced to America by two French brothers’ d’Iberville and Bienville (History.com). The first celebration was on March 3rd 1699 along the Mississippi river in honour of their native Mardi Gras (History.com).
In 1711, the first informal mystic society was founded to celebrate occasion preceded by another one by students in 1827 and the first formal one in 1856 commonly referred to as the Mistick Krewe of Comus (History.com). With time, the celebrations gained popularity outside New Orleans and beyond Catholics and Anglicans though a legal celebration only in Louisiana .Today, the celebration is characterised by street parades, decorating floats, dances, donning masks, throwing beaded necklaces and other trinkets and eating King Cake (History.com). Mardi Gras theme colours are purple green and gold.
Worldwide, Mardi Gras is prominent in Brazil, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Paris and New Orleans (History.com). In Brazil the Period is responsible for seventy percent of the county’s tourists (Rhodes). According to a 2009 study, 7 out of 10 Americans support Mardi Gras and in the same year, 1.2 million people participated in the festival in new Orleans (Rhodes). In addition, about 7000,000 people participated in the post –Katrina Mardi Gras (Rhodes).
In conclusion, Mardi Gras is popular globally. The festival features parades, costumes, dancing and throwing of beads (History.com). Mardi Gras’s historical religious foundation is still stunt though the event has been adopted by non Catholics. The period of the event is different in each region but one fact remains; it is celebrated prior to the commencement of the catholic lent season. Moreover, the festival is relevant to people globally the reason why New Orleans city spends 3.33 million dollars on Mardi Gras (Rhodes).
Work cited
Rhodes, M. Cool Mardi Gras stats mash up. Accessed on January 7th 2013 from http://blog.carnivalneworleans.com/?p=3151 (2011)
History.com. Mardi Gras. Accessed on January 7th 2013 from http://www.history.com/topics/mardi-gras(n.d)
The Female Gaze in the Illusions Film
Student’s Name
Instructor’s Name
Course Tittle
Date
The Female Gaze in the Illusions Film
In this paper, I will review an activity of the representations of black women in Hollywood film. By this I will review the female gaze in a movie known as Illusions. Through this film, I demonstrate that there is negation of black representation in Hollywood film, either by no representation or stereotyped, racist representations. This makes it hard for black female viewers to recognize their representations on screen, leading to moments of rupture that allow black female spectators to generate an oppositional gaze that sees and interrogates the racism and sexism of Hollywood film. Gaze in critical concept signifies the actions of being seen and seeing (Barlow, 205). In a hegemonic moral belief that hinges on sexism and racism, the idea of gaze and who is allowed to contain one has been microcosmic of the associations of power that convey these concepts. Cinema can oppose racism and sexism or build a black feminist gaze by taking part in deconstructive filmic practices commonly exercised in other mainstream media. It creates an oppositional gaze or a black critical feminist gaze by functioning against the mainstream.
The female gaze is a feminist film hypothetical word signifying the look of the female onlooker. In the illusion film, the female gaze has been used to denote the viewpoint a female director, filmmaker, producer, or screenwriter brings to a cinema that would be different from a male view of the subject. The Illusions film by Dash is an example of a movie that build the gaze themselves (Barlow, 211). Illusions film is a 1982 movie transcribed and directed by Julie Dash. The short motion picture illustrates the life of an African American lady short-lived as a white female character at work in the film sector for the duration of the 1940s. The film calls consideration to the absence of African Americans in the film industry during that period. In illusions, an oppositional gaze is constructed in a way that all viewers being black females, are mandated to watch the cinema disapprovingly. The filmmaker ensures this by using all the film production components, for instance, the narrative, sound, editing, and cinematography.
The illusions that Julie Dash deliberates in her short motion picture try to seek consideration to the delusion that African Americans were not included in part of Hollywood history and attempts to finish the Illusion, to make things right by rewriting history ultimately. This illusory component is at its highest in the calling series of Illusions. The scene commences with a pan across a sound compartment that Mignon and Ned Bellamy (Her boss) go in, whereas two sound engineers try to finalize on the post-synchronous and dubbing sound for their Christmas holiday period release. However, there is an issue: the dubbing doesn’t match while their star is not around assisting with the war effort. To sort out the problem, they have taken on Esther (Rosanne Katon). She was a young African American girl, to substitute the star’s voice known as Leila Grant. After that scene, we then see a musical scene from the film.
However, one of the most noticeable illustrations is the writer’s decision to highpoint black women as the powerful elements of the chronicle at the same time as they fight to make a profession in the white occupied sector of Hollywood. Both Mignon’s and Esther’s choices and actions demonstrate the structure of the plot. It is apparent at the time when Mignon declines the white lieutenant’s signs of progress. On no occasion, it would have occurred in a traditional Hollywood chronicle for black female personalities. Leila Grant is the entity of desire: ‘the right female character of the treatise of feminists,’ an entity of the editor’s cut and gaze. She does not have the yearning; she is the yearning. She does not have a vocal sound; she exemplifies it. Stuck on the Dark Landmass, Esther gazes at Leila and desires to be desired.
Something interesting about this flick is how it exploits the numerous gazes found in the cinema. To commence with, we have Esther, the entity of the look of the sound engineer. Second, we have the verbatim doubling of the sound engineer whereby the viewers are sutured with, as we are put in of the sound compartment with him viewing this entire take place inside the studio. Then we have Esther looking at Leila Grant on the screen, attempting to lip-synch her sayings to her mouth movements. Other demonstration of Illusion generating a critical black feminist or an oppositional gaze can be seen in the asynchronous editing when Ester is singing. Esther’s lips and her voice are not quite matched up. This makes the viewers to deliberate about where the film’s sound originates from and disturbs the seamless pleasure that Hollywood functions so hard to keep up with perfect editing.
Julie Dash’s Illusions appeals attention to how the Hollywood studio scheme made the illusions that forced African American females to the verge of cinema history just to be forgotten. In her cinema, she creates these illusions perceptible by reviewing that same system and demonstrating how the Leila Grants of the domain in effect were not the depiction’s actual star. Cinema can build a critical black feminist gaze by creating an oppositional gaze through using pride, power, and confidence to deliver a message. Generally, this film has made a strong illustration of the oppositional gaze, or the critical black feminist gaze. The characters in the Illusions film work to reflect the black female’s movement out of servitude through strong and independent women. It directly function to reflect against the inclusiveness of primarily the black male and the erasure of black female history.
In conclusion, Illusions portray a fictitious 1940s Hollywood studio and outline movie as a strong historian, though one that neglects several cultures from its history. The main character Mignon Dupree shows the necessity for movies that offer the public state of affairs and personalities that they can identify as part of their living. Illusions is a truthfully self-aware movie since it occurs in an imaginary studio, and its actors converse Hollywood’s movie production openly
Works Cited
Barlow, Jameta N. “When I Fell in Love with Myself: Disrupting the gaze and loving our Black Womanist self as an act of political warfare.” Meridians 15.1 (2016): 205-217.
Julie Dash. ILLUSIONS. USA, 1983.
Privacy on the Internet
Privacy on the Internet
Ever feel like you are being watched? How about having the feeling like some one is following you home from school? Well that is what it will be like if users do not have the privacy on the Internet they deserve. EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), a advocacy group that has been fighting the Clinton Administration for tougher online consumer protection laws, and other privacy protection agencies have formed to protect the rights and privileges of the Internet user. With the U.S. Government, EPIC has had to step in and help small companies and Internet users with their own privacy problems, hackers getting into their systems and ruining the networks, and crackers stealing and decrypting private information. They have also helped with trying to stop the “IPv6”, an every day occurring problem from eventually taking over the already used widely IP addressing system. Intel also has had a feud with the government about privacy issues. When their new chip came out, the Pentium III it had skeptic problems with its serial number feature. That is why I strongly agree with EPIC and what they are representing, privacy on the Internet.
Say you were on the Internet surfing around, would you want every site that you have visited to know who you are and almost every thing about you? No. That is why Intel had to disable their serial number feature in the new Pentium III. With this feature, each site on the Internet that you have visited could use this number to look you up and see who you are and almost every thing about you. Before released Intel told the U.S. Senate that they had disabled this function on every chip, but when these chips where out on the market for a while, programming companies found a way to go back in and enable this function without the computer user knowing it. So when the Senate heard this, Intel had yet another feud with its little problem. When the dust all settled Intel was to put this now option into the BIOS of every computer that had the PIII (Pentium III) installed on them. When the user opened up the BIOS there was now an option to either enable or disable the serial number on the chip. But since not many people know how to get into the BIOS of a computer it is hard for this option to be accessed. And once again Intel was back in the courts trying to explain their reason for yet another problem. The government finally ruled that when a new PIII chip is to be installed into a computer the serial number option is to automatically be turned off. Yes, Intel had some very good reasons for this “security feature” but the public did not think so. They tried to argue that if a chip was ever to be stolen they could track them down when the thief accessed the Internet (PC Computing 105). But how often do you hear of computer chips being stolen? Not at all. So why did Intel want to fight for this feature so much? They say because of the security over the widely growing Internet (107), but what it seems like to me and the public is mostly an invasion of the users privacy when companies get to greedy and want to know every thing about you, and your life. If it weren’t for EPIC, and the government getting involved in privacy issues, Intel would have its way on what ever they want, and we would have internet sites looking us up every day breaking our personal privacy.
Almost every one that has been on the Internet or that uses e-mail has heard of hacking. Hacking is very serious in some cases. How would you like a hacker to intercept your credit card number and start using it to buy his or her own stuff? A lot of us would not like that, because the hacker is stealing from us. When the Internet first started to develop, hackers could get into anything and do anything. They could change what ever they wanted and do what ever they please on any network. Since those days are long over, we now know how to keep hackers out of our networks and from stealing private stuff. Microsoft has now come up with the 128-bit secure line that makes it impossible for anyone to read anything on that secure line. Once you could not even dream of putting your credit card on the Internet, but now with the invention of the secure line and encryption capabilities people or now using the internet to buy more than ever. You can now bank online or buy stocks online if you want to, but with all of these new privacy inventions there are always the hackers inventions. Hackers have invaded the privacy of the American Internet User since the dawn of the Internet. With the protection programs that we write, the hackers write their own programs to disregard our individual privacy on the Internet and hack into systems holding our private information and stealing it to reveal some of our most biggest secrets. Encrypting private information has also been a useful tactic against hackers cracking encrypted data, and reading this private information. But they have their own ways of cracking our data. It was only not long ago that we could only encrypt up to 32-bit, and now we can encrypt up to 128-bit which makes it slightly impossible to decrypt unless you have almost all of your life to spend on solving it. But soon hackers will probably write bigger and more complex programs to decrypt this 128-bit shell that we have and make that shell keep on going rising and rising in the numbers until not even a computer program or any hacker can access or private documents or files except us. The war on hackers is decreasing less and less each time we make new security programs, but it will not be long until the hackers, and crackers will have their turn at turning the fight around and really start attacking us.
IP address. Does that ring a bell in any e-mailer, Internet surfer, or computer game gurus mind? I think not. The IP address is the address that is assigned to your computer once you access the Internet from your ISP (Internet Service Provider). With this IP address host computers (sites you are visiting) know where to send information and not to send it to the wrong computer on any network. Think of it kind of like a postal address. Your postal address is not totally private and it does not need to be, almost like your IP address. Your IP address is very similar to a computer identifier (identifies you, your computer, and ISP) and if things keep on going the way the government wants it to it eventually will become “IPv6”. The new and under research and development IP address now will become the IPv6 with the computer identifier. This new address system would not become widely used for years but ultimately would affect every Internet user. Critics warned that commercial Internet sites, which already routinely record IP addresses, could begin to correlate these embedded serial numbers against a consumer’s name, address and other personal details, from clothing size to political information could be obtained from this (CNN). Right now the ITEF (Internet Engineering Task Force) itself will ultimately decide whether to include the identifying numbers in the new IP addresses. But, Baker said the ITEF also envisions alternate ways to configure Internet devices so addresses won’t contain the sensitive numbers (CNN). At this time, most home computer users currently are assigned a different IP address each time they connect to the Internet through a telephone line, which affords some extra security and anonymity. But under the IETF a portion of those somewhat randomly assigned addresses could include the consumer’s unique serial number—and that information would be stamped on every piece of information sent from his computer. With that in mind, the dangers worsen with Internet sites that are expected to begin to share information about their customers, and if you are visiting a new site that site could already identify you with this new system. There’s no doubt there are serious privacy concerns for Internet users, about ¼ of them don’t understand what is going on or just plainly don’t care about the risks that are involved. And what the future will bring if we don’t get our act in control?
In conclusion, with our privacy at risk we the people need to become more aware of what is at stake. Our privacy on the Internet, or privacy in our lives. It is now the public’s turn to speak up. We need to make our voices heard on these big privacy issues so we don’t end up losing every thing that this country has worked so hard for. We need to stand up and help EPIC and other protection agencies to help them help us. Our privacy is at stake and we need to control it, because without our privacy who knows what might happen in the years to come. Maybe people listening in on your telephone conversations or cameras in your house to make sure you are not doing anything wrong. Stand up for what you believe and lets end this once and for all. Privacy is what every American needs and America needs privacy. Get in the act now, privacy on the Internet.