Escapism

The past is seen to haunt our everyday life. In theatre especially, ghosts serve to embody haunting memories and burdens of the characters. In craftful plays such as Hamlet by Shakespeare and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, ghosts symbolize an impediment on the development of the protagonists and the permanent presence of our history. Theatrical presentations on the oppressive effect of the past on the present, these plays portray two tragic heroes and their descent into their…

Salvador Dali is credited with having said, “I don 't do drugs. I am drugs.” Dali was not only a world famous artist known for painting, sculpting, and photography, for he was also a drug addict. Dali has bluntly described how he and other addicts feel while they are in the clutches of their addiction. They feel as if their drug of choice has dominated their lives, and they have lost their identity, and free will to it. Occasionally, however, the drug addict does not consider that losing…

Gossip Girl (CW, 2007-2012) is a drama television series about a group of fictional wealthy teenagers living on the Upper East Side in New York City. It is based off of a book series by Cecily Von Ziegesar. Though the characters all attend the same prep school, the show mostly focuses on what they do in their non-academic lives. The drama portrayed in this series is more extreme than other comparable teen drama shows, such as The O.C or 90210. This is due to the controversial topics that are…

When observing an object, there is an uncanny feeling that is a result of the emotional response human beings obtain. This unique feeling is what makes art so special. The ability to provide escapism in a world of chaos is an asset provided from art. Art is life and vice versa. Therefor, art must be given more emphasis in curricula. Due to its absence in the modern education system, society has grown to become more adapt at looking at art for the wrong reasons. Commercialized art has become the…

When considering a story such as The Immortals, one must take into account not only the contents, characters and setting of the story, but the manner in which it is told, and the perspective by which it is narrated. All of these components are certainly full of importance, but all of them must be valued equally or the balance would tip and fall crashing down from the point all the best stories, like The Immortals, strive to reach. Unfortunately, there is a surprising amount of rather irritable…

There are several factors for this; he sees it as a good form of escapism, often any kind of virtual experience, especially a relationship, can serve as a quick shortcut to forgetting your problems. Next factor - fear of commitment, a virtual relationship is not seen by many to require the commitment nor the effort required…

In his lectures, “The Power of Myth,” Joseph Campbell states that two of the major functions of myth are the sociological and pedagogical. Myth can uphold social orders, and myth can teach people how to live in any circumstances. These two functions are not necessarily separate; in fact, they can intertwine in such a way that the myth itself can uphold a social order by teaching people how to live with that social order, as Walter Lippmann would say, manufacturing consent for that order just by…

Analyse the representation and formal importance of transformation with regard to two texts studied so far. Metamorphosis, meaning change of form, underpins the process of transformation in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (008AD). Present throughout Kafka’s text is the political instability of central Europe during the early 1900’s; the social and militaristic unrest of the Second Reich was rife in Kafka’s home city of Prague. The grim reality of Gregor’s metamorphosis,…

Daniele Aquino Trigilio, Mike Vis 194s 8/30/16 Final Exam A) Neuromancer and Cyberpunk Film In the famous novel “Neuromancer”, written by William Gibson, was one of the first pieces of literature to introduce Cyberpunk as a subgenre within science-fiction. One major component within cyberpunk, deals with augmentations that are put upon the human being both physically and virtually. To put in perspective, one perfect example of augmentation that appears in Neuromancer, puts forward a…

through the symbolic use of clouds presenting the “mystical” otherworldly as evidenced in Renee Margrite’s The False Mirror (MOMA). Moreover, the “Roundabout” suggests the fast fashion nature of the fashion industry. There is a paradoxical sense of escapism through the cloud symbolism and entrapment through the “roundabout” suggesting the nature of unstoppable fast fashion. Thereby fusing…