Silent Running

into its theatres (289). If the industry had not rushed forward in the sound evolution, the switch from silent to sound film may not have happened for a while with theatres unable to afford the sound equipment. The “Wall Street boom and quick success of the talkies” is what led theatres to readily buy the equipment in the first place (MacGowan 287). The movie industry was advancing from silent films into a new era that produced many great films and stars. Even though most audiences seemed to…

insecticidal properties. In World War II DDT was used to control malaria and typhus among civilian troops. It was later used as an agricultural insecticide and as it popularity increased, it gained commercial use. In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book tracing the environmental impact of the nationwide spraying of DDT and the ethical concerns of releasing large amounts of potentially toxic chemicals into the environment without fully understanding their effect on human and animal…

Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (1971; Sweetback hereinafter) is a low-budget, 97-minute-long independent film written, directed, produced and scored by Melvin Van Peebles (b. 1932). Its production is considered a watershed in the history of US filmmaking. Sweetback’s firm stand on racism in the movie industry and the wider US socio-political context is still pertinent today as the racist ideology is disturbingly still with us today. Hence, the importance of revisiting Sweetback to unpack its…

In the book Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson the thesis was that pesticides were harming the environment and wildlife, especially birds. Carson focused her attention on the pesticide DDT, which was first made in 1874. DDT was used heavily during World War II to try and control the diseases typhus and malaria. So she presented research that pesticides can cause cancers, other ill effects and how they can gather in animals bodies through a process called bioaccumulation. Rachel Carson was a…

In ‘Music and the Silent Film’ by Patrick Miller the writer comments that from the earliest days of the cinema, commercial films were accompanied by music. From the fairground nickelodeons where player pianos churned out popular favourites to the glittering movie palaces where large orchestras accompanied the images on the silver screen, film music flourished. Music for the movies not only heightened the emotional response to a picture, but also served the practical purpose of drowning out the…

“real music”; the appeal of black and white films is the fantasy of a simpler time of flapper dresses and men laying their coats down for women to walk over. It is for this nostalgic reason that Charlin Chaplin’s City Lights has survived as a classic silent film for over eighty years. Released in 1931, City Lights is a romantic comedy that follows the story of the Tramp, a clumsy man with a humorous mustache, who develops an…

almost feel the vibration from how loud it is. Chaplin was able to produce and star in silent films and he still was able to get his point across. Today when people watch a movie, there are multiple colors and sounds. It would be weird to people if it was how it used to be because people are used to the new changes. Life on the streets influenced Charlie Chaplin, his character “The Tramp” helped him become a silent film star, and Chaplin’s style was adored by to the public for his sense of humor…

actor to a diligent director. Two films he participated, The Thief of Bagdad and Don Q, Son of Zorro, which brought the idea of swashbuckling into Hollywood for the first time and was continued to carry on by acting and directing, are landmarks in silent film industry. While I was amazed by his vividly-portrayed swashbuckling characters and his athletic charisma, I was also curious about the man behind his mask on the screen. What was his story? The early 20th century was the beginning of the…

remembered more today as the woman who challenged the notion that humans could obtain mastery over nature by chemicals, bombs and space travel than for her studies of ocean life. (The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson) "There is no question...that SILENT SPRING promoted the Federal Government to take action against water and pollution- as well as against the misuse of pesticides- several years before it otherwise might have moved." "Carson's most direct legacy in the environmental movement was…

I. Introduction a. Background information parathion and use of pesticides in the 1950-1960s b. Information about the environmental movement that happened after the book was published THESIS: In the excerpt from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, she states that the use of spraying pesticides is not worth the damage done because of the poison's widespread damage to nature and farmers' ignorance to the dangerous effects parathion has on humans and their worker's lives. II. Body Paragraph 1 a. Carson…