A Violent Message in the Art of Popular Culture Essay -- Pop Culture R

A â€Å"Violent† Message in the Art of Popular Culture Many people believe that present-day music cause division, tension, and sometimes violence. However, it is acknowledged as art in popular culture. Art in popular culture revolves around action movies, television sitcoms, and provocative song lyrics, which have themes centered on explicit sexuality. Art in popular culture is embodied in music, dance, photography, and other artwork that embraces the ills of the world and acknowledges that they are appealing to the senses of people who live in a not so perfect world. Many critics say that popular culture is a product of generation X. A messed up group of people. What is wrong with popular culture? Why do the baby boomers regale this era of popular culture an era of madness? The answer is blatantly clear. Popular culture accepts the flaws of all its admirers and participants. For example, music in popular culture is generally deemed as negative. However, a positive consequence is that it has an international language and every one around the world can relate to what it communicates. Art in popular culture encompasses a common language, especially the art of music. This language rejects the sophisticated, civilized, intellectuals. For instance, popular culture inhibits the old, boring, classical music that operated out of the same musical dictionary and responded to the same chords. Whereas, music in popular culture rejects harmony as being important and values improvisation that breathes life-giving rhythm in non-structural chords. Music in popular culture is a genre distinct from both folk and classical music genres. According to The New Harvard Dictionary, it differed from the former being composed and notat... ...lent in this country. Some examples of Manson’s music, which can influence youth of today or could have taken the life of the young teenager previously mentioned are Dried Up, Tied Up and Dead to the World; Get Your Gun; Cake and Sodomy; Organ Grinder; Snake Eyes and Sissies; and etc. It is funny how rap and hip hop is essentially the only thing deemed violent, but popular culture stems from chaotic and violent factors. The two examples above can vouch for the previous statement. When looking at other outcomes of popular culture such as slasher movies with explicit sex scenes; talk shows that depicts American women as housewives or whores; or people like Monica Lewinsky who shows her bloomers to married men, popular culture music genres are just artistic expressions that mirror societal values in popular culture. Sometimes people do not like the reflection.

Bibliography of Famous Authors Essay

In this article by Robert Scholes, it talks about the hope and memory in My Antonia. He says the characters find themselves by looking back at the past. He said â€Å"we are reminded of this past constantly: by the Bohemian customs and culinary practices of the Shimerdas; by the observations of Otto Fuch on the relationship of Austrians and Bohemians I the old country; and especially by the Catholic religion of the Bohemians, which is their strongest link with the past, and which serves to bind them together and to separate them from the protestant society of their adopted and†¦Antonia cherishes her connection with the past† it talks about the characters and their past and how it has impacted their lives. I will use this to tie back into my thesis because this is basically what my whole paper is about. My paper based on the character’s past and how it impacts them later in life. The article talks a lot of the past memories that I can use in my research paper. Lucenti, Lisa Marie. â€Å"Willa Cathers My Antonia: Haunting the Houses of Memory.† Twentieth Century   Literature 46 (2000): Literary Reference Center, Galileo. MPHS Library, 18 April 2011 (#33 a work from an online service to which your library subscribes) This article analyzes My Antonia and it’s theme of memory and how it haunts some of the characters. It talks about the story of the wolves and how its haunted Peter and Pavel and how that brings gothic to the story. It also tells why Cather included some of the memories that she did in the novel. It tells the importance of those memories to the characters. I will talk about the memories it mentions and how they are important to the story and to the characters lives. Their past is what makes them who they are and it is important to mention why they are so important to them. This article analyzes the theme and I can use some of that information to help with my argument. Meeker, Joseph W. â€Å"Willa Cather: The Plow and The Pen† Willa Cather’s Ecological Imagination. Ed. Susan Rosowski. Volume 5. Lincoln: U of Nebraska, 1986. (#18 a selection from an anthropology) In this article, Meeker talks about the symbols mentioned in Cather’s novels. It talks about the plow and the landscape in My Antonia. It also talks about how some of the symbols represent the past. The article mentioned imagery throughout the novel and how the Nebraska plains had an impact on Jim. It also mentioned some of the imagery in O Pioneers! and other novels by Cather. I will use the information to help support my thesis on the symbols and theme and how it impacts the characters in the novel. In the article when it talks about the land and how it ties back to the past, I will use that to help my thesis. It has very good detail on everything represented in the novel and it will help me develop my paragraphs on symbolism. Gross, Jonathan D. â€Å"Recollecting Emotion in Tranquility: Wordsworth and Byron in Cather’s My à ntonia   and Lucy Gayheart† Cather Studies 7 (2007): Literary Reference Center, Galileo. MPHS Library 18 April 2011 (#33 a work from an online service to which your library subscribes) This article compares My Antonia with novels from Wordsworth and Byron. They all share similar qualities in their writings. In this article it talks about theme and symbols in My Antonia. In both My Antonia and in â€Å"Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey†, they talk about the theme of nature and how it impacts the characters. This whole article compares My Antonia to other works by Cather, Wordsworth, and Byron. I will use the information about the theme of nature and symbols mentioned in the article. There’s not a whole lot I can use on My Antonia but it has good information about theme and symbols throughout out the novel. It talks about how Cather focused on landscape and sensitivity of the reader to relate the past. Hallgarth, Susan A. â€Å"Archetypal Patterns in Shadows on the Rock†. Colby Quarterly 24 (1988): 2-4. (#22 An article in a journal with continuous pagination throughout the annual volume) In this article, it talks about symbols and how they represent something in the novel. It talks about how shadows are a repeated pattern in My Antonia and how Antonia breaking away from her mother is a symbol of her going through a new beginning. It compared symbols in My Antonia to some in Death Comes for the Archbishop and how they relate to one another. In the article it says â€Å" Burden’s discovery of pastness in the present allows him to see Antonia as all the ‘image’ which do not fade and herself, a ‘battered woman’ (MA, 352, 353). So I will use that in the paragraph I will have talking about how the past still reminds him of Antonia because his childhood is basically Antonia. All of his memories remind Jim of her because she is a big part in his past.

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 Henry Garnet and the Jesuits

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was an attempt by Catholic rebels to kill Protestant King James I of England, his eldest son and much of the English court and government by exploding gunpowder beneath a session of the Houses of Parliament. The plotters would then have seized the king’s younger children and formed a new, Catholic, government around which they hoped England’s Catholic minority would rise and rally. In many ways the plot was to have been a climax of Henry VIIIs attempt to take control of the English church, and its final failure, and Catholicism was heavily persecuted in England at the time, hence the desperation of plotters to rescue their faith and freedoms. The plot was dreamed up by a handful of plotters, who didnt initially involve Guy Fawkes, and then the plotters expanded as more and more were needed. Only now was Guy Fawkes included, because of his knowledge of explosions. He was very much the hired hand. The plotters might have tried to dig a tunnel underneath the Houses of Parliament, this is unclear, but then they moved on to hiring a room beneath the building and filling it with barrels of gunpowder. Guy Fawkes was to detonate it, while the rest put their coup into effect. The plot failed when the government were tipped off (we still dont know by who) and the plotters were discovered, tracked, arrested and executed. The lucky were killed in a shoot out (which involved the plotters partly blowing themselves up by drying their gunpowder near a fire), the unlucky were hanged, drawn and quartered.   The Jesuits are Blamed The conspirators feared that a violent anti-Catholic backlash would happen if the Plot failed, but this didnt occur; the King even acknowledged that the plot was due to a few fanatics. Instead, the persecution was limited to one very specific group, Jesuit priests, which the government decided to portray as the fanatics. Although the Jesuits were already illegal in England because they were a form of Catholic priest, they were especially hated by the government for encouraging people to remain true to Catholicism despite the legal onslaught aimed at turning them Protestant. For the Jesuits, suffering was an integral part of Catholicism, and not-compromising was a Catholic duty. By portraying the Jesuits, not just as members of the Gunpowder Plotters, but as their leaders, the post-plot government of England hoped to alienate the priests from the mass of horrified Catholics. Unfortunately for two Jesuits, Fathers Garnet and Greenway, they did have a connection to the plot thanks to the machinations of leading conspirator Robert Catesby and would suffer as a result. Catesby and Henry Garnet Catesbys servant, Thomas Bates, reacted to news of the plot with horror and was only convinced once Catesby had sent him to give confession to Jesuit, and active rebel, Father Greenway. This incident convinced Catesby he needed a religious judgement to use as proof, and he approached the head of the English Jesuits, Father Garnet, who at this point was also a friend. Over dinner in London on June 8th Catesby led a discussion which enabled him to ask whether for the good and promotion of the Catholic cause, the necessity of time and occasion so requiring, it be lawful or not, amongst many Nocents, to destroy and take away some innocents also. Garnet, apparently thinking that Catesby was just pursuing an idle discussion, answered: That if the advantages were greater on the side of the Catholics, by the destruction of innocents with the nocents, than by the preservation of both, it was doubtless lawful. (both cited from Haynes, The Gunpowder Plot, Sutton 1994, p. 62-63) Catesby now had the resolution of the case, his official religious justification, which he used to convince, among others, Everard Digby. Garnet and Greenway Garnet soon realized that Catesby meant, not only to kill someone important, but to do it in a particularly indiscriminate way and, although he had supported treasonous plots before, he was far from happy with Catesbys intent. Shortly after, Garnet actually found out exactly what this intent was: a distraught Father Greenway, the confessor to Catesby and other plotters, approached Garnet and begged the Superior to listen to his confession. Garnet at first refused, guessing correctly that Greenway knew of Catesby’s plot, but he eventually relented and was told all. Garnet Resolves to Stop Catesby Despite having lived, effectively on the run, in England for years, having heard of many plots and treasons, the Gunpowder Plot still deeply shocked Garnet, who believed it would lead to the ruin of him and all other English Catholics. He and Greenway resolved upon two methods of stopping Catesby: firstly Garnet sent Greenway back with a message expressively forbidding Catesby from acting; Catesby ignored it. Secondly, Garnet wrote to the Pope, appealing for a judgement on whether English Catholics could act violently. Unfortunately for Garnet, he felt bound by confession and could just give vague hints in his letters to the pope, and he received equally vague comments back which Catesby also ignored. Furthermore, Catesby actively delayed several of Garnets messages, stranding them in Brussels. Garnet Fails On July 24th 1605 Garnet and Catesby met face to face at White Webbs in Enfield, a Catholic safehouse and meeting place rented by Garnets ally Anne Vaux. Here, Garnet and Vaux tried again to forbid Catesby from acting; they failed, and they knew it. The plot  went ahead. Garnet is Implicated, Arrested and Executed Despite Guy Fawkes and Thomas Wintour stressing in their confessions that neither Greenway, Garnet nor other Jesuits had any direct involvement in the plot, the prosecution at the trials presented an official government, and largely fictional, story of how the Jesuits had dreamt up, organised, recruited and supplied the plot, aided by statements from Tresham, who later admitted the truth, and Bates, who tried to implicate the Jesuits in return for his own survival. Several priests, including Greenway, fled to Europe, but when Father Garnet was arrested on March 28th his fate was already sealed and he was executed on May 3rd. It only slightly helped the prosecutors that Garnet was overheard admitting in prison hed known what Catesby was planning. The Gunpowder Plot cant be blamed exclusively for Garnets death. Just being in England was enough to get him executed and the government had searched for him for years. Indeed, much of his trial was concerned with his views on equivocation – a concept many people found strange and dishonest - rather than gunpowder. Even so, government lists of the plotters had Garnets name at the top. The Question of Guilt For decades, much of the general public believed the Jesuits had led the plot. Thanks to the rigours of modern historical writing, this is no longer the case; Alice Hogges statement ...perhaps the time has come to re-open the case against the English Jesuits...and restore their reputation  is noble, but already redundant. However, some historians have gone far the other way, calling the Jesuits innocent victims of persecution. While Garnet and Greenway were persecuted, and while they didnt take an active part in the plot, they werent innocent. Both knew what Catesby was planning, both knew their attempts to stop him had failed, and neither did anything else to stop it. This meant both were guilty of concealing treason, a criminal offense then as now. Faith Versus Saving Lives Father Garnet claimed he was bound by the seal of confession, making it sacrilege to inform on Catesby. But, in theory, Greenway had been bound by the seal of confession himself and shouldnt have been able to tell Garnet details of the plot unless he was himself involved, when he could mention it through his own confession. The question of whether Garnet learnt of the plot through Greenways confession, or whether Greenway simply told him has affected commentators views of Garnet ever since. For some, Garnet was trapped by his faith; for others, the chance the plot might succeed sapped his resolve to stop it; for others going further still, he was a moral coward who weighed up breaking the confessional or letting hundreds of people die and chosen to let them die. Whichever you accept, Garnet was the superior of the English Jesuits and could have done more if hed wished to.