Brokeback Mountain And The Western

Brokeback Mountain And The Western Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) integrates traditional western motifs and iconography, and follows a common plot structure of the genre, but at the same time overlooks certain aspects and introduces new concepts and motifs, mixing western with melodrama to create a contemporary Western. Brokeback Mountains queerness challenges us to question the usefulness of boundaries and categories, not just between straight and gay masculinities, but mainly between the films genre leanings as both melodrama and western. The western represents American culture, explaining its present in terms of its past and virtually redefining the past to accommodate the present. Thomas Schatz (1981) The westerns various cultural forms indicate the central role that it continues to play in conceptions of national identity. If the western genre represents American culture, as Schatz implies, then can the film Brokeback Mountain be considered a western? On the one hand, if Brokeback Mountain is to be considered a western this would imply that homosexuality has always been part of the narrative and logic of the western. However, to reject the film as a western would also overlook the ways in which it rewords the genre through contemporary political concerns. Brokeback Mountain is made in such a way as to be considered both a revision of and an extension of the western genre. It integrates traditional western motifs and iconography, and follows a common plot structure of the genre, but at the same time overlooks certain aspects and introduces new concepts and motifs, mixing western with melodrama to create a contemporary western. In most films, a true western is set in a particular historical moment approximately between 1836 and the Mexican Revolution in 1913 (Kitses, 1969). Brokeback Mountain is set between 1963 and 1983, which seems to come too late by historical definition. The impression given by the film, however, is of an American setting that represents a continuum with the old ways of western life. This western life, though drastically altered by twentieth-century capitalism is seemingly unchanged by twentieth-century ideology. Although Brokeback Mountain is not set in the distant past, it clearly conjures up the mythology of the West; the lonesome cowboy figure: the cowboy attire; the solitary lifestyle; the restriction of the homestead on mens freedom; working with animals; rodeo culture; the power of the wilderness; and melancholy produced through country music. Since Brokeback Mountain begins in 1963, it might not represent the west as an epic moment and Ennis and Jack might not be considered rea l cowboys but it portrays a west that exists through the ideologies and practices of specific American regions associated with western mythology. Set between Wyoming and Texas, Brokeback Mountain still presents the West as a mythic, imagined fantasy, a concept of a way of life that remains intact with the west of the past. Brokeback Mountain presents the contrasting relationship between wilderness and civilisation through its aesthetic conflict between freedom and restriction, namely between the mountain and the town. The film characterises the western through its structuring of life in the wilderness, symbolised through Ennis and Jacks freedom to express their love there. In contrast there is the reality of rural town life with their respective wives and children, which forces them to conform to a failed normal life. As Gary Needham states, Brokeback Mountain claims the landscape and the frontier for its symbolic meaning to express freedom and the cowboys affiliation and closeness to nature, the land, and of course to the other cowboys who might be out there too. The wilderness is fabricated by the title Brokeback Mountain. Created by Annie Proulx, it not only represents isolation and secrecy, but also empowerment. The mountain symbolises the only place where Jack and Ennis are able to express themsel ves unrestricted and free from fear, shame or paranoia. The place comes to symbolise a temporary escape from the closet, an almost-freedom, and this is shown through the landscape in the film. The landscape is juxtaposed against the bleak suffocating small town. Masculinity and the western landscape are the two most symbolic elements in the western because of their power to be translated into epic mythologies and concepts of freedom. The traditional western is, more than anything else, about the conflict between civilization and savagery on the frontier. In the genre, the western man has a duty to uphold justice and honour all that is good in civilisation. He is characterised as brave, honourable, rugged and a loner. Tompkins (2004) argues that the west functions as a symbol of freedom, and the opportunity for conquest. It seems to offer escape from the conditions of life in modern industrial society; from mechanized existence, economic dead end, social entanglements, unhappy personal relations, political injustice. The desire to change place also signals a powerful need for self-transformation. With his tall masculine frame, quiet reserve and deep voice, Ennis looks and sounds like the typical western hero traditionally seen in the genre. E nnis is forced to deal with the pull of the wilderness while at the same time remaining true to civilisation by quitting his job to attend his daughters wedding rather than quitting to see his unorthodox lover Jack. In Brokeback Mountain, every main character suffers because of the masculine western myth, with Ennis suffering the most. The antihero Jack meets his antihero end at the hands of the unsympathetic civilisation which cannot accept his true identity. But the hero (Ennis), the frontier cowboy who stays close to the land but resists natures temptations, and who attempts to do right by his daughters has a more painful fate. He is left ultimately alone in his trailer forever knowing that what might have been can never be. And this is all because he is the man of the west, the lonely hero forever doomed to tread alone. The most obvious change introduced to the western genre in Brokeback Mountain is the issue of homosexuality. The lead characters Ennis and Jack share a homosexual love interest, a concept very rarely explored in western texts. Chris Packard (2006) states, If there is something national about the cowboy, and if there is something homoerotic about the partnerships he forms in the wilderness, then there is something homoerotic about American national identity as the literary West conceives it. Because of this, homosexuality is not an issue that is readily explored in western literature or cinema, especially within the western genre. The romantic interest in the traditional western is the femme fatale, desired for her feminine charm and allure. Brokeback Mountain twists this concept by placing another male (Jack) as the heros love interest. However, in doing so, Jack merely takes the place of the femme fatale and is therefore attached with the same ideologies of femininity. It is Jack wh o seduces Ennis, tempting Ennis when he calls him into the tent. So while exploring the relationship between the two men, Brokeback Mountain aims to put a twist on the traditional western, but ultimately adheres to the motif of the femme fatale. Although many of the motifs and structures used in Brokeback Mountain follow the western genre, the ultimate powerlessness and emotional involvement produced in the film fall into the melodrama genre. The power of melodrama to create intense feelings is contrasted with the serious genre of the western in which masculine identity is of greater importance than any romantic connection. The film creates overly emotional responses and attachments through portrayal of tears, separation and loss, thus removing all seriousness, reason and propriety. our experiential investment in the narrative of Jack and Ennis relationship is primarily emotional; for Needham, then, Brokeback Mountain mobilises melodrama as a tactical way of provoking feeling and sentiment that are politically efficacious. It exhibits an excess of confusion, suffering and restlessness and it expands on two key motifs of melodrama in order to express and to some extent work through this excess. By utilising a version of the maximised type David Lusted has argued, the Western emerged in the earliest days of Hollywood as a generic form of melodrama, dependent on the melodrama stage for its dominant narratives, themes and performance styles (Lusted, 1992: 13). [1] These melodramatic themes, Lusted suggests, include love sacrificed and reunited; suffering, misunderstanding and reconciliation; victimhood, emotionalism and pathos (Lusted, 1992: 17ff). The films melodramatic mode and form are constructed through narrative situations of separation and loss. Suffering and failure, and helplessness and pathos. Brokeback Mountain is places as a melodrama to narrate to great affect the ongoing problems of the closet and homophobia. Brokeback Mountain uses several structures which fall under the melodrama genre. These include and expressive use of music to produce heightened emotion; discrepancies in point of view and the timing of narrative events that are mobilised to induce tears. It is Brokeback Mountains melodramatic form that allows it to express a history of unjury, backward feeling and affectivity thought the conventions of melodrama that work so well in dealing with themes of secrecy, passivity, paranoia, shame and temporal irreversibility. though many western films traditionally use long shots, Brokeback Mountain makes use of close-up shots to key the audience into the main characters relationship. This heightens the sense of intimacy between the two characters. Nearly all of the love scenes between Jack and Ennis are close-ups, bringing the audience into their relationship. The Western genre is ultimately one which incorporates other genres, including romance, war, melodrama and action. As Kitses (1969) puts it, Experiment seems always to have been varied and development dynamic, the pendulum swinging back and forth between opposing poles of emphasis on drama and history, plots and spectacle, romance and realism, seriousness and comedy. Brokeback Mountain utilises this flexibility to successfully introduce new ideas into its plot, while still retaining traditional structures of the Western. Not only does the film follow the genre specific framework and incorporate classical Western motifs (cowboy costumes, alcohol, and a landscape which represents paradise), it also builds on the theme, creating a new and contemporary version of the genre and demonstrates the detrimental impact to identity brought about by social ideologies of what is normal. Brokeback Mountains queerness challenges us to question the usefulness of boundaries and categories, not just between straight and gay masculinities, but mainly between the films genre leanings as both melodrama and Western.

Importance of libraries Essay

The definition of a â€Å"good time† is different for everyone, but for me its reading a good book, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, history, religious books, comics anything . When I came to America in July 2013, I was fascinated to see a lot of different things and one of them were libraries, since I have a passion for reading books, I try to read one whenever I have free time, there were a lot of books ranging from the ones for small kids to those for adults. Sometimes I thought about becoming an author and sometimes a librarian. That’s why for my Senior Project, I will be exploring my passion of reading and libraries by showing the importance of libraries. I did not have any knowledge about the libraries in the US and I was very interested in doing it, I did research, surveys and volunteer work. My first objective was to learn the system of the library. In the 18th century, when the people first realized that there should be a way where people can gain knowledge, acquire information about anything they are interested or simply read because they like it that’s when the first library started operating in America. However, at that time many people donated a lot of money so that the libraries will be build and many donated all of their books so that other people will be able to gain knowledge from them. There was no need for a system back then as there was not much variety of books, but as time passed there were more and more discoveries, inventions and a lot of other knowledge which came, books increased and as the advancement went on and on, people realized there should be books for different age levels and that in order for the library to keep running without any sort of problems like stealing of books, proper organization of books and the supply of books. The need to check and arrange the large varieties of books was fulfilled by a librarian. There are many different systems of classification of books in a library which vary from library to library. Classification serves two main purposes in the library, to arrange books in a logical manner on the library shelves and to group like subjects together, They are classified either by numbering or on the basis of the author’s name alphabetically. The Dewey Decimal Classification System is the most widely used method for classifying books in the library. This system is a general knowledge organization tool  that is continuously revised to keep pace with knowledge. It is named after Melvil Dewey, an American Librarian who developed it in 1876. This system is a numerical scheme for the arrangement of subjects of nonfiction books, and it classifies books by dividing them into 10 main subject groups that are called categories. Each category is represented by figures beginning with 000 and going on to 999. In other words, it is a system of numbers used to mark and arrange mostly non-fiction books. As I started volunteering in Columbia Pike Library, there were different sections for children, teens and adults. Since I mostly work in the children’s section, this is the type of classification I learned about in children’s section. Since children are the ones who are in the process of learning how to read, their books are classified on a deeper level than that of teens and adults. They are classified on the basis of their leve l of reading like J, JE, JP, the â€Å"J† stands for juvenile which are mostly board books. The next are the â€Å"JP† (juvenile picture books) these books which are generally shelved on the basis of the author’s last name then â€Å"JE† (juvenile easy readers) these are for beginning readers, JP (juvenile fiction) these books harry potter, the non-fiction books are the juvenile non-fiction and juvenile biographies. The same goes for CDs and DVDs for children as well, they are also arranged as J/CD/DVD. The adult and teens section is comparatively less categorized and simply classified into fiction and non-fiction. The technological and management skills required for running a library are getting higher that’s why it has become necessary to acquire a master’s degree in Library science. From Ferguson’s careers in focus:- â€Å"Most acquisition librarian positions require a master’s degree in library science (M.L.S) a master’s degree in information service or a master’s degree in science of information.† Ac quisition librarians are responsible for building and maintaining a library’s collection of books and periodicals (e-publications) so they need a master’s degree in science information . I did a survey on the type of books preferred by teens the most, the options were fiction, nonfiction, history and biography. There were 0% votes for both history and biography non fiction had 33.33% vote and fictional books had 66.67% vote. Fiction got the majority votes. My second objective was to research about developing recommendation of books based on different age groups, The reason I did this objective was to develop a sense of recommendation or to be able to give an  opinion to people about any kind of book. My consultant asked me to make lists of books by searching for them in amazon because they have the latest books and they also have a better search engine then the library’s catalog. By doing this objective I learned how to research about books in order to suggest them to someone or to update the library. My consultant asked me to make lists of books for aged 2-3 or any other group by searching from the catalog or sometimes making a list of books for children th at were published after 2009 from amazon, and then give it to her so that it can be used to update the library. The best website to find the ideal book for any age group is amazon, this I learned from experience, after searching the books for hours and not being able to find the desired ones, the easiest method is to use the â€Å"advanced search† by putting in the desired requirements, I was able to easily find the books and then searched for them in the library’s catalog to check whether they were there or not. My consultant gave me several projects about making bookmark bibliographies one of them was about creating bookmark bibliographies for kids and teens about other countries and religions since books give children an idea about the other parts of the world, these books were mostly about their culture, food, religion and daily activities. â€Å"If we wish to create a lasting peace we must begin with the children.†-Mohandas Gandhi I personally liked this project a lot, because kids and teens should explore other parts and regions of the world by reading books like pic ture books, religion, food and culture, because I feel that the media and the internet seem to create a very negative influence on people all around the world, about their neighbouring countries and about all the other countries around the world, children should read and know about other cultures of the world so that their would be more peace in the future. It is better to have an idea about something before believing anything about it which the TV shows. My third objective was reviewing practicality of normal libraries and virtual libraries. Virtual libraries or digital libraries are a great source of information and learning, while many predicted that as digital libraries will begin, that will be the end of the normal libraries and that all the shelves of the public libraries will be sweaped clean, but it did not. While many people who want to save their time and effort prefer digital libraries, there are many people including myself who prefer reading the old fashioned  way. In my survey of virtual libraries vs. normal libraries, 13 people responded to the survey, out of which 8 prefered virtual libraries and 5 preferred normal libraries, there was a 38.46% vote for normal libraries and 61.54% vote for virtual libraries. The results surprised me because I thought people will choose normal libraries, because even though a virtual library sounds good, it is difficult to access virtual library and some require membership too. I researched about the advantages and disadvantages of normal and virtual libraries. My second survey was to find out the biggest advantage and disadvantage of virtual libraries. The advantages included Immediate access to resources, Information updated immediately, No physical boundaries, Support different learning styles, Accessible for the disabled.Information retrieval,Teaching tool for information literacy, Storage of information, Networking capabilities (provides links to other virtual libraries) and Directs students to relevant resources. Out of 12 people, 7 chose Immediate access to information making it 58.33%, 3 people chose information updated immediately which made it 25%, one person chose support different learning styles and one person chose directs students to releva nt sources making each of them 8%. These results were very predictable because no doubt the biggest advantage is immediate access to information. The disadvantages included Restricted by copyright law, the requirement for internet access and that skilled professionals are required to organize,maintain and help students. Out of 12 people 5 chose requires internet access, 4 chose that skilled professionals are required for help and 3 chose restricted by copyright. So in the disadvantages the need for internet access seemed to cause the most problems. So my overall conclusion from my surveys is that even though normal libraries will not end, there are many who prefer digital libraries over normal ones, the biggest advantage is the immediate access to resources as there is no need to go to the library and if it is checked out, there is no need to wait for it the because the virtual libraries gets rid of that long process and the biggest disadvantage is the requirement for internet access, it is no doubt that internet has made the life of people unimaginably easy but not everyone can afford this luxury. My fourth objective was to research about the history of the libraries in the US. It is due to the founding fathers of America like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson that the system of  library began the US. The first public library came in the 18th century after some time, lots of people contributed millions of dollars so that education could be given to all for free. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin and his friends operated library company of Philidelphia. Andrew Carnegie gave millions to bring books and information to the people. From Gail Sakura’s Library of Congress â€Å"Thomas Jefferson had retired from the presidency and was living at Monticello, his home in Virginia. He offered to sell his personal book collection to the library of congress as a quick way to quickly replace the library’s losses.† The library of congress was set on fire on August 24, 1814. Some assume that the British had done it. Due to the efforts of our leaders, today the library of congress is the world largest library. It contains 100 million items, including 29 million books and pamplets, 53 million manuscripts and 4 million maps and atlases which are shelved in three buildings in Washington DC. My fifth objective was to volunteer at Columbia Pike Library. I started doing it in October and I will continue to do it after Senior Project .I worked in the children’s section where putting books back on the shelves, finding books for them and displaying them is the most important thing to do I also painted the walls of the library once and I decorated it by paper cutouts of different animals for the children. Sometimes on the weekends there is a story time in which teachers and students or parents and children come to the library, at that event I come earlier then usual and along with the other voluntee rs arrange the cookies and tables for the children and after they are done with it. I help to clean up the mess. My biggest obstacle was finding a job or volunteer work at a library, because since I just came in july and had never done volunteer work before, I was nervous and furustrated. I struggled hard to find a job, sometimes by searching on google and sometimes by going there like I went to Aurora Hills Library since it was close to my house but there was no volunteer work being offered at that time. I was not able to work at the school library, because they had another girl working there whose senior project was also on libraries. I thought about changing my Senior project but finally in October with the help of a friend of mine I was able to contact Barabara Dean the incharge of the Arlington Public Libraries and she asked me to contact Ms.Desiree Fairooz who was the incharge of Columbia Pike Library, she even gave me her e-mail address, and through that I was able to  finally start volunteering. My new skills are that I learned about the history of Library system in the US, I got to k now about virtual libraries and the qualifications required to become a librarian. I learned to make bookmark bibliographies and I learned how to do surveys, which I am sure I will need to do later in college and then in my career. I was thinking about printing out copies and then giving them to people but then my teacher told me about an online survey that was very useful, I just sent the link to my friends and I was able to get the results I needed, I am currently working on learning to make pamplets for the library. This project will help me by giving me volunteer hours which will help me get accepted in my desired college, because they require volunteer hours, The new skills I learned like making surveys, pamphlets and bookmark bibliographies will help me in college and later on in my life too, also the way the project is organized in a step wise manner with its deadlines, has shown me that putting everything till the last minute is not the solution, we should make achieve our targets by setting up a timetable and follow it. Works Cited † Library and Information Science, Second Edition (Ferguson’s Careers in Focus)† Ferguson. 2nd ed. N.p.: n.p., May 1,2011.. Sakurai, Gail. The Library of Congress. New York: Children’s, 1998. Print. Null, Kathleen Christopher., and Barb Lorseyedi. How to Write a Research Report. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Materials, 1998. Print. Zainebabrar18@yahoo.com. â€Å"E-mail.† Www.yahoo.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Jan. 2014. . http://akaleidoscopicworld.blogspot.com/2008/03/advantages-disadvantages-of-virtual.html http://www.collegeonline.org/library/adult-continued-education/librarians-needed.html http://mypages.iit.edu/~smart/halsey/lesson1.htm

Act Writing Essay Samples for Dummies

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Redefining Realness And Becoming Nicole Essay - 1540 Words

After reading Redefining Realness and Becoming Nicole, there were multiple differences between the two stories of the main characters transitioning from male to female. Nicole Maine’s story, while it had more negative experiences for Nicole than Janet probably did, it was a story that was more relatable to transgendered people. There were many things that were learned from these two books. From Redefining Realness, what I learned about gender was that you figure out your identity sooner than you realize, and that if not through your family, you will find a support system from people in your life. From Becoming Nicole, what I learned about gender is that even if you’re completely sure that feel like you were born into the wrong body and you want to change, there can always be doubts that run through your mind about being sure if you want to change yourself or not. Janet Mock’s story was very interesting to me because it brought about a new approach to people discovering that a person is transgendered than I had seen. For example, in the film Three to Infinity: Beyond Two Genders, one of the individuals, Zander King, recalled how he had been harassed on the street for being transgendered. Nicole in Amy Ellis Nutt’s book also experienced some harassment while she was in the process of becoming a girl. I liked how Janet Mock’s story didn’t have those common examples of harassment. Even though she had to endure her father not always understanding why she wouldn’t â€Å"act like a