Sex and Marriage Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Sex and Marriage - Essay Example The essay "Sex and Marriage" demonstrates that the evidence from a significant subculture, the swingers, shows that the consensual physical infidelity, especially mutual, need not threaten the stability of marriage as long as respect, consideration, trust, and love remain. The popular notion is that if one engages in nonmonogamous sex outside the bounds of marriage one is being unfaithful to their partner. The assumption is that this is being done secretly without the consent or even knowledge of the partner. Hence, we have the term â€Å"cheating.† Under these circumstances, I would agree that it is an act of infidelity. I partly agree with the mainstream in the following respect. The person is being unfaithful not because of the nonmonogamous sex act per se, but because it is done secretly due to anticipated partner disapproval. Applying this definition of infidelity, any act, whether sexual or not, pursued secretly due to partner expected disapproval would be an unfaithful act since it is a breach of trust. But what if the partner is aware and agrees to participate jointly in monogamous sexual activity? I would submit there is no infidelity involved as there is no breach of trust. Although I would agree that Savage is stretching when he describes monogamous sex as a â€Å"need.† I would accept his view that it is a strong desire for many people. I concur with the notion that responsible nonmonogamy that is done safely with the knowledge and consent of the partner does not pose a threat to the institutions of marriage. and the family as claimed by mainstream culture. Swingers I base my argument on literature that shows that swingers have a lower divorce rate than the American population at large and also on my own personal observations of people in this significant subculture (Liberated Christians). Although swingers can include singles of both sexes, most are married or common law couples with children, ranging in age from 20s to 60s. They can be from all walks of life including the clergy. They tend to be middle and upper socioeconomic classes but, otherwise, are indistinguishable from the majority except for their open pursuit of non monogamous relationships. To me the chief characteristic separating swingers from non swingers is that the former draw a clear distinction between â€Å"sex† and â€Å"love†. My experience is that while group sex does indeed take place it is not as prevalent as non swingers believe nor it is the â€Å"be all and end all† of this lifestyle. While it is true that there is more emphasis on the physical erotic aspects of the sex act, this does not mean that friendship and affection are excluded. For example, while I can enjoy sex with a new partner, I do so even more with one I have gotten to know developed some feelings for. On the other hand, if I disliked my sexual partner I would not derive any pleasure having sex with her. Swingers have developed the theory of primary and secondary relationships to distinguish their relationships between their wife or long term partner and their â€Å"temporary† partners. If you are interested in a new partner but know that your

DEATH Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

DEATH - Essay Example He does this as a gesture of remembrance, to hopefully keep his brother from focusing on the negative aspects of him being away, and instead remember the fond times the two of them had shared in the car. When Henry finally leaves, the car seems to be the only comforting semblance for Lyman, of the times they had spent together. The images of a healthy, happy Henry are embodied in the spirit of the red convertible, and these special memories are what keep Lyman from digressing into sorrow. Some of the relaxing and content thoughts Lyman conjures up are ones where they had no specification of destination, during the summer when there were traveling in the car. â€Å"We took off driving all one summer,† and the story goes on to show how happy and at peace they both were, finding spots in areas where they felt â€Å"so comfortable†, Henry is depicted as feeling at ease enough to fall, â€Å"asleep with his arms thrown wide† (Erdrich 2002). Lyman continues to grasp onto these visual memories he brings up, in anticipation of those same feelings for when his brother will finally return. The car itself is what symbolizes the bond between the two of them, even with a gre at distance of separation dividing them. Finally, Henry returns home in the story but it’s obvious he has changed; things are just not the same. â€Å"Henry because quiet and restless† (814). Often he secluded himself and although he was there, his mind seemed to be somewhere else. It appeared war and the white mans culture had taken its toll on him and all that was there for him was ugliness. This is evident in the story when, one night they all gather around the dinner table and beforehand, Henry has bit down into his lip so hard from frustration that he sits with blood dribbling down his chin, theorizing how badly he wanted to be done with American ways, in his mind and in his life (817). This is representative

How the battle of Gettysburg changed the Civil war Thesis

How the battle of Gettysburg changed the Civil war - Thesis Example It was the strategic turning point of the war. Several years of war before the battle of Gettysburg were a time of military success and economic collapse of the blockaded South. The Federals suffered defeats, but retained their economic and political advantages. Military defeats, in no small measure, were due to failures of command authorities. â€Å"Generals-politicians† were much better in intricacies of a political struggle than in the art of war in battlefields. President Abraham Lincoln had to change and shuffle his â€Å"brave Generals† periodically. As far as the warfare proceeded, a new galaxy of generals made mark; generals able to withstand the brilliant Southerners, such as General R. Lee and Gen. T. Jackson. Lee’s Gettysburg campaign had to thwart the Federal army plans for the summer, ease the pressure on the besieged Vicksburg, take away the burden of the army munitioning from Virginia, and, which is the most important, to threaten Washington to per suade it to peace negotiations. Repulse of the Southerners’ attacks at Gettysburg and defeat of the invincible Lee, are considered as the watershed in the war, but this statement is true only if the battle of Gettysburg is viewed together with the capture of Vicksburg, which occurred on the same day in the Western theater of operations.

DEATH Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

DEATH - Essay Example He does this as a gesture of remembrance, to hopefully keep his brother from focusing on the negative aspects of him being away, and instead remember the fond times the two of them had shared in the car. When Henry finally leaves, the car seems to be the only comforting semblance for Lyman, of the times they had spent together. The images of a healthy, happy Henry are embodied in the spirit of the red convertible, and these special memories are what keep Lyman from digressing into sorrow. Some of the relaxing and content thoughts Lyman conjures up are ones where they had no specification of destination, during the summer when there were traveling in the car. â€Å"We took off driving all one summer,† and the story goes on to show how happy and at peace they both were, finding spots in areas where they felt â€Å"so comfortable†, Henry is depicted as feeling at ease enough to fall, â€Å"asleep with his arms thrown wide† (Erdrich 2002). Lyman continues to grasp onto these visual memories he brings up, in anticipation of those same feelings for when his brother will finally return. The car itself is what symbolizes the bond between the two of them, even with a gre at distance of separation dividing them. Finally, Henry returns home in the story but it’s obvious he has changed; things are just not the same. â€Å"Henry because quiet and restless† (814). Often he secluded himself and although he was there, his mind seemed to be somewhere else. It appeared war and the white mans culture had taken its toll on him and all that was there for him was ugliness. This is evident in the story when, one night they all gather around the dinner table and beforehand, Henry has bit down into his lip so hard from frustration that he sits with blood dribbling down his chin, theorizing how badly he wanted to be done with American ways, in his mind and in his life (817). This is representative

Characters In Havisham, Hitcher, and The Laboratory Essay Example for Free

Characters In Havisham, Hitcher, and The Laboratory Essay What similarities or differences are there in the way disturbed or disturbing characters are presented in Havisham, Hitcher, and The Laboratory? Necrophilic fantasies in Duffys Havisham, the impulsive murderer in Armitages Hitcher, the smarter premeditated plot in the Lab, and finally the darkened anger of Inversnaid. All of these poems contain elements of disturbed characters or disturbed fantasies, some flaunt an erratic display of anger love and hate, and some are more contained and scheming. In all of these poems the disturbed and the disturbing is explored in new ways and helps us to better understand our own minds and evils. Inversnaid is immediately begun with dark and disturbing imagery darksome burn this conjures up gory and gothic thoughts before the poem has properly begun. In contrast Hitcher starts in a completely opposite way Id been tired, under the weather the enjambment on the first line creates suspense, also the spelling of answer phone as ansaphone shows the narrators simplicity, also the erratic punctuation gets across his disturbed state of being. The fact that he has a hired car could also mean that he is a dangerous driver and has caused a road accident. A part in the poem that also suggests that the narrator is crazy is round the next bend this indicates that he is round the bend showing he is crazy. Inversnaid also gives this impression through the use of enjambment. This gives the poem a rambling feel as though he is just spouting random words. A disturbing feeling is also created by: broth Of a pool sp pitch-black, this phrase sounds almost apocalyptic, this combined with the rambling could almost be seen as though he is speaking in tongues; prophesising some terrible end to the world. In Duffys Havisham, the psychotic issues of the narrator can be seen from the start, as is the case in inversnaid. Green pebbles for eyes this shows the audience that she has lost all emotion and individuality she ever had. We know this Havisham is defiantly crazy when Duffy describes her cawing Nooooo at the wall; it shows her loss of self-respect and dignity. In contrast, the woman in the Laboratory chooses to hid her self tying thy glass mask tightly she does this in order to hide herself so as to save her self-respect and also to ensure she does not get caught in planning a murder. However, despite the narrators dignity there is a disturbing element about her for example: keep them one half minuet fixed she would fall the fact that she believes that she can stare her victim to death, but most of all because she does not care that the man will still not love her after she has killed Pauline, this proves that she is just doing it out of jealousy as she cannot have him. Carol Ann Duffys Havisham is defiantly the most disturbing poem of all as it addresses all the usually psychotic issues that the narrators in each of the poems talk about and goes beyond that by describing Havisham necrophilic fantasies. However it is evident that all of these poems are describing a hate that we have all felt at some point, we are not all necessarily necrophilias but we have all hated someone in this way. As for hitcher I believe that this is the same and that Armitage is merely presenting to us a part of ourselves but exemplified in an amplified and literal state.

What photography can and should document

What photography can and should document The social crisis of our time, however, calls for a redefinition of what photography can and should document. Obviously, not all documentary photography has to be didactic in pointing to a possibility of social change. But there is a need for discourse among documentary photographers about the content of work, and its relationship to the social movements of our time. The social movements of our day are more complex. Its often harder to find the sense of political certainty which filled the vision, and inspired the dedication of these artists who came before. Photojournalism relies upon the notion that photography captures an objective record of reality for viewers. Yet, at the same time, a clearly defined system of rules and conventions governs the professional practice of photojournalism, delimiting the range of appropriate images and shaping the form those images take. Paradoxically, news photographs are valued as neutral records at the same time that they are admired as carefully crafted pictures. Photojournalists earn kudos not only for what they show, but also for how well they show it. Documentary photography was tied, historically, to both exploration and social reform. Some early documentarians worked, literally, documenting features of the natural landscape. Others worked, like Lewis Hine for the great social surveys of the early part of the century. Their work was used to expose evil and promote change. Their images were, perhaps, something like those journalists made but, less tied to illustrating a newspaper story, they had more space to breathe in. A classic example is Hines image of Leo, 48 inches high, 8 years old, picks up bobbins at fifteen cents a day, in which a young boy stands next to the machines which have, we almost surely conclude, stunted his growth. Documentary photography supposed to dig deep, get at what Robert E. Park (a sociologist who had worked as a journalist for daily papers in Minneapolis, Denver, Detroit, Chicago and New York) called the Big News, be concerned about society, play an active role in social change, be socially responsible, worry about its effects on the society in which its work is distributed. Photographers like Hine saw their work, and it has often been seen since, as having an immediate effect on citizens and legislators. Today, we see this work as having an exploratory, investigative character, something more like social science. Contemporary documentary photographers, whose work converges more consciously with social science, have become aware, as anthropologists have, that they have to worry about, and justify, their relations to the people they photograph. Photographs get meaning, like all cultural objects, from their context. Even paintings or sculptures, which seem to exist in isolation, hanging on the wall of a museum, get their meaning from a context made up of what has been written about them, either in the label hanging beside them or elsewhere, other visual objects, physically present or just present in viewers awareness, and from discussions going on around them and around the subject the works are about. Documentary projects typically go on for years, often focus on social issues rather than news events, and are usually independently conceived and financed by the photographer, rather than commissioned by a publication. Documentary is often assumed to be subjective, to have a point of view on the subject being investigated, but it is also presumed to be honest reporting and photographers in this mode do not generally resort to setting up shots. These sort of projects are sometimes sold in pieces to magazines but with the decline of mass circulation magazines like Life, the usual goal has become to publish the whole project in book form. Photojournalism is used here to refer to the coverage of current news events in an extended format, both in the investigation and shooting stage and in the final story product which normally consists of more than one photograph. Because these projects are time-sensitive, they may take months but not years to complete. Photojournalism is usually commissioned by a publication, such as a magazine or newspaper, but will sometimes later appear in book form as well. While documentary projects are usually driven by the personal interests or convictions of the photographer, photojournalisms subject matter is generally determined by what is deemed news-worthy by the media. The question of whether an image appropriately â€Å"reflects reality† is an issue that documentary photography and photojournalism has contended with throughout their histories. The global audience is changing, and photography needs to reflect this in order to remain effective. Readers are disillusioned at the manipulation they are slowly becoming aware to via pseudo-documentaries on society and politics by filmmakers. That the camera cannot lie is true only in the sense that the images it captures must have existed in one form or another at some particular time. We are familiar with historical photos that have been retouched to include or exclude political figures. We are less familiar with the potential of new technologies for falsifying images, particularly those that appear in newspapers and magazines. Photojournalism, photography that accompanies stories intended for newspaper and magazine readers, has a long and cherished tradition of truthfulness. The faking of photographs, either through stage direction by the photographer or through darkroom manipulation, unfortunately, also has a long tradition. However, computer technology puts photographic faking on a new level of concern as images can be digitized and manipulated without the slightest indication of such trickery. If the manipulation of photographs is accepted for any image, the public will naturally doubt all photographs and text within all publications. Scoopt, the citizen photojournalism arm of Getty Images, claims to have experts who carefully screen images to ensure no digital tampering has occurred. As Far id points out, however, tampering is becoming increasingly difficult to detect with the naked eye—particularly for understaffed organizations trying to push through photos of breaking events. Yet, human beings continue to die from war, murder, natural disasters; to be born, now in litters as large as seven or eight: to live in harmony and conflict. Newspapers and photojournalism have survived the onslaught of electronic media, continuing to report the human maelstrom of a global citizenry as if it were a vivid reality play m the midst of the non reality o turn-of-the-millennium culture. Almost drowned within media criticism have been the voices of those professionals whose appreciation of the subjective nature of observation and reportage has led to more sensitive and sophisticated practice of visual journalism. In daily practice, digital-imaging technology has led to increased awareness of the ease of manipulating visual reportage, in turn leading to higher not lower ethical standards. At the same time, new technology has made visual coverage faster, easier, and more prolific via digital distribution. More and more photojournalists are asked to also be advertising photographers shooting fashion, food, architecture, portrait, and editorial illustration assignments. These assignments take photojournalists away from doing meaningful documentaries about social conditions in their community. These economically driven assignments are fuelled by news directors, publishers, and photographers who dont necessarily distinguish between magazine and television commercial advertising and classic photojournalism documentation. When a young photojournalist is expected to split her time between news and corporate controlled images, its hard for her to take herself seriously as an on-call visual documentarian. Issues and debates surrounding truth will continue as long as media is reported. Even with the saturation of so-called amateur journalists, there will always be motives of greed, a human trait that is undeniable in our society. Some critics have predicted that in a few years, images whether still or moving will not be allowed in trials as physical evidence because of the threat to their veracity created by digital alterations. Most consumers of the media can easily tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story. But sometimes the distinction is so subtle, only highly observant readers can tell the difference. But no matter how the tools of journalism change, fundamental ethical concerns still apply. Displaying violent, sensational images for economic reasons, violating a persons privacy before the judicial process can function, manipulating news-editorial pictures to alter their content, stereotyping individuals into pre-conceived categories and blurring the distinction between advertising and editorial messages were journalism concerns in 1895, are important topics in 1995 and will be carefully considered issues, no doubt, in 2095. Now, as we witness the dramatic transformations to the print journalism industry, these questions not only reveal how the idea of visual journalism has congealed but also indicate the kinds of issues that both photojournalism practitioners and their audiences will need to resolve in a world in which the printed periodical is no longer the favoured institution through which these images are mediated. Over the last fifteen years or so we have witnessed the emergence of new kinds of visual story-telling. Digital photography gave us instantaneous feedback; camera phones gave us ubiquitous photography; picture-sharing sites gave us a developing social milieu in which these instant and ubiquitous pictures could be shared. As a result we have new formal models for presenting visual information. There is more documentary feature production than ever before. Still images are organized as slideshows, browse-and-enlarge albums, or in an irregular temporal flow. Reuters Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War is a brilliant use of multimedia that is not a linear display of images. These new formal properties will redefine visual grammars and inform how and of what photographers make pictures, but they will also be subject to the new contexts and frameworks that will continue to emerge. The value of information increases not only when it is controlled and withheld but also when it is given shape and purpose, when value articulates with meaning. We may not remember many of the facts that led to the brief student uprising in Chinas Tiananmen Square in 1989, but you can never forget the image of the lone protester standing defiantly in front of a line of menacing, green Chinese tanks. Words and pictures become one powerfully effective communicative medium inside your own mind. Professional photojournalists cannot be in the best places at the right times in order to capture events as they unfold. The future of photojournalism lies with the new breed of moral and aware consumers. The Internet offers us the chance to reinvent photojournalism by enabling us to blend the best practices from still photojournalism, broadcasting, and independent films. The Internet permits us to blend still photographs with audio, text, video, and databases to make compelling content that is far richer than print or broadcasting typically deliver. This new world of visual story telling gives us a chance to reinvent the form and to adapt integration of various media types to tell the most compelling possible story. Visual journalism on the web offers the chance to tell narrative stories that speak powerfully to underlying truths of the human condition. The traditional model of print distribution and direct editorial funding has been unravelling from the 1970s onwards, ever since weekly pictorial magazines like Life folded. This demonstrates photojournalism that required an editorial paymaster was in trouble long before the Internet was an issue or the global recession added to its woes. It involves seeing oneself as a publisher of content and a participant in a distributed story, the form of which helps reshape the content of the story. Rather than just producing a single image or small series of images to be sold into another persons story, multimedia on the web has numerous advantages for visual storytellers. â€Å"Both media are time-based, as opposed to space-based. A print layout is about space — the eye wanders; the viewer controls the time and rhythm. Time-based, of course, means the show is driven by the audio and is viewed over time,† â€Å"good slideshows, I think, have a very different rhythm than video — less literal. Slideshows need to lean on the strength of the still image — these punctuated moments in time that visually meld with the audio.† As a result, photojournalism at the beginning of the 21st century find itself maturing beyond the naive idealism of early and mid-20th-centur positivism, and even beyond the dark cynicism of late-20th-century post modernism, toward a profound sense of purpose: Good visual reportage may very well be the only credible source of reasonably true images in decades to come. The heart of photojournalism is reporting human experience accurately, honestly, and with an overriding sense of social responsibility. The key to earning and maintaining public trust is increasing awareness of the process of visual reporting and its potential to inform or misinform. Published in Life magazine in 1937, Robert Capas photograph shows in one instant the suddenness and loneliness of an anonymous soldiers death. It has been suggested that the photograph was either a chance occurrence by the photographer shooting blindly, or it was staged for the benefit of the camera. He photographed in China, on the beaches of Normandy, in Israel, and finally in Vietnam, where he was killed by a land mine./10 Capa consistently produced images with strong emotional impact and high technical expertise. Those Capa images that have been chosen by his brother Cornell Capa and by Magnum to represent his lifes work emphasize the qualities of drama and heroism and thus have had a crucial role in sustaining the Robert Capa legend. Robert Capas saying, often quoted, that â€Å"If your pictures arent good enough, youre not close enough,† has helped reinforce the important elements of drama and the heroic photographer that have been emphasized in the Magnum style. Capas most famous photograph, â€Å"Death of a Loyalist Soldier, Spain 1936,† often celebrated as the greatest war photograph of all time, creates drama with a close-up depiction of the moment of death and conveys a macho persona with the clear implication of Capas decision to place himself in close proximity to danger. His choice of a type of lens that closely resembles normal human vision, probably around 50 mm, gives the feeling that we are right next to the soldier as he falls. The fact that the viewer can see the landscape around and behind him indicates that Capa is clearly not hidden safely far away with a telephoto lens (which would compress and narrow our view of the background), but is closely engaged with the action.43 Capas photographs of D-Day where he is obviously in the surf with the advancing troops has a similar effect of dramatizing events by being as close as possible to the action, and thereby also endowing the photographer with even more daring and courage than the heroes of the moment, the invading soldiers, since he had a choice that the soldiers did not: to photograph from up close or from afar. While many of Robert Capas photographs of war, such as â€Å"Death of a Loyalist Soldier, Spain 1936,† do not seem particularly dramatic viewed now, in the 1930s they were hailed as the finest pictures of front-line action ever taken.44 Certainly, this kind of close-up view of war was relatively new to viewers who were more used to images of fightings aftermath. However, captions applied by the picture magazines certainly played an important role in the creation of Capas images as dramatic. As Fred Ritchin notes, Capas Spanish Civil War photographs were often accompanied by captions such as In the Heart of the Battle: The Most Amazing War Picture Ever Taken, and You can almost smell the [gun] powder in this picture, and the most famous, This is War! in the British magazine Picture Post.45 Robert Franks book, The Americans. Frank traveled around the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955/56 taking photographs of people at funerals, on the street, at drive-in movies, in restaurants, driving cars. Rather than rely on neat geometrical compositions to create abstract patterns, he focused on fleeting, contemplative facial expressions or included empty space to lend his photographs a sense of sad loneliness and of disjuncture between people. In his photograph Elevator Miami Beach the young elevator girl looks wistfully off into the distance as her rich-looking patrons blur past her out the door. Its not possible to know whether it is her sadness the photograph conveys, or Franks. While the documentary aspect of Franks work in The Americans is highly subjective, like much of Magnums own work, he uses the element of artistic expression to create a whole different visual style, leading viewers to conclusions about his subjects at odds with the conclusions drawn from work in the Magnum style.

Japanese Media Overview :: essays research papers fc

Japanese media overview Physically, the mass media in Japan are quite similar to those in any developed nation, although perhaps somewhat more advanced. In organizational structure, however, Japanese media are unique. Individual elements of the Japanese media mix may resemble counterparts in other nations, but the combination is purely Japanese. The primary characteristics of Japanese mass media are the influence of the national daily newspapers and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nihon Hoso Kyokai, or NHK) and the relative lack of localism. The importance of newspapers Japanese media are dominated by five national daily newspapers. The Asahi, Mainichi, Nihon Keizai, Sankei and Yomiuri Shimbun (newspaper) all publish both a morning and an evening edition, with total circulation of more than 40 million copies per day (Cooper-Chen, 1997, p. 53). Of the world’s ten highest daily circulation newspapers, the top three are Japanese, with the fourth highest having a circulation of just over one-third of the circulation of the Yomiuri Shimbun (The United States is not represented in this list) (Cooper-Chen, 1997, p. 54). It is not surprising that Japan has the highest ratio of newspapers to people in the world, with 578 copies per day for every 1000 people (Cooper-Chen, 1997, p. 52). Local newspapers are smaller than the nationals, and many are published only once or twice a week, even in cities with populations above 100,000. However, the national newspapers all have regional sections. The national daily newspapers are also involved in other media. All of the commercial television networks are either affiliated with or owned by a national newspaper (Cooper-Chen, 1997, p. 115). They are also heavily involved in radio broadcasting, although their presence is less influential. Japanese book and magazine readership are also quite impressive. In addition, Japan has a thriving comic book, or manga, industry. Japanese comic books are for all ages and all types of people. One can see people reading manga in restaurants, coffee shops, trains, buses, even schools and offices. Sales of manga for 1984 totaled 297 billion yen (US$ 1.2 billion), although this figure does not include any of the income from manga-related products (Schodt, 1986, p. 138). Nature of television broadcasting There are five major commercial and two public television networks in Japan. The public networks, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) general and education, are funded by annual license fees paid for every television set in the country. Although NHK is an independent entity, it enjoys a close and favored relationship with the government.