Modernism, Postmodernism

The youth culture of the 1960s represents the threshold between modernism and what, in most circles, passes for postmodernism. On the one hand, it is clearly an extension and reinvention of the historical avant-garde, and, on the other, it signals the increasing obsolescence of the (modernist) divide between elite and mass culture, between the artisanal and the mechanically reproduced.Reacting against the universalizing tendencies of high modernism (from abstract expressionism to the international style), and its dedication to seriousness, abstraction, and elegance, the new artists delighted in extending the range of art, in juxtaposing the exalted and the abject, the sacred and the profane, in being vernacular and relevant, and in rudely transgressing bourgeois norms.From the point of view of post-modern theory, the recent history of popular music can be seen to be marked by a trend towards the open and extensive mixing of styles and genres of music in very direct and self-conscious ways. Put very simply, the argument about the transition between modernism and postmodernism in pop music can be seen as the Beatles in the 1960s. The songs of the Beatles drew explicitly on diverse classical and popular forms and made a claim to what was for pop a new kind of musical and lyrical seriousness.Postmodernism first emerges out of a generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism. The insistence on an absolute distinction between high and popular culture came to be regarded as the ‘unhip' assumption of an older generation. One sign of this collapse can be seen in the merging of art and pop music. For example, Peter Blake designed the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.Jameson (1991) distinguishes between modernist and post-modern pop music, making the argument that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones represent a modernist moment, against which punk rock and new wave can be seen as post-modern. In ‘Popular Mus ic and Postmodern Theory', Andrew Goodwin (1991) quite correctly argues that for various reasons this is a very difficult position to sustain. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are as different from each other as together they are different from, say, the Clash and Talking Heads. In fact, ‘it would be much easier to make an argument in which the distinction is made between the â€Å"artifice† of the Beatles and Talking Heads and the â€Å"authenticity† of the Rolling Stones and the Clash' (55).Perhaps the best way to think of the relationship between pop music and postmodernism is historically. In most accounts, the moment of postmodernism begins in the late 1950s-the same period as the emergence of pop music. Therefore, in terms of periodization, pop music and postmodernism are more or less simultaneous. This does not necessarily mean that all pop music is post-modern. Using Raymond Williams's model of social formations always consisting of a hierarchy of cultu res-‘dominant', 'emergent' and ‘residual'-post-modern pop music can be seen as 'emergent' in the 1960s with the late Beatles, and the rock music of the counter-culture, as principal examples, and in the 1970s with ‘art school' punk, to become in the late 1980s the ‘cultural dominant' of pop music.It is also possible to see the consumption of pop music and the surrounding pop music culture as in itself post-modern. Instead of an approach concerned with identifying and analysing the post-modern text or practice, we might look instead for postmodernism in the emergence of particular patterns of consumption; people who actively seek out and celebrate pastiche. The notion of a particular group of consumers, people who consume with irony and take pleasure in the weird, is very suggestive.Flirtations with Eastern mysticism in the 1960s brought new influences; the success of the Beatles, and George Harrison’s fascination with the Indian sitar, increased exposu re to Indian music and to Ravi Shankar, probably the first distinct ‘world musician’, unquestionably promoting musical sounds and structures quite different from those in the West. Prior to the successes of Miriam Makeba, Ravi Shankar and Manu Dibango, the first African musician to have an international hit, and whose music helped usher in the disco era (Mitchell 1996), musicians with exceptional local and regional popularity were otherwise largely unknown in the West, because their music was unfamiliar and inaccessible, and the words incomprehensible (hence Western recording companies took little interest).The Beatles’ quest for mysticism, enlightenment and innovative sounds (which could be incorporated in Western musical structures, rather than being given a life of their own) was the forerunner of other Western performers’ similar searches for authenticity and difference. Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986) recorded English lyrics over tracks performed by black South African bands and the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.As many critics noted, rock may have been the most popular and influential art form during the late '60s, â€Å"the deepest means of communication and expression† that negotiated the incompatibility of the post-modern with the preindustrial by attempting to unite â€Å"a mass culture† with â€Å"a genuine folk culture.† In the mid-Sixties, electricity, poetry, sex, and rhythm mixed with another combustible element, drugs, to create psychedelia. Baby boomer parents worshipped doctors and high medicine and avidly ingested antidepressants and other medications to achieve altered states of mental and physical health.Likewise, baby boomers' drug experimentation aimed for transport to a new personal and world consciousness that would eliminate human barriers— class, race, ideology—dividing their parents' world. By 1965, a suite of drugs coursed through the rock community. Dylan and marijuana influenced the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965), a folk rock record of soft edges and personal introspection. Attracting a male following, The Who, the Mod heroes, thrashed through early singles such as â€Å"Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere† and â€Å"My Generation† with amphetamine-fed punk fury.Acid rock borrowed sounds, scales, chords, and rhythms from around the world to distort space and time. The Beatles adapted Indian ragas and modal jazz to dislodge the rhythmic anchor and erase the four cardinal directions. In England, the Beatles were introduced to acid in 1965; they recorded Revolver a year later. Their variable tape speeds, tape loops, backward guitar and voice lines, and other experiments transformed basic rock and roll chords, beats, and voices into a tableau of acid-soaked sound, rhythm, and poetry. Especially disorienting was â€Å"Tomorrow Never Knows,† an early trance-rock number. Ringo Starr's bass drum figure, a human heartbeat, kicked time in reverse, while John Lennon's filtered vocals, chants inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, seemed piped in from creation.In a key contribution, ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism', Jameson overviews postmodernism as the cultural expression of a new phase of capitalism, characterized by communications technologies facilitating the virtually instantaneous shifting of international capital, the emergence of new centres of capital (e.g. Japan) in a global economy, new class formations breaking with the traditional labour v. capital division, and a consumer capitalism which markets style, images and tastes as much as actual products. The commoditization of culture has resulted in a new populism of the mass media, a culture centred around the marketing and consumption of surfaces and appearances, epitomised by the ubiquity of commercial television.Despite its obvious plausibility as a general explanation of developments in popular culture, postmodernism su ffers from a number of difficulties. To heavily generalise, these are: its frequent lack of specificity; its overpreoccupation with texts and audiences at the expense of locating these within the economic and productive context within which cultural products reside; its reduction of history and politics and its ignoral of ‘traditional' sociological notions of production, class and ideology.The postmodernist view of rock music regards it as exemplifying the collapse of traditional distinctions between art and the commercial, the aesthetic and the unaesthetic, and the authentic and unauthentic. This view is most prominent in discussions of music video, with its affinities to advertising (Kaplan 1987). Popular cultural texts of the Beatles are regarded as dynamic not static, mediated both by patterns of economic and social organisation and the relationship of individuals and social groups to these patterns. This puts politics in a position of central importance, as culture is vie wed as a site of conflict and struggle, of negotiations which constantly confirm and redefine the existing conditions of domination and subordination in society.Against the backdrop of these cultural studies signposts, the construction of meaning in rock can be seen as embracing a number of factors: the music industry and its associated technologies, those who create the music, the nature of rock texts, the constitution of rock audiences and their modes of consumption, and attempts to influence and regulate all of these. The role of the music industry, in its drive to commodify rock and maximise profits, is the starting point for understanding rock.In film or in rock a certain historical logic can be reintroduced by the hypothesis that such newer media recapitulate the evolutionary stages or breaks between realism, modernism and postmodernism, in a compressed time span, such that the Beatles and the Stones occupy the high modernist moment embodied by the ‘auteurs' of 1950s and 1960s art films.Although animation was used in the early days of filmmaking and became just another form of studio production, it underwent big changes in the late twentieth century. A major break in such style occurred with the Beatles' animated film, Yellow Submarine (1968). Not only was the colour startling – a psychedelic experience of sorts, as some commented – but the animation also used a mixture of media that inspired what was later called the â€Å"blendo† style in which cels, cut-outs, clay figures – and more recently – computer graphics are blended (Cohen 1998).The application of postmodernism to popular music is primarily based on two perceived trends: firstly, the increasing evidence of pastiche, intertextuality, and eclecticism; and, secondly, increased cultural fusion and the collapsing of high-low culture type distinctions in rock. However, rock history demontrates that the first trend frequently actually reaffirms the distinctions supposedly being broken down in the second trend. Post-modern music clearly contributed to the increasingly global nature of cultural and economic linkages, mapping out new networks of commodity flow and entrepreneurial activity.At least at a surface level, all countries’ popular musics were shaped by international influences and institutions, by multinational capital and technology, by global pop norms and values. Even the most nationalist sounds—carefully cultivated ‘folk’ song, angry local dialect punk, preserved (for the tourist) traditional dance—were determined by a critique of international entertainment. The rise of rock ‘n’ roll, the success of the Beatles, alongside transitions in other cultural forms, ensured some measure of ubiquity.ReferencesCentore, F. F. (1991). Being and Becoming: A Critique of Post-Modernism, Greenwood Press: New York.Goodwin, Andrew. (1991). â€Å"Popular Music and Postmodern Theory†, Cultural Studies, 5.Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Kaplan, E.A. (1987). Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture, New York: Methuen.Mitchell, T. (1996). Popular Music and Local Identity, Leicester University Press, London and New York.

Educational psychology Essay

One of the world’s issues of today is on context of education. Many education conventions have been organized to discuss on matters relevant on the development of educational goals and programs. Education should be considered as one factor in the development of man as the most significant since it brings all breakthroughs in all walks of life. From the time of primitive education to the medieval period, education has been playing a great role in the lives of every citizen and the state in general. The very first task of educational contenders was and is to set educational development goals. The challenge of all educational institutions today is to produce a curriculum that will earn high productivity as in lifelong education. The institution should be more focused on creating opportunities where learners can exercise their abilities and potentials. There must be that sense of self-education in order for them to perform better jobs in the real world because their education is gained not only by mere transfer of learning but through applying their skills into the real life setting. Today, people are conscious of searching for breakthroughs be it scientific, cultural, or educational, in order to improve the quality of life. This is one goal in education that must be taken in to account from time to time because it is through this that improvements and developments take place. Along with these breakthroughs, rapid changes in the society’s way of life bring a lot of conflicts in the human life. By conflict, man faces several challenges that will test his true capacity and knowledge in resolving his own issues. That is, by inculcating in the learners the culture of being sensitive to the needs of the people and the nation brings a lot of pressure in our educational today. People are not trained to satisfy themselves but to see to it that the whole nation can benefit what one person is enjoying out of something. However, in the advent of various educational programs and projects, long term education program is still best to be implemented. This is in response to different curriculum reforms to attain quality delivery of instruction. The national government through the education department, has been looking for ways and means in order to help sustain these long term programs in order to provide a standard and suitable curriculum for every Filipino and attain progress in the academe. Moreover, the Department of Education has laid the three millennium development goals to help attain the Education for All by the year 2015. These goals include accessibility, quality, and sustainability. These goals will help improve the number of Filipino children to be in school and complete their education as prescribed by them of their age and as mandated by the constitution of which education is a right. These millennium development goals of the Education for All (EFA) enable schoolchildren to harness their faculties in improving their way of life and participate in the development process in educational reform and societal progress. According to the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, Russian Federation, education will become a social institute providing people with various educational opportunities. With this end in view school and university curricula should be diversified to enable everyone to make up their own educational trajectory in compliance with their aptitudes, thus creating the basis to implement the principle Education for all. Thus, in the Philippines various projects have been undertaken in order to qualify the implementation the Education for All. These projects include MADRASAH (for Moslem schoolchildren), Education for Indigenous Peoples, inclusion of values education in the curriculum, strengthening the higher order thinking skills type of questions in every learning area, the implementation of National Achievement Test (a standardized test), the participatory school improvement planning, the integration of information and communications technology in education (ICT4E), the decentralization of management including the downloading of maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) to specific schools, and the conduct of various trainings and national competency examinations. These are some of the approaches in order to carry out the implementation of Education for All. Nevertheless, Article XIV of the 1987 Philippine Constitution cited that the Department of Education as the only agency in the Philippine government, responsible for education and manpower development. It further stated that the state shall protect and promote the right of every citizen to quality education at all levels and shall take appropriate steps to make education accessible to all. This is still in line with the context that education is a right and is for all. Whether a schoolchild is in the formal or non-formal education, what matters most is his assumption of his respective role in the society, the virtues he shall live with, and the use of his capabilities in attaining the long term goal in education that contributes to the total progress and development of the nation. At the end of the day we do realize that the search for an adequately structured educational system, is to secure our lives from the many challenges of the outside world at all sorts. Hence, education in the new society shall be within the context of national development and value formation in order to help build a nation other than ourselves. —oo0oo—

Care of Cancer Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Care of Cancer - Essay Example Oncologists or physicians perform tests to verify the diagnosis of cancer. However, more tests are recommended by a doctor to find out more on the cancer. This is because most tests are vogue and cannot be relied on for treatment. Additionally, there are types of cancer that are hard to classify. Lymphomas is one of the types cancer that require more than one test to ascertain its existence on the body. Combination of thorough test and evaluation of the patient history of symptoms provides a clear analysis for confirmation of presence or absence of cancer. Additionally, clear and effective diagnosis provides steps of monitoring the disorder and the rightful treatment for the diseases. The most common diagnostic methods of cancer are; biopsy, x-rays, endoscopy, diagnostic imaging and the blood test. According to Regnard and Kindlen (2002), biopsy is one of the diagnostic methods for cancer and it is done by surgically removing the tissue sample and put under microscopic test. The process involves either a short needle or a longer needle with the help of scan guidance such as CT scan or ultrasound. Diagnostic imaging is a technique used to provide internal image of the body. There are various processes performed under diagnostic imaging, such as X-rays, CT scans, positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). X-rays is the most common method used for screening lung and breast cancer. The method is effective in determining the spread of cancer to bones. CT and MRI scans are mainly used to ascertain the level of tumour and the results of treatment. The images produced during CT scans are analysed using a computer to produce images with a high number of tissues. However, MRI produces more detailed images than both CT and X-ray. Ultrasound is another diagnostic imaging for cancer. The aspects of ultrasound are not good like CT and

5 Processes Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

5 Processes - Case Study Example From this discussion it is clear that for Article Writing, the level of service expected would be more qualitative than quantitative. Price, originality, creativity, and on time delivery of the write up are some of the aspects which need to be considered while hiring. For Articles, fixed cost deals will be preferred. Criteria for the selection for most suitable vendor as article writer would be quality of write up, originality of write up and cost. We will hire 3 writers for this task. Creative write up will be awarded to one, informative write up to the other and in house reports writing to the third and last one. The write up should be provided to us in 2 weeks time after selection. First step will be hiring advertisement which will be placed 2 months prior to the time when the content is needed to be ready. 2 weeks will be taken up in selection process; 2 weeks for the writers to finish off work and the last 2 weeks for our editing team to finalize the content. This paper outlines that while outsourcing photography assignments, the service level required would be to provide us brilliant natural and related to our topic kind of photographs at low cost. It will again be a fixed cost job. We will review the portfolio of the vendors and will prefer handing over this task to someone who has experience in nature photography. One vendor will be selected for one magazine issue. Selection will be finalized one month prior to the time we need the photos ready. Printing is a specialist’s job. Level of service expected will be high quality printing, with latest machinery. The contract in this case will be on per unit cost basis. Low cost and best quality will be important criteria for us. All printing will be done by one vendor.  

Not set, depends on a research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Not set, depends on a research - Essay Example It was this pacified demeanor reinforced in King’s speech that I want to give focus to. The speech is an intense argument that delivers its point to persuade others in the pursuit of the objective that the movement aspires to accomplish. The eloquent call of Dr. King to his people was an inspiration that gave face to the diplomatic crusade of the African-American people. â€Å"Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred† (King). This was meant to be a reminder against the tendency of those who employ the use of violence to call attention to their goal. â€Å"Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality† (King). This is also recognition on the tendency of others to be consumed by animosity against those who prejudice their race because of the reality that demonstrations could easily turn vicious. Thi s is not the answer, as he reiterates, to be able to achieve true freedom from the existing racial oppression. Much like the crusade of Mahatma Gandhi and his adherence to uphold a passive resistance, ensuring that there is no bloodshed, Dr. King called for the same. A wrong can never be corrected by another wrong and where a victory is sought and achieved through inequitable means then it is a shallow triumph nonetheless. â€Å"He could not see that the fact that a majority was oppressing a minority, even violently, somehow justified the minority's oppressing the majority by violence in turn. Nor could he see that an oppressive minority should be suppressed by a violent majority† (Steinkraus 104). When we look at it, the success of the Civil Rights Movement is even more admirable in a historical point of view because they were able to change the course of future because of the virtue of the people who led them. This is why Martin Luther King is the first person we associate with racial equality. The event itself was a confirmation of the peaceful face of the movement. There was something on that day extremely different from all the riots that are happening in other parts of the country. The people were very calm and though the number of those present was numerous, there was no tension between the police officers and the demonstrators. There were sharing of food and the people were dressed as though they were going to church. The organizers of the protest kept a working relationship with the officers and there was a system created to ensure that everything was orderly. Some participants even went so far as to prepare 80,000 cheese sandwiches in New York (Lei and Miller 84). Warren Steinkraus in his article, â€Å"Martin Luther King's Personalism and Non-Violence,† explores the development of King’s philosophy from the influence of religion from early on up to his acquaintance with various political and social philosophers that shaped his o wn views. This formation of his own philosophy is significant in understanding how he came to impart his own indelible mark on the Civil Rights Movement. â€Å"King's support of non-violence as a method of social change seems to be derived from his view of the nature of the ultimate ground of existence and the place and importance of finite individuals in the universe†

Macbeth Act 3 Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Macbeth Act 3 - Coursework Example Explain Macbeth does see Fleance as a threat to his throne as, according to witches’ prophecies, Banquo’s sons will rule the country. However, he does not see the bay as a threat yet – the boy is too small. Macbeth is more afraid of the boy’s father – Banquo. 3. Do you feel any sympathy at all for Lady Macbeth as she talks about her "doubtful joy" in scene 2? Explain. It is a pathetic sight – a queen, having no joy in life, because the way she got what she wanted was so wrong. She lives in fear that their guilt will be discovered.   Nought's had, all's spent, /  Where our desire is got without content; /'Tis safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (3.2.6-9) Her life is empty and she even envies the king Duncan - she says it is â€Å"safer† to be in his place. On the other hand we do understand that she suffers greatly because of her own evil choice. Her ill conscience and a lack of joy is the sad consequence of the conspiracy and murder she took a part in. She finds no peace either during the day, nor can she sleep peacefully at night. 4. Quote and explain a line in this scene which helps develop the theme of sleeplessness. The theme of sleeplessness started back in the act 2 when Macbeth murdered the king. He heard the voice then: â€Å"Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor /Shall sleep no more.

Steamboal Bill, Jr Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Steamboal Bill, Jr - Essay Example An analysis of the film will address themes, sound tracts, and effectiveness to the audience. The plot of the movie begins with the arrival of a new steamer in the river junction. The owner of the new steamer is J.J. King (Wickstrà ¶m). He is shown being happy with other captains of the ship waiting for its arrival. On the other hand, Steam Boat Bill is shown with his mate Tom Lewis in the old steamer (Wickstrà ¶m). Bill is shown annoyed because of the new steamer, as he perceives it as a business rivalry. King is depicted as a wealthy business with some few banks and hotels under his name (Wickstrà ¶m). King notes of the old steamer as a floating ‘thing’ (Wickstrà ¶m). Bill also receives a telegram of his impending son visit. They go with his mate to get the son at the railway station. They both expect a well-built man. However, the contrary happens, as the son appears small and dressed in a funny way. This makes his father begin a journey of his transformation in a new life. At the same time, King Daughter (Marion Byron) arrives from school (Wickstrà ¶m). Both Bill and King get annoyed as they realize that both Willie and Byron were lovers. They engage in a journey of ensuring that the relationship does not exist. On the other hand, Stonewall Jackson is condemned from public safety committee from carrying out transactions (Wickstrà ¶m). This annoys Bill who confronts J.J. King. The confrontation lands Bill to jail. The son tries to rescue him without any success. In the end, Willie is shown saving father, Marion Byron, and King from ravaging weather (Wickstrà ¶m). He ends up being a hero in the film despite his initial weaknesses. The theme of the film appears as that of transformation. This has been well articulated and developed by the main characters in the play. For example, Willie is shown as a weak character in the railway station. The father and his mate Tom Lewis are ashamed of Willie as he