advertisements concerning attention, cognitive learning and motivation

advertisements concerning attention, cognitive learning and motivation 1.0 Executive Summary This proposal examines broad areas of issues in advertisements concerning attention, cognitive learning and motivation in messages as problem in the communication field. The first section elaborates about that background of advertising, followed by the definitions of problems. In the later section, an integrated oriented literature review of previous research conducted will give a short insight of the methods and social research that were carried out. In section 4.0, the objectives of the proposed study will give the highlights what the study can obtain and follow by the methods of research, data collection and analysis. The summary of the proposal is included in the section 6.0, which is the conclusion. 2.0 Background To The Problem 2.01 Advertising Belch and Belch (2004) defined advertising as space or time that is bought by an identified sponsor to use any form of nonpersonal communication elements (e.g., television, radio, magazines, or newspapers) to deliver messages to a large number of individuals of potential consumers, frequently at the same time about an organisation, product or service (Belch Belch, 2004, pp16). Wells, et al (2003) alleged that advertisements strive to satisfy consumers objectives by engaging them and delivering a relevant message. Hence, the consumer may remember the advertisement if it is sufficiently entertaining and possibly learn to relate the advertisement to personal needs. Furthermore, the information extracted from the advertisement may provide incentive and reinforce the consumers decision. Whilst from the advertisers perspective, the definitive objective of placing an advertisement is to persuade or influence consumers to do something. The advertiser aims to move consumers to action by attaining the consumers attention, seizing their interests for a period of time to convince the consumers to change their behaviours, try the advertisers product or build brand loyalty (Wells, el at 2003, pp.5). According to Wells, et al (2003) people are concerned about the society being overrun by advertisements, thus many aspects of ethical advertising issues such as advocacy, accuracy and acquisitiveness are being investigated. Hence, advertisers must make mindful decisions to either adhere or breach the codes of ethics (Wells, el at 2003, pp.30 33). 2.02 Problem Definitions Wells, et al (2003) articulate puffery as one of the key issues in advertising, which is defined as ‘advertising or other sales representation, which praise the item to be sold with subjective opinions and superlatives or exaggerations, vaguely and generally stating no specific proofs, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of puffery indicated that reasonable people do not believe such claims whilst there are public who expects the advertisers to prove the truth of their superlative messages. Ergo, advertisers are advised to conduct necessary research that verifies facts about ethical messages for effective advertising. Advertisers and advertising agencies that have insights into the minds of the potential consumers views and evidences on their perceptions will prove to be helpful in assessing what are ethical conducts (Wells, el at 2003, pp.33 34). Wells, et al (2003) elucidate ‘subliminal messages is transmitted below the threshold of normal perception, where the receiver is not consciously aware of receiving, the embedment of messages are placed to manipulate. Research has yet to prove subliminal messages can affect behaviours due to physiological limitations, while the results in different research has shown indications that subliminal stimuli can cause some types of minor reactions (Wells, el at 2003, pp.42). This proposed research aims to examine the hierarchy of issues in advertising from the consumers perspectives, hence the research process is designated to investigate the important levels of attention, cognitive learning and motivational messages in advertising. 3.0 Literature Review The evidence from studies on advertising overwhelming indicates that additional studies are needed to cover the broad spectrum of issues concerning advertising practice. Rosbergen, et al (1997) adduce a methodology to examine the effects of physical ads of consumers attention to visuals elements on the accounts of heterogeneity, to inquire when and how consumers devote their attention to commercial stimuli and what determines the consumers attentional strategies and patterns. The proposed methodology was driven by the lack of research conducted on consumer attention, even though the importance of attention has been acknowledged (Rosbergen, et al 1997, pp.305). A growing body of research indicates that exposures to ubiquitous advertisements over a period of time have lead to increased physical dissatisfaction amongst a large proportion of women (Halliwell, el at 2005, pp. 408). Other research findings proved that women portrayed in the advertisements do not control for attractiveness. For example, Posavac, et al (1998) compared viewing fashion models with realistically-sized women ‘you might meet in everyday life. Although they do not report attractiveness ratings, they note that the attractiveness of models is accentuated by artificial means. (Halliwell, el at 2005, pp. 408) There are many theoretical reasons to expect that consumer reactions to advertising are affected by their response to the program or print material in which the advertising is inserted. Indeed many studies have looked at the impact of media context on the effectiveness of advertising. At present, however, two major issues arise with this literature. One concerns the need for more specific theories about how media context can affect advertising as well as the other relates to when context affects advertising positively and when it affects it negatively. (Halliwell, el at 2005, pp. 408) Researchers increasingly recognise the interest in on the psychology of consumers has been steadily on the rise. Much of this research has focused on changes in information processing (e.g., Roedder-John and Cole 1986). The research indicates that, consumers of different ages have different level of susceptibility to misleading advertising (Gaeth and Heath 1987) and the truth-inflating effects of repetition (Law, Hawkins, and Craik 1998; Skurnik et al. 2005). The research has shown evidences that consumers of younger age rely more on schema-based whilst older consumers adopt detailed processing strategies. However, aging also has important effects on motivational processes that can significantly affect information processing. In particular, aging is associated with an increase in the motivation to attend to emotional versus factual information (e.g., Labouvie-Vief and Blanchard-Fields 1982; Williams Drolet, 2005, pp.343) Williams and Drolet (2005) conducted their first study on how time horizon perspective affects older and young adult consumers attitudes toward and recall of emotional (vs. rational) appeals. The experiment 1 design was a 2 (age group: older vs. young) x 2 (appeal type: emotional vs. rational) x 3 (time horizon perspective: limited vs. expansive vs. control). In control conditions, where the researchers were expecting age to interact with appeal type that: (1) older participants will have more favourable attitudes toward and better recall of emotional (vs. rational) appeals and (2) young participants will have more favourable attitudes toward and better recall of rational (vs. emotional) appeals (Williams Drolet, 2005, pp.345). Additionally to expectation time horizon perspective to moderate the above effects such that in limited time horizon conditions, where researchers anticipate young participants will show increased attitudes toward and recall of emotional (vs. rational) appeals. In expansive time horizon conditions, Williams and Drolet (2005) look at the prospect of older participants showing increased attitudes toward and recall of rational (vs. emotional) appeals (Williams Drolet, 2005, pp.346) From the analysis tested for potential differences due to the use of two different products (coffee and film), the results indicated no significant differences in results (all ps 1 .30), and analysis are collapsed across the two products. The product categories were tested to use as a potential covariate in the analysis. No effects were significant ( ps 1 .30) and were not discussed further. As expected by Williams and Drolet (2005) the findings from Experiment 1 indicated that in the control time horizon conditions, older participants had greater liking and recall of the emotional appeals whilst the younger participants had greater liking and recall of the rational appeals. Whilst in limited time horizon conditions, both older and young participants attitudinal and memory responses were higher for the emotional appeals. In contrast, in the expansive time horizon conditions, the attitudinal and memory responses were higher for the rational appeals for both groups. As an afterword for Experiment 1, which have proven that age and time horizon perspective moderate responses to emotional and rational appeals to older and young adults. The results compiled from Experiment 1 differ from results of previous research (e.g. Fung and Carstensen 2003), which had inadequate evidence.(Williams Drolet, 2005, pp.345) In Experiment 2, Williams and Drolet (2005) examine how differences in age and time horizon perspective influence consumers attitudes toward and recall of emotional appeals that focus on the avoidance of negative emotional experiences. Participants were instructed to read either a positively framed or negatively framed emotional appeal of one of two emotional products. After reading the appeal, participants were required to answer questions about their attitudes toward products. After that, participants were required to do manipulation checks and answered product use and demographic questions. Lastly, participants were asked to recall all they could about the appeal that they have read earlier (Williams Drolet, 2005, pp.349 50). Williams and Drolet (2005) tested for differences by using two emotional products (greeting cards and flowers). The analysis found no significant differences in results ( ps 1 .30). Hence, Experiment 2 have shown indications that aging and time horizon perspective impact and preferences for emotional versus rational appeals, but also preferences for different types of emotional appeals. Specifically, that avoidance of negative emotional outcomes is more preferable and has higher memory retention among both groups of older and younger participants in limited time horizon view. On the contrary, younger and older participants who had an expansive time horizon view generated were preferably higher on positive emotions and are more memorable (Williams Drolet, 2005, pp.351). Gunter, et el (2005) have preliminary evidence that can lead advertisers to believe that effectiveness of advertisements on consumers retention and comprehension of messages relies on the placement of television programs, positioning of ads in print materials or radio airtime. The nature of the advertising environment can affect memory for embedded advertising as a result of cognitive interference effects when and where the advertisement formats are congruent semantically (Furnham, Bergland, Gunter, 2002;Furnham, Gunter, Richardson, 1999) or in terms of format (Gunter, Baluch, Duffy, Furnham, 2001); or as a function of program-induced moods (Goldberg Corn, 1987; Kamins, Marks Skinner, 1991; Schumann, 1986). Arousal (Mundorf, Zillman, Drew, 199 1; Pavelchak, Antil, Munch, 1988), or excitement (Singh, Churchill, Hitchon, 1987). While unpleasant arousal or interference can impede memory for embedded advertisements, the degree to which any advertisement format involves or appeals also can affect memory (Gunter, et al 2005, pp. 1680) 4.0 Objective of Proposed Research The objective of the research is to provide advertisers and advertising agencies to have insights to create ethical, effective and efficient advertisements to publics. The collection and analysis of consumers personal information from various electronic media and tools with the advancements and improvements in the new age of technologies and research methods, advertisers are able to analyse consumers information, perception and behaviours. 4.01 Methods This study aims to investigate which element in advertising precedes primary in the minds of the consumers, by taking into account the possible role of attention, puffery and motivational messages in advertising. The use of focus group interviews allows researchers to generate information that can be used to design effective, ethical and efficient messages in advertising. Focus group interviews can provide researchers with relevant perceptions and attitudes of selected participants (Frey, et al 2000, pp.221). In addition for more insight and higher success of the interviews, four facilitators will be acquired to guide and lead the focus group interviews. The facilitators will introduce the topics; encourage participations and probes for more information. The participants will be exposed to advertisements of different materials (e.g., television commercials, radio commercials, magazines ads, or newspapers ads). The participants will be divided into four focus groups that will be videotaped and recorded with written consents given by the participants. Every participant will be asked to provide demographic information including age, gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, and religion. The members of the research team were present to greet and support the focus group, by playing the roles of complete participant, participant observer, observer participant and complete observer via listening to the discussions, and record field notes (Frey, et al 2000, pp.269). Male and female participants will be assigned randomly to 4 treatment conditions, ensuring equal numbers of 5 each gender per condition: Group 1- television commercials and magazine print ads; Group 2- radio commercials and newspaper ads; Group 3- television commercials and radio commercials; and Group 4 magazine print ads and newspaper ads. Each group will spend 30 minutes on the different advertising formats that will be played in a small theatre room that will be fully equipped with a large screen, enhanced audio systems, desks and refreshments. After observing the different formats of advertising, each group will be lead into discussions by the facilitators, where participants will be encouraged to express themselves freely about their experiences, opinions and perceptions. Before finalising the focus group sessions, participants will be given three set of questionnaires to answer. Commercials rating questionnaire. On the program rating questionnaire, participants will use a 10-point scale to rate the advertisements, which they have watch, heard or seen in the focus group session on 12 evaluative scales (absorbing, hostile, arousing, disturbing, engaging, entertaining, enjoyable, exciting, happy, violent, interesting, and involving). Each scale ranged from 1 (not at an> to 10 (extremely). Free-recall questionnaire. A free-recall questionnaire will ask participants to write everything they could remember about the advertisements that they saw. They will be required to write down the name of the product and the brand advertised, and any details of the advertising message. Such details could include specific product-related information, such as price, promotional appeals, specific strengths or benefits, presence of celebrity endorser, and other idiosyncratic features of the advertisement. Brand recognition questionnaire. A brand recognition questionnaire will test participants memory for the brands advertised in the duration of the focus group. Participants will be asked to indicate as many brands as they could remember that appeared during the focus group. Each correct answer was scored 1 point, while incorrect choices were given 0 points. 4.02 Data Collection and Analysis All the members of the research team who will engage in a series of meetings to review and compare the four focus groups coding schemes The meetings will audio-recorded, and then the selected portions of the recordings were transcribed to review dialogue through which concepts will be refined. Metaphor analysis and fantasy theme analysis can best complement the data collected from the focus groups interviews. Metaphor analysis will allow researchers to investigate into participants figures of speech in a word or phrase that denotes one object to another, while fantasy theme analysis allows participants to interact between one another and share stories and experiences (Frey, et al 2000, pp.285). The questionnaires will be content-analysed and compared against a pretested list of salient points that had been identified for each advertisement. The research will be compiled into an informal structure report written by the researchers in first-person singular voice, which signifies rhetorical assumption of naturalistic paradigm (Frey, et al 2000, pp.20). Every participant will be treated as a unit of analysis in analytic strategy to consider the participants behaviours, attitudes, perception and cognitive process. 5.0 Timeline The proposed timeline of research is as below: Week 1 Selecting Respondents Or Target Participants Week 2 Setting the environment for focus groups Week 3 Conducting Focus Group Interviews Week 4 Conducting Focus Group Interviews Week 5 Collection of Data Week 6 Compiling Of Data and Transfer Data Into Transcripts Week 7 Analysis Of Data Week 8 Compilation of Report Week 9 Compilation Of Report 6.0 Conclusion The proposed study has important social implications that can provide advertisers and advertising agencies with more concrete and overwhelming findings to help overcome the issues that are threatening the effects and impacts of advertising on individuals. Hence, the study can result in advertisers creating ethical, efficient and effective advertisements that can influence and persuade individuals with motivational messages that affect emotional appeals positively. 7.0 References Belch, G. E. Belch, M. A. 2004, Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective, 6th edn, McGraw Hill, Singapore. Frey, L., Botan, C. Kreps, G. 2000, Investigating Communication: An Introduction to Research Methods, 2nd edn, Allyn Bacon, Needham Heights, MA. Gunter, B., Furnham, A. Pappa, E. 2005, Effects of television violence on memory for violent and nonviolent advertising, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol 35, no. 8, pp. 1680 97. Halliwell, E., Dittmar, H. Howe, J. 2005, The impact of advertisements featuring ultra-thin or average-size models on women with a history of eating disorders, Journal of Community Applied Social Psychology, vol 15, pp. 406 13. Jacoby, J. Hoyer, H. W. 2002, Viewer miscomprehension of televised communication: Selected findings, Advertising Social Review, viewed 16 October 2009,http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/advertising_and_society_review/v001/1.1jacoby.html Rosbergen, E., Pieters, R. Wedel, M. 1997, Visual attention to advertising: A segment level analysis, Journal of Consumer Research, vol 24, pp. 305 -15. Wells, W., Burnett, J. Moriarty, S. 2003, Advertising: Principles and Practice, 6th edn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Williams, P. Drolet, A. 2005, ‘Age related differences in responses to emotional advertisements, Journal of Consumer Research, vol.32, pp. 343 55.

An Introduction To Independent Filming

An Introduction To Independent Filming Because independent film is independently financed, several of its characteristics, such as visual art, theme and background, make it different from any other type of film. An independent film, indie film, or underground film, is a film that is produced mostly outside of a major film studio. Todays big six major film studios are Time Warner, News Corporation, Viacom, Sony, The Walt Disney Company and General Electric/Vivendi Universal. Technically, Independent film does not belong to any major film studio or film company; both the funding and film-making are done independently. The funds of making an independent film were originally mostly from the funding that director has found by himself or even that the director personally contributes to the film. But nowadays, independent films are usually produced or distributed by subsidiaries of major studios so that, if less than half of a films financing comes from a major studio, it can be considered independent film. Where Does Independent Film Come From? The concept of independent film came from Hollywood in the last century. At that time, the Hollywood oligopoly replaced the Edison monopoly. Within this new system, a pecking order was soon established which left little room for any newcomers. At the top were the five major studios, MGM, Paramount Pictures, RKO, Warner Bros., and Twentieth Century Fox. Beneath them were Universal Studios and Columbia Pictures. Finally there was Poverty Row, a catch all term used to encompass any other smaller studio that managed to fight their way up into the increasingly exclusive movie business. It is worth noting that though the small studios that made up Poverty Row could be characterized as existing independently of any major studio, they utilized the same kind of vertically and horizontally integrated systems of business as the larger players in the game. Though the eventual breakup of the studio system and its restrictive chain-theater distribution network would leave independent movie houses eager for the kind of populist, seat-filling product of the Poverty Row s tudios, that same paradigm shift would also lead to the decline and ultimate disappearance of Poverty Row as a Hollywood phenomenon. While the kinds of films produced by Poverty Row studios only grew in popularity, they would eventually become increasingly available both from major production companies and from independent producers who no longer needed to rely on a studios ability to package and release their work (wiki). So at the time, the studio system had brought large amounts of money to the film industry, but it also extremely limited the themes of film that a scriptwriter would be allowed to write about. Because of this situation, many filmmakers wanted to get out of the studio system so they collected money and directed the film by themselves, sometimes even writing the scripts by themselves. Therefore, a large number of the independently funded and directed films were totally different from the commercial films that had been made. It is these films that became the first independent films. Backgrounds of Independent Directors A film can be called an independent film for two reasons. The first reason is that most of the financing is not from a major studio. The second reason is that the theme of the film is unique. From the beginning, independent film is different from the major studios: its purpose is not to earn money. Although production is small (low cost and simple technology are the symbols of the independent film), this does not mean that the film itself is crude or unprofessional. Because there are fewer influences from sponsors, the independent films can be involved in more themes that commercial films cannot write about, it also shows the unique of the director. Basically, the themes of independent films in the U.S. have no limit as they include politics, violence, sex, science fiction, crime and even indescribable fantasy. So it is really hard to classify independent films the same way one does for Hollywood commercial films. The unique characteristics of independent film can be proved by the backgrounds of the director of an independent film. It is not hard to find out that these directors usually have their own unique backgrounds, not only their race, but also their social status and the area that they come from. Each director is skilled in his own way and wants to show this in his film through the use of complicated structure. Take John Cassavetes, for example, who is basically called the father of the independent film in the U.S. He is most notable as a pioneer of American independent film. John was born into a Greek-American family, so his Greek family values extremely influenced his creativity in film. So, in his films, it is clear to see his observations of and questioning on American family life. They also show self-examination in the relationships between families. Woody Allen, another famous director, was born in Brooklyn, New York City, in a well-educational Jewish family. From Annie Hall to Melinda and Melinda, we can see that Woody Allens background caused him to criticize reality in his films. Another director, Spike Lee, grow up in the same neighborhood as Woody Allen, but he has a totally different angle in directing films. Because Spike Lee was born into a middle to low class, African-American family, his films are full of a fearlessness to corruption and violence and tended to show the darkness of society. Even when dealing with the same theme, different directors usually show a different point of view. For example: sex. In Woody Allens film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*But Were Afraid to Ask , he describes traditional sex using jokes instead of serious discussion. Allen even played the role of a sperm in his film for emphasis. Steven Soderbergh, however, also dealt with the theme of sex. In his opinion, sex became a symbol of danger. In his film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, sex is abnormal and makes people feel restless. This is totally different from Woody Allens humor. Thus, independent film directors each have their own style and skilled theme, causing a unique structure of theme in independent film. Black humor In Independent Film The black humor in independent film is a kind of humor that makes people feel sad. One way is to describe the compassion to nobody; another way is to sneer at somebody. Woody Allen is a representative man to use the second way in his films. Woody is good at directing his films in an exaggerated funny way, and most of his films are against tradition and authority, for example his early films Bananas Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*But Were Afraid to Ask and Sleeper. These films were meant to poke fun at Hollywoods politic film, sex film and science-fiction film at that time. Most importantly, these mocks were definitely valuable and were not sleazy jokes, but always make people think about more. And after people laughing at these jokes, they will feel a little bit sad about this reality. After Woody Allens early films, his skills has developed and used it to make fun of all society and human nature itself. In Stardust Memories Everyone Says I Love You Bullets Over Broad way, human nature, love, violence, happiness, etc, these ideas has instead of Hollywood, became his targets. Although it sounds impossible to make fun of these things, Woody Allen can always give us surprise, he has ability to make people laugh. Even in Stardust Memories, has been thought it was greeting to Ernst Ingmar Bergman, it is still easy to see Woody Allens self-mockery. In this film, he used a lot of skills from European directors, because of this, he has been criticized by critical circles, but he still treated it as his best film. Of course, Woody Allen can never forget to make fun of Hollywood, the typical one is The Purple Rose of Cairo. This film poked fun of that Hollywood made huge contrast between the reality and film world. Because of the big differences that Hollywood made in film world between realities, he criticized the Hollywood film industry. The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of Woody Allens most importantly films, it criticized film industry itself make it bec ame a landmark in independent film history. The way to make fun of nobody is used by a lot of directors, Coen brothers become the best of these directors since they began direct the independent films. Their tender humble but a little bit weird black humor became their symbol. Especially their first film Blood Simple, it became one landmark in independent film history, this film has influenced a lot of films after, especially large number of 90s independent films, its style and theme became the fashion in independent film industry. But Blood Simple was just their first one, Coen brothers second film Barton Fink won the reputation for them. The same as Woody Allen, in Barton Fink, it full of taunts to Hollywood, and their thoughts has showed in this film. The boss of the film company in Barton Fink stands for those Hollywood big shots. Money can make them kneel down, and can also make them became animals without any humanity and of course they do not care the art of films. After this film, O brother, Where art thou? became anoth er landmark, this film was adopted from Odyssey. It discussed the changes of American politics and religions make it became more like an epic for independent film history. Quentin Tarantino, are also famous for his black humor in his films. From his first famous film Reservoir Dogs, poke fun of mafia, crime, violence and etc, it became his mark. In his film Pulp Fiction, all the members of mafia has been described stupid, dirty and has no brains. They bully the weak and fear the strong, make people cannot stop laughing at them. Kill Bill extremely showed his black violent aesthetics, the female role in this film fight with Japanese mafias, killing people is just a little thing, this scene is also poke fun of Hollywood that used Chinese kung fu whenever they want to. The most typical black humor independent film must be Kevin Smiths Clerks, this film just cost $27,000, and it was a miracle to Hollywood in 90s. This is a really simple story about two salesclerks. They open for business, but there is no business. They go to funeral, but the coffin has been overthrown by them, etc. All these stories happened in the same day, it has no directly connections but it is well-organized. The story is simple, but it full of philosophy, makes people try to think. At the end, it tells people a simple truth but usually been ignored by people, which is be nice to your friends and family. In independent film, usually need wonderful actors to play out the black humor. Like Tom Cruise in Magnolia, Dustin Hoffman in I Heart Huckabees, Samuel L Jackson in Do the Right Thing and etc. These good actors are really important to any good independent films. Freedom, Revolt Violence in Independent Film For independent film, freedom is the most important characteristic. This freedom not only means the freedom of funds, but also means the freedom of minds. From some point, independent film can also be called freedom film. If independent film want to be freedom means have to break the tradition rules, which also means have to revolt the rules. So the spirit of independent film should be called the revolt of freedom. So it is not hard to find that the characters in the independent films are usually uninhibited. Take David Lynchs Wild at Heart as an example. In this film, a couple cannot be together because of several reasons, but they use a lot of lurid ways to try to get together. This film shows peoples restless though bloody violent scenes, it full of Freud style analysis. But this film also shows a little bit romantic, the other extremely way to love each other. Wild at Heart is also a typical rock film, the main character in the film usually drives a car on the high way and show up in the public like a rock singer. After Wild at Heart, Lost Highway basically continued the story has been told in Wild at Heart, the style, characteristic and even the main actor Nicholas Cage has not been change. But this time, a lot of videotapes about privacy have been instead of abstract of pressures from society. This experimental film described the darkness side of people, it is the most strange and inscrut able film in all his films. Compare with Oliver Stones films, David Lynchs films are really tender. Oliver Stones Natural Born Killers can be called the most violent film in all the 90s American independent films. In this film, he broke all the rules that had been showed on the screen, he did not even care about the audiences, just showed the extremely violent to audiences. This is not only an irony to Hollywood, but also it is an irony to the darkness of American cultures. And this counterattack is hopeless, to the whole society: just a person can do nothing. So the character in the film just can kills people to release his anger and against the society. Natural Born Killers actually has some similarities with Quentin Tarantinos films, which is that they all used violence as the clue in their films. Especially in Kill Bill, the story itself is very simple, but Quentin Tarantino described violence in details, he even makes people think that violent is kind of aesthetical. But in fact, what he wants to tell is t he same as Natural Born Killers. Hollywoods Banishment or Incorporation of Independent Film Directors Since independent film was born, Hollywood always tries to incorporate the independent film directors. Usually, an independent film director will be incorporate into Hollywood after some of his films got successes. For example, Steven Soderbergh, after he directed his independent films Sex, Lies, and Videotape Traffic, he directed some commercial films like Oceans eleven Oceans twelve. But unfortunately, for audiences, he is one of the best directors of independent film, but for commercial film, he is not the best. But still there were a lot of directors have successes on commercial film, such as Oliver Stone and Gus Van Sant, they are both good at independent film and commercial film. Oliver Stone not only has commercial films like Born on the Fourth of July Heaven and Earth but also has famous unique independent film like Natural Born Killers. Gus Van Sant is much clever, he used the theme of the independent film to do it in commercial film way, Drugstore Cowboy To Die For Good Will Hunting these films are the typical. Of course, money is everything for Hollywood, if they think the independent film director can earn money for them, they will become animals. Even the film has done, if they do not think it will earn money, they will kill it without thinking. So this is why such a lot of independent film directors do not want to direct any Hollywood films. Because their films are like their babies, if Hollywood will kill their babies sometime, who will work for Hollywood? I do not think there is one. In conclusion, only when film directors are not controlled or limited by the sponsors, the really films will be create. Not only independent film will be free, but also any other types of film will be free. At that time, I believe there is just one type of film that is called good film.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Essay -- Mental Health Disorders

Approximately five million people in the U.S., or about one in every 50 Americans, suffer from OCD. That’s about 2%, a substantial number of sufferers. It affects men, women, and children, as well as people of all races, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds.OCD is an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms that can include powerful, unwanted, or recurrent thoughts and/or compulsive, repetitive behaviors. Some of the most common obsessions are:Fear of contamination Fear of causing harm to another Fear of making a mistake Fear of behaving in a socially unacceptable manner Need for symmetry or exactness Excessive doubt Some of the most common compulsions may include:Cleaning/Washing Checking Arranging/Organizing Collecting/Hoarding Counting/Repeating Obsessions are unwanted, recurrent and unpleasant thoughts that cause anxiety. Compulsions are repetitive, ritualistic behaviors that the person feels driven to perform to decrease anxiety. At least 80 percent of patients with OCD have both obsessions and compulsions. OCD appears to be caused by increased activity in the orbital frontal cortex and caudate nucleus of the brain. OCD may also involve abnormal functioning of the neurotransmitter seratonin in the brain. Stress does not cause OCD; however, a stressful event can trigger the disorder. There are no hard facts to tell how OCD is obtained. OCD is thought to be a genetic disorder. This idea has plenty of evidence and is believed by most doctors. The chemical imbalance in the Brain is an imbalance of Seratonin and Dompamine. 80 percent of the people with OCD have another disorder called Tourettes Syndrome (TS). This syndrome is caused by the imbalance of Dompamine in the Brain. This causes the person to have muscular and/or verbal spasm which are called tics. Some people who are familiar with TS may think of people shaking wildly of cursing a lot, but that is only in a severe case. These are a couple of examples, or case studies, that I got off the internet.I. DickUp until this year, Dick had done fairly well in school, played basketball, held down a part time job cleaning a fish plant, and spent most weekends with his girl friend. Over the last year, he has had to let most of this go. His girlfriend found someone who had more time, he quit his job, and he stopped going to basketball. He could barely get his schoolwork done. Why? It took... ...ment is a treatment in which the person is exposed to there obsession and go without fulfilling their compulsions. This kind of like "facing your fear".In treating OCD with medications there are many medicines that are prescribed, here are five of the most common: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, and Anafranil. These medicines do not always work, but 60-80% of the time they do. Also these medicines do not just work right away. They have to take time to balance in the body. This usually takes about 6-8 weeks. A person is usually on one of these medicines for 12-18 months, but can be more or less. Support groups are few, yet one that I found on the Internet, called â€Å"Emotions Annoymymous† seemed to help alot of people, since this disease isn’t well known by the general public, it is misunderstood, and the words â€Å"obsessive-compulsive† are used out of place far too frequently.My OpinionI think that OCD Is a common disorder that is underestimated and there are not enough people that are educated about it. The more people know about something, the less they are afraid of it. There are five million people that have it, I think more people should know about it, one in fifty people has it.

Essay --

Jack Zalewski Period: 2 1/1/14 John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, names that speak volumes, and during the end of the 19th century they were the quote on quote â€Å"kings of the United States.† With the Civil War over and the United States in a rebuilding process, corporations for steel, oil, and railroads grew rapidly in this time. Big businesses had economic and political effects on the United States, which caused responses by the Americans. The businesses were thriving and driving the economy forward, into a state of balance. These companies also controlled a big portion of the election outcomes and political ideas. The United States citizens did not always want these companies but the United States needed them to keep the economy. The economy slowly but surely began to return to a state of balance. The prices of food, lighting, fuel, and housing were lowing as a result of big business. Thomas Edison's creation of the light bulb made lighting homes easier and safer. Farmers were smarter with crop production, and grew what they needed to the grow so they would drop to a lower price but not low enough that it would cause an overproduction.(Doc. A) The North began to increase their use of industry by creating huge factories and increasing the use of railroads. The South had to find a new way to live without the use of slavery. Many southern planters turned to sharecropping as their agricultural base. Sharecroppers were tenant farmers especially in the United States. The would be provided with credit for things such as seed, tools, living quarters, and food. There was a â€Å"second† Industrial Revolution with the increase of factories in the North and even some in the south, and there was a sh... ...successful railroad riots. During the speech a bomb it throw into the crowd killing a policeman, police then raid labor and radical offices. Unions like the American Federation of Labor rose up as a powerful union against the big businesses. The Civil War is in the past and the United States needed to rebuild. The names of great businessmen like John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Big businesses had economic and political effects on the United States, which caused responses by the Americans. The United States citizens did not always want these companies but the United States needed them to keep the economy. Businesses were thriving and helping the economy improve, into a state of balance. Big business dominated the United States, but Americans were not having it, like LeBron James blocking Tiago Splitter in the NBA Finals.

Goldings View of Man and War Exposed in Lord of the Flies :: Lord Flies Essays

Golding's View of Man and War Exposed in Lord of the Flies "...Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart" (Golding 223). An author's view of human behavior is often reflected in their writing. The novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding is an example of a literary work that demonstrates the author's view of man, as well his opinion of war. Golding's Lord of the Flies is highly demonstrative of Golding's opinion that society is a thin and fragile veil that when removed shows man for what he truly is, a savage animal. Perhaps the best demonstration of this given by Golding is Jack's progression to the killing of the sow. Upon first landing on the island Jack, Ralph, and Simon go to survey their new home. Along the way the boys have their first encounter with the island's pigs. They see a piglet caught in some of the plants. Quickly Jack draws his knife so as to kill the piglet. Instead of completing the act, however, Jack hesitates. Golding states that, "The pause was only long enough for them to realize the enormity of what the downward stroke would be" (Golding page #). Golding is suggesting that the societal taboos placed on killing are still ingrained within Jack. The next significant encounter in Jack's progression is his first killing of a pig. There is a description of a great celebration. The boys chant "Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood" (Golding page #). It is clear from Golding's description of the revelry that followed the killing that the act of the hunt provided the boys with more than food. The action of killing another living thing gives them pleasure. The last stage in Jack's metamorphosis is demonstrated by the murder of the sow. Golding describes the killing almost as a rape. He says, "Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward wherever pig flesh appeared ... Jack found the throat, and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her" (Golding page #). In this case it is certain that the boys display animal savagery. Because they have been away from organized society for such a long time, the boys of the island have become Golding's view of mankind, vile, destructive beasts.

Masculine versus Feminine in To Kill a Mockingbird

In novels, masculine against feminine has been a popular writing technique throughout many writing achievements. Writers have displayed the masculine side as well as the feminine to express the setting of the story in which they are trying to write. Female writers have been suggested to have a difficult time in the interpretation of male characters within their writing. As Peter Shwenger states, â€Å"To suggest a similar assessment of writing by men is to remind us that the rich variety of writing alone† (621). However, in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee is able to express the underling roles of masculinity and femininity within the story using Atticus Finch and Calpurnia. Atticus Finch is the ideal father and a well esteemed lawyer. Becoming widowed when his children, Scout and Jem, were very young; he is still able work and provide a stable environment to raise his kids. Lee illustrates Atticus as the intelligent male role model he is intended to be He treats his kids the same way he treats adults. He does not talk down to them; and when discussing Scout going to school he tells her, â€Å"I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation by the more learned authorities† (Lee 35). Scout is used to him talking to them that way but still asks him what he means. Atticus allows his children to learn from him which in turn allows them to appreciate him more. He only wants them to do right and holds them to the same principles that he goes by. When he believes that Jem stabbed Bob Ewell, instead of trying to get Jem out of trouble he tells Sherriff Heck Tate, â€Å"Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don't want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don't want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don't want anybody saying, ‘Jem Finch†¦ his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that. ‘ Sooner we get this over with the better† (314). Atticus is balancing his duties as a father and priorities as a lawyer. He wants what is best for his son and other lawyers in his same position might have done everything in their power to prevent him from getting in trouble. Atticus, however, sees what has been done and is taking the proper action as a lawyer and a father. In the book, the reader sees Atticus as the hero, as a man willing to defend something he knows he is going to lose. All of the community respects him, and they do not lose respect when he takes the case of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. He goes against the community and everything they have ever known when he represents Robinson in court. During the proceedings, he keeps his composure and does not put on a theatrical show for the town. Marie A. Failinger discusses Atticus’ demeanor during the trial, â€Å"A man who simply stood as witness. Just saying, simply, as he stood, that the case was about the community itself and its prejudice toward the Negro, and about whether the verdict was to be a moment set within or set apart from that reality† (305). This shows the type of man Atticus is. He does not let a high profile case get in the way of doing what is right. He wants the townspeople to see what is right too. He knows how to do his job and show what kind of man he is without trying to show it. Lee is able to articulate his masculinity by describing his temperament rather than explaining his characteristics. Although Atticus is by himself in court, he receives help from Calpurnia to bring up Scout and Jem. Calpurnia is a black woman who works for Atticus. She is more a part of the family than anything else. She has been the mother figure in the lives of Scout and Jem since Scout could remember. She is shown throughout the book in the white world of Alabama and Lee only gives the audience a small taste of what she is like in her own community. When Atticus is away she is there for the kids. She is tough on the rules, but is also nurturing. When Scout comes home from her first day of school, Calpurnia she kisses her. Scout is confused by it, but she just missed her being home during the day. When Calpurnia takes them to church she gives them a dime and when Jem insists on using his she says, â€Å"†I don't want anybody sayin' I don't look after my children† (Lee 134). She has always viewed them as her own. She shows them the caring side and her teachings of moral values runs parallel with Atticus’. She was also able to teach Scout how to write and because she is a black woman in the 1930s who is literate she never acts better than anyone else. Scout invites Walter Cunningham over for dinner and when she reticules him for the way he is eating Calpurnia scowls Scout to show her the type of lady should want to be. She tells Scout, â€Å"Hush your mouth! Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny, and don't you let me catch you remarkin' on their ways like you was so high and mighty! Yo' folks might be better'n the Cunninghams but it don't count for nothin' the way you're disgracin' 'em – if you can't act fit to eat at the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen! † (27). This is where the audience first sees Calpurnia take charge of a situation. She sees something she does not like and steps forward to address it. Calpurnia knows how to set her foot down with her surrogate family. It is her family and she knows how to be a woman about it. She knows she could have it a lot worse and is grateful that she works for someone like Atticus Finch. In the 1930s, African-American women workers were not always treated the same way as Calpurnia was. She is one of the few that is able to read and write. Although wages are never discussed in the book, according to Annie Barnes, â€Å"African-Americans' mistresses during the Depression paid as little as $5. 0 weekly for full- time laborers to wash windows and clothes, iron (as many as twenty-one shirts a shift), and wax floors† (30). Lee never shows Calpurnia participating in any of these things. The only thing she does, domestic wise, in the book is cook. The reader forgets that she is hired by the Finches’ and only witnesses her as the female role model in the children’s lives. Her femininity remains during the reading because she maintains the household and instills values in the children which they may not have learned from only their father. There are many characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. However, when the reader is thinking along the terms of masculinity, the most masculine character is Atticus Finch. He might not be able to play football like the other fathers in Scout’s class, but he represents what a true man should be. His characteristics and the way he handles himself makes him an ideal candidate for what being masculine is about. He might be a strong man, but he could not have done it without Calpurnia. She is the backbone of the family. She allows Atticus to work and keeps the children from running wild. Her femininity shows through from the beginning to end. She is a strong woman and knows what is right. She will not let things get in her way of life and knows how to be a lady in all situations. Being feminine or masculine is not so much about being a man or a woman, but about how the person handles themselves when faced with certain issues. Calpurnia and Atticus know exactly how to behave in all atmospheres and that is why, in this book, they are the male and female role models.

Is Democracy good for women? Essay

Democracy without women is no democracy! (Declaration †¦ of Independent Women’s Democratic Initiative 1991:127) Women have tried to change the contours of a male-defined concept of democracy and assert the struggles for democracy which have been present within women’s movements as integral to a democratic body politic. (Rowbotham 1986: 106-107) Democracy is not something which, as a matter of ill-fated fact, has failed to deliver on its promises to women. It exemplifies ideals which guarantee that it will never deliver unless it gets on upon wide critical examination of its own philosophical assumptions. In brief, the charge made against democracy is that, for women, it was never more than an article of faith, and while two hundred years of democratization have failed (and are still failing) to bring equality for women, even faith is giving out. The uncharitable might interpret these remarks as nothing more than proof of feminist paranoia and of women’s general incapability to distinguish when they are well off. It is therefore significant to stress that the charge is not simply that democratic states are, as a matter of fact, ones in which women are deprived (though they are), but rather that democratic theory is, as a matter of principle, devoted to ideals which guarantee that that will remain so. As a faith, democracy was always a false faith, and its prophets (including nearly all the main political philosophers of the past two hundred years) are now exposed as false prophets. These are staid, depressing, and even dangerous charges. The more so if we have no preferred substitute to democracy, and no revised interpretation of its central ideals. The tasks for modern feminism are therefore twofold: first, to justify the claim that traditional democratic theory leads to undemocratic practice; secondly, to recognize the ways in which that theory might be reinterpreted so as to come closer to democratic ideals. The previous is feminism’s critique of the faith; the latter is feminism’s revision of the faith. Feminist theory and practice occupies a revealing position in debates concerning the relationship between social movements and democracy. As both a social movement and an academic body of thinking. It also offers a distinguishing, if marginalized, theoretical contribution. Though feminists are not the only movement contributors to have been both objects of and subjects in academic debates, they are debatably unique in emphasizing issues of democratic barring and inclusion. This emphasis stems from the chronological experience of women’s marginalization in the polity, their subordination within fundamental movements, and the complexities that feminists have faced in their attempt to create an independent, comprehensive movement of women. From these experiences, two discrete trails of analysis have emerged. The first, feminist democratic theory focuses on the integration of women in the polity. The second, emerging from debates concerning feminist organizing, centers on the democratization of relationships within the movement itself. Both are entrenched in a critique of the masculinity limits of liberal, republican, and leftist democratic theory and practices and are entrusting to constructing liberal, inclusive, and participatory alternatives. Since Mary Wollstonecraft, generations of women and some men wove painstaking arguments to demonstrate that excluding women from modern public and political life contradicts the liberal democratic promise of universal emancipation and equality. They identified the liberation of women with expanding civil and political rights to include women on the same terms as men, and with the entrance of women into the public life dominated by men on an equal basis with them. After two centuries of faith that the ideal of equality and fraternity included women have still not brought emancipation for women, contemporary feminists have begun to question the faith itself. (Young 1987: 93) Women’s marginalization within liberal democratic institutions was simply obvious at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth. The vote was regularly extended, at least supposedly, to all adult men decades before it was to women. Full female suffrage was not won in Great Britain, for instance, until 1928. In France it was not granted until after the Second World War and in Switzerland not until the seventies. Early feminists felt that the elimination of women from the vote and other rights and privileges liberals accorded to â€Å"mankind† was conflicting and ignorant, a hangover of pre-Enlightenment prejudice and tradition that needed only to be brought to public attention to be remedied. However, it â€Å"turned out to be the merest tip of the iceberg: a daunting hint at deeper structures that stay women politically unequal† (Phillips 1993: 103). This is not to say that women do not use their vote as often or as autonomously as men. This has been the conclusion of some non-feminist studies of female voting behavior, which have argued that women are apolitical and ready to delegate decision making to the male head of family. Consequent feminist studies have concluded that gender disparities in voting behavior are extremely context specific, stratified by social and geographic location, and expected to diminish as women gain access to education and formal employment (Randall 1987: 50-53; Conway et al. 1997: 77-80; Baxter and Lansing 1983: 17-39). though, once we move beyond the vote, the participation of women of all backgrounds in those institutions inner to the functioning of liberal democracies, from parties to lobbying groups, remains considerably less than that of comparable men, though the proportion still varies eventually and space (Randall 1987: 53-58; Conway et al. 1997: 80-128). At the utmost levels of government, the numbers of women shrink radically, with little difference between democratic and non-democratic regimes. A sweeping experiential survey of both reveals: A bleak picture of women’s contribution as national leaders, cabinet ministers, members of national legislatures and sittings in the high civil service. At the end of 1990, only 6 of the 159 countries represented in the United Nations had women as chief executives. In almost 100 countries men held all the senior and deputy ministerial positions in 1987-89. Worldwide, only 10 percent of national lawmaking seats were held by women in 1987. (Chowdhury et al. 1994:15) There are disparities in the degree of women’s participation, even at this level. Most notably, Nordic countries have long outpaced other liberal democracies in the percentage of women in their legislatures as of facilitating welfare reforms, an democratic culture, and the overture of political quotas. For instance, women made up 37. 5 percent of the legislature in Norway in 1994 (Nelson and Chowdhury 1994: 775) and 47. 4 percent of the cabinet in 1991 (Bowker-Sauer 1991: 277). Jane Jaquette has argued that there were obvious increases in indicators of women’s demonstration in many regions during the 1990s. Yet the figures she cites underline the devastating reality of continuing female marginalization: â€Å"In the United States, women now make up 11. 2 per cent of Congress†; more than double the figure of 1987, certainly, but the fact remains that men still constitute 88. 8 percent (1997: 26-27). To take another example, women gained around 20 percent of the seats in the British Parliament in the 1997 elections. This was a vivid rise, but one leaving around 80 percent of representatives male. What is more, these advances remain brittle. In the British case, they were the consequence of the victorious Labour Party having ensured that a percentage of its candidate shortlists were composed of women, a move that consequently was ruled illegal. Finally, any advances have been compensated by the sharp drop in female levels of contribution during the East Central European transitions to liberal democracy. The significant point to recognize is that Nordic uniqueness and recent incremental advances in some countries do not basically alter the stark and relatively static discrepancy between male and female levels of contribution in liberal democratic institutions wide-reaching. Women have also not been incorporated as equals into substitute visions of democracy. The previously Marxist-Leninist regimes in East Central Europe made an overt effort to establish a considerable women’s presence within their policy-making institutions, attaining an average proportion of between 25 and 35 percent. Though, this was again much lower than women’s presence in the general population and it was attainned through quotas. Though they are not essentially undemocratic in themselves, quotas meshed with male-dominated, authoritarian rule to inflict a female presence lacking in legitimacy, autonomy, and real power. Additionally, efforts to democratize relations of production continued circumscribed by the top-down imposition of decisions by the party and by ongoing gender hierarchies within the party, workplace, and home. Women were integrated in large numbers into the workers but in lower paid, lower status work. They remained burdened with domestic responsibilities, and their capability for autonomy at work and in the home was thus not efficiently increased (Jaquette 1997: 27; Janova and Sineau 1992: 119-123). Anti-colonial radical movements that arose elsewhere throughout the twentieth century, from Vietnam to Nicaragua, were apparently more popular-democratic in nature and often succeeded in mobilizing large numbers of women in a wide diversity of roles. Though, they have also shown a propensity to relapse to more traditional divisions of labor on attaining state power, excluding women from positions of authority. The record is not much better for fundamental movements that are not primarily tilting toward gaining state power. The New Left, for instance, mobilized many women and was distinguished by an egalitarian, participatory democratic ethic, but it generated mainly male spokespeople and privileged masculinist modes of behavior. It also failed to challenge the sexual objectification of women and channeled them into community-oriented activism and supportive, administrative tasks (Evans 1979: 108-155, 177-179). Similar stories of women’s subordination and the trivialization of their concerns have emerged from more recent fundamental nonstatist movements’ organizations, from the Israeli peace group â€Å"The 21st Year† (Rapoport and Sasson-Levy 1997: 8) to the ecological activists â€Å"Earth First! † (Sturgeon 1997: 49-57). A major approaching of early second-wave feminist thought was the classification of gender itself as a site and source of hierarchical power, functioning to benefit masculine traits, roles, and values over feminine comparables. This brought with it an prominence on the pervasiveness of power and a focus on its operations at the micro level of daily interactions, or what Nira Yuval-Davis calls â€Å"primary social relations† (1997a: 13). This contrasted with the focus of most modernist approaches on power in â€Å"more distant secondary social relations† (Yuval-Davis 1997a: 13), namely the state and/or economy. Early second-wave feminists explicated the causes and operations of gendered power under the rubric of patriarchy. The factual meaning of patriarchy as rule of the father, â€Å"the principle of the authority of senior males over juniors, male as well as female† (Uberoi 1995: 196), was stretched in very diverse directions. It was conceptualized by â€Å"radical† feminists as the primary and most essential form of power, exercised by all men over all women all through the world and originating in either male biological capacities and psychological disaffection or women’s susceptibility to physical attack and pregnancy. Patriarchy in this sense was understood to be retained through male aggression, the philosophy of heterosexuality, and the institutionalization of both in marriage and the family. on the contrary, feminists working within Marxist and socialist theoretical traditions concerted on the operations of patriarchy in capitalist modernity. Some argued that capitalism was essentially patriarchal, with varying stress given to the gendered division of labor, the reproductive role of women, or the purpose of the household within the economy. Others insisted that patriarchy and capitalism were distinct if inter-related systems of power, though they disagreed on the specific nature of that interrelationship. All established that neither patriarchy nor capitalism must be systematically or politically privileged, both being equally major forms of power. In addition, socialist feminists agreed that patriarchy was a property of structures that located both women and men in patterned roles within society. Most socialist and radical feminists held to the view that it was both potential and essential to abolish patriarchal and capitalist power relations and thus form a power-free world. A third strand in second-wave feminist thinking concerning gender and power drawing a division between power over as authority and control and power to as creative capacity, exercised in involvement with others rather than at their expense. The latter form of power also featured as an significant strand in republican thinking. Feminists have argued that it reflects especially feminine, relational modes of being and acting, of the kind typically exercised in close realms of life and in local communities. Such arguments have usually not been intended as a refusal of theories of patriarchal power over but do adapt them by insisting that women’s experiences are not completely negative and that their capacity for agency must be recognized alongside the constraints imposed upon it. This entails that patriarchal power has not completely prevented women from making an involvement to democracy although it has ensured that their involvement has not been fully valued. Second-wave feminist criticisms of the limited extent of most formulations of democracy focus predominantly on the dissimilarity between public and private life. Many feminists have accepted the force of Marx’s analysis of the liberal divide between public life and the private world of civil society. though, they have added that both liberalism and Marxism, and other approaches to democracy, rely on and reify a diverse public/private peculiarity, that between the domestic realm and the rest of social life (Pateman 1989: 118-140). The gendered nature of the domestic globe was openly recognized and defended in early moderate and republican work, and criticized in some Marxist and anarchist tracts, but it has since been included within the nebulous mass of civil society. Women’s continued involvement with the domestic, and the positioning of the domestic as especially private and outside of the public, has served to accept the relations of inequality between the genders that structure all dominions of life and to ensure that most women remain politically indiscernible. Whereas some second-wave feminists have formed historical and transcultural theories of this trend, others have stressed that it’s precise formulation and the consequences for women have diverse over time and place. Carole Pateman’s significant analysis of the recasting of this relationship in modernity (1989) describes a evolution from a monumental public patriarchal order, in which paternal control of the household was subordinated to a masculine hierarchy descending downwards from God and the King, to a system of private patriarchy whereby male heads of households were reconstituted as free and equal agents in the public globe through the continuation of hierarchical gender relations in the home. This meant that the state and the allegedly private civil sphere were constructed as fraternal associations of especially masculine equals. This argument is resistant by feminist critiques of the masculinist and Eurocentric character of public modes of behavior and language, such as balanced speech and impartial judgment. Feminists have argued that the supremacy of these modes is predicated on the relegation to the private sphere of bodily, affective, and illogical ways of being and those people, including women, who are considered to mark those (Young 1987). Perhaps most feminist investigations of the public/private divide in modernity, mainly those influenced by Marxism, have focused on the gendered division of labor under capitalism: the methodical allocation of accountability for â€Å"public,† paid work to men and â€Å"private,† unpaid labor to women. This is not an argument that women have been completely absent from the public economy. Total imprisonment to the home must be understood as a bourgeois ambition rather than a reality for most women. It was legitimately rejected in apparently socialist regimes and is increasingly being redundant by women of all classes in most locations. Though, women still take on the irresistible responsibility for family and domestic chores and this, joint with associated ideologies of domesticity, romance, and sexuality, channels them into marginalized, subordinated, and frequently sexualized roles in the formal economy. Precisely where the causal means in this process has been situated by feminists has depended on their precise analysis of the way patriarchy works and its relationship with capitalism. There has, conversely, been general agreement on the effects. In the West, women are intense in public welfare provision and service sectors, clerical and non-unionized manufacturing occupations, and part-time and lower paid rungs of the workforce. Women in emergent economies carry out the bulk of textile and electronics production, typically in non-unionized conditions that are often appalling. Those on the fringes of the world economy eke out a living from marginal agriculture, the informal economy, and sexual and domestic work. The dual burden of insecure and low-paid work in the formal economy and domestic chores in the private sphere operates as what feminist political scientists call a â€Å"situational constraint,† restrictive the participation of women, particularly those from certain classes, races, and locations, in public, political activities (Randall 1987: 127-129). All the above arguments focus on the gendered segregations arising from the restraints of politics to the public sphere. Feminist analysis also entails that the gendered hierarchies of the private sphere require to be recognized as political. This was the interpretation behind one of the most renowned second-wave slogans, â€Å"the personal is political. † The slogan insisted that in fact personal issues typically faced by isolated individuals behind closed doors such as whether to have sex, whether to have children, or how to systematize caring roles and responsibilities were analytically shaped by structures and relations of power that disadvantaged women relative to men. These power relations also limited women’s entree to partaking in those areas of life more characteristically understood as political and they requisite collective contestation (Randall 1987: 12-13). Effectively, this necessitated a refusal of restricted notions of politics as a characteristic activity separated out from social life, or as limited to a explicit realm or social struggle. Politics was extended to encompass the maintenance or contestation of coercive power relations wherever they were marked. This is a fundamentally agonistic formulation of politics as essentially confliction. It brought with it a liberal notion of democratic politics as the contestation of coercive power relations, and the disparities and marginalization they produce, in even the most intimate areas of life. It could be argued that this too is an agonistic formulation, one that anticipates the postmodern reconfiguration of democracy as a continuing process of conflict and contestation rather than an attainable end state. However, there is another element to the expansive feminist formulation of democracy, and that is the ambition to construct more cooperative, inclusive, and participatory relationships between individual women and the community. Certainly, second-wave feminists have had greatly different visions of possible â€Å"utopias† to which they desired and they have advocated very diverse routes to get there. Moreover, their arguments have hardly ever been articulated using the language of democracy per se. But the general point remains that much of untimely second-wave feminism sought to ease the self-determination and creative flowering of individual women and the development of more democratic and authentically consensual relationships between women and/or between women and men. This reverberates strongly with revolutionary arguments about democracy. One cause for the second-wave emphasis on participatory modes of democracy was a distress with women’s political agency and its chronological erasure. â€Å"Male stream† approaches to democracy were condemned for universalizing masculinist ideas concerning who can act in democracy and how they do and must act, in ways that function to eliminate women or marginalize their activities. One center of criticism was the liberal notion of the political subject as an asocial individual affianced in the rational pursuit of pregiven ends. Drawing on histories of the social and cultural collision of gender roles, psychoanalytic theories of gender establishment, and the experience of giving birth and living in families, feminists have argued that women hardly ever have the opportunity or the desire to live as entirely separate and discrete persons to the degree presumed by liberal ontology. Men can do so simply if they distance themselves from feminine traits and roles, relying on women to assume the major accountability for domestic labor and emotional interrelationships in the domestic spheres. The more social conceptualization of citizenship put onward by republicans, whereby individual autonomy is achieved through public consideration, has been seen as little better as it shares with liberalism the insistence that all corporal differences and particularist emotional attachments should be transcended in the public sphere. In early liberal and republican formulations, the gendered allegations of this move were made explicit. The bodily disparities of women from men and their involvement with sexuality, childbirth, and childrearing earned them a subsidiary service role in the private (Jones 1990: 790-792). Also, second-wave feminists have noted that the chronological connection between nationality and military service, predominantly evident in republican formulations, has resistant women’s internment to the private by positioning them as vulnerable and in require of protection. The fact that women finally won formal inclusion as citizens (and, somewhat, as soldiers) has not, many feminists have argued, altered the fundamental masculinist model. Women’s participation is probable to remain partial and driven with disagreements. This is supported by the findings of feminist political scientists with consider to the situational constraints faced by women with childcare responsibilities and the socialization of young girls into domestic roles and inert traits, both of which bound women’s capacity to become political actors as conservatively understood (Randall 1987: 123-126). A final area of second-wave feminist criticism has drawn consideration to the limits of strategies for change in â€Å"male stream† democratic frameworks. This is not to contradict that many feminists have established conventional strategies. Reformism has been and remains advocated by those working within laissez-faire and social democratic frameworks, who insist that women have to grab the opportunity to lobby for incremental change by exercising their vote and organizing cooperatively as an interest group to put more direct pressure on states, parties, and legislatures. The state is seen here as an unbiased arbiter of contradictory interests those women have an equal chance to shape to their purposes if they muster collectively. Their capability to do so, welfare liberal and social democratic feminists add, can be eased through economic redistribution. Such an approach has long been condemned by other feminists for its lack of radicalism, its search for compromise, and its emphasis on the activities of comparatively educated and economically privileged women. A conservatively Marxist model of revolutionary change through seizure of the state has often been pursued by more left wing feminists, often from within existing leftist organizations. The argument here is that gendered relations of power will collapse with capitalism and the liberal state, and a state proscribed in the interests of the working classes will facilitate a more substantive democracy for both women and men to expand. This view has been condemned by those who snub to subordinate feminist demands to anti-capitalist struggle. As the experience of so-called socialist states established, such subordination is probable to continue after the revolution. Gendered inequalities, though they may be considerably reconfigured, are unlikely to be determinedly overturned. Reference: †¢ Baxter, Sandra, and Marjorie Lansing. 1983. Women and Politics: The Visible Majority. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. †¢ Bowker-Sauer. 1991. Who’s Who of Women in World Politics. London: Bowker? Sauer. †¢ Chowdhury, Najma, and Barbara J. Nelson, with Kathryn A. Carver, Nancy J. Johnson, and Paula L. O’Loughlin. 1994. â€Å"Redefining Politics: Patterns of Women’s Political Engagement from a Global Perspective. † In Barbara J. Nelson and Najma Chowdhury, eds. Women and Politics Worldwide. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. †¢ Conway, M. Margaret, Gertrude A Steuernagel, and David W. Ahern. 1997. Women and Political Participation: Cultural Change in the Political Arena. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. †¢ Declaration from the Founder Members’ Meeting of the Independent Women’s Democratic Initiative. 1991. â€Å"Democracy Without Women Is No Democracy! † Feminist Review 39: 127-132. †¢ Evans, Sara. 1979. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. New York: Vintage Books. †¢ Janova, Mira, and Mariette Sineau. 1992. â€Å"Women’s Participation in Political Power in Europe: An Essay in East-West Comparison. † Women’s Studies International Forum 11/1: 115-128. †¢ Jaquette, Jane S. 1997. â€Å"Women in Power: From Tokenism to Critical Mass. † Foreign Policy 108: 23-37. †¢ Nelson, Barbara J. , and Najma Chowdhury, eds. 1994. Women and Politics Worldwide. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. †¢ Pateman, Carole. 1989. The Disorder of Woman: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. †¢ Phillips, Anne. 1993. Democracy and Difference. Cambridge: Polity Press. †¢ Randall, Vicky. 1987. Women and Politics: An International Perspective. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. †¢ Rapoport, Tamar, and Orna Sasson-Levy. 1997. â€Å"Men’s Knowledge, Women’s Body: A Story of Two Protest Movements. † Paper presented at the First Regional Conference on Social Movements, 8-10 September, Tel Aviv, Israel. †¢ Rowbotham, Sheila. 1986. â€Å"Feminism and Democracy. † In David Held and Christopher Pollit, eds. New Forms of Democracy. London: SAGE in association with the Open University. †¢ Sturgeon, Noel. 1997. Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action. London: Routledge. †¢ Uberoi, Patricia. 1995. â€Å"Problems with Patriarchy: Conceptual Issues in Anthropology and Feminism. † Sociological Bulletin 44/2: 195-221. †¢ Young, 1987. â€Å"Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory. † In Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds. Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. †¢ Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997a. â€Å"Women, Citizenship and Difference. † Feminist Review 57: 4-27.