June 1, 2011

The fair was a success and a tribute to American ingenuity and perseverance. We achieved what most people didn't think we could accomplish and did the unimaginable. One of the key things the Chicago World Fair changed America by changing how the world perceived our country. No one believed that the Paris Fair could be outdone but we proved them all wrong. Another positive change that came along with the Chicago Fair was for the world to have a more positive view of Chicago and of the Eastern United States and even please the residents of New York. Although Chicago was still seen as the wild west, the fair sort of calmed that crazy image. The fair was an elegant, extravagant and beautiful exposition that introduced a lot of impressive production. By that I am referring to the use of electricity and the Ferris Wheel. Important figures introduced include, Burnham, Walt Disney's father, Buffalo Bill Cody, Thomas Edison and Susan B. Anthony. A lot of architecture artists were influenced in the Fair and found the experience profitable.

Devil in White City

The Devil in the White City puts together the stories of Daniel Burnham and Henry H. Holmes. I find each character interesting in his own way. Burnham designed buildings with his partner John Root, his firm built the first structure called a skyscraper. Its astonishing that he was able to lead the fair to completion in so short period of time.  Then there  was Holmes, himself something of an architect, building a hotel ,a building designed for murder. I found it odd that both these men were living at the same time in history with such different motivations.  They were both so intelligent and groundbreaking for their time. They helped push the American public into the 20^th century. They did this with their outrageous ideas and dreams.It was very bizarre how the author intertwined their lives indirectly.

  The author didn’t use the storytelling to his advantage. The issue is that the story of the architect is the far more intriguing and entertaining. With that being said Larson piles the story with such unnecessary details causing the readers to be bored fast.

In contrast, the story of the killer is equally boring.Larson’s use of boring storytelling makes the readers disconnect from the text. Larson should of added more detailers of the murder’s life and less of Burnhams. Readers are attracted to that mysterious dark side of the killer. While they are bored by the endless details Larson writes of the structural details. The details make the novel seem endless. This distracts from the essence of the book.Furthermore, neither the architect nor that of the killer are presented as very interesting characters, though the killer has more potential to be the great story. The parts on the architect fill the pages with endless detail.The strong account of the characters of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago add emphasis slightly to one another however.

 These characters in some weird way tie into each other. Both undertake obstacles ,politically entangled delays, labor unrest, an economic panic, and a harsh Chicago winter.  Also the architectural challenges, Burnham and his colleagues, including Frederick Law Olmsted, produced their festive idea in just over two years. The fair was a city unto itself, the first to make world scale use of alternating current to light its 200,000 incandescent bulbs. Spectacular engineering feats included Ferris’s gigantic wheel, intended to “out-Eiffel Eiffel,” and, ominously, the latest example of Krupp’s artillery, “breathing of blood and carnage.” Dr. Holmes, a frequent visitor to the fair, was a consummate swindler and lady-killer who secured his victims’ trust through “courteous, audacious rascality.” Most were  young women, and estimates of their total ranged from the nine whose bodies  were recovered to nearly 200.  Holmes represented darkness in the fair city. The evil amongst all the good happening around him. He used a positive situation to his advantage an unexpecting place for a killer.Larson does a great job expressing this “ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.”

Modern satire

Satire is, basically, a word used to describe works of art, including and especially literature, which is designed to ridicule and, often, parody. It is most often recognized in the political sense of making light of genuinely serious problems and issues.

However, since Satire is a formalized subject one must recognize that, like any written genre, it also has its forms and modes, and although in ancient times satire was more likely to be presented as poetry, it clearly also is presented as narrative and dramatic text.

A good example of popular modern satire would be Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The ironic utopia Huxley illustrates in Brave New World sets out a vision of humanity that has eradicated healthcare issues, abolished war and is technologically and, from their perspective, socialogically advanced. However, the book also describes a world which has eliminated family, diversity, art and culture, even religion and philosophy. Brave New World was written at a time where the Westernised world revelled in new breakthroughs in genetic science, technological advances, and (to an extent) self-congratulating in terms of how civilzed it had become. The satire is Brave New World is, as such, probably more obvious to the western world, but is nonetheless a great introduction to modern satire. Another example would be…

 

The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club. It claims a national print circulation of 690,000 and says 61 percent of its web site readers are between 18 and 44 years old.[  Since 2007, the organization has been publishing satirical news audios and videos online, as the "Onion News Network".

The Onion's articles comment on current events, both real and fictional. It parodies such traditional newspaper features as editorials, man-on-the-street interviews, and stock quotes on a traditional newspaper layout with an AP-style editorial voice. Much of its humor depends on presenting everyday events as newsworthy and by playing on commonly used phrases, as in the headline, "Drugs Win Drug War."

A second part of the newspaper is a non-satirical entertainment section called The A.V. Club that features interviews and reviews of various newly released media, as well as other weekly features. The print edition also contains restaurant reviews and previews of upcoming live entertainment specific to cities where a print edition is published. The online incarnation of The A.V. Club has its own domain, includes its own regular features, A.V. Club blogs and reader forums, and presents itself as a separate entity from The Onion itself.

 

The Second Supper is a web site and newspaper published in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The newspaper is published weekly from its headquarters in Downtown La Crosse.

Originally created as a satirical newspaper, The Second Supper has since 2007 become more focused on local interest stories. Weekly issues include music, new films, cult classics, and book reviews, as well as Q&A's with established and up and coming musicians such as Hanson, Wes Borland, Killdozer, Julien-K, and Freezepop. Local interest stories and editorial columns take up the main share of content, often sticking to a universal theme for the week's issue.

The Second Supper has had its share of controversy. In 2006, the paper published a sartirical piece about the then United States Vice President Dick Cheney. For the 2007 Oktoberfest issue, the paper's cover featured a gloved hand emerging from water, in reference to La Crosse's history of river drownings.

The Humor Times is an American monthly newspaper that "reviews the news" using humorous editorial cartoons, columns by political comedians, a fake news section ala The Onion, and more. The paper was founded in Sacramento, California by James Israel, with the premiere issue appearing in April, 1991. It was originally titled the Comic Press News.

The publication features editorial cartoons that comment on current events in the United States and throughout the world. Some of the editorial cartoonists include:
Pat Bagley, Mike Baldwin, John Darkow, Walt Handelsman, Mike Keefe, R. J. Matson, Mike Lane, Jeff Parker, Rob Rogers, Steve Sack, Dan Wasserman and many more. These cartoons are grouped by subject, with short quips written by publisher/editor James Israel above each cartoon, stringing them together in a storyline that adds even more humor to the subject. The sections are titled separately — for example, a page on President Bush may be titled "Bushed."

The paper also features political strip cartoons by various artists. These include:
Lloyd Dangle's Troubletown,
Ruben Bolling's Tom the Dancing Bug,
Jim Siergey’s Cultural Jet Lag and more.

Other, non-political cartoons are also featured, such as
Dan Piraro's Bizarro, and
Mike Baldwin's Cornered.

More features of the paper include:
Will Durst's comical political observations,
Grist Magazine's environmental news column, and
Jim Hightower's Hightower Lowdown.

The fake news section is titled "Faux News", and features articles that mimic real news stories, but are full of satirical twists. Authors are from various sources, and usually include a Humor Times original each issue.

The Humor Times began as the Comic Press News in April 1991, changing its name with its 16th anniversary issue in April 2007. The name-change was noted in a in Sacramento's only daily newspaper, the Sacramento Bee.

 

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, currently edited by Ian Hislop.

Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic of public figures deemed incompetent, inefficient or corrupt, and has become a self-styled "thorn in the side" of the British establishment, though it also receives much criticism and ire, both for its style and for its willingness to print defamatory and controversial stories. This was reflected in its once prominent libel lawsuits, for which it became notorious.

As the UK's best-selling current affairs magazine, such is its long-term popularity and significance that many recurring in-jokes in Private Eye have entered popular culture from its pages.

In many ways satire is a way many people express their opinions. It always serves as a good laugh as well.



On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Andreya Duey wrote:

“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift begins by discussing the extreme poverty that is in Ireland and expresses at how the country’s position is not helped  by England. The narrator of "A Modest Proposal" by Swift is very cold and rational, despite his somewhat sympathetic early description of the poverty he witnesses although this narration is the key to the presence of satire and irony in "A Modest Proposal". He believes in a cycle of poverty where the parents are too poor and thus their children remain poor and thus useless to society and his only offering is that these children be put to use. Shockingly, the “use” these children are designated for is food. The narrator of "Modest Proposal" backs up this frightening statement with economic rationalization and concludes that the children will contribute to the feeding and clothing of Ireland’s massive population. The essay begins innocently by establishing the speaker as a concerned citizen genuinely sympathetic to the Irish poor, whose suffering he describes in moving detail.  

"A Modest Proposal"  goes on to further to suggest all of the ways such a system could work. Since he has the belief that every poor family has a price, he is convinced that mothers would gladly carry and then sell their children for 8 shillings, that the rich would find the youngsters to be an excellent delicacy, and with the extra money going to the landlords ,the whole economy would be benefit, the population and poverty problems would be solved. The state would no longer be responsible for these poor children’s welfare and Ireland would no longer be reliant on England. Although there have been a few rather gruesome details omitted in the modest Proposal by Swift the general idea one should pay close attention to is that Swift’s satire is meant to point out the flaws inherent to a strictly rational way of dealing economic and social problems . He is also suggesting that the Irish people are not necessarily the victims that for personal economic gain they would “sell out” the families and go along with such a disgusting proposal. The reader’s confidence in the speaker vanishes quickly after the first few paragraphs, however, as Swift engineers one of the most shocking moments in all of English literature. The modest proposal, humbly presented and drafted at great length, argues for the many advantages of the Irish people raising their children as food to be sold at great profit to the landlords throughout the kingdom. Far from being horrified by this suggestion, as the reader surely is, the speaker continues to imagine himself as a disinterested patriot offering his countrymen a practical and almost miraculously effective way to reduce poverty, overpopulation, and an unfavorable balance of trade with England.

"A Modest Proposal" is a very short satire, it is nonetheless loaded with political, moral, and economic questions worth exploring. In general, I read the piece two times to try and capture the very essence of what he was trying to convey. The first time, just  to appreciate the humor and language that comprise the brilliant satire of "A Modest Proposal" having fun with it without driving yourself nutty thinking about the implications of what the narrator/Swift is saying on a sentence by sentence basis. The second time, do a little seeked the underlying history of the piece beforehand about the Age of Reason, especially as it relates to rationalist approaches to state management. I thought about how the Irish are being represented and question whether or not there are any “good” points that the narrator makes. I considered the role of England, the Catholic versus Protestant representations, and the way the poor of Ireland are not shown to have much initiative. The most powerfully ironic aspect of this essay is rather obvious. The modest proposal is of course anything but modest. It is in fact savage, frightening, perhaps even insane. But other subtle ironies and satiric targets may be overlooked if the speaker is simply dismissed as an extravagant madman. Most important, Swift characterizes him as rational and calculating in order to show that these qualities are dangerous when taken to an extreme. People who rely on speculative reason to solve problems may end up thinking the unthinkable rather than following what should be more natural and humane impulses of common sense and compassion, and those who treat humans as numbers rather than as living beings recall how often the speaker in the essay computes and quantifies are only one short step away from making it easier to murder them.

Blog #2

Hemingway’s book The Sun Also Rises has a character named Pedro Romero. He is a bull fighter that is added to the book in the the second half. He is a supporting character of the novel alongside three main characters. Those main characters are Jake Barnes, Brett, and Robert Cohn. Brett is the males of the novel forbidden love. She plays men throughout the book to get what she wants. She does this because of her abusive previous marriage. Another supporting character is  Michael Campbell. He is Brett's "fiance". Brett flaunts herself around wherever she goes. Romero comes into the chaos when the gang goes on a not well planned trip to Spain to go to a festival called San Fermin. Jake is introduced to Pedro Romero by Montoya the manager . Jake is the narrator of the novel and Hemingway describes Romero as, ” The boy stood very straight and unsmiling in his bull fighting clothes. His jacket hung over the back of the chair. They were just finishing winding his sash. His black hair shone under the electric light. He wore a white linen shirt and the sword–handler finished his sash and stood up and stepped back. Pedro Romero nodded, seeming very far away and dignified when we shook hands. Montoya said something about what great aficionados we were, and that we wanted to wish him luck. Romero listened very seriously. Then he turned to me. He was the best-looking boy I have ever seen.”  Hemingway portrays Romero as very fresh and pure. He is very handsome and holds himself in high regards.

          Pedro Romero is obviously a hero. He is living his life on the edge by being a bullfighter. While the bull-fights are happening Hemingway uses fine diction to express the appreciation everyone has for Romero. He states,”Romero was the whole show. I do not think Brett saw any other bull-fighter. No one else did either, except the hard-shelled technicians. It was all Romero…Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Romero’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness. Brett saw how something that was beautiful done close to the bull was ridiculous if it were done a little way off. I told her how since the death of Joselito all the bull-fighters had been developing a technic that simulated this appearance of danger in order to give a fake emotional feeling, while the bull-fighter was really safe. Romero had the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure, while he dominated the bull by making him realize he was unattainable, while he prepared him for the killing.”  Romero is a fearless young man who takes what he does seriously. He doesn't allow the dangers of his sport bother him. He entrances  the people and critics who watch him with precise talent. The people are fond of him because he was such a beatiful "show" to watch. The characterisitics he expressed throughout the book made him an amazing hero.

          Heroes today share qualities with Romero. They convey these qualities in the public's eye. Romero did as well. The heroes today are sometimes arrogant of the talents that they posses but so was Romero. We have to remember our heroes are only human and so was Romero. Humans make mistakes but what makes heroes different is how they learn from them.They are constantly in public. It takes a strong person to always have to set a good example. Their efforts our payed off with praise from the people who support them. It takes a special person to be a hero. Think about it, who are your heroes?                                                                                                                  

Blog #1

The Execution of Tropmann written Turgenev is about capital punishment. Turgenev tells of his personal experience witnessing Tropmann’s execution. He reveals his personal opinion of capital punishment throughout the text. Turgenev does this by describing everything that happened with many details. He was one of few that were able to be right beside Tropmann through the whole long process. Due to that he is able to form his own opinion of why capital punishment is so wrong. He hopes that readers will understand the process better and maybe open their eyes about the topic..

                Turgenev’s tone in the passage is nervousness. He writes about the time he had to spend waiting for the execution to start. Turgenev seemed like the whole procedure was growing on him in a negative way. He became very anxious and flustered while he waited. Also Turgenev’s tone throughout the passage is sadness for Tropmann And bitterness for the people who had become excited by what was happening. Turgenev describes Tropmann as a young guy who barely has lived life. I believe Turgenev felt sorry for Tropmann because he wasn’t able to experience many of life’s greatest joys yet. Tropmann does a very good job of explaining what Tropmann is going through in a step-by-step fashion.

                A statement of Turgenev’s that stood out to me was , “It will not be only the reader’s curiosity that will be satisfied: he may derive some benefit from my story. ”. Turgenev’s purpose of the work was to enlighten readers on how he looked at  capital punishment. He gave a foundation to an argument that could be used. I don’t believe Turgenev wanted to argue he just wanted to spread his own opinion. He also says, “ And, anyway, who is not aware of the fact that the question of capital punishment is one of the most urgent questions that humanity has to solve at this moment?. This shows that he knows his writing could be used in support of one who is trying to stop capital punishment altogether. He also showed the barbaric process of using the guillotine and publicly humiliating process that goes along with it. Also, he expresses his disappointment for the public’s way of using the beheading as a source of media.

                 Turgenev later in his passage says, “…my account supplies a few arguments to those who are in favour of the abolition of capital punishment or, at least, the abolition of public executions. “. He hopes that his experience will help drive capital punishment out of existence. Turgenev’s passage has enough details to show why capital punishment should in fact be thrown out. The public looked at Tropmann execution as a source of media. Do you think it was okay for Tropmann to go through that horrible public humiliation? People may argue he was a criminal and deserved what was given to him. Also a point that is arguable is the process he went through. People may say he was a criminal and didn’t deserve those last rights that he received. Any way you look at it Turgenev told his story and showed his readers his point of view on the topic of capital punishment.