The Truth About Platonic Friendships :: Platonic Love and Friendship

The researcher's qualitative research consisted of speaking with platonic friends of the opposite sex in casual random settings. The qualitative research was completely random using friends by chance that had no idea of the experiment. In doing so the researcher realizes that it is unethical, but figured it was the only way to find the real answers to his problem. During the conversation the researcher at one point or another came to ask the same four questions to all of the subjects involved in the experiment. The four questions were as follows: 1) we are strictly platonic friends, right? 2) Why are you my friend? 3) Have you ever wanted to be more than friends? 4) Is it a possibility for us to be more than friends? The "so called" platonic friends names will all remain confidential in order to keep their business private. To this point there have been ten random friends that have partaken in the qualitative study. In most of the studies the answers stayed consistent. To question number one all ten subjects agreed that "Yes we are platonic friends." For question number two, all sorts of answers were recorded. Most stayed along the line of conventional reasons for being a friend. Some mentioned reasons such as cute, funny, easy to talk to and popular. Three of the ten did however mention that they in fact didn't want to be friends when we first met. They stated they were looking for ore from the beginning it just didn't happen. Question number three an astonishing seven out of ten platonic friends noted they at one point of another did want to be ore than friends. One individual went as far as to say that they quit being my friend due to the fact that she found out that I was involved with another girl. In question four again another seven out of ten friends agreed that something more could become of our friendship. Two mentioned that they had hoped that it would have already happened. Most that replied yes to question number four either looked puzzled of asked if I was still involved with my girlfriend.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In one example for the researcher was left stunned. For privacy sake we will call the subject by the fake name of molly. In the platonic informal interview with Molly the researchers exact problem was proven just the way predicted.

“Habit is a great deadener”. In what ways does Waiting for Godot illustrate this idea? Essay

Habit and routine form an important part of the play Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. The play, a famous product of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, is characterized by a circular structure which doesn’t lead anywhere, repetitive dialogue and a general absurdity. It witnesses two men, Vladimir and Estragon, who spend the entire two acts waiting for Godot. The routines they develop throughout the play are mainly a result of their attempts to pass the time. Habits such as fiddling with objects and telling stories become part of their routine and seem like a good way to get through the waiting. However, as Vladimir himself says, â€Å"habit is a great deadener† (Beckett 105) and eventually their habits deaden them. The term â€Å"deadener† implies that the habits make the characters even more bored and that instead of helping them, they lead to their downfall and make their lives even more meaningless. This essay will discuss the habits developed by the various characters and explore whether they indeed illustrate the idea of habits being a deadener. Through this, it will also discuss what Beckett is trying to prove about habit in human life in general. One habit that is developed in Waiting for Godot by both Estragon and Pozzo is fiddling with objects. This habit is portrayed mainly through the stage directions and is therefore visual action instead of words. Estragon uses objects such as his boot in order to pass time. â€Å"Silence. Estragon is fiddling with his boot again† (Beckett 37). In this stage direction, Beckett places Estragon’s fiddling within a silence which shows how he tries to fill the void by playing with his boot. This habit is formed out of boredom and therefore designed to relieve it. Through this, Beckett seems to be commenting on how human beings rely on habits in order to give their lives meaning and security. However, instead of making life more interesting, the repeated fiddling only reinforces the monotony in the play making the characters even more bored. Pozzo on the other hand fiddles mostly with his watch, â€Å"cuddling his watch to his ear [†¦] he puts his watch back in his pocket† (Beckett 37). He repeatedly takes his watch out, consults it, puts it away, and gets it out again in a very routinely manner. He does not only do this to pass the time; it is also a way for him to prove his superiority through the material objects he owns. It is important for him to continuously assert his power and position. However, instead of giving him power, this habit eventually contributes to his downfall. In the second act, Pozzo becomes blind and loses all his power. A second way for Pozzo to prove his power and seek attention is by performing which also becomes habitual. At several occasions, Pozzo takes on another role and starts performing in order to entertain the others and become the centre of attention. He usually performs dramatic monologues, â€Å"tirelessly torrents of red and white light it begins to lose its effulgence† (Beckett 38). This sentence clearly shows his eloquent diction chosen to impress his audience and again prove his superiority. The varied syntax of this particular speech, ranging from complicated poetic sentences to short crude phrases, makes it interesting to his audience and shows how he is indeed acting. Every time he takes on a role, he ensures that everyone is paying attention to him because that is his ultimate goal. Routines are a way for people to define themselves by what they habitually do. But again, this habit turns out to be a deadener which is illustrated by Pozzo’s sudden change of status in the second act. Suddenly he is blind and no one pays attention to him anymore. He repeatedly asks for help but no one responds and this proves how his habits deadened him. A similar habit to that of performing is telling stories. It is one of the first habits to be introduced in the play and is again a way for them to fill the time. In the beginning of the play, Vladimir attempts to tell his first story, but Estragon repeatedly interrupts him: â€Å"two thieves, crucified at the same time as Our Saviour. One – / our what?† (Beckett 6). This habit is almost an immediate deadener as it fails to achieve its goal of passing time and giving them something to do. Estragon’s interruptions undermine Vladimir’s capabilities as a story teller and turn the stories into meaningless, circular debates. Instead of storytelling becoming a routine to give their lives meaning, it becomes a reinforcement of the meaninglessness of their existence proving that they aren’t going anywhere. None of the routines or habits they develop is helping. They are in fact doing the opposite and making their situation worse. They are still stuck waitin g for Godot and always will be. Waiting in itself could be considered as a deadening habit. It is definitely the dominating habit in the play as they are continuously waiting. The phrase â€Å"we’re waiting for Godot† (Beckett 51), which also inspires the title, is the most repeated sentence in the entire play. The fact that it is repeated so many times shows how desperate and meaningless their situation has become. The repetition of the phrase emphasises its importance to the overall play because even though it is very simple, it sums up the entirety of the play. This habit is arguably the most deadening of all as it prevents them from leaving and going on with their lives. It forces them to stay put and thereby takes all the meaning out of their existence, diminishing them to mere spectators rather than participators in life. A final habit that Estragon and Vladimir develop is that of staying together. In staying together, they attempt to avoid the insecurity of being lonely and try to use each other to confirm that their lives do have meaning. â€Å"I felt lonely†, says Vladimir when Estragon falls asleep (Beckett 10). This simple sentence is the very essence of why they develop the habit of staying together. Even though Estragon is physically there, Vladimir has no one to talk to anymore and this agitates him. They need each other even if they don’t always get along in order to confirm each other’s existence. At the slightest threat of being left alone, they panic and therefore stay together as a matter of necessity. The above quotation invokes pathos in the audience as they realise how strong their reliance is upon one another and therefore how low they have sunk as individuals. They are trying to avoid insecurity through their habits, but Beckett is implying that this is impossible and that habits will lead to monotony and insignificance in your life. Instead of profiting from each other, staying together prevents them from moving forward and thereby deadens them. Habit is indeed a deadener and Waiting for Godot illustrates this in numerous ways. All four characters in the play have been deadened by their habits and instead of their routine saving them, they caused their downfall. It seems as if Beckett is trying to illustrate how habit affects people in reality. It is unavoidable as human beings to develop habits. It is almost like a natural mechanism in order for us to avoid absurdity in life. However, Beckett implies, one has to accept absurdity as it is part of life. Habits won’t give us the security we need, they will only bring monotony and eventual deadening to our lives as happened in Waiting for Godot. This play is obviously part of absurdist theatre and therefore an exaggeration, however Beckett seems to be relating it to real life to a certain extent. He seems to be advising to prevent from developing habits and instead accept the randomness that unavoidably accompanies life. Work cited: Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Grove Press: New York, 1982.

Free sample - The influence of mass media on the social life.. translation missing

The influence of mass media on the social life.. The influence of mass media on the social life.1. Nowadays it is very hard to overestimate the influence of mass media on the social life. It provides us with big quantity of information- movies, news, informative and educational TV-programs and for sure there is a lot of commercial information- advertising. In order to pick needed information from the flow of differently-oriented information, it is necessary to outline the general principles of its ‘consumption’ and to understand the principles of its work. According to the Stuart Hall â€Å"Encoding and Decoding†, it is possible to say that people get all needed information, especially commercial on the subliminal level. In other words, advertising and propagandistic films influence human mind indirectly, with the help of specially-developed psychological tools. Stuart Hall outlines the four staged theory of communication, which includes the following steps: production, circulation, use and reproduction. [1] According to the â€Å"Encoding and Decoding†, it is possible to outline three following hypothetical reader/viewer positions: first of all, the sender never determines the meaning of the message; secondly, it is very hard to understand the essence of the message for the audience, because the message is not transparent; and finally, the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning[2] According to the Halls concept, it is possible to say that sender never makes a strict determination of the message, because each viewer would make those conclusions, which are supported by his own moral standards and attitude towards some subject matter. In the Ang’s "Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture" we have found the following interpretation of mass culture: it makes its great impact on the social, life, while the mass serials like Dallas are widely watched and discussed by wide auditory; some of people like that serial, others do not, but it is still discussed, watched and it does not lose its popularity. It has become being the part of the social life. People live together with the main characters and they are waiting for watching the new episode in order to get the information, concerning the plot development. There is such an attitude towards mass consumption serials: some people feel comfortable and do not consider their life problems, while watching serial, such people live together with their heroes and do not care about their own and global problems. Mass culture serials development allows stage director (or letter-writer) to outline new ideas in the current culture and to create new mass culture – they include into the plot of the serial those issues and aspects, which would make significant influence on the social life: beginning from the fashions and accomplishing with the behaviour ideas. People would follow their beloved characters of serials and in such manner they would be trying to be alike to the serials’ main heroes.[3] According to the David Morley THE NATIONWIDE AUDIENCE, it is possible to make conclusions about the influence of the mass culture on different aspects of human lives. In such manner it is possible to create public opinion the desired way- to involve public opinion polls in order to ‘outline’ the general attitude towards some event. In such manner those people, who are not involved directly into the problematic, would be influenced by such ‘mass’ opinion. That allows preventing panic and at the same case such mass media tools mislead people, concerning current situation in the country.[4] Finally, Jacqueline Bobo has outlined in her THE COLOR PURPLE the possibility of using mass media tool for paying additional attention on the situation (in Jacquelines’ Bobo case - with the racial discrimination.   To conclude, we would like to stress that getting the message from the author means understanding all ideas, which laid the foundations of the movie or serial or advertising. The quality of such message could be measured by the number of those people, who have made conclusions, alike to the authors’ ones.[5] 2. Currently, is possible to outline one of the most powerful cultural moving today- fun clubs. They were developed and created in order to integrate different people with the same attitudes towards life values, towards some popular persons or towards some works of art. These people are usually very friendly and they are integrated by the common idea about development the mass culture tool- promoting, supporting and admiration with some person or group of people. Different actions, participants meetings and future actions consideration are the main directions of the fan clubs activities. To our opinion, it is possible to consider fan clubs as extension of audiences for some cultural activities. In order to prove the above said, we would like to consider the Star Trek fans, who have tried to achieve the social understanding if the homosexual relations and to prevent wide judgement this movement. They have considered the homosexual relations as a normal social event, which should be understood and supported by their society. They have achieved that level with the help of the following tools: they have proclaimed the slogan 'Out of the closet and into the universe’ – tending to be visual and ordinary and by mass national letter-writing campaign organisation. As a result, both these tolls have attracted mass attention towards that issue and that has made its influence of the situation improvement in the whole country. [6] Talking about the Titanic and DiCaprio funs, we would like to pay additional attention that the majority of its fans are young females (more that 60 percents of the general quantity) and their age does not exceed 25 y.o. in majority of cases. Titanic with DiCaprio is the blockbuster, which is based on the real historical events. It concerns such topics as welfare, love and human relations. Also such philosophical issue as the sense of life is outlined indirectly, because it is up to the audience to decide whether hero has made right decision of it would have been better to act another way to prevent such misfortune. The fun clubs have supported the popularity of this movie   for durable period of time and have significantly increased the revenue from its screening - majority of young ladies have watched it for several times- from 2 to 14 and that has attracted additional interest towards that issue from another female representatives of young age. In order to defend the favourite movie from the different negative journalistic and star discourse its fans have marginalized their desires, the fan club representatives have widely involved press into that process and there they have printed different articled, supported with DiCaprio photos and some desired of personal meetings, love and devotion towards main hero of this movie. In such manner young fans have constantly attracted some interest towards the Titanic and they have saved its popularity and the interest towards this movie for a durable period of time. [7] To conclude, we would like to stress that mass media and fun clubs create the populations’ attitude towards some social events, works of art and persons. It is very important to support such movements and to direct their activities into the positive course. Only in such manner it is possible to achieve the highest results and to combine the fan club legal activity and mass culture creation, support and development. Reference list: 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Ang, Ien. "Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture." The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. New York: Routledge, 1993. 403-420. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Bobo, Jacqueline (1988 ) Black women's responses to The Colour Purple. Jump Cut, no. 33, Feb. 1988, pp. 43-51 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Hall, S. (1973) Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse Birmingham: CCS 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Henry Jenkins (2001) OUT OF THE CLOSET AND INTO THE UNIVERSE' Queers and Star Trek 5.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   MELANIE NASH AND MARTTI LAHTI (2001) "Utmost Ashamed to Say I am the One of Those Girls " Titanic, Leonardo Dicaprio, and the paradoxes of girls' fandom   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Morley, David (1980) The 'Nationwide' Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: BFI. ISBN 0-85170-097-7   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Procter, James. (2004) Stuart Hall, Routledge critical thinkers.