Sherlock Holmes A Marxist Deconstruction Essay example

Mysteries have always held great fascination for the human mind, not least because of the aura that surrounds them and the realm of the Unknown into which they delve. Coupled with the human propensity of being particularly curious about aspects which elude the average mind, the layer of intrigue that glosses over such puzzles makes for a heady combination of the literary and the popular. In the canon of detective fiction worldwide, no detective has tickled the curious reader’s imagination and held it in thrall as much as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The 221-B, Baker Street, London ‘amateur’ detective combines a rare blend of intellectual prowess and sharp wit to crack a series of baffling riddles. The aim†¦show more content†¦The first publication fetched Conan Doyle a flat fee of twenty three pounds. It is narrated from Watson’s perspective and recounts the duo’s first fateful adventure. Sherlock Holmes, as a late Victorian, lived in an age of great social change. England was rapidly moving towards new schools of thought. The Reform Bills of 1832, 1867 and 1884 that gave democratic rights to the people had been passed. The spread of education and the increase in the publication of books, periodicals, and newspapers gave power to new sections of society: the trading bankers, merchants, financiers, professionals and writers. The proletariat occupied a strategic and important position between the aristocracy and the working class. Class barriers were breaking down, which led to insecurity amongst the nobility and the newly formed ‘upper’ classes. England’s imperial conquest was at its peak, having successfully subdued the Indian Mutiny. Scientific and Industrial progress were on track. Darwin’s revolutionary treatise had been published and much of the contemporary literature had discussed the theory. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries, as one reviewer put it, ‘open up a world of Victorian gaslight, Stradivarius violins, of hansom cabs, and cries of ‘The game’s afoot!’ † The tales bring to

Essay about The Medium is the Message - 1923 Words

â€Å"The medium is the message,† uttered by the late media scholar and theorist Marshall McLuhan, and they have been revered and dissected ever since they were spoken. There has been several different interpretations on the premise of McLuhan’s words, and the meaning behind them. The best way to start unraveling his theory, is to get a general understanding of the terms used in his famous quote. In McLuhan’s own words, a medium is simply â€Å"an extension of ourselves.† Simply put the medium personifies or enhances what we as humans cannot do on our own. In a mass media perspective this means the use of technology including radio, television, and the Internet to project our thoughts, feelings, and senses (Frederman) . Finally, it is important to†¦show more content†¦Take the newspaper or any written article for example. Now here is a quote from a pregame interview by Tom Brady, addressing the lack of crowd noise at home games: Yeah, start drinking early. [...] Get nice and rowdy. 4:15 game, lot of time to get lubed up. Come out here, and cheer for the home team. Even though this quote is a tad unorthodox and may come across un-scholarly, it truly does get the job accomplished. This is because Brady’s words can be taken several different ways, and with little known information about the way he said them, could lead the reader astray. These would and did spark a lot of attacks against him for saying these things. This was not surprising because when reading his words it sounds as if he is telling fans to become heavily intoxicated and to lose some self-control. But, if you saw the actual interview on the television, Brady was just being rather facetious. When watching this pregame interview, seeing his unserious face, and hearing the inflection in his voice, it was obvious he was just having fun with the media and fans. Even though there was no malicious intent, this shows how when the medium changes, that peoples interpretation can be skewed very easy. So it can be said as the medium changing can inadvertently affect the message se nt. A slightly different way in which McLuhan’s quote can be interpreted, is how important the medium is to the message. The reason why the medium is so important isShow MoreRelatedThe Medium Is The Message958 Words   |  4 PagesMcLuhans, the Medium is the Message, he claims that the medium is more important than the message. I agree with his statement that the medium is more important that the message, because it is not what we say it is how we say it that matters most. The words we use are not as important as the way we choose to say them. I think that sometimes it can seem that what people are saying can be more important but it truly is how it is being perceived that is the most important part of the message. McLuhansRead More The Medium is the Message Essay1075 Words   |  5 PagesThe Medium is the Message McLuhan’s work with literature and culture produced the revolutionary thought that â€Å"the medium is the message.† In other words, cultures are changed not only by the â€Å"content† of technology, but also by the technology itself. The basic â€Å"content† of technology is easy to recognize. The content of the railway would seem to be transportation; the content of the Internet would seem to be information. But McLuhan’s idea that the medium proclaiming the â€Å"content† is itselfRead MoreMeaning the Medium Is the Message1363 Words   |  6 PagesWhat is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message? by Mark Federman Former Chief Strategist McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that isRead MoreIs The Medium Still The Message?2186 Words   |  9 PagesTanner Roark Prof. Robert O’bert English 1302-WC4 7 August 2016 Is the Medium Still the Message? Newspapers have traditionally been an important part of civil society, providing information to citizens, convening groups around events and issues, and serving as a watchdog against abuses by those in power. Going back to the Revolutionary War, newspapers have served to connect their community and relay information to those unconnected otherwise. Through the atrocities of the Vietnam War, surprise andRead MoreThe Medium Is the Message Media Hot and Cold970 Words   |  4 PagesRunning Head: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE MEDIA HOT AND COLD The Medium Is the Message Media Hot and Cold Name: Course: Instructor: Date: Introduction According to Mcluhan (2002), the media is a very significant channel of transmission of cultural values from one group to another or across generations. With the introduction of the television in the year 1948 in America, radio became less popular since the new media seemed involving and enticing than the former. It has beenRead MoreCommunication Is The Process Of Passing A Message Or A Medium Or Channel?918 Words   |  4 PagesCommunication is the process of passing a message or information from the sender to the receiver through a medium or channel. It is an essence of human interaction, relationships and learning. It’s also the process of using sound, sign and words to exchange information or express ideas and feelings to another person. The sender and the receiver of the message can interact face to face, or they can be far apart. For instance, people conversing together face to face. This implies that they are nearRead MoreUntitled1341 Words   |  6 PagesIn The Medium Is the Message by Marshall McLuhan, he explores new media in its most original, basic and pure way as an object, furthermore, he use the idea of the medium itself carries the message rather than the message, furthermore, to analyze how new media influence in the society. At the end, McLuhan explain the role of broadcast television (as a new medium) and how television itself become a â€Å"fixed charge† in people’s day-to-day living which we simply cannot live without it. (Marshall McLuhanRead MoreThe Importance of Perception in Face to Face Communication between Individuals1132 Words   |  5 PagesThe medium is, as McLuhan famously observed, a message that is inherent to every message that is created in or consumed from a medium. The medium is, to the extent that we can select among media, also a language such that the message of the medium is not only inherent to a message, but often an element of its composition. In what may be the most extreme view enabled by the processing of messages within media, the medium may also be a person and consumes messages, recreatesRead MoreCommunication Medium1062 Words   |  5 PagesIntroduction The essay below defines the process of communication and its mediums, outlines the main types of mediums, and describes why it is important to carefully choose the right way of communication when trying to deliver a message to recipients. Communication and its mediums. Communication is a very important aspect of everyday life. From the time we are born we are involved in this process. It’s one of the very first skills we learn in life, it’s something we do every day, and still theRead MoreThe Current Era Of Media1494 Words   |  6 Pagesstatement made by him that made many people to think that The medium is the message. McLuhan clearly support the notion that media increases the desire and new purposes. (Dekay, Sam H, 2014, page 51-52) He said that media is an extension of the human body, it represents the development so that we understood that the development is needed now, in order to adapt to human needs the science and technology. Thus, the medium is the message to emphasize that the use of communication tools have profoundly

The Evolution of Developmental Psychology Free Essays

The Evolution of Developmental Psychology Jennifer Haag Walden’s University Lifespan Development September 9, 2012 Over the course of history, many scholars and researchers have discovered the evolution of developmental psychology. However, there are certain people throughout the course of history who have made more significant process in shedding light on developmental psychology as it is known today. The three best known theorists that helped people understand, or at least consider psychology, were Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget. We will write a custom essay sample on The Evolution of Developmental Psychology or any similar topic only for you Order Now These three men were able to develop and test theories that formed the modern idea of psychology. Without the vital research and theories, one might never have understood the inner workings of the mind and how nurturance, nature, and other factors affect a personality over time. Using research methods such as observation, correlational design, and several other methods, researchers are able to put together a bigger picture of developmental psychology. With research comes responsibility; a responsibility to protect the rights of those who are researched. Therefore, there is an ethics policy designed by the federal government that researchers are not supposed to violate. Psychology is an ever evolving unit and is something that will always change as life goes on. Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget are some of the best known psychological researchers ever known. Freud contributed several theories and had many followers of his teachings. One of his theories is the psychosexual theory. This theory emphasizes how parents manage their child’s sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years are crucial for healthy personality development (Berk, 2010). Even though the theory may be somewhat controversial, it is one that contributes to the evolutional development theory by suggesting that something that happens in childhood helps to form the adult. Erikson believed that there were significant psychological changes with each stage. His psychosocial theory emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands; the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills at each stage that make the individual an active, contributing member of society (Berk, 0210). With this theory, a person develops based on needs and the ability to control one’s self. Erikson was the believer in stages unlike Freud who believed that a single event in a child’s life would have such a big impact on adulthood. He introduced the time line of development from birth to late adulthood showing how the person changes with maturity. Adding to both of these theories is Jean Piaget’s cognitive-development theory which explains that children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world (Berk, 2010). This theory extends into adulthood as well. People learn new things everyday by manipulating things around them. Therefore, if a child learns to manipulate things at a young age, they are capable of continuous learning or an ever evolving development of the mind. These three men helped shape the concept of psychology and helped researchers understand it better today by testing their theories over and over again. Research is the basis for any theory. Without research, there would be no foundation for anything. Therefore, studies must be conducted, people must be observed, interviews must be done, and information gathered. It has been known for some time that people are all different; the way they think, the way they react to different stimuli, and the way they interact with others. It is known that experiences and influences have quite a significant impact on a person’s psych. However, this would not have been known without the hours of laborious research conducted through studying people under different circumstances. One research method is observation. Observations can be done in many different ways. One is through correlational design. This is where researchers gather information on individuals, generally in natural life circumstances, without altering their experiences. Then they look at relationships between participants; characteristics and their behavior or development (Berk, 2010). This type of observation is the most natural and non-evasive way of conducting research and one of the best ways to get pure information. Using an evasive form of research can be useful as well, however. Interviews can help researchers in a big way by getting information straight from the subject without trying to guess what the person is thinking or what the person might do when faced with a situation. There are different ways to conduct interviews such as clinical interviews where a person takes part in an open conversation or structured interviews where a person takes a questionnaire, test, or simply answers a few questions. There are many ways to conduct research but there is just one thing; people must be respected and treated fairly when doing so which leads to ethics. Thus, the federal government came up with ethics codes to protect those being studied. There are certain rights a person has when being studied or evaluated for any type of mental health research. The rights of research participants include: protection from harm, informed consent, privacy, knowledge of results, and beneficial treatments. Protection from harm is the right to be protected from physical or psychological harm. Informed consent means that all participants or guardians of participants must sign their permission for the research to continue. Privacy means that information regarding them personally, identity, cannot be shared with outside parties. Knowledge of results means that those participating in the research have a right to know the outcome of that research and beneficial treatments is if experimental treatments believed to be beneficial are under investigation; participants in control groups have the right to alternative beneficial treatments if they are available (Beck, 2010). Without these rights in place, people would not have any say in what was done to them or how the research was collected. People would, in essence, be nothing better than cattle told what to do in the name of research. Over all, research is necessary to help discover all the possibilities there are regarding psychological development. Researchers and theorists like Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget helped shed light on the evolution of psychology and how it is ever changing. Researching and gathering information is the only way to continually develop theories and test possibilities regarding mental health. In doing this, it is imperative to remember that those who are researched and observed have rights that need to be respected meaning an ethics code must be followed. Psychology, although centuries old, is still an enigma to be discovered with constantly evolving aspects that researchers may never fully understand. Reference: Berk, L. E. ,(2010). Development Through the Lifespan. (5th ed. ). Pearson Education, Inc. , Allyn Bacon, 75 Arlington Street, Suite 300 Boston MA 02116 How to cite The Evolution of Developmental Psychology, Essay examples

Analysis of a Tv Show free essay sample

These attenders share their own experience and ideas of the topic which is given of each episode. The reason that shown at night every week days is because it is the time university students are active at. The content of â€Å"University† bases on the campus life of Taiwanese university students and their experience of it as well as their shared ideas of some hot issues. Most of the type of the content appears in the talk show is about lifestyle such as gossip of celebrities or political personages, fashion, romance, travel, education, career and some interesting or strange phenomenon. It can be also interestingly found that the guests from some of the episodes are comprehensively different identities, for example, one guest is the school beauty and the other, the ugly person from the same university (of course we will never know how much money the production units pay for her to be a guest on TV until you have a try). This phenomenon is called â€Å"binary oppositions†, one of the categories of structuralism. Branston and Stafford claim in the theory of this concept that the reason why people use binary oppositions in myth systems and in language is because they can have a comparison of different key boundaries and cultures, especially with unequal value attached to one side of the pairing. One example of using binary oppositions in language is: black/white, hot/cold; etc. The other example is that we know the word ‘man’, but it can mean different things in different contexts. It can be opposed to ‘boy’ in some context such as ‘act like man not a boy’, or to ‘woman’, or even to ‘beast’, for instance, ‘are you a man or a mouse? ’(Branston, G. and Stafford, R, 2010) Producer of the talk show invites a school beauty and an ugly person at the same time tends to have a comparison of them and tries to tell the media audience take care of their appearance properly is sometimes important both to self and to others. The performance of university students in the talk show is another important figure in this essay. According to Goffman’s statement he asserts that the word ‘person’ is not just the first original meaning: a mask, it is more like recognition of the fact that each person is somewhat playing a role everywhere. They know each other and also know themselves through playing these roles. (Goffman, E. , 1959) Goffman believes that individuals and society are related to each other with a deep interaction, he stresses the fact that there are cultural differences in the arts of impression management, when people are playing a role of others, they are finding for the facts of the situation as well. It would be useful to know the innermost feelings and thoughts of those involved in a given interaction. Since this kind of information is rarely available, the individual tends to employ substitutes as predictive ways. †(Goffman, E. , 1959) The more an individual is concerned with the reality of a situation, the more he must focus on appearances. As performers, individua ls are concerned with giving the impression that they live up to the many standards by which they and their products are judged. Goffman also accepts that when an individual is acting, he is regarded as a performer at one side also as a character to the other side. The character is a mask which uses for the current situation, the performer himself need to use different skills to play his role. During the experience of the involvers themselves in the talk show they claim that the main reason they have the chance to perform in public is due to their identity a university student, however this identity also becomes a character in the talk show. The production units of this TV program give these involvers masks and require them to play a good part of the situation as they are â€Å"just like those university students† indeed. Goffman’s statement can also bring out the limitation of â€Å"University†. For example, once a performer needs to have a successful performance, he has to exaggerate his role so as to enable audience to recognize that they, the performers, are imitating someone else known by people. If audiences have recognized the person they are imitating, they will think the ability of these performers are brilliant, and will pay more attention on the entertainment effect. As a result of this, the production unit will then choose performers who have high sense of humour rather than the ‘standard identity of university student’ originally. It violates the initial purpose of producing the talk show. From the analysis above, the influence of this talk show can be found that the words said by attenders in the talk show can have an effect on the ideology of audience. For instance, if attenders in the talk show are inclined to western culture, the traditional culture of Taiwan can be ignored. In other words, ideology changes culture. It is said that â€Å"Lifestyle magazines and television programs are primarily consumer-based products that aim to make a profit by ‘selling’ particular types of audience to advertisers. They are literally offering their readers a ‘’lifestyle† in other words, a model on which base their lives at this particular moment and the goods necessary to accommodate it. † (Rayner, P. and Wall, P. , 2008) The more audiences rely on this kind of talk show, the more demands they need both on material and ideological aspects. As a summary, this essay reveals the performance of performers from different universities of Taiwan who play in the television show ‘University ’. The identities of these performers are university students both in the show and in real life; however they wear masks when playing as roles. While they are playing a role of others, they are finding for the facts of the situation at the same time. Moreover, performers need to use different skills to play their roles well for the appropriate situation as well. The ‘University’ television show gains a number of praise but also reflects the limitation. Due to the preference of audience that focus on the entertainment effect rather than the standard of the identity of performers who are university students originally, performers exaggerate their attitudes instead of declaring their viewpoints fairly, which may influence the ideology of audience. Such lifestyle television program can become consumer-based products that aim to make a profit by changing ideology of audience and ‘selling’ them to advertisers, as a result, it is important to consider seriously about the values of such kind of television talk show.