Oedipus And Othello :: Compare Contrast Oediput Othello Essays

Oedipus and Othello   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When comparing and contrasting the character's Oedipus and Othello by means of the different theatrical practices, one must take in account that there have been many interpretations, and productions of each of their respected plays. The differing presentations of each may lead someone to think differently about the play than another would. In comparing and contrasting the dramatic representation of the protagonists Oedipus and Othello, theatrical presentation, costume design, and character will lead the reader, and viewer, to have a greater insight into the theatrical practices of their times and their approaches to the issue of verisimilitude.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The theatrical presentation of both plays are very similar. The two plays would both be presented on a thrust stage, which is a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience. Except for the backdrop which would have some element of scenery, the stage itself would be bare apart from a few scenic elements and props. Othello, like most of Shakespeare's plays, had what is called an abstract setting. That is a setting in which the locale may change rapidly, it may not be indicated by the script that it has changed, and was most likely suggested by a few props. Abstract settings place more emphasis on the language and the performer, which causes the spectator to use their imagination. It also places more emphasis on costuming. This type of setting helped set up the style of representational theater, which places high emphasis on the realistic. The style used in classical Greece was presentational which, because of the use of the mask, gave no illusion that this story is happening before their eyes. The audience is reminded that they are watching a play, and not merely observing life. Thus, the use of the thrust stage is the only similarity of the two types of presentation. Othello is a purely illusionistic play, whereas Oedipus Rex is one that when watched, the viewer knows that they are watching a performance.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Costumes convey information about the character and aid in setting the tone or mood of the production. Because most acting involves impersonation, most costumes are essential to re-create historical or to the period in which the production takes place. Costumes like that of William Shakespeare's Othello maybe abstract, ever-changing, like it's setting. When using the costume design of the latest film version of Othello, he is usually seen in a toga-like uniform which may have stemmed from his moor background. Since costume elements were formalized in classical Greek theater, the costumes would be that of everyday dress with slight additions of colour, designs, all of which created a larger

Why Looks Are the Last Bastion of Discrimination

Why looks are the last bastion of discrimination In the 19th century, many American cities banned public appearances by â€Å"unsightly† individuals. A Chicago ordinance was typical: â€Å"Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting subject . . . shall not . . . expose himself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense. † Although the government is no longer in the business of enforcing such discrimination, it still allows businesses, schools and other organizations to indulge their own prejudices.Over the past half-century, the United States has expanded protections against discrimination to include race, religion, sex, age, disability and, in a growing number of jurisdictions, sexual orientation. Yet bias based on appearance remains perfectly permissible in all but one state and six cities and counties. Across the rest of the country, looks are the last bastion of acceptable bigo try. We all know that appearance matters, but the price of prejudice can be steeper than we often assume.In Texas in 1994, an obese woman was rejected for a job as a bus driver when a company doctor assumed she was not up to the task after watching her, in his words, â€Å"waddling down the hall. † He did not perform any agility tests to determine whether she was, as the company would later claim, unfit to evacuate the bus in the event of an accident. In New Jersey in 2005, one of the Borgata Hotel Casino's â€Å"Borgata babe† cocktail waitresses went from a Size 4 to a Size 6 because of a thyroid condition.When the waitress, whose contract required her to keep an â€Å"an hourglass figure† that was â€Å"height and weight appropriate,† requested a larger uniform, she was turned down. â€Å"Borgata babes don't go up in size,† she was told. (Unless, the waitress noted, they have breast implants, which the casino happily accommodated with paid medica l leave and a bigger bustier. ) And in California in 2001, Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound aerobics instructor, was denied a franchise by Jazzercise, a national fitness chain.Jazzercise explained that its image demanded instructors who are â€Å"fit† and â€Å"toned. † But Portnick was both: She worked out six days a week, taught back-to-back classes and had no shortage of willing students. Such cases are common. In a survey by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, 62 percent of its overweight female members and 42 percent of its overweight male members said they had been turned down for a job because of their weight. And it isn't just weight that's at issue; it's appearance overall.According to a national poll by the Employment Law Alliance in 2005, 16 percent of workers reported being victims of appearance discrimination more generally — a figure comparable to the percentage who in other surveys say they have experienced sex or race discrimination . Conventional wisdom holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most beholders tend to agree on what is beautiful. A number of researchers have independently found that, when people are asked to rate an individual's attractiveness, their responses are quite consistent, even across race, sex, age, class and cultural background.Facial symmetry and unblemished skin are universally admired. Men get a bump for height, women are favored if they have hourglass figures, and racial minorities get points for light skin color, European facial characteristics and conventionally â€Å"white† hairstyles. Yale's Kelly Brownell and Rebecca Puhl and Harvard's Nancy Etcoff have each reviewed hundreds of studies on the impact of appearance. Etcoff finds that unattractive people are less likely than their attractive peers to be viewed as intelligent, likable and good.Brownell and Puhl have documented that overweight individuals consistently suffer disadvantages at school, at work and beyond. Among the key findings of a quarter-century's worth of research: Unattractive people are less likely to be hired and promoted, and they earn lower salaries, even in fields in which looks have no obvious relationship to professional duties. (In one study, economists Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh estimated that for lawyers, such prejudice can translate to a pay cut of as much as 12 percent. When researchers ask people to evaluate written essays, the same material receives lower ratings for ideas, style and creativity when an accompanying photograph shows a less attractive author. Good-looking professors get better course evaluations from students; teachers in turn rate good-looking students as more intelligent. Not even justice is blind. In studies that simulate legal proceedings, unattractive plaintiffs receive lower damage awards. And in a study released this month, Stephen Ceci and Justin Gunnell, two researchers at Cornell University, gave tudents case studies involving real criminal defendants and asked them to come to a verdict and a punishment for each. The students gave unattractive defendants prison sentences that were, on average, 22 months longer than those they gave to attractive defendants. Just like racial or gender discrimination, discrimination based on irrelevant physical characteristics reinforces invidious stereotypes and undermines equal-opportunity principles based on merit and performance.And when grooming choices come into play, such bias can also restrict personal freedom. Consider Nikki Youngblood, a lesbian who in 2001 was denied a photo in her Tampa high school yearbook because she would not pose in a scoop-necked dress. Youngblood was â€Å"not a rebellious kid,† her lawyer explained. â€Å"She simply wanted to appear in her yearbook as herself, not as a fluffed-up stereotype of what school administrators thought she should look like. † Furthermore, many grooming codes sexualize the workplace and jeopardize em ployees' health.The weight restrictions at the Borgata, for example, reportedly contributed to eating disorders among its waitresses. Appearance-related bias also exacerbates disadvantages based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and class. Prevailing beauty standards penalize people who lack the time and money to invest in their appearance. And weight discrimination, in particular, imposes special costs on people who live in communities with shortages of healthy food options and exercise facilities.So why not simply ban discrimination based on appearance? Employers often argue that attractiveness is job-related; their workers' appearance, they say, can affect the company's image and its profitability. In this way, the Borgata blamed its weight limits on market demands. Customers, according to a spokesperson, like being served by an attractive waitress. The same assumption presumably motivated the L'Oreal executive who was sued for sex discrimination in 2003 after a llegedly ordering a store manager to fire a salesperson who was not â€Å"hot† enough.Such practices can violate the law if they disproportionately exclude groups protected by civil rights statutes — hence the sex discrimination suit. Abercrombie & Fitch's notorious efforts to project what it called a â€Å"classic American† look led to a race discrimination settlement on behalf of minority jobseekers who said they were turned down for positions on the sales floor. But unless the victims of appearance bias belong to groups already protected by civil rights laws, they have no legal remedy.As the history of civil rights legislation suggests, customer preferences should not be a defense for prejudice. During the early civil rights era, employers in the South often argued that hiring African Americans would be financially ruinous; white customers, they said, would take their business elsewhere. In rejecting this logic, Congress and the courts recognized that custome r preferences often reflect and reinforce precisely the attitudes that society is seeking to eliminate.Over the decades, we've seen that the most effective way of combating prejudice is to deprive people of the option to indulge it. Similarly, during the 1960s and 1970s, major airlines argued that the male business travelers who dominated their customer ranks preferred attractive female flight attendants. According to the airlines, that made sex a bona fide occupational qualification and exempted them from anti-discrimination requirements. But the courts reasoned that only if sexual allure were the â€Å"essence† of a job should employers be allowed to select workers on that basis.Since airplanes were not flying bordellos, it was time to start hiring men. Opponents of a ban on appearance-based discrimination also warn that it would trivialize other, more serious forms of bias. After all, if the goal is a level playing field, why draw the line at looks? â€Å"By the time you' ve finished preventing discrimination against the ugly, the short, the skinny, the bald, the knobbly-kneed, the flat-chested, and the stupid,† Andrew Sullivan wrote in the London Sunday Times in 1999, â€Å"you're living in a totalitarian state. Yet intelligence and civility are generally related to job performance in a way that appearance isn't. We also have enough experience with prohibitions on appearance discrimination to challenge opponents' arguments. Already, one state (Michigan) and six local jurisdictions (the District of Columbia; Howard County, Md. ; San Francisco; Santa Cruz, Calif. ; Madison, Wis. ; and Urbana, Ill. ) have banned such discrimination. Some of these laws date back to the 1970s and 1980s, while ome are more recent; some cover height and weight only, while others cover looks broadly; but all make exceptions for reasonable business needs. Such bans have not produced a barrage of loony litigation or an erosion of support for civil rights remedies gener ally. These cities and counties each receive between zero and nine complaints a year, while the entire state of Michigan totals about 30, with fewer than one a year ending up in court.Although the laws are unevenly enforced, they have had a positive effect by publicizing and remedying the worst abuses. Because Portnick, the aerobics instructor turned away by Jazzercise, lived in San Francisco, she was able to bring a claim against the company. After a wave of sympathetic media coverage, Jazzercise changed its policy. This is not to overstate the power of legal remedies. Given the stigma attached to unattractiveness, few will want to claim that status in public litigation.And in the vast majority of cases, the cost of filing suit and the difficulty of proving discrimination are likely to be prohibitive. But stricter anti-discrimination laws could play a modest role in advancing healthier and more inclusive ideals of attractiveness. At the very least, such laws could reflect our princ iples of equal opportunity and raise our collective consciousness when we fall short. [email  protected] edu Deborah L. Rhode is a Stanford University law professor and the author of â€Å"The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law. â€Å"

Failure Of The Great Depression - 871 Words

â€Å"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely†. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel was the only hope the people had during the Great Depression. It was the worst economic crisis in U.S. History. It was a time that could only be described as something horrible. Something that impacted many American lives. A time when all that people wanted was for it to end. A time that came all of a sudden and left a mark on many people. It all began soon after the stock market crash. A severe downturn in equity prices that occurred in October of 1929 in the United States. This severe downturn didn’t occur in a day. It was a problem that developed during a two-week period. Even though it’s impossible to list all the causes of the Great Depression some just stand out. With the stock market crash being one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression. This time can be described as the time when Stockholders had eventually lost more than $40 billion dollars. At one point they began to regained some of their losses but, it wasn’t enough to keep America from entering the Great Depression. The stock market crash wasn’t the only cause of the Great Depression, many contributing factors followed. Throughout the 1930’s over 9,000 banks failed. Bank deposits were uninsured causing many people to lose their savings. Banks soon became untrustworthy. The banks that were still standing soon became concerned for their own survival, therefore theyShow MoreRelatedEducation Failure Of The Great Depression863 Words   |  4 Pages Education Failure, the Great Depression revived in America After escaping the tyranny of England, and arriving to the America to establish both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, American leaders Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, acknowledge that the American Dream could not truthfully be established, without education being one of the priority components constituent of it. They wanted everyone the right to have equality and no social statusRead MoreThe New Deal Was a Total Failure as a Response to the Great Depression1446 Words   |  6 PagesThe New Deal Was a Total Failure as a Response to the Great Depression The Great Depression during the interwar years had disastrous effects on American society and the economy. 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