American Characters In American Culture

1. How can an understanding of the complexities of culture help us make sense of the day-to-day world which we live? Give an example from your life to illustrate your answer.

The Thematic Paradigm, written by Robert Ray, shows that throughout America’s history, people are often attracted to heroes whose traits reflect those of the society at the time. Ray writes about how many American heroes are valued for their strong leadership and sense of community, but there are other heroes who are celebrated for their individuality and their ability to form their own moral laws. In The Thematic Paradigm, Robert Ray shows that the American people are drawn to those who embody traits of both good and bad values. By comparing common values and laws, showing a strong sense of individualism, and contradicting opposite views on America’s historical heroes, Ray is able to give a strong argument as to why Americans are drawn to certain characters in cinema and history.

“Some of the features that are to become key elements of the genre are to be found in early silent Westerns from the late 1890s and early 1900s” (Westerns). Since this time, many of the famous films have become household names. For some people, the reason they have been introduced to this film genre is because of their grandparents or parents. For others, they may have a genuine interest to understand this culture that has transformed itself to fit with a new era of time. Although these films have been able to generate great amounts of revenue, they are full of underlying elements that show the cultural issues of that time period. Moreover, some of these elements may not be noticeable to everyone at first, but that is where the satire and parody come into play.

Both Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and John Ford's The Searchers depict a ¨cowboy¨ going on an adventure, but each shows the myth of the cowboy in very different lights. The Searchers shows John Wayne as a great man loyal to his family who will do anything to protect them. McCarthy shows the cowboy John Grady as a boy who wants to chase the dream of the life of a cowboy. These differences are very similar to the more major contrast between the novel and the movies’ views on the myth of the cowboy. While both romanticizing and challenging the myth The Searchers in general romanticizes the myth while All the Pretty Horses does both to change how we view the cowboy. These can be seen when each of them present violence, setting, and

How would you feel if I told you women had more of a hand in setting the Wild West than you have been lead to believe? How would you feel if you knew many of those women were prostitutes? Like a majority of people my views of the Wild West originally stemmed from the old Westerns I used to watch with my family. I never paid a second glance to the women in those stories for they all seemed the same. Just some saloon girl hussies with a tendency to be damsels in distress but after seeing a video from the Adam Ruins Everything series my views have changed.

Rereading America begins by discussing the obstacles that students will face when entering college, and how cultural myths play a significant role in the way we think, and how we react to situations in our environment. In order to be a successful, intellectually-minded college student, one must engage in critical thinking in their academic work. Critical thinking involves the examination or consideration of various perspectives, realizing that what is commonly appeared to be “normal” or “crystal clear” is not from analysis, but rather from the cultural myths unconsciously embedded in our lives. While it can be argued that cultural myths provide social order in society, they also discourage individuals from forming their own beliefs after thinking

Clint Eastwood’s, Unforgiven, represents a “new” type of Western that defies the formula previously used to create traditional Western films. Unlike Shane, a film with a clear-cut threat to the community, endangering all homesteaders, a lack of defense, creating an unfair advantage to the threat imposed, and a true hero, one who saves the day and must willingly return to where he came from, Unforgiven is a Western that is told through a different formula. Eastwood tackles this revisionist piece and lacks the three basic components to any classic Western film – a threat, lack of defense, and a hero.

Christine Bold’s article, “The Rough Riders at Home and Abroad: Cody, Roosevelt, Remington, and the Imperialist Hero,” tracks the contributions of three important historical figures: William Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederic Remington, to the image of the Rough Riders and the “packaged version of the American West” and its influence during the Spanish-American War (Bold, 324). After offering background on the conflict, she first considers the contributions of William Cody and his Wild West Show to the Rough Riders. She details how Cody constructed a narrative

Today when American society and others societies around the world thinks about a Native American man, the images that comes up ranges from the figure of the Crazy Horse indian warrior man-a strong and aggressive man that when everything seems to be lost rides his horse over the hill and saves the day(Shook)-to the image of the Sitting Bull chief-a hero, a soldier and one of the best leaders of all time in Native American history, who lived his life fighting for the rights of his people and died defending them(Native American Indian Chiefs). These traditional perspective of the Native American man remains valued elements of the Native American masculinity, and remarks the complexity of Native American masculinity(Kimmel, 2004). According to American masculinities: A historical encyclopedia by Bret E. Carroll, in las four hundred years, Native American men have played a host of other roles that have shaped American history in concrete ways and that offer important insights into the

Through application of a trilogy (social, cultural and political) of historical lenses will provide a better representation of Crazy Horse and General Custer.

The question is whether No Country for Old Men and Stagecoach provide adequate examples of the decline in American moral values. From my perspective of today’s world and my interpretation of No Country for Old Men and Stagecoach, I can see how the argument could be made that they have declined or haven’t changed at all. I see a difference between the relationship of Ringo and Dallas vs other members of their traveling group compared to Sheriff Bell vs Chigurh. These relationships, in my opinion, explains a lot about the development of moral values, or lack of, in the western United States. In this paper, I will describe the moral values that are represented in each movie and I will also try to describe my understanding of why American moral values may have declined between No Country for Old Men and Stagecoach.

Name: Nhat Ho Mr. Erwin Philosophy 432 30/10/2015 Hero in High Noon In many Western films, the roles of courage, women, integrity, community , individualism, Indians, landscape, and the wilderness were often presented in a similar thematic way, for the directors and their audiences shared a common view of the Old West and shared the same basic values. Courage, integrity, and individualism were greatly admired, women were admirable creatures but needed to be rescued quite frequently, and communities needed to be united in order to survive hostile Indians and an unforgiving wilderness. These values all reflect the idea of Sublime, Jonathan Locke’s view of property, Thomas Hobbes’ conception of human nature and human society, and Aristotle’s

Ironically, Moving to America was the right decision for Ganga and her mom because there was nothing much left in Sri Lanka anymore for them. At first Ganga wasn’t really happy about this because she spent most of her life back in her home country. Later on she slowly becomes okay with this and plus she says she will get to know her cousin a lot more and spend her time with her since she left homeland since she was a little kid. Ganga and Dharshi was attending the same school here in the U.S, Which brought them more closer to each other then they have before. This wasn’t just a normal closer they had with each other, it was much more than closer more like they were building a secret relationship between them.When Darshi parents used to leave

The southwest is a region of the United States that makes our country unique. Without the southwest, we would undoubtedly lack the spirit, hope, beauty, and truth that this vast region brings to the rest of the United States as a whole. The southwest represents many things, such as journeying, racism, violence, the clashing and cooperation of cultures, and spirituality, as well as primitivism and pastoralism. All of these elements that the Southwest is comprised of is perhaps the reason why the rest of the country feels so captivated by it; why the southwest is considered a place to “find yourself” or to “regenerate”; and why literature and film regarding the Southwest has been and continues to be of the most popular genres. The western film was one of the most popular during the first half of the twentieth century. Audiences far and wide were mesmerized by actors such as John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and their roles as heroes who fought to tame the American frontier. This very concept, ‘taming the frontier’, gives way to a larger theme that was prevalent in many western films and literature of the southwest: ubi sunt, or rather “where are those who came before us?”. Director Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue portrays this idea better than any other western film; the concept of ubi sunt is undeniably the film’s overarching theme, clearly seen through its components.

A persona as commonly known to many people is a social role played by a character. With all the kind of immigration that continuously takes place in America it is not easy to clearly distinguish who is an American. An American persona in a general perspective refers to someone whose origin is America. In history an American refers to the Red Indians; now they are refered to according to the political nomenclature Native Americans. Ironically, they have been reduced to almost an extinct community in their own country. Is it possible for one to clearly define an Italian, a British or a German?