The Dancing Jimmy Magoo

In Alice Walker’s, Nineteen Fifty-Five, a young white singer, Traynor, acquires song rights from an African American rhythm and blues singer, Gracie Mae. The song makes Traynor rich and famous. Obsessed with finding out the song’s meaning, Traynor remains in contact with Gracie Mae through letters, gifts, and visits. The conflict of the story is in Traynor’s inability to ascertain the meaning of the song. Traynor eventually passes away, without ever resolving the conflict.

To begin with, the story Footloose the Musical unfolds with a teenage boy named Ren McCormack who lives in Chicago. One of the main hobbies of Ren McCormack is dancing, who plays a critical role throughout the story. The rising actions became with Ren McCormack’s father abandoning the family. Due to that, the family has to move to a small town where the sister of Ren McCormack’s mother lives. The town puts more emphasis on spiritual life while monitoring all events that occur in the town cautiously. In the town, Ren McCormack is having a tough time fitting with other people in the town. While that is happening, he discovers that there is a law which bans dancing of any type or any time which is set by local minister Reverend Shaw Moore. At that time, he also learns from Ariel's (Reverend Shaw Moore’s daughter) friends about an accident resulting in the death of four teenagers that occurred 5 years ago. Due to this incident, dancing in the town has been prohibited. Gradually, Ren starts connecting with the other teenagers in the town while also building a strong friendship with Ariel. With the help of Ariel and Willard (Ren’s best friend), Ren convinces the teenagers how dancing is not harmful, and it should not be prohibited, and they should tell their concern to Reverend Shaw Moore. After many attempts, the teenagers in the town were able to convince Reverend Shaw Moore that the town should heal from a tragedy that happened five years ago. In the end, Reverend Shaw

The story is about Josie Moraine, living in the French Quarter of New Orleans and wants a new life away from New Orleans. Josie dreams of going to college in the East, where nobody knows her. Josie's mom is a prostitute and has never been a good mother to Josie. Josie is very ashamed of her mother and embarrassed because she is a prostitute.

The narrator leaves Jacksonville for New York because the cigar factory that he was working in shut down permanently. Instead of getting a job at a different factory in town, the narrator decided to join some other works and go to New York for work. On his first night in New York, he starts out at a house that has been converted into a bar. He plays at a craps table and finds out that he is actually really good. Later on in the night they go to a place called the Club. The music within the club is ragtime and it resignated with the narrator.

The author Chris Crutcher’s choice of language really helps us get a feel for what is actually happening in the story. An example is on page 19 when Mike Barbour was pushing Chris Coughlin into a locker because he was wearing his dead brother's letterman jacket. This shows how cruel kids can be and how people really are.

Especially in times of difficulty, such as those of economic depression, talking seriously about serious things all the time may only worsen the situation. People want relief from what troubles them, and one of the best ways to provide this relief is through comedy. Thus, this play, and many others, takes on the serious topics it involves and discusses all of them with a lightheartedness that people can both relate to and laugh at. It thus, while not being inaccessible to the thoughts of the audience is still able to give the audience an escape from what may be troubling them. Humor is one of the best coping mechanisms, and that is not only true for this play. Many successful fixtures of pop culture thrive off of the same concept, including Saturday Night Live, which for decades has been successfully satirizing contemporary issues and bringing laughs to times and topics that may need them most. Ultimately, this play is a fantastic example of how we not only deal with similar issues in different countries and different decades, but how we also deal with them in similar ways, specifically

Profanity should be the last reason a great novel should be banned. After all, it is reality, it is how people talk, and in the case of Harris and Me, its definitely how young boys talk to each other. The use of the language is hardly profanity at all. For example, Harris says, “Well you can just blow it out your butt you old cow, you ain’t no grown-up to tell me what to do. How the hell am I supposed to know things if I don’t go ahead and ask them? (Gary Paulsen, Harris and Me .7)” The words feel elementary to me, he says butt instead of ass, and old cow instead of old heifer. Maybe it’s not the actual words that parents are losing their minds about, but more about

words in the book are not trying to offend the reader there trying to tell and story and illustrate

Scott Hastings is ridiculed and abused for dancing his own steps, and Josie Cormier from Nineteen Minutes believes that if she doesn’t put on a mask everyday to ‘belong’ to a certain group, she too will be bullied and unhappy. Scott and Josie can be contrasted, as Scott wants to belong to the ballroom world, but he wants to be himself and dance his own moves, unlike Scott, Josie tries to ‘belong’ by being untrue to

These words by which we live by were actually made official on December 12, 1791. My point is that these governing words have governed our lives for over two centuries, which is a long time. The times aren't the same as they were when the Constitution and its amendments were established, so we need to reconsider some of the ideas that are not valid in today's society. Our greatest freedom that our founding fathers left us, freedom of speech, needs to be reconsidered. Many times the Constitutional right of freedom of speech is taken too lightly in that people believe that they can say whatever they want to say when they want to say it. This is a false belief. One would think it very wrong to scream fire in the middle of a crowded building. The same goes for the lyrics of many songs these days. "Music lyrics have profound public consequences and, in many ways, the music industry is more influential then anything…" (Brownback 454) therefore, there needs to be censorship of harmful lyrics so that listeners will not be influenced by the violence that many songs are about. This does not mean that singers can not sing certain songs, it means that it is not necessary for singers to glorify violent acts or incorporate meaningless four letter words that may be repeated. It is perfectly legal to draw the line with music if it is getting to a harmful state.

Musicians may feel that the only way to increase sales is to make their lyrics as graphic as possible. It seems as though the lyrics to songs are giving permission to listeners to do wrong and immoral things (Tanner). As stated in the article “How Much Are Violent Lyrics to Blame?” by Emily Tanner, “Music is important in today’s society and when music becomes corrupt in its meaning then society may in turn become corrupt and immoral.”

Jimmy Stewart was a man of considerable acting skills, and appeared in countless movies which are highly regarded in the industry. In 1936, he was 28 years old, and appeared in eight movies that year alone, including The Thin Man, and so we have the problem with Born To Dance, and to sum it up, I ask, "what was he thinking." The thought of Jimmy Stewart acting and singing in a musical feels quite puzzling, and unbelievable. I might not protest so hardily except that he's terrible at singing--something he admits to in a later interview (video below trailer).

Claude McKay’s “The Harlem Dancer,” focuses on an African American woman performing in a nightclub during a period of time in the 1920’s know as the Harlem Renaissance. She faces the crisis of self-exploitation and perception while exposing her “perfect half-clothed body (line 2)” to those who “toss coins in praise (line 10)” of her dancing. One can conclude from line 14 of the poem, “I knew her self was not in that strange place,” that the dancer feels like a slave to her job in being that perhaps she is doing it against her will. She appears not mentally strong enough to stop doing it.

Censorship in music has been a major problem plaguing America since the early nineteen forties. It came to a head during the nineteen sixties with the Vietnam War and the hippie movement. During the nineteen seventies and eighties heavy metal and hard rock were getting the brunt of the censorship heat. Now in the nineteen nineties the major focus of censorship is rap; primarily gangster rap. Some of the main factors of music in general that cause legal ramifications are sexual content, suggestive violence and obscene language. Censorship is an attack against our first amendment right guaranteeing the freedom of speech. However if a song or album is deemed obscene the first amendment does not protect this.

The short story “Why Don’t you Dance?” by Raymond Carver follows the story of a young couple having a strange encounter with an older man who has seemed to have lost someone close to him who also tries to connect with their relationship in an absurd way. The old man sets the mood for the reader by having all his furniture organized outside his house the same way it was inside. The old man and the girl had a dance together, essentially, it was the strangest part of the story. The way the author wrote this short story affects the way the reader comprehends the theme. The author develops the overall theme of the story by using diction, symbolism, structure and absurdity throughout the text.