The Other Paris Summary

Beginning in the mid-1980’s, a number of efforts were initiated to bring awareness and enlightenment to the actual tragedy of AIDS. Two films that evolved out of these awareness campaigns were the documentaries “Paris Is Burning” and “How to Survive a Plague” . Both films, although in significantly diverse ways, provide a window into the alternative lifestyles of LGBT people of the times and the problems and issues they faced. A comparison of these two documentaries demonstrates the initial fears of the public and affected people and the beginnings of acceptance or at least tolerance of these alternative lifestyles.

In the story “Marrying Absurd,” Joan Didion scrutinizes the Las Vegas wedding industry critically with the analysis of how ludicrous Las Vegas wedding industry has become. In her articulations, Didion portrays to the readers how cheap the wedding industry is making a mockery of the sanctification of the marriage. Didion applies various effective techniques and details to pass her impression of Las Vegas giving her opinions on its values within the marriage environment. The essay explains the Didion Joan account on the Marrying Absurd.

We recently watched the film Paris is Burning, a documentary about black drag queens in Harlem and their culture surrounding balls. Directly related we also read two feminist critiques, Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion by Judith Butler and Is Paris Burning by bell hooks. Two areas of critique I focus on and question are the critiques regarding the filmmaker, audience and drag queens and how they participate to reinforce a heterosexual racist patriarchy. Furthermore I ask if this line of investigation is the most beneficial way to view and understand the film and its various participants.

Paris is Burning is a film directed by Jennie Livingston, and Livingston attempts to introduce/popularize the drag & ball culture to the world. In her documentary, she explores underground drag queen bars where individuals go to escape the world and cross-dress down a runway, where they are facing no judgment and receive a round of applause for their courage/act/costume. In Bell Hooks’ commentary on this documentary, she dives into the idea that being transgender is “always constructed in the patriarchal mindset as a loss” (Hooks 146). I think that Bell Hooks is undermining the mindset of the “patriarchal” point of view. The year is currently 2017, and the rights that the LBGTQ community has earned/achieved in the last hundred years is an accomplishment that I feel people like Books neglect.

Paris 1919 the six months that changed the world, is a novel written by Margaret McMillan that gives the reader an insight into the post war peace conferences that took place in Paris, France. The book is written so that McMillian is giving the reader the details and the reader must follow along with her. McMillan makes it a habit to often pull from sources and provide direct quotes that were spoken during the conference. The book’s main subject is of the peace conferences but it also tells of events that occurred before and after the war. Mcmillan is not stranger to writing as she has written many other historical novels and is highly decorated with awards presented to her for her writings. She serves as a historian as well a professor at

Harwood throws the readers the suggestions to acknowledge the most unlikeable elements of marriage and love. The truth that a woman’s self in Harwood’s time would be completely lost with her wedding vows. This becomes equally relevant to date because of questionable equality between the sexes. Harwood is therefore condoning the practices that endorse

Between the end of the First World War and Hitler's seizure of power a cultural explosion occurred in Paris that altered our notions of art and reality and shaped our way of viewing the world ever since. In the 1920's, Paris became the undisputed international capital of pleasure and was regarded as the cultural and artistic center of Europe with a reputation for staging one of its most glamorous eras, as well as some of the most spectacular revues in the world. Imagine for a moment, that it really is 1920's Paris. You are leisurely strolling through the gas lit promenades. World War I is over and the exuberance of jazz musicians, symbolist painters, and American expatriates

During the eighteenth century, marriage was a representation of not only the unity between man and women but it was also a representation of a woman taking a servile, less meaningful role in the household. Once married, women were expected to be completely submissive to their husbands. This was the norm across Europe and even in enlightened society. These relationships were hierarchical. It was not customary for women to attend schools that educated men the math and sciences. Women holding privileged positons in society traditionally allotted to men were seen as the exception. Yet these exceptions did not generally bother society because they did not lead to certain conclusion that women could do anything. In Gotthold Lessing’s novel “Nathan the Wise” and Francoise de Graffigny’s “Letters from a Peruvian Woman”, both authors upset traditional expectations about what constitutes a novel’s happy ending by refusing to end either of their novels with weddings. In Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise”, the rejection of marriage plot reflects a larger symbolic representation of religious tolerance. While in Graffigny’s novel “Letters from a Peruvian Woman”, the rejection of marriage plots illustrates a woman whose circumstances would make her the exception. Zilia, Graffigny’s main character, was an enlightened woman who chose sovereignty over servitude. Therefore, I would argue that the intentions behind both Lessing and Graffigny’s rejection of the marriage plot was not to serve the same

The environment in which people live in demonstrates the societal norms and values of said culture. In Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris, Florent, a political outcast, returns to Paris only to find that the regime has drastically changed. Napoleon III, a self-elected emperor, has torn down many of the streets of Old Paris to make room for the angular and orderly streets of New Paris as well as the new markets of Les Halles. Throughout the novel, the character’s lives revolve around the various markets in Les Halles and the streets of Paris. Zola uses descriptions of architecture and city planning as well as how people use space within Paris to demonstrate the city’s corruption, signifying that the architecture of a city is a reflection of

In the late 1800’s through early 1900’s women and men were did not “tie the knot” like the women and men do in today’s day. In today’s world, women and men get married because they have many things in common, they are in love with each other, and they choose to get married to one another. In many stories written back then, readers can expect to read about how marriages were arranged and how many people were not having the wedded bliss marriage proclaims today.

Wilde creates comedy through the presentation of Victorian views on the functionality of marriage, ridiculing it as a social tool. The fact that Victorian society does not value the ‘love’ and romance of marriage is witnessed from the exposition, where Algernon’s mockery of social constraints is shown through his statements of “is marriage so demoralizing as that?” and “I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing.” This cynical view creates vast amounts of disorder as Algernon’s desire to escape his responsibilities clearly overrides his desire to settle down. This is illustrated through his view that “the very essence of romance is uncertainty” and therefore, perhaps, Victorian ideals, which dictate marriage to be a conventional source of gain, are not suited towards his anti-realist nature. Within his refusal to follow social conventions of the Victorian era, whereby courtship is typically functional rather than romantic, Wilde mocks the superficial tendencies of marriage as a social tool, as is displayed through the proposal that marriage is “demoralizing.” This not only conveys the concept of futility in marriage and loss of hope for a future that is not

American in Paris, based off the novel by Craig Lucas, was made into a 1951 musical film. The movie is known for George Gershwin’s famous music and Gene Kelly’s tap dancing. It told a happy nostalgic story of an American young painter in Paris who falls in love. In 2015, a musical was created based off the movie with the same music and similar characters. However, the story was much more dramatic, and about young people experiencing a Paris just freed from the occupation during the war. Christopher Wheeldon choreographer and director is known for classic ballet choreography. The show used the new blending of art to create a new and more meaningful experience for the audience, and expands the possibilities of musical theatre, and ballet.

The Victorian attitudes towards marriage are presented through the play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ as extremely negative. In the play ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ marriage in Victorian England comes under fire throughout the first act.

The theme of the two stories revolves around the feminist issue of marriage. A common notion between the two short stories is that love is a failure and a mere comic when there is the failure to recognize the beloved as a person and not a mere convenience. The stories also deal with the 18th and the 19th century American life?declining in their spiritual and emotional lives.

This chapter discusses a combination between marriage and singledom which lead to the modernization of women. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section will discuss an overview on the literary background of the author, Candace Bushnell and it will be followed by the second section which will discuss the previous studies on the text. The third section will discuss an overview of the conceptual framework of marriage and singledom. And finally, the fourth section will discuss the previous studies on marriage and singledom.