Twilight : Los Angeles, 1992, By Anna Deavere Smith Essay

Though sparked by the Rodney King verdict, there were many other causes of the riots that erupted on the streets of Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. The Los Angeles riots in 1992 were devastating. The obvious issue portrayed through the media was black versus white. If you did not live in Los Angeles or California chances are you did not hear full coverage of the story, you heard a simple cut and dry portrayal of the events in South Central. If you heard one thing about the riots, it was that there was a man named Rodney King and he was a black male beaten with excessive force by four white Los Angeles police officers on Los Angeles concrete. The media portrayed the riots as black rage on the streets due to the

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) explores the intermingling of public and private realms, puncturing the illusion of the former and unveiling the grim and often disturbing reality of the latter. By delving into the personal delusions of its characters and showing the devastation caused by disrupting those fantasies, the film provides not only a commentary on the industry of which it is a product but also a shared anxiety about the corrupting influence of external perception. Narrated by a dead man, centering on a recluse tortured by her own former stardom, and concerning a once-promising director who refuses to believe his greatest star could ever be forgotten, the work dissects a multitude of illusory folds to reveal an ultimately

Based on Annie Dillard’s account of witnessing a total eclipse in her essay “Total Eclipse” I would have to say she definitely encourages her readers to witness a total eclipse. She says that it is almost the opposite of a partial eclipse, which I am sure most people have seen many times before, that’s how different they are and I believe most people including myself think partial eclipses are spectacular and almost dreamlike.

Los Angeles possesses the characteristics of great fame and fortune as well as immense homelessness and poverty. Often times, young people are misled by the financial success of some and assume that is typical of city people. Writers Joan Didion and Carol Muske-Dukes characterize the realization that an adolescent’s lifestyle is not suitable for the demands of a city as signaling the dawn of the apocalypse. In the essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Didion highlights how the failure of society is brought about by a family’s inability to fulfill traditional roles and a lack of education as exemplified during the Hippie movement. While poet Muske-Dukes utilizes gothic language and allusion to illustrate the notion of an apocalypse in the poem “Like This”.

Mack and Nelson begin their essay by taking a look at the “borderline psychotic” society of Vancouver (Mack and Nelson 209). The essay discusses the alienated community the city has become along with the foolishness of the youth. This information soon becomes misleading as the blame from the riot is dismissed from the city and is placed elsewhere. The outlook of the frenzy is taken from a much more expansive approach and this is evident in the statement: “It’s a problem that, as always, starts from the very top” (210). Mack and Nelson note that rather than the rioter’s being the problem, the economy and politicians are at fault

In the month of May 1992, Anna D Smith, who was an actress and playwright, started investigating the experiences, feelings and emotions of the Los Angeles peoples when the riots had happened. For her play; she wanted to perform an act of one woman on the stage and also published all those human experiences in her book. For her requirements she did interview more than 200 citizens of that country for getting the detailed information about Riots. However, through her play “Twilight” she wanted to explore the real picture of the people suffrages, police brutality, and exact problem behind the racisms, people feelings and thoughts about the brutality. Twilight describes all the pain and sufferings of the people who had lived during the riots period. Anna had presented clear visuals of riots including all human emotions, causes and their sufferings including all historical facts that were playing leading factors for it.

Our story begins in 1994 in the backdrop of Los Angeles, here there is depressing and diminishing place called the Crenshaw district . In the prologue

Most curriculums being taught to students withhold a mass amount of history. Some may do this because they feel some events do not have the same importance as other topics being taught. Such topics for example would be the rape and sexual exploitation of thousands of African American females during the time periods where racism and segregation was the norm. It is important for people to be educated about the horrific events that these women went through without justice. It is also essential because it shows the amazing activism Rosa Parks took part in. Most people are often just taught about Parks’ actions on the bus. At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire shows how Rosa Parks and many other dedicated their lives to receive equality not only for themselves, but for all African Americans in the south. Danielle L. McGuire’s work is an amazing way for people to not only learn more of Rosa Parks story, but to get a better understanding of what all African American woman had to deal with during this time period. The realism of sexual violence and its dominant impact on the African American women was one of the many events that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement. McGuire wrote At the Dark End of the Street in order to resolve the negligence of this reality.

The movie “Crash”, by Director and Writer Paul Haggis, follows 8 ethnically diverse families/ individuals facing the struggle of modern day racism and stereotypes created and faced in modern Los Angeles, California. These individuals take the roles of individuals living their daily lives within Los Angeles, California while facing stereotypes. The cast portrays: 2 caucasian white male police officers, an African American director and his wife, a white district attorney and his wife, a Persian immigrant family, and a Hispanic father whose occupation is a locksmith. The scene chosen from this film involves the police officers (Officer Ryan and Officer Hanson) pulling over the African American Director (Cameron Thayer) and his wife (Christine Thayer) at a traffic stop. This scene establishes two different types of theoretic sociological concepts of Thomas Theorem and cognitive dissonance.

Based on the infamous 1942 "Sleepy Lagoon" murder mystery and the resulting "Zoot Suit Riots" in Los Angeles , playwright Luis Valdez weaves fact and fiction to depict the fate of 22 young Mexican Americans brought to trial for a murder they did not commit.

This picture taken by Barbara Davidson in Los Angeles on December 29,2010 depicts the true reality of the environment that the people in Los Angeles were living in. The photo informs audiences that many families were victims caught in the crossfire of the gang violence that erupted within the city. The victim in this picture is a young man still in high school shot and killed walking home after a shopping trip. The photographer uses pathos and appeals to the audience emotions by showing the sorrow and pain left behind by these acts of violence and complete disregard to human life and those affected in the aftermath. The context of this photo can be political and cultural in that the suspect of this picture was an undocumented immigrant teenager

In Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” there are a lot of characters who have different thoughts of what happened and why it happened. The LA uprisings happened after the video of a black young man being severely beaten by four white policemen was released to the media for everyone to see. During the uprisings people were getting shot by stray bullets and businesses were being destroyed, especially Korean stores. It was said to be one of the worst riots in U.S. history.

In 1992 the city of Los Angeles was one of our nation’s largest cities. It had an estimated population of over 9 million.1 The city had been in a deteriorating state for several years. There also had been tension growing between the citizens and the police for nearly the last 30 years. This had a lot to do with riots that occurred in Los Angeles back in the 1960’s.2

Soon after, the catalyst that ignites riots in Harlem, which was foreshadowed earlier in the essay, takes place. The riots begins when a rumor spread claiming that a white police officer shot a black soldier in the back, which wasn’t the truth at all (81). The way

In a postmodern world it is worth contemplating in what we can put our faith. Does culture, religion, or God merit our trust? Or is this a world of mechanical and biological evolutionary processes void of any meaning and purpose? The Sunset Limited, “a novel in dramatic form,” by Cormac McCarthy, is a dialogue between two persons who approach each other from opposite worlds to answer these questions. Black, a born-again believer and ex-con, and White, a nihilistic college professor, attempt to determine whether belief in God is viable in this world and if life is worth living. Despite Black’s efforts to convince him otherwise, White remains a Depressed Self who denies God’s existence, affirms his view of the world as deranged, and leaves to complete his suicide.