Susan Sontag

A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source? Susan Sontag, a jewish-american writer, argues about how the external beauty influences the inner beauty. She starts giving a paradoxical and accurate example of Socrates, where she said that he was everything but beautiful and for the Greeks it was kind of contradictory because they had always thought that the inside beauty would be compatible with some other kind of beauty. According to the writer, people were used to say that a woman was beautiful depending

1. In “Beauty,” New York Times columnist Susan Sontag argues, “[t]o be called beautiful is thought to name something essential to women’s character and concerns” (85). I agree with Sontag's ideas that physical beauty is increasingly perceived as a necessity, but that doesn’t make it commonplace. If unimaginable beauty were a universally shared trait, the media’s current portrayed importance of beauty wouldn’t exist. Because unattainable beauty cannot be achieved, Sontag’s solution revolves around

vaccine. Although there is no cure or vaccine, the virus is treatable and death is not always the result (Nall). I believe that there are similarities to the way the media is covering Ebola now and how the media covered the illnesses discussed in Susan Sontag’s book “AIDS and ITS Metaphors”. The way Ebola is portrayed in the media can be very frightening. Since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak there has been a lot coverage of the illness, but I do believe that when someone in the United States

women all over the world to fight for empowerment. The traditional mindset of the society was that women were not entitled to the same rights as men. This issue was not acknowledged in a major way until the 1800s. Women’s rights activists such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul made it their life goal to make sure that women were granted the same rights and liberties as the men around them. These women had to fight because they were not granted the rights due to a traditional

response to the action of animal testing. Although Sontag argues that avoiding the “spectacle” makes the purpose of the photo/exhibit more effective, this may only apply to that of familiar exposure, such as war photos.  The scenes portrayed in the store window of Lush show novel forms of distress and torture. As Sontag point out, the suffering presented in war photos produce more of a voyeuristic approach rather than a push for change. Sontag states, “Perhaps the only people with the right to look

The first chapter of Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) is quite the eloquent introduction to her varied opinions on the topic of photography, more specifically, the photography of atrocities of humans against humans, contained in the book. Published the year before her death, the extensive essay serves as her final assertions on the implications and effectiveness of documenting the anguish of others through photography. To what extent could these photos play a role in halting the

Photographs are everywhere —on our work desk, in our wallets, on restaurant walls, and even at photography exhibitions. Every photograph has its own story behind it. However, each photograph does not tell us the complete story and instead captures only a part of it. For this reason, viewers sometimes find themselves confounded between viewing a photograph as fact or an interpretation because they only see a part of what has happened during that captured moment. Yet, we live in this world where most

evaluating and understanding art. “A photograph is not an opinion. Or is it?” So begins Susan Sontag's introductory essay to the book Women, a collection of photographs by Annie Leibovitz. Collected without a stated intention other than to treat on the subject matter at hand, Leibovitz’s images confront a wide spectrum of issues surrounding women living in America at the end of the twentieth century. Sontag explains, “Any

make up behind a photograph, the second theory reading looked at the camera and by using this camera what it can inform. Susan Sontag talks about how in today’s world and the past, how everything has been photographed. Photography was a way to escape what was going on around us. Once the photo was taken, Sontag has stated it guaranteed the photo “longevity, if not immortality” (Sontag). She then dives into the difference between paintings and movies compared to what photographs display. Paintings and

1. “Why Don’t We Complain” Question 2 Employing simple anecdotes, William F. Buckley argues in his essay “Why Don’t We Complain”, that as people continue to ignore rudimentary issues, their passivity is transferring into political indifference. Buckley begins with a simple story of how “train temperatures in the dead of the winter… climb up to 85 degrees without complaint” and how “For generations, Americans who were too hot, or too cold, got up and did something about it”. Although there were many