How does the imagination of disaster (Susan Sontag) function in Essay - 1

How does the imagination of disaster (Susan Sontag) function in depictions of urban catastrophe in film I Am Legent' (2007) - Essay Example Susan argues that the film thrives on the sensuous connection with the audience through the arresting images and the immediacy of the experience as observed on the screen. The author traces the main stages of development of the sci-fi film in terms of the emergence of a situation that disturbs harmony, to the stages of disbelief, tragedy, threat, destruction, feelings of vulnerability, and the heroic antics of a lone actor who eventually designs some kind of remedy that prevails against the formidable foe. The main features in Sontag’s analysis are manifest in the post-apocalyptic film I am Legend, which was directed by Francis Lawrence with Will Smith featuring as the military virologist Robert Neville, the main protagonist (Lawrence, 2007). In the film, Neville finds himself facing the odds of a horrific destruction wrought by a scientific experiment gone awry leading to a virulent strain of a virus that has depopulated nearly 95 percent of the world population. Neville has to put aside his own pain of losing his wife and child and struggle to save his own life and the lives of the few surviving humans by developing an antidote that would rescue the infected and the few survivors. The task is daunting and the odds are nearly insurmountable for the lone hero but he has to endeavor to contain the horror. The film represents the good and bad of science in the sense that it captures both its threat to humanity and its near limitless potential to provide solutions to the same thre ats. Sontag argues that scientific films are mainly dominated by the theme of massive destruction (Sontag, 1966). The focus, she argues is the scale of destruction, which is usually captured on an enormous and shocking scale. Destruction is captured in grim details that involve the potency of powerful machinery, a determined destructive force, and great humanitarian suffering. Most of these films anticipate calamities and apocalyptic

Postmodernism in the Field of Anthropology Research Paper

Postmodernism in the Field of Anthropology - Research Paper Example The research paper "Postmodernism in the Field of Anthropology" states the postmodernism in the field of anthropology. Comprising the idea of this new practice, they do not anymore depend completely on the answers that have been given by the church or biblical canon, eminent intellectuals and scholars have provided with concrete theories so that they can account for the formation of the world and its dwellers. While differentiating between various concepts like humanism which was applied by Franz Boas and E.E. Evan Pritchard, did exist altogether with the method based epistemology of science, around 1980 a very concrete theory emerged which led to the systematic study of human life namely postmodern anthropology. The postmodern epistemology has been exempted from the similar fields like of symbolic and feminist anthropology, this constitutes the significance of our ethical responsibility, the importance of the relativity of our position it also deals with the consequent subjectivity it develops, and it by force challenges the aloof ideal of the uninfluenced view. The purpose of developing this field was to understand, examine and reason. To evaluate and draw conclusions about our ancestors and their lives. The postmodernist who is criticizing or critiquing on science usually has two formal interlinked arguments that is epistemological and ideological. Both of these are based on subjective approach. The initial debate that arises is that anthropology cannot be a branch of science. in accordance with the epistemogical approach and the reason is that basically the purpose of science is objectivity and a relatable conclusion. Secondly, the concept of objectivity is too vague and fantasized, therefore one relates to science in an ideological perspective, it tends to camouflage itself by supporting and voicing the rights of the suppressed class, women, ethnicities, etc. The universally recognized act of developing a scientifically indifferent view which was severely criticized by Clifford Geertz, who deviated from the universal formulations of prior anthropologists and carried on that features of culture, like religion, should be visualized and sorted by the meaning it contains, irrespective of what sort of reaction it may develop in the society. Culture is something which differs for everybody. It's how one takes it to be not something homogenous for all. As all humans perceive and adopt things differently therefore culture is then different within people living together as well. Feminist anthropology trails across the limitations of academia and changes the gathered research and makes it concrete. Fieldwork doesn’t only cover up the entire thing, it acts like a spark igniting the effort for better morality in culture as well as socially.(Salzman 2001). These joined principles of symbolic and feminist theories emerge as the basics that lead to postmodernism; it is a great combination of relativist epistemology and advocacy (Salzman, 200 1). When we take the initial one under consideration, a very essential point of this postmodern theory is the eager denial of science, a limiting tool within an powerful dominant class. The stress is laid upon that the symbolic and feminist anthropology that has been based on morality and subjectivity; hence, it negates the consumption of the empirical scientific method in best context that defines the authencity. (Heartney, 2001)Those who were working with the assumptions were not credited while now the room for the postmodern