Women, Title IX and Film :: Sports Essays

Women, Title IX and Film When I was younger I can remember watching old movies with my mother every Sunday. I loved watching the dashing men sweep away the pretty women and the extravagantly cheesy music. However much I loved the romance part of the story, it always struck me as kind of funny the way the woman was usually a very passive part of the whole relationship making model. She waited for him to kiss her, and the (or I should really say perhaps then) the ball is in her court and she has the ability to make decisions. In countless movies the woman is mad at the man and so what does he do? He grabs her and kisses her passionately. I always thought that it looked like it hurt. Some guy mashing his face into yours when you really do not want to be kissed? Not pleasant. My point in all this is that if you look at movies like these and then watch, say, Bend it Like Beckham or Girl Fight, the woman is actively choosing her sport, her path in life, and her relationship. Women now have the right to be empowere d in film (despite the still pervading Hollywood kitsch) and on of these ways, is inherently, through sport. Sport empowers women. That is a proven fact, and for many of us Title IX babies, a no-brainer. The question is why? When Title IX was still a fresh, new thing, for women sport served as something once denied them that they could finally experience. It represented getting the ball and being able to play just like "one of the boys." Now women were on an even playing field, and that is always empowering. For these women it represented a chance more than anything else, but women of my generation get something else out of sport that makes the modern woman different. In films across the board, sport or no, the image of woman is changing. She is thinner, yes, to keep up with the Hollywood standard of the waif, but she is also fit and muscular. Jada Pinkett-Smith is my favorite example of the new Hollywood body. She has muscular definition in her body but she is still very feminine. Women are expected (not just in Hollywood) to go to the gym regularly and work out. A woman who is not physically fit is not as attractive in today's modern world and that is the truth.

How does Act 1, Scene 1 prepare the audience for the love theme of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”?

Act 1, Scene 1 prepares the audience for the rest of Shakespeare's â€Å"Twelfth Night† by introducing the central theme of love which runs throughout the play. Orsino, Duke of Illyria is immediately established as one of the protagonists, and it is clear that love is all he is willing to think about. Orsino is indulging himself thinking of love, but he is preoccupied with his own reactions, and doesn't take into account those of the object of his affections, Olivia. He has declared his love for Olivia, which sets up the storyline between them.Love Poem For Orsino it was love at first sight, which he explains through metaphor when one of his Lords, Curio, tries to change the subject to hunting. He explains by saying that when he first saw Olivia he was turned into a hart, and compares his desires for her to fell and cruel hounds that â€Å"E'er since pursue me†. Shakespeare has taken this idea from the Greek legend of Actaeon. In the legend, Actaeon was out hunting when he came across Diana, God of Hunting, bathing naked in the river. She turned him into a stag, and then his own hounds hunted him down and killed him. Shakespeare has used this idea to show Orsino's sense of self importance by how easily he can imagine himself in the role of Actaeon. Despite claiming to be this deeply in love, Orsino is sending his courtiers to woo Olivia on his behalf. As he is the Duke, he doesn't go himself because he doesn't want to risk the embarrassment of being rejected in person. In the first scene Valentine returns from Olivia's country estate with the response he received from her handmaid. He was not allowed in to talk to Olivia in person, as he was told Olivia was mourning the death of her brother by refusing to leave the house for seven years. He was told that for those seven years â€Å"like a cloistress she will veiled walk† and that once a day she would â€Å"water her chamber round with eye offending brine†. This means she was planning on wearing a veil as a closed order nun would, and cry in her bedroom every day. To do this for seven years seems to be a disproportionately long time, at that time the more normal period of grieving was six months or a year. Olivia has plunged into grieving with the same haste as Orsino has into love. The way in which Olivia grieves is in stark contrast to that of the other female protagonist, Viola. At the time the play is set, it would have been hard to be an independent women, as most women were looked after by their husband, family or employer. Both Olivia and Viola have been put into this situation by the death of their brothers, but they both cope with it in different ways. While Olivia becomes withdrawn, Viola, although initially devastated, immediately takes constructive action to get out in the world and take control of her own well being. She constructs a plan with the help of the Captain to become Cesario and disguise herself as a eunuch (a castrated male servant with a high pitched voice) to go to serve the Duke. You can read also Audience Adaptation Paper Olivia becomes dependant on the only remaining men in her life, but who are also the wrong sort of men. These men are Malvolio, her head servant, her uncle Sir Toby Belch, a drunkard, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby's idiotic friend who he has brought to the household as a suitor for Olivia. She is letting her servants run the household for her and Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are getting away with the heavy drinking and irresponsible behaviour that would normally have got them thrown out the house. These are the only men she has seen since the death of her brother, so when she sees Viola/Cesario she falls for her, because compared to the men she has been with Viola/Cesario would seem to be perfect. One theme which is touched upon in the first scene and later recurs throughout the play is that love is seen to be destructive. While in the first scene Orsino claims that when he first saw Olivia he thought she â€Å"purged the air of pestilence†, Olivia talks of the plague in Act 1, Scene 5 as destructive. She says â€Å"even so quickly may one catch the plague?† to tell Viola/Cesario that she is falling in love. By comparing it to the plague she shows she does not want to fall in love, but is going to do nothing to stop it as she says â€Å"well, let it be†. Another comparison made to illustrate loves destructiveness is with the sea. Orsino again uses metaphors to make his point, comparing love to the sea. He says that the spirit of love â€Å"notwithstanding thy capacity, Receiveth as the sea†. What he means is that his love has the capacity of the sea, but nothing that enters retains its value, the sea and his love both destroying everything. He echoes this sentiment in Act 2, Scene 4 saying that his love is â€Å"all as hungry as the sea, and can digest as much†. In this scene, Shakespeare consciously echoes the words of his opening theme. In Act 2, Scene 4, Orsino continues to ponder the nature of love as he does in Act 1, Scene 1. He is questioning Viola/Cesario on who it is she has loved. She is trying to hint that it is him by saying they are of his complexion and his years. Orsino thinks that men are fickle and that Viola/Cesario shouldn't love a woman older than herself. He says â€Å"our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering sooner lost and worn, than women's are†. He is saying that men are shallow, and that they will lose interest when a woman loses their looks, so men should always marry younger women. In Act 1, Scene 1, he shows how hard it is for him to keep interest, even when he is so in love it is all he can think about. The very first line of the play is â€Å"If music be the food of love, play on†. Orsino wants the music to stimulate thoughts of love, he wants more. In the last line of the scene this is also shown, when he says â€Å"away before me to sweet beds of flowers: love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers†. He wants to maintain his heightened emotional state and he needs it to be artificially induced because eventually he will be doing it because he feels he has to, rather than because he wants to. He wants to continue in this state until â€Å"The appetite may sicken and so die†.

The Function of the Federal Reserve System in the US Economy

When countries issue currency, especially fiat currency that is not specifically backed by any commodity, it is necessary to have a central bank whose job it is to monitor and regulate the supply, distribution, and transacting of currency. In the United States, the central bank is called the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve currently consists of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., and twelve regional Federal Reserve banks located in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco, and St. Louis. Created in 1913, the history of the Federal Reserve represents the federal government’s   ongoing effort to achieve the goals of any central banking system — ensure a secure American financial system by maintaining a stable currency backed by the benefits of high employment and minimal inflation.   Brief History of the Federal Reserve System The Federal Reserve was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act. In crafting the landmark legislation, Congress was responding to a series of economic panics, bank failures, and credit scarcity that had plagued the nation for decades. When President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on December 23, 1913, it stood as a classic example of an all-too-rare politically bipartisan compromise balancing the need for a consistently regulated centralized national banking system with the competing interests of established private banks backed by a strong â€Å"will of the people† populist sentiment. Over the more than 100 years since its creation, responding to economic disasters, such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s, have required the Federal Reserve to expand its roles and responsibilities. The Federal Reserve and the Great Depression As U.S. Representative Carter Glass had warned, years of speculative investments led to the disastrous â€Å"Black Thursday† stock market crash of October 29, 1929. By 1933, the resulting Great Depression had resulted in the failure of nearly 10,000 banks, leading newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare a banking holiday. Many people blamed the crash on the Federal Reserve’s failure to stop the speculative lending practices quickly enough and for its lack of an in-depth understanding of monetary economics necessary to implement regulations that might have lessened the devastating poverty resulting from the Great Depression.  Ã‚   In response to the Great Depression, Congress passed the Banking Act of 1933, better known as the Glass-Steagall Act. The Act separated commercial from investment banking and required collateral in the form of government securities for Federal Reserve notes. In addition, Glass-Steagall required the Federal Reserve to examine and certify all banking and financial holding companies. In a final financial reform, President Roosevelt effectively ended the long-standing practice of backing U.S. currency by physical precious metals by recalling all gold and paper silver certificates, effectively ending the gold standard. Over the years since the Great Depression, the duties of the Federal Reserve expanded significantly. Today, its responsibilities include supervising and regulating banks, maintaining the stability of the financial system and providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions. How Does the Federal Reserve System Work? The Federal Reserve system is overseen by a seven-member board of governors, with one member of this committee chosen as the chairman (commonly known as the Chairman of the Fed). The president of the United States is responsible for appointing Fed chairmen to four-year terms (with confirmation from the Senate), and the current Fed chair is Janet Yellen. (The regular members of the board of governors serve fourteen-year terms.) The presidents of the regional banks are appointed by each individual branchs board of directors. The Federal Reserve system serves a number of functions, which generally fall into a couple of categories: first, it is the Feds job to ensure that the banking system stays responsible and solvent. While this does sometimes mean that the Fed has to work with the three branches of government to think about explicit legislation and regulation, it more often means that the Fed works in a transactional sense to clear checks and to act as a lender to banks that want to borrow money themselves. (The Fed does this mainly to keep the system stable and is referred to as the lender of last resort, since the process is not really encouraged.) The other function of the Federal Reserve system is to control the money supply. The Federal Reserve can control the amount of money (highly liquid assets such as currency and checking deposits) in a number of ways. The most common way is to increase and decrease the amount of money in the economy via open-market operations. Open-Market Operations Open-market operations simply refer to the process of the Federal Reserve buying and selling U.S. government bonds. When the Federal Reserve wants to increase the money supply, it simply purchases government bonds from the public. This works to increase the money supply because, as the buyer of the bonds, the Federal Reserve is giving out dollars to the public. The Federal Reserve also keeps government bonds in its portfolio and sells them when it wants to decrease the money supply. Selling decreases the money supply because the buyers of the bonds give currency to the Federal Reserve, which takes that cash out of the hands of the public. There are two important things to note about open-market operations: first, the Fed itself isnt directly responsible for printing money. Printing money is handled by the Treasury, and there are multiple channels by which the money gets into circulation. (Sometimes, for example, the new money just replaces worn-out currency.) Second, the Federal Reserve doesnt actually create or issue the government bonds, it just handles them in secondary markets. (Technically, open-market operations could be conducted with a number of different assets, but it makes sense for the government to manipulate the supply and demand of an asset that was issued by the government itself.) Other Monetary Policy Tools Although not used nearly as frequently as open-market operations, there are other tools that the Federal Reserve can use to change the amount of money in the economy. One option is to change the reserve requirement for banks. Banks create money in an economy when they loan out customers deposits (since both the deposit and the loan count as money), and the reserve requirement is the percentage of deposits that banks have to keep on hand rather than lending out. An increase in the reserve requirement, therefore, restricts the amount that banks can lend out and thus reduces the money supply. Conversely, a decrease in the reserve requirement increases the number of loans that banks can make and increases the money supply. (This, of course, assumes that banks want to lend more when they are allowed to do so.) The Federal Reserve can also change the money supply by changing the interest rate that it charges banks when it acts as the lender of last resort. The process by which banks borrow from the Federal Reserve is called the discount window, and the interest rate that the Federal Reserve charges is called the discount rate. When the discount rate is increased, it is more expensive for banks to borrow in order to cover their reserve requirements. Therefore, a higher discount rate causes banks to be more careful about reserves and make fewer loans, which reduces the money supply. On the other hand, lowering the discount rate makes it cheaper for banks to rely on borrowing from the Federal Reserve and increases the number of loans they are willing to make, thus increasing the money supply. Decisions regarding monetary policy are handled by the Federal Open Market Committee, which meets approximately every six weeks in Washington in order to discuss changing the money supply and other economic issues. Updated by Robert Longley