...Naomi Summary Summary (Literary Essentials: World Fiction) Naomi is an ironic account of a seemingly proper gentleman in his mid-twenties who meets a young girl named Naomi, who is working as a waitress in a cafe. The story is told by its protagonist, Joji Kawai. Fascinated by her Western-sounding name and her sensuous beauty, which reminds him of American silent film star Mary Pickford (highly popular in Japan in the 1920’s), Joji decides that he intends to marry Naomi; soon he falls into a Pygmalion-like relationship as he attempts to tame this selfish and willful creature. Joji gives Naomi money for English and voice lessons, only to learn that she is less talented than he had first supposed. She refuses to do any work in the house, buys extravagant clothes, and manipulates Joji into borrowing money under false pretenses from his doting mother, who lives in the country. Naomi next takes up Western dancing and forces Joji to accompany her to her lessons and to Tokyo dance halls. There he realizes that she has developed a whole coterie of younger male friends unknown to him. The young student Kumagai in particular speaks with Naomi in a fashion which suggests that they have been intimate. Joji’s illusions shatter; his work suffers, and he begins to lose control of himself. At Naomi’s suggestion, Joji decides to rent a cottage for the summer in the resort town of Kamakura, south of Tokyo. He commutes from there to his job in Tokyo. Naomi seems happy with this arrangement,...
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...Ali Tashpulatov East Asian Studies Professor Tom Havens 3/5/2015 Which character in Tanizaki’s Naomi (1924), the husband Joji or the wife Naomi, seems more considerate of the other’s feelings? Tanizaki’s Naomi describes in intricate detail the relationship between man and wife in early 20th century Japan, but the relationship described is far from the conventional ideas of the time. Although it the novel might be perceived as a story of gender empowerment, in reality it is more of a description of a post-marriage gender role reversal. Moreover, the novel documents the paradigm shift from a relationship of a father and child to the relationship of husband and wife, and although peculiar this relationship is an ubiquitous phenomenon. The novel is comparable not only to the somewhat analogical story of Lolita, but also to many other works such as Pygmalion or even The Great Gatsby. Naomi follows the progression of Joji and Naomi’s relationship, narrated entirely by Joji; Although Joji remains the narrator, he eventually loses the role of the protagonist to his spouse. Throughout the novel, Joji’s feelings and consideration of Naomi’s feelings have no limit, but Naomi never shows or speaks of her care towards Joji’s feelings or even well being. The first example of such inequality is the housing arrangement that the two adopt. Having moved into their first “ever so Western” (Tanizaki 1924: 9-10) home the two reside in separate rooms, and when Naomi’s bedding...
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...- The metaphorical Alligator has swallowed the literal shirt. Grounds (Belæg) Type of text: - A chapter in the book No Logo - Topic is branding and logos Speaking: - Naomi Klein is a Canadian journalist, author and activist. She is best known for her book “No Logo” published in 2000. Naomi was brought up in a Jewish family with a history of peace activism. Her mother is Film maker and her father a psycian. Kleins´s husband, Avi Lewis is a Tv Journalist and film maker. Klein spent much of her teenage years in shopping malls, obsessed with designer labels. Reader: Those who are interested in branding and logos. Characteristic of the text: - Past tense, adult, technical terms - References to logos and RP, Lacoste - No questions, a informing text - The material there is used is historian facts, Naomi´s own experinces and facts. - No illustrations Language: By the mid-eighties, Lacoste and Ralph Lauren were joined by Calvin Klein, Esprit and, in Canada, Roots; gradually, the logo was transformed from an ostentatious affectation to an active fashion accessory. Tommy Hilfinger transformed a clothing style into walking, talking, life-sized Tommy-dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds. Actually said: Study Question Side 157 * How does Naomi Klein describe the “Reign of logo Terror” in Grade 4? She wanted to see the label behind the logo. It begun to be very popular going in clothes with logos. * What did Klein experience...
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...Video production 9/18/12 The two thousand and five version of King Kong is by far much better than the 1933 version due to certain technology advancements. “Good things never last” said Naomi watts as “Ann” to character “Mr. Denham”, and that seems to be the fate for the once beloved “king Kong” of 1933. Technology seems to be the reason the new version transcends the classic and out shined version. Green screens of the nineteen thirties where great compared to other motion picture technology of its time. Back then you could set up a Claymation diorama or an acting set then just generate an interesting picture behind it and the crowd would go wild. But old ways have proven inadequate in comparison to new age technology. Green screens in two thousand and five could cultivate an entire feature length film with the addition of some other computer animations and sound affects. Such advancements pertain to the reason why I think the two thousand and five versions is better than any previous version. Motion pictures of the nineteen thirties where missing a vital piece of technology that helps the viewer better understand and illustrate the scene. That technology is color, and earlier motion pictures lacked the technology, leaving the viewer to use his imagination. Although “Technicolor” films had started as early as nineteen twenty two, many producers did not acknowledge the technology until later on. Color isn’t a necessity to make a movie “great” but it sure does help the...
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...Book Review: This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein, published: Sept. 2014 Summarize the book. What is being discussed? Rob Nixon of the New York Times called Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” “a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable.[1]” Naomi Klein researches the impact of Climate change and its relationship with free market capitalism. She discusses capitalism as failed economic system. She goes into great depth on the subject of resource extraction, pollution and the events of surrounding the affected communities in these regions across the world. However, rather than concluding that things are hopeless Naomi Klein argues that: We can build something better and reclaim our economic system. She argues that the market cannot save us. We have the tools/technology to get off of fossil fuels, but it requires leaving free market capitalism behind. We need to rebuild local economies, reign in corporate power and reclaim democracy. She argues that we aren’t all the all powerful saviours of the planet, but that as visitors on the earth we have to save ourselves from an earth that is rocking, burning and driving humanity into extinction because of our actions. Describe the three most important arguments or claims made in the book. The first argument Naomi Klein makes is that world leaders and climate scientists agree if we are going to avoid truly catastrophic consequences of climate change; we need to...
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...The Shock Doctrine Matt Linseman The Shock Doctrine describes the concept of “disaster capitalism” where the “the powers that be” exploit the current social and economic systems in place to gain an advantage over the general population and in turn achieve their ultimate goal of generating any type of profit or power possible. Naomi Klein’s book describes how free market policies have come to dictate the world with the help of disaster manipulation, torturous exercises and shock of all kinds implemented upon countries as well as individuals themselves for profit and power gain. Naomi Klein dissects this theory in her book by illustrating countless unfortunate events that have happened across the globe such as revolutions, terrorist attacks, market meltdowns, wars and natural disasters and how “disaster capitalism” is implemented behind the scenes while these events take place. “Friedman defines these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting ‘market opportunities’ or ‘disaster capitalism.’”(p6) It’s interesting because critics have been known to label Klein as a kind of conspiracist due to the nature and tone of her writing, though she does backup her arguments. She also follows the actions of a man named Milton Friedman throughout her book; she describes him as “a grand guru of the movement for unrestricted capitalism and for writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hypermobile global...
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...Resistance can be interpreted into a variety of alike but altered interpretations all boiling down to being opposed to the ideas of others or to an entire situation occurring. These ideas lead to groups of individuals who have similar opposing ideas to what some call the norm, these are called resistance groups. These groups are usually hidden and show their own twist on the ideas altering from the countries beliefs. Naomi Klein and Barry Lopez are two boisterous authors when it comes to resistance. Barry Lopez was not the one to sit back and let something he believed to be not right go on without voicing his opinion. Therefore he creates the multiple short story book “Resistance” to show his readers how he believes the world is not healthy. Naomi Klein on the other hand takes her own approach to resistance and puts it into a more straightforward subject of excessive branding and globalization. “No Logo” created by Naomi Klein, focuses in on four parts of the excessive branding going on in the world today, “No Space", "No Choice", "No Jobs", and "No Logo." () These four confrontational ideas that Klein speaks about throughout “No Logo” are the basis to her resistance. “I was an angry bystander. I'd no power to intervene, and had no intention of dropping the work I was already committed to, not in order to raise someone else's awareness, promote greater indignation, or organize.” (Resitance) Lopez begins resistance with the short story “Apocalypse,” () a key short story to...
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...Disaster capitalism The two terrible natural disasters occurred recently in Haiti and Chile, together with the coup de eta in Honduras, plus the reaction of USA about this critical situations, have reawakened the fear that Latin America might be completely directed to the application of the doctrine of the “Disaster Capitalism”. According to Naomi Klein, capitalism has triumphed in the world not because the nations had willing accepted it, but because the ‘rules of the game’ of capitalism have been imposed in the form of liberal market politics. This is true especially in moments of disasters produced or used as an excuse for impose these politics. The fundamentalists of capitalism believe that the countries crashed by natural disasters become very ductile and easy to influence politically speaking. According to Naomi Klein, this is the way how big nations ideologically take over small crushed countries. No matter what our thoughts about her claims might be, we cannot ignore the fact that calamities like the attack to NYC in 2011, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the AH1N1 pandemic and let us not forget the devastation of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina, were used as mere business opportunities by American companies. These companies try to profit even if it means taking advantage of pitiful situations. The terrible events occurred during the September 11 attacks in NYC, no matter if they were product of an evil force or a self-attack, fitted like a glove to the plans created...
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...Their thighs are too big, their breasts are too small, their hair is boring, their skin is flawed, their body is shaped funny or their clothes are outdated. Today these are the thoughts of many women who feel they’re not beautiful. Naomi Wolf’s essay “The Beauty Myth” explores, why women feel they don’t measure up. Meanwhile Helena Maria Viramontes’ short story “Miss Clairol” examines the life of Arlene, who is a product of “The Beauty Myth”. Each author shows the power exerted by beauty ideals over women’s identities and goals, including the anxieties produced in women by these beauty ideals. The basis of Wolf’s essay was to show as time progresses it seems, the standards of physical beauty have grown stronger for women as they gained power in other social arenas. “The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us” (120) Women have accomplished so much over the past few decades yet, as you watch television or walk around the city, images of pencil thin women are shown to basically tell you that what you see is beautiful and if you don’t look like that you’re not. Wolf states that women today feel a need to purchase cosmetics to make them feel a sense of beauty, this is actually evident in “Miss Clairol” when Arlene is getting ready for her date, “She has painted her eyebrows so that the two are arched and even, pencil thin and high.” (90) This is showing that...
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...barriers to trade and investment flows. The concept of globalization is said to have been spawned out of the Cold War as a result of the increase in specialization and the need for trade. As a result of globalization many economists, businesspeople, and politicians have found that they needed to change their policies and adopt what is called “the Golden Straightjacket”, which is a set of guidelines that governments and businesses must follow to be successful in a unified market. Many economists, politicians, authors, and businesspeople have differing views on the costs and benefits of putting on the Golden Straightjacket. Tom Friedman, an economist and author, argues that the Golden Straightjacket is a good thing for the world economy, while Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, argues that free trade is a technique used to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Other ideas that have been argued are the effect globalization has on the spread of democracy. Tom Friedman argues that globalization is used to revolutionize governments to conform to democracy while Dani Rodrik, author of The Globalization Paradox, says that globalization actually hinders the spread of democracy. Klein, Rodrik, and Friedman offer differing views that reveal the various costs and benefits of globalization. Globalization usually refers to the global distribution of goods and services though reduction of barriers to trade. Globalization has existed for as long as there has been international trade...
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...Disaster Capitalism The best way to describe the opening stages of disaster capitalism is shock and awe and the inception of what she refers to as the shock doctrine. Throughout Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, she describes how cataclysmic events whether through wars, terrorism, military coups, market meltdowns or natural disasters open the doors to Friedmanite (named after Milton Friedman) economics (2007). Not only do these disastrous events make countries susceptible to increased exploitation from free market capitalists looking to profit from disaster, their radical economic policies and the massive privatization of public schools, utilities, health care and other public services, but also, as Klein describes in the book, it has led to some of the most atrocious and violent acts carried out by governments and their army and police forces throughout the world. Klein begins with describing the events that took place immediately after Louisiana was hit by Hurricane Katrina. She introduces us to Milton Friedman, author of Capitalism and Freedom and the one responsible for using “shock therapy” to implement Chicago School economics in other countries. Friedman’s goal was to recreate societies and return them to a pure capitalist state without any interruptions, government regulations, trade barriers and entrenched interests (Klein, 2007). In addition, he believed that the reformation to pure capitalism of these societies was not possible without the presence of a disaster...
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...La doctrina del shock. En el ser humano siempre ha existido el instinto de descubrir y experimentar para poder avanzar y evolucionar. Este hecho provoca que en determinadas situaciones, como conflictos bélicos, se haya experimentado con individuos diferentes técnicas de tortura y resistencia, no sólo por lo que implica, sino por descubrir hasta que punto podemos ser flexibles, y para detectar cuales son nuestros puntos más débiles y nuestra resistencia. Esto nos ha conducido a encontrar el arma fundamental de cada individuo, la comunicación en términos de persuasión. En este documental Naomi Klein nos otorga su punto de vista, donde recurre a las terapias del shock como ejemplo de aquello a lo que recurren determinados organismos para conseguir beneficiarse de ello. Así las guerras, los ataques terroristas y los desastres naturales son fenómenos en los cuales se debe actuar para conseguir que la economía, el capitalismo florezca. Explica como determinados políticos y empresas recurren a esta terapia de shock para imponer el miedo y la desorientación sobre la sociedad y así conseguir avanzar con los planes económicos. Por tanto entiendo que para dominar un país, hemos de atacar su población imponiendo una serie de normas a seguir, penalizando aquellos opositores. Mientras sucede esto, introducir unas medidas económicas que el país no soporte, creando por tanto una crisis, consiguiendo así un beneficio, además de poder. Desde mi punto de vista es evidente que algunos países...
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...Ghosts by Naomi Wood The short story by Naomi Wood was written in 2012, and is about Pia, who is a middle-aged woman and the day where the short story takes place, is her 40th birthday. In this story we meet Pia, her partner Daniel and random people from the streets and of course Pia is our main character. The short story starts in the middle of Pia’s day, she just finished working and she is about to leave the car park at work. She is on her way home, where her partner Daniel waits to take her to a restaurant to celebrate her birthday, but on her way home she is reflecting over what it means to turn 40. The short story is told in a chronological order, but with flash back-like situations “Giving in, she ghosted back through memory. She drank the coffee, ate the omelette, took down the laundry...”. What’s most important is the middle and the ending of the short story, how Pia starts by thinking that turning forty will only be the first of many depressing situations, but actually comes to the conclusion that it is only as depressing as you make it. It is kind of an open ending where the author puts in a line saying “Time waits for no man” which sums up on every reflections Pia had during her drive home. The atmosphere of the story is to begin with really tense and dim because of how Pia feels about herself. Turning 40 should be something to celebrate but for Pia it is the same as starting digging your own grave. When she hears the news of the neutrinos she “…wondered...
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...an action feminist praxis. This young girl speaks for every generation, above and below her. She is so empowering to the current movement that is going on worldwide and will definitely be remembered in history because of her powerful voice that will never be forgotten. Part 5: Movements, Resistance and Women 11. Intersectional Feminism is including women of all color, race, sexual orientation, wealth, and religion. It is important because most people think it only categorizes white women, but that is false. The category of intersectional women should include all women, and the issues that impact women. Works Cited: Hooks, Bell. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000. Print. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. Print. "Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2017. ...
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...The question on my mind after seeing The Shock Doctrine was whether ends justify means. Quite possibly, this is the question Klein wanted to be asked, because much of her case regards the distasteful means taken in order to further free market economics, tactics which the very proponents of these dogmas may feel they want to disassociate themselves with. However, my question was about Klein's/Winterbottom's own tactics. The film uses all methods that we've grown used to from modern politics: cherry-picked facts, "proofs" by emotionally-charged metaphors, hinted claims of guilt by association, sound-bite slogans that are repeated incessantly, and, of course, scare tactics. Sad to say, I've come to expect these things from political candidates that need to make their points in a 30-second TV appearance. I've even come to expect them in rating-seeking news programs. But have we stooped so low that these tactics are now par-for-the-course in documentaries, where a film-maker has 90 minutes of canvas to make a clear, compelling, and well-argued case? I happen to agree with Klein's stance that extreme capitalism is dangerous, and I think what we are seeing in both Europe and China in recent years (e.g. the collapse of Chinese nation-wide education and health policies) are just further proofs of the narrative Klein forwards. However, I don't see that there is a well-argued case here that would convince someone claiming that any change, good or bad, rarely happens in a peaceful way...
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