Historical Background To Animal Farm Essays (912 words)

Historical Background to Animal Farm Historical Background to Animal Farm Karl Marx was a German scholar who lived in the nineteenth century. He spent most of his life studying, thinking and writing about history and economics. A many years of study, much of it spent in England, he believed that he understood more deeply than anyone who had ever lived before him why there is injustice in the world. He said that all injustice and inequality is a result of one underlying conflict in society. He called it a 'class struggle', that is, a conflict bet the class of people who can afford to own money- producing businesses, whom he called 'capitalists' or 'the bourgeosie', and the class of people who do not surplus money to buy businesses and who are therefore forced to work for wage whom he called 'workers'. Marx said that, because it was always in the economic interest of capita to take advantage of or 'exploit' workers, nothing could persuade capitalists change their ways. In other words, peaceful progess toward equality and socia justice was impossible. The only way to establish justice, he said, was for t workers to overthrow the capitalists by means of violent revolution. He urged workers around the world to revolt against their rulers. "Workers of the worl unite!" he wrote. "You have nothing to lose but your chains." Another thing Marx taught was that organized religion, the churches, help capitalists to keep the workers quiet and obedient. Religion, according to Mar 'the opiate of the masses'. The church tells working people to forget about th injustice they meet in their lives and to think instead of how wonderful it wi in the after- life when they go to heaven. Marx, with his colleague, Engels, spread his ideas in two famous books, Capital' and 'The Communist Manifesto'. In the early years of the twentieth century, Russia was ready for the ide Marx. The Russian people were extremely discontented with their ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, who had little interest in governing and was neglecting the count badly. Making conditions even more miserable for the people were the hardships the First World War and a particularly cold winter. By 1917, the Russian people were desperate enough to accept a revolution. fact, they got two for the price of one, the first in March when the Tsar was deposed and a provisional government was set up. Then in November a political called the Bolsheviks led a further rebellion which ousted the provisional government. The leaders of the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Trotsky, began to build a Russia, one built on the ideas of Marx, where everyone was equal, where all property was owned by 'the people' rather than by capitalists and where the wo were in control of the goernment. Not long afterward, Communist Russia was attacked by Britain, America and France, who wanted to get rid of the communist government. They were afraid th workers in their own countries might be inspired to imitate the example of Rus Trotsky, a highly intelligent and energetic communist leader, led the defence Russia with great success. After Lenin's death in 1924, a power struggle began between Trotsky and a leader within the Communist Party named Stalin. While Trotsky was a brilliant intellectual and an idealist, Stalin was a simpler, quieter sort of person, wh based his power not so much on plans and ideas as on alliances with other memb of the Communist Party. While Trotsky believed in Russia's trying to assist wo all over the world to rise up in communist revolutions against their bosses, S wanted Russia to take care of its own business. The rivalry between the two leaders went on for several years. Eventually 1929 Stalin gained the upper hand and drove Trotsky from Russia. Stalin later up a scheme to industrialise the backward country which he called the Five-Yea Plan. It included a number of Trotsky's ideas which Stalin had previously opposed. As Russia developed under Stalin, members of the Communist Party took for themselves many privileges. All the original communist ideals of Marx received service, but it became clearer and clearer that members of the Communist Party becoming a ruling class that was not equal to non-members. Most important of all to Stalin was ensuring that he remained in power. H often used the most brutal tactics. Chief among his creations were two highly effective political weapons - an efficient propaganda machine which more and m promoted the idea of Stalin as a great, nearly god-like leader, and a secret p force which kept the country quiet through the use of terror. At one

Stereotypes of Italian Americans in Film and Television

Stereotypes of Italian Americans in Film and Television Italian Americans  may be European in ancestry, but they were not always treated as white in the United States, as the pervasive stereotypes about them demonstrate. Not only did Italian immigrants to America face employment discrimination in their adopted homeland, but they also faced violence by whites who viewed them as â€Å"different.† Because of their once marginalized status in this country, ethnic stereotypes of Italians persist in film and television. On the big and small screen, alike, Italian Americans are all too often portrayed as mobsters, thugs and peasants hawking spaghetti sauce. While Italian Americans have made great strides in U.S. society, their characterization in popular culture remains stereotypical and troublesome. Mobsters Fewer than .0025 percent of Italian Americans are involved in organized crime, according to the  Italian American News website. But one would be hard-pressed to know that from watching Hollywood television shows and movies, where just about every Italian family has mob ties. In addition to films such as â€Å"The Godfather,† â€Å"Goodfellas,† â€Å"Casino† and â€Å"Donnie Brasco,† television shows such as  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The Sopranos,† â€Å"Growing Up Gotti† and â€Å"Mob Wives† have perpetuated the idea that Italian Americans and organized crime go hand-in-hand. While many of these films and shows  have won critical praise, they do little to complicate the image Italian Americans have in popular culture. Food-Making  Peasants Italian cuisine is among the most popular in the United States. Accordingly, a number of television commercials depict Italians and Italian  Americans flipping pizzas, stirring tomato sauce and squashing grapes. In many of these commercials, Italian Americans are portrayed as heavily accented, robust peasants. The Italian American News website describes how a Ragu commercial features â€Å"several elderly, overweight Italian American women in housedresses [who] are so delighted with Ragu’s meat sauce that they turn somersaults and play leapfrog in a meadow.† An undue amount of food ads portray Italian women as â€Å"elderly, overweight housewives and grandmothers wearing black dresses, housecoats or aprons,† the site reports. â€Å"Jersey Shore† When MTV reality series â€Å"Jersey Shore† debuted, it became a pop culture sensation. Viewers of all ages and ethnic backgrounds faithfully tuned in to watch the group of mostly Italian American friends hit the bar scene, work out at the gym, tan and do laundry. But  prominent Italian-Americans protested  that the bouffant-haired stars of the show- self-described Guidos and Guidettes- were spreading  negative stereotypes about Italians. Joy Behar,  co-host of ABC’s â€Å"The View,† said that â€Å"Jersey Shore† did not represent her culture. â€Å"I do have a master’s degree, so a person like me is rather annoyed with a show like that because I went to college, you know, to better myself, and then these idiots come out and make Italians look bad,† she said. â€Å"It’s awful. They should go to Firenze and Rome and Milano and see what Italians really did in this world. It’s irritating.† Bigoted Thugs Anyone familiar with Spike Lee’s films knows that he has persistently depicted Italian Americans as dangerous, racist thugs from New York City’s working class. Italian Americans such as these can be found in a number of Spike Lee films, most notably â€Å"Jungle Fever,† â€Å"Do The Right Thing† and â€Å"Summer of Sam.† When Lee criticized Django Unchained  director Quentin Tarantino for turning slavery into a spaghetti Western,  Italian groups called him a hypocrite because of the thread of anti-Italian bias that runs through his films, they said. â€Å"When it comes to Italian Americans, Spike Lee has never done the right thing,† said Andre DiMino, president of the Italian American One Voice Coalition. â€Å"One wonders if Spike Lee is indeed a racist who hates Italians and why he harbors a grudge.† One Voice voted Lee into its Hall of Shame because of his portrayals of Italian Americans. In particular, the group criticized â€Å"Summer of Sam† because the movie â€Å"descends into a panoply of negative character portrayals, with Italian Americans as mobsters, drug dealers, drug addicts, racists, deviants, buffoons, bimbos, and sex-crazed fiends.†