Once Were Warriors Essay Example for Free

Once Were Warriors Essay â€Å"Forget the big players in the world; it is the people in the margins of our society whose stories are most compelling. † To what extent do you agree with this statement? Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied. The Heke family that feature in the ground-breaking New Zealand film from 1994, ‘Once were warriors’ directed by Lee Tamahori are clearly a family living on the margins of society. They live in a state house next to a busy and noisy motorway in South Auckland, New Zealand. Their story is undoubtedly a compelling one: an abusive husband with a love of beer drinking and parties who gains respect from the use of his fists at the local pub; a long-suffering wife who has somehow managed to hold the family together through an obviously tumultuous 18 year marriage; a disillusioned older son who flees the dysfunctional household to join a gang; a pubescent daughter who is the de-facto mother of the family; another son who has gotten in with the wrong crowd and is committing petty theft and two younger children, Polly and Huata. Director Lee Tamahori uses a range of camera and sound techniques, dialogue and compelling themes to teach us about the dangers of excessive alcoholism and moving away from our ancestral connections. Jake ‘the muss’ Heke is a compelling protagonist. After being laid off from his job, he uses his redundancy money to bring home seafood for his family. We are initially positioned to see him as a loving and caring family man, that is until his wife Beth discovers he has been laid off and sees her dreams of buying their own home go out the window. Jake is a man of excuses who sees the dole as being â€Å"only 15 bucks a week less than my wages† and bursts into a tirade of abuse when his wife Beth resists his sexual advances after discovering the truth. Jake also excuses his own propensity for violence when he says, â€Å"Look when I get like that, get out of my way, but you’ve got to get all lippy on me. Sure I’ve a temper, but who hasn’t? † It is apparent that Jake has an inferiority complex dating right back to his courting days of Beth saying â€Å"I was never bloody good enough† and that he descends from a â€Å"long line of slaves† unlike Beth who originates from more upper-class Maori roots. What this highlights is that domestic violence, while inexcusable can often have its origin in insecurities from years beforehand. This is why men in particular need to seek help when they are struggling with issues instead of resorting to excessive bing-drinking to numb emotional pain. Jake’s wife, Beth is also on the margins of society as we see her struggling to raise her family amidst all the physical and verbal abuse around her. Gradually the low angle shots of Beth become more prominent as her courage to stand up to her abusive husband increases as also seen in her dialogue. I won’t have any more of these parties or your bloody ugly mongrel mates coming over. † Tragically, Beth’s surge in power in response to Jake’s failure to take the family to see Boogie in the Boy’s home comes too late, as unbeknownst to her, Uncle Bully has raped her daughter, Grace sending her into a downward spiral which culminates in her suicide. Beth’s cou rage in standing up to Jake and restoring the family without him is compelling. It must have inspired many women across New Zealand and indeed the world to leave behind dysfunctional and violent domestic set-ups. The fabulous low-key lighting and low angle shot of Beth at the end as she calmly informs Jake that ‘from now on I make the decisions for my family’ is inspirational and reminds us of the ‘mana, pride and spirit’ that many Maori have. She finally goes ‘home’ to her Maori ancestral roots as well as literally home to restore her devastated family in the wake of Jake’s departure. Perhaps the most compelling story of hope in the film is that of younger son, Boogie who is ‘sent into welfare’ after the state decides his family can no longer control him after his mother, Beth fails to accompany him to a court hearing (due to suffering a beating and rape at the hands of Jake) as a result of a string of petty crimes. Boogie finally gets the tough love he needs from Maori man, Bennett a distinguished tane who teaches Boogie to use ‘his taiaha on the inside,’ instead of on the outside. Boogie learns that true mana is found by using your mind and developing the inner-strength and resolve to solve problems instead of resorting to violence. Bennett, initially called a ‘black bastard’ by Boogie despite being Maori trains Boogie to reconnect with his maori tikanga and culture which effectively clears up Boogie’s confusion about his Maori identity and that this can be a source of pride. This shows that with the appropriate guidance, initially wayward youth can have a chance to redeem themselves, although this is a job parents and to a lesser extent teachers need to be doing. State foster homes should only be a last resort. In conclusion, ‘Once Were Warriors’ left an indelible mark on the psyche of many New Zealanders with its brutal violence and depiction of problems such as binge-drinking and poverty that previously were swept under the carpet. Only by examining characters on the margins of society can we truly learn how easy it is to get there ourselves if we do not value our families, our education or seek help when we are struggling with issues from our past. The story of the Heke family is a compelling one and a story we would do well to consider seriously.

Meaning And Definition Of Business Process Reengineering Information Technology Essay

Meaning And Definition Of Business Process Reengineering Information Technology Essay The main of preparing and presenting this report is to understand about the concept what business process engineering is, and how it benefited the companies in reduction on process time and costs. Another objective is to evaluate how business process reengineering enhances the capabilities and working capacities of companies. This Research will also involve the Research of those factors that companies use to develop business process reengineering a more profitable one. Meaning and definition of Business Process Reengineering-BPR: In business processes reengineering all the outdated processes of the business are redesigned along with the connected systems and entitys structures with an aim to reach at a remarkable performance level along with business improvements. The corporate basis for creating these changes possibly will comprise deprived performance in terms of competition, financial aspects and reduction of market share of emerging market opportunities. Business process reengineering just not mean to introduction of new technology, automation, reorganization, and downsizing of business process etc but also involve change assessment various business components such as culture, entity, technology, processes and strategies. According to M. Hammer (2003) in his book reengineering corporation defines BPR as: Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to bring about dramatic improvements in performance. Whereas, according to Davenport and short (1990), business process reengineering is Analysis and design of workflows and processes within and between entities And according to Teng et al. (1994), business process reengineering is: Critical analysis and radical redesign of existing business processes to achieve breakthrough improvements in performance measures. M. Hammer (2003), spotlight is on radical and fundamental of business process reengineering. Similarly according to him another process improvement technique is Continuous process Improvement (CPI), that mainly gives importance to measurable and small type of modifications in an entitys existing systems and processes. Continuous process improvement includes its foundations in following six sigma and total quality management (TQM) solutions similar to those of Motorola Inc. VARIOUS MYTHS OF BPR: The most accepted management theory has produced supplementary myths than realistic tactics of business process reengineering. Business process reengineering-BPR is in the industry from 1990s, but still BPR is generally get the wrong idea and always associated with ABC, quality, client/server computing, downsizing, and numerous other management change processes in the past decades. On the basis of having conversations through interviews with higher than 20 companies, and 35 reengineering initiatives, etc Davenport Studded (1990) identify seven reengineering myths: Reengineering novelty myth: in spite of having familiar concept reengineering, but is now merged with the latest concepts and brings a synthesis in business. However these combinations of components were not seen ever before. Clean slate myth: Clean slate change is hardly ever found in reality, despite of Davenport and Stoddards (1994) black sheet of paper and M. hammers (1990) catchphrase Dont automate, obliterate!. These phrases were used in design more often than not needs a blank check for execution is completed over some phased projects. Furthermore, it is assisted by groundwork conclusions of Jarvenpaa and Stoddard (1995) that gone opposing to Michael Hammer (1990). According to Michael Hammer reengineering be capable of bringing radical besides, a innovative process of change that may not be viable under specified cost and risks of those innovative processes Information systems Leadership myth: with contrary to greatly hyped leadership role, Information system is usually seen as a co-worker inside a cross-functional group i.e. commonly leaded by a non information system plan leader and a non information system business supporter that got good command over various processes which are to be redesigned. Top-Down Design myth: project implementation and putting it to start the newly redesigned processes extremely depend on working partners. Therefore, involvement of members and further critically approval and possession, the lowland roots stage is crucial for thriving business process reengineering-BPR. Reengineering VS transformation: According to Adams (1984), Entitys transformation system or process is defined as, Profound, fundamental changes in thought and action, which create an irreversible discontinuity in experience of a system whereas, business process reengineering is a process of contributing to entitys transformation system. But any how BPR not means the same as transformation. Engineerings Permanence myth: according to the researchers Davenport and Stoddard (1994), they hypothesize that reengineering has gone high in United States during1994 and may possibly turn into integrated process with greatly broader entitys experience such as another combination of thoughts that comprise awareness of reengineering. Relationship between companies and its customers and importance of business process engineering: The relationship between a company and its customers is not limited to just the buying and selling of a product or service. It has gained new dimensions and expanded from the buying and selling of products and services to a whole range of business practices form customer service, consulting and pricing to production and distribution. Customers have become increasingly selective due to the availability of a wide range of products and services. These changes in the market place have forced companies to rethink about their business processes. Business process reengineering (BPR) makes companies more customers focused and responsive to changes in the market place. These results are achieved by reshaping the corporate structure around the business processes. Business process reengineering (BPR) achieves this transformation, not by automation of the business processes, but by rethinking the companys tasks in a holistic and process oriented manner. Figure: Business as a system Money People Facilities Material Information Information Workflow Output Input Raw materials, Operations, Finished goods, Components, Processes Services Source: Vinod Kumar Garg and N.K Venkitakrishnan, (2002), Enterprise resource planning: concepts and practice, prentice hall, p.28 Business process reengineering and information technology: The increasing use of information technology in businesses has compelled organizations to go for business process reengineering because the implementation of information technology necessitates significant changes in business processes. These changes allow organizations to take full advantage of the benefits offered by information technology. The relationship between business process reengineering (BPR) and information technology cannot be underestimated. For instance, Wal-Mart would not have been able to reengineer its processes for procurement and distribution of its mass-market retail goods without information technology. Michael Hammer (1990), think information technology as main support to business process reengineering-BPR that he thinks as radical change. According to Hammer (1990) the use of Information technology to face hypothesis inborn in project processes which have been present ever since earlier than arrival of present supercomputers and telecommunications technology. Michael hammer also criticize that at the central processing unit of reengineering is idea of Discontinuous thinking or recognizing and breaking away from outdated rules and fundamental assumptions underlying operationsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ se rules of work design are based on assumptions about technology, people, and entitys goals that no longer hold, Michael Hammer (1990) Michael Hammer (1990) recommended the following reengineering principles. They are: Organization may not be around tasks but it should be around outcomes Those should involve in implementation process who actually rely on the perform output of the process Consider processing of information task addicted to actual tasks which responsible for information production Take care of geographically detached resources as despite the fact that they will be centralized as they are Connect the activities that are parallel rather than integrating their outcomes Keep judgment point at actual place of work, and create control up on the process; and Gather and collect information once and at the starting place. BPR Implementation methodology: The various stages that a typical BPR implementation program goes through are: Identify the needs for the BPR package: The first stage involves the identification of the needs to be satisfied by adopting the BPR package. Once these needs are identified, organizations can evaluate how ERP implementation can help satisfy these needs. Transforming the labor and machinery based productivity into knowledge and information based productivity can be the examples of the needs that a BPR can satisfy. Evaluating the as-is situation of the business: The next stage involves the identification of various processes involved in the working of the organization. Then, the detailed processes in business activities should be listed. Process mapping can be helpful in detailing the processes. It provides information about the time taken to complete a process, the number of decision points, the number of reporting points and flow of information, etc. Decisions about the desired would-Be situations for the business: once the structure of the current processes is identified, the next stage involves the identification of the desired attributes for each of the processes. Performance standards are set for each process by using benchmarking techniques. Benchmarking ensures that the desired organizational attributes are comparable with the best business practices in the industry. Reengineering of business processes to achieve the desired results: in order to achieve these desired standards in business processes, organizations need to reengineer their current processes. The objectives of business process reengineering including reducing the process cycle time, reducing the number of decision points, optimizing the information flow between different functions and departments, etc. CASE STUDY: A Study on business process reengineering by Prosci The following are the details of a study conducted by Prosci on BPR: The areas of chosen for conducting the research? What should be reengineered, what is going to be reengineered and why? Which alternative advancements/approaches are working? Vital do and dont activities Choosing a best team from alternatives Necessities required for approval of a project PARTICIPANTS OF RESEARCH What processes are targets for Reengineering? Client service was the major commonly reengineered process during the 1997 and 1999, except by fewer of a percentage. Services related to computers and telecommunication almost two times in rate, stirring it from 5th to 2nd mainly embattled business taken for processes reengineering. Are business process reengineering-BPR projects successful? Research members confirm to a large extent in general projected improvements as of their business process reengineering-BPR projects in 1997 or 1999 and now in 2002. More than 50% i.e. (54%) of members likely improvements of over 30% achieved. Furthermore to the anticipated greater improvements, Research members also got success in their projects after implementation of BPR. With reference to the study, 113 Research members are accomplished to compare project in opposition to preliminary set objectives. More than 73% meet up or go beyond their goals, among them almost i.e. 47% approximately of Research members got their project inside 10 percent. Why are certain teams successful? According to the Members of research there were various factors that are responsible for success of their team. Among those the above 3 factors are given below: Dedication and strong commitment towards completion of the project with 100% success Maximum support from top level management and conversion of support into actions Everyone shared a common and clear vision towards the goals and objectives. The team got a single understanding and focus point for success of the project. What did Top management do to encourage project success? Showing outcomes from report of the year 1999, those teams got heavy success which was highly supported by top management. The projects were greatly possible to end with the over and above the organizations success expectations. The failure companies senior managers failed to give sufficient visible involvement in their organizational reengineering project. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ not staying involved enough after the initial phase, assuming that everyone in the entity understood their vision and strategy. An irresistible greater part of the teams had support to their teams from the senior and sponsor managers or executives in the project implementation and the majority rated that the involvement of their seniors use as excellent. What were the problems faced while implementing BPR? Poorly defined business process Rushed deadlines Many complex tasks Only one major milestone Silence from the upper management The wrong team members Unmotivated teams Communication breakdown BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: To gain competitive advantage, organizations should understand the scope of a particular market and identify the various inherent differences between various markets. They need to understand what is required to become qualifiers and order-winners. Qualifiers are the most basic attributes that an organization must possess before any customers will decide to deal with them. For instance, ISO standards have become on e of the key qualifiers for any organization with global markets. Qualifiers provide the initial impetus to customers to deal with an organization but, in order to close a deal, organizations must have order-winners. The order-winners could be price advantage, quality, etc. BPR enables the organizations to optimize and organize different qualifiers and order-winners by redesigning the complete processes so as to gain competitive advantage in the market. Some of the order-winners and qualifiers, which apply to most companies, are discussed below: Price: As price is one of the key order-winners in most markets, the BPR package can help identify the cost centers and assist in redesigning processes to reduce production costs. Setting up tough cost targets and putting in place a rigorous monitoring system can help a company become cost-efficient. Therefore, BPR implementation should focus on the areas in which significant costs are involved so that appropriate resource allocations can be made and management attention can be focused on them. When a company uses price reduction as an order-winner, it should also change its corporate strategy accordingly. It needs to assess changes in lead-times, investment implications and cost-reduction potential in several areas. Without assessing these factors, the changes in the strategy will be inappropriate. Delivery reliability and speed: Delivery reliability has also become one of the criteria on which customers judge an organizations competitiveness. BPR can make more efficient the procurement and distribution activities and reduce the process lead time involved in purchasing the raw materials and distribution of finished products. BPR helps to reduce the time in coordinating activities among all the entities of the supply chain through the smooth flow of information between them. With the help of BPR, the lead time required to process an order is reduced significantly. The need to provide information to customers and suppliers has forced BPR vendors to implement their applications with e-commerce also. Quality: The concept of quality no longer denotes just a state of being free from defects. Today, quality encapsulates many dimensions like performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability and aesthetics. BPR by its redesigning capabilities can bridge the gap between the existing process and the implementation of the best process can help an organization achieve its quality objectives. Product range: In todays competitive world, organizations need to provide products in different shapes and sizes that satisfy the requirements of the different segments of the markets. They need a variety of products in their product line. But as the product range increase, the cost and time of production increases due to the modification of production process to accommodate the changes required for each product range. BPR, through reducing the process defects and be making the old labor and machinery system to knowledge and information systems, help in integrating the functionalities and a common database, enhances the capabilities that assists organizations in this direction. KEY GUIDE LINES TO BE FOLLOWED: Important guidelines that an organization must follow in Business Process Reengineering to make it more efficient and profitable: Business process reengineering is different from other IT systems/models in that its implementation is not restricted to a single functional domain. In order to take full advantage of the profitable benefits of the BPR package, organizations may/need to follow the guidelines given below: Define corporate needs and culture: In order to implement a BPR system successfully, a complete overhaul of the business organization is needed. Organizations should assess their readiness for change and the possibility of the implementing change in the organization. The level of difficulty in bringing about change depends on the amount of change involved. Project leaders should assess the level of difficulty they are likely to face. The top management should provide complete support for the implementation of the BPR package. Implementing a BPR package may also involves the redefinition of the roles of different functional departments, and the authority and responsibility of individuals throughout the organization. Complete business process change: The organization should be aware of the required changes in business process and skills and attitudes for BPR implementation. It may have the willingness to adopt changes but may not be able to assess the implications of the changes. Therefore, the organization should undergo a brief business process redesigns exercise before the actual implementation. The redesigning exercise should be carried out on the basis of the structure of the BPR package, so that there is no mismatch between the required functionalities and the functionalities provided by the BPR package. Communicate across the organization: Communication allows different entities involved or affected by BPR implementation to be aware of its effects on their jobs. Proper communication optimizes the implementation process, as the employees are aware of what is required of them. Besides, feedback provides the management with information needed to allay the concerns of the employees. Communication should not overstate or understate the functionalities of the new system. Overstating the functionalities would raise employees expectations unrealistically, while understating them may leave employees unprepared for the changes required for BPR implementation. Provide strong leadership: Strong leadership is an important success factor in implementing a BPR package. The difference between and informal support and active leadership can be the difference between the success and the failure. Therefore, the members of the steering committee members should be able to understand the business redesign and integration. Though these may be complicated processes, the right modeling tools can help them make simpler to follow. The steering team should be trained in process mapping and reengineering methodology and it should be fully involved in the process redesign so that it can guide the team members (implementation team) properly. Select a balanced team: The size and complexity of BPR implementation and maintenance necessitates a balanced team of professionals. In general, the BPR implementation team consists of personnel from IT, finance, marketing, sales and production. Most companies hire external BPR consultants who provide information about the operational aspects of the new BPR system and assist the internal team. Select a good method of implementation: As the implementation of a BPR package involves the participation of all the departments, a proper sequence of steps should be identified to define the implementation process. Project leader should set the milestones to be achieved in the various phases of the implementation and review progress continuously against the milestones. They should define clearly the scope of the project and develop the work breakdown structure (WBS), and estimate the time required to complete each activity identified in the WBS. This will help them reach a realistic project plan. They need to ensure that there is no compromise with the quality of the new process/system. Organization-wide training: BPR is a complex and organization wide system that requires some amount of training so that full advantage of the capabilities of the new process can be taken. The steering team should be trained in process analysis and redesign. The staff in the information technology department should be made aware of the package architecture, design and configuration. Functional managers should learn how the new process performs and how it can be useful in the decision-making process. The training varies across the different levels, and is based on the requirements of the persons using the new system or process. CONCLUSIONS: The term Business process reengineering-BPR, has an imperfect records in the past. But became popular in 1990s beginning, conversely, tactics and advancements was not completely be aware or nor valued. A lot of time, upgrading projects tagged with the name Business Process Reengineering-BPR be inadequately designed and implemented. Organizations and their employees get embarrassed at consideration of an additional Business process reengineering-BPR familiarity. The concept BPR is less utilized, and modified lot of times from the actual business process reengineering-BPR that was earlier exists. An organization operating in a competitive environment needs to have competitive advantage over others to attract and retain business. This can happen when different organizational functions develop strategies that complement the corporate strategy. An organizations competitive advantage can be defined by service quality, responsiveness and ability to satisfy customers needs and wants. In spite of this mistreatment of put into practice and imperfect name, applications of business process redesigning, connected technology and entitys structure is further accepted these days than past. Organizations go on with to reconsider and basically transform system they conduct operations. Cutthroat competitive force and a slow-moving market offer efficient techniques for entities motivated to work as efficiently and professionally as feasible.

Design And Develop Supermarket Sales System Services Computer Science Essay

Design And Develop Supermarket Sales System Services Computer Science Essay It contains details for the customers, suppliers and products. This system contains two types of users, administrator and the end user. The administrator has the authorization to create new users, edit an existing user and delete a user or disable a user. This system generates multi reports for costumer, supplier, product, and soling. This will cut down the amount you spend away from the primary focus of your business and getting more control over your business. CHAPTER ONE Introduction SMSSS is solving a problem that could face any business. An inventory that could disappears from your stores, pharmacies, restaurants and hospitals, due to theft, wastage and employee misuse; because employee will know that inventory is being carefully tracked. SMSSS can instantly tell you about how many a particular product have sold today, or in any period you want. My Graduation Project is applied on supermarket; this will help on tracking its remaining inventory, spot sales trends, use historical data to better forecast your needs and detailed sales reports make it much easier for it; to keep the right on hand. SMSSS will include two types of users, administered user and a normal user. The first will have the authorization to add users to check the reports and observing the suppliers. The normal user just will prepare the customers orders and print out the billing. Every SMSSS system needs a printer to create credit card slips for customer but the users will deal with this system without using that printer therefore the paying will be in separate operation with normal printer. Touch screens are more intuitive to use than keyboards for many users, but in this case there will not be a touch screens, the users will depend on the keyboard and a computer only. It is a simple system without providing the flexibility to users. Background As it is mention before in the introduction this project will apply on supermarket, which has number of employees who received the customers orders. This supermarket is new, so it is looking for suitable manner to run on their business. This work is usually want a faster user who understand the customers order in short time, and save the money by count the orders price without mistake, especially when your business is run will and lot of customers orders you should focus on to not effected on your business, that why the SMSSS system will helps to save money, provide productivity gains. Objective Our project helps to record any and all sales, it automate overall inventory control, helping to keep stocks in proper balance depend on demand and other factors, so management is much easier. Also you are able to track promotions more successfully, whether through capons and special discount. In SMSSS you get many tools in a single package. SMSSS can make better use of your personal by little is more maddening to a business owner than watching his/her staff bogged down. SMSSS reduce paperwork, increase productivity, reduce time you have to spend doing inventory, provide more precise information on the rate at which each product in your inventory moves so you know when and how much of each item to order, showing you what selling and what not, which vendor product are profitable, and which vendors are making you the most money overall. In this case, your customer gets faster and more accurate service. CHAPTER TWO (Project Deliverables) Project Deliverables The deliverables for this project is consisting into four main sections: Research Analysis and Design Implementation and Testing Testing and Evaluation Project management 2.1 Research In this section, it will gather information about HCI, and similar software to the one that will be built and the language that decide to use. 2.2 Analysis and Design Analysis is the process of breaking a case or topic into many smaller parts to increase a better understanding of it. This way will helps to find the functionality of the software should have, and what programming language should used to implement it, and solve problems found during the research section, and discuss what methodology will use for both designing and implementing the system. Design method consists of the modeling language and the design process. Modeling language is a convention detailing how the design will be written on the paper. Unified Language is an example of a modeling language (UML). It makes details on how the software will be developed. 2.3 Implementation and Testing The design section will contain screen designs as well as the core design of the software and the way it is implemented and it will include the testing and evaluation. 2.4 Testing and Evaluation Testing is establishing a software system to find out the errors. Testing a set of programs against requirements specification expressed in different diagram such as data flow and entity relationship diagrams. In the process of software development, testing has historically been left until the code has been written. [1] Testing code done by different people at different times. The testers are depending on which testing is being done and the resources allocated in order to tasting a particular software product. The testers could be: the programmers, a team of testers, people represent the market for the software, the client and maintainer [1]. During and after implementation the software, code is being tested .Pre-implementation testing is done by a testing team of reviewers project manager or clients or system developers. After implementation or code testing, software developers prefer to taste the system from the bottom up, in order to check if they launch to have coded correctly. The testers applying two main testing techniques: black box testing and white box testing. There are many different of testing such as unit testing, test phases, system testing, integration testing, regression testing , acceptance testing, release testing and beta testing à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦..[1] 2.5 Project Management Eatch project can run smoothly and efficiently according to some sort of managements. This ways of monitoring the project is important in order to controlling the costs and benefits of any project. If there are occurred reasons that make the work is running late, or make the costs are beginning to escalate, it is necessary and essential to discover this as soon as possible and to be able to recovery these bugs . That cause uncovered a problem then corrective action can be taken to have the possible effects of the problem reduced. The project manager is responsible for organizing planning, monitoring and controlling the project only if the management side has been separated from the technical development. [2] The task of the project management, plan, estimate time and effort, identify tasks for the team, use prior experience, schedule work, use resources, monitor and control the progress of the project, evaluate what is priority , and identify quickly the causes of problems all these are expensive, in terms of both time and money. [2]It is important to project manager to be able to identify areas of risk, such as lack of knowledge, occurred new technologies or problems relating to requirements, and to obviate these all plans should be prepared.[2] most of project managers use such as graphics of charts to scheduling their work there are many different types of char, they mainly fall into one of two categories, bar chart which is often referred to Gantt chart) and network chart which is often referred to (CPM or PERT or CPA) in this project well use the Gantt Chart in order to organize our timing,. Chapter Three Research Similar Product There are a variety of software solutions available for Cashier Assistant (point of sale). Several different approaches are examined here to compare different features and gain an understanding of the best approach to take when designing a Cashier Assistant (POS) in the following pages, good and bad points about surveyed application will be examined on what to add or to improve in the software to be. The layout of this examination is follow: The name of the being application A list of good points about the application A list of bad point about the application 3.1 Harolds Fine Home Lighting is a company based on tradition with 17 independent workstations. 3.1.1 Good Points Fast Eliminate the need for separate point of sale terminal. Provide quick verification and processing of credit cards at the POS. Simple bar coding and efficient, create a reliable way to control inventory. 3.1.2 Bad Points Huge data, there is no automatically back up. Difficult to update 3.2 Rod Works 5 stores depends on sale items 3.2.1 Good Points Automatically generate purchase orders when items fall below recorder levels Reduce inventory carrying costs by tracking inventory turns and gaining Generate discrepancy reports to resolve errors in physical inventory 3.2.2 Bad Point Huge data, there is no automatically back up. Difficult to update Research into HCI Human computer interaction is created by computer software and hardware. Human computer interaction makes computer and human interface more interesting and satisfies users needs. Human computer interaction design methodologies are based on User Centered Design. They are focus group, affordable analysis, participatory design, rapid prototyping, user scenario, value-sensitive design, and contextual design, etc. In Human computer interaction design seven principles are considered, tolerance, simplicity, Visibility, Affordance, Feedback, Structure, Consistency, etc. web interface and normal GUI are used according to the purpose. It is used for conferences, space shuttles, aircrafts, etc[3] The human-computer interface is the point of communication between the user and the computer. There are several goals depend on the end user to gain his interaction. Environment: depend where the user is used his own machine in which environment, college park whatever. Input information: the tasks the required by the user to the computer. Output data: whatever have generated from the computer represented to the user. Feedback: whatever the user required pass to the computer and forward back. HCI is affected by several forces of future computing for example:[5] Reduction hardware price guiding to larger memories and quicker systems. Miniaturization of hardware guiding to portability. Decrease in power needs guiding to portability. New present technologies guiding to the packaging of computational machines in new shapes. Specialized hardware guiding to new roles. Improved progress of network communication and shared out computing. Increasingly extensive use of computers, especially by user who are outside of the computing occupation. Growing novelty in input techniques (e.g., voice, gesture, pen), combined with lowering price, guiding to fast computerization by people who left out of the computer insurgency. Widespread common concerns guiding to get better contact computers by disadvantaged groups Interview Techniques interview Inputs interview Outputs interview Interaction Techniques interview Issues kinds of input principle s (e.g., choice, distinct parameter specification, nonstop control) Input techniques: keyboard, menus, mouse-, pen-based, voice. kinds of output principles, express precise information, abstract information, show processes, create illustration of information) Output techniques like: scrolling present, windows, animation, sprites, fish-eye displays) Screen describe issues (e.g., focus, clutter, visual logic) Dialogue type and techniques for example: form filling, menu selection, icons and direct treatment, generic functions) searching, error management Multimedia and non-graphical dialogues: mic, speaker, voice mail, video mail, active documents, CD-ROM Real-time reaction issues Manual organize theory Supervisory control, automatic systems, embedded systems Standards protection 3.2 Research on Software Tools 3.2.1 Research on Java http://www.csci.csusb.edu/dick/samples/java.html http://101.lv/learn/Java/ch1.htm Java is an object oriented program it is often used in VCRs and toasters it was originally called OAK it is a high level language developed by Sun Microsystems. One a real information is that Java is based on the first version of C++. Java includes a set of class libraries that provide basic data types it is standard Java environment, system input and output capabilities, and other utility functions. Java is Platform that means it is easy to move the program from one computer to other. This is as an advantage of java over other programming languages. To execute a Java program a bytecode interpreter should be run. Bytecode is built into every Java-enabled browser. it is read the bytecodes and executes your Java program it is often called the Java virtual machine or the Java runtime. Java is a language that should compiled into the special machines code to then interpret. The role of the interpreter is to protect the machine from errors that can break down operating systems in C++. Compiled code can run on different systems, so a Java program can be across via a network to a machine with any different operating system you have it and with different GUI. Since java is high-level language it used to write applet and applications. An applet is a small program should send it cross the internet and interpreted on the client machine by a Java-aware browser. Java application can only be compiled and then run on the same machine. That why you cannot run the java if you do not have an application or a WWW page that refers to it. Once you decide to run the java you may have to change the properties of your browser this is a security issue in order to have the trust from your browser in order to use the compiler, that why when you do not recognize the compiler version you w ill face that your applet is rejected. 3.2.2 Visual Basic It is a programming language and environment developed for such type of windows or web application or reports and many purpose belong to development.[10]. since its launch in 1990, the Visual Basic come up to be the custom for programming languages. Now there are visual environments for many programming languages, including both C and C++, plus for Pascal and Java. Sometimes VB called RAD system because it is enable programmers to speedily build proposal applications. VB was one of the first products to supply interface environment for user, plus the VB programmers can insert a substantial quantity of code just by dragging and dropping control, like using buttons, text box, radio buttonà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦act and then defining them by using the properties functions. Although not a true OOP language, it is sometimes known as an event-driven language because each object can act in response to several events for example when we use a mouse click. 3.2.3 C# Language C# is an object-oriented language. It is further includes support for component-oriented programming. C# has a unified type system. All C# types, have primitive types(int and double, inherit from a single object type). C# supports user-defined reference types and value types, allowing dynamic allocation of objects and-line storage of lightweight formations. C# programs consist of one or more source files .Concepts in C# are programs, namespaces, types, members, and assemblies. Programs declare types, which contain members and can be organized into namespaces. Classes and interfaces are examples of types. Fields, methods, properties, and events are examples of members. When C# programs are compiled, they are physically packaged into. Assemblies have both executable code in the form of Intermediate Language (IL) orders, and symbolic information in the form of metadata. Before the executed begin, the Intermediate Language code is directly changed to processor-specific code by help of the Just-In-Time compiler of .net Common Language Run time (CLR). Variables types: value types and reference types. value types include their data where variables of reference types store references to their data. With reference types, it is likely to have two variables to reference the same object helping for operations on one variable to affect the object referenced by the other variable. Through value types, the variables have their own copy of the data. It is possible on one to affect the other. 3.3 Research on Database 3.3.1 Research on SQL Server SQL Server Aclient server is made of two components: an application that is used to present the application data, and a database system that is used to store it. The application may used the visual studio 2005 or access or some other graphical user interface. And to store the database it is suitable to use SQL server. Database is a collection of objects stored in the SQL server. This collection of objects including tables, views, stored procedures, functions and other object necessary to build the database. As know the tables are the first generally thing that you add to a SQL server. And each table contains information about specific case. Once the tables are created the user should mentioned the keys for each table. SQL server stored procedures and compiled code and executed on the server. You can execute them through any client(VB.net, microsoft access, microsoft wordà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦) If you waant to modify the a stored procedure you can modify it from the server. The change you do impact to all user client thet call the stored procedure. Microsoft recognize that there is a plethora of database user with disparate needs. That why they release the following six version: SQL server 2005 Express edition SQL server 2005 workgroup edition SQL server 2005 developer edition SQL server 2005 standard edition SQL server 2005 enterprise edition SQL server 2005 mobile edition. Features are provided by database engine http://www.informit.com/guides/content.aspx?g=sqlserverseqNum=14 Clustering Services It is operating system allows the user to recover immediately from currently system to another. Replication services remains data in synchronization between SQL Server databases and other database like Oracle, Microsoft Accessect. other using for It is to send data to several systems. XML transfer data between mixed programs or data sources. SQL Server 2008 allow the user to report on SQL Server 2008 adds a new Policy Based Management system to SQL Server, which allows you to report on and put in force a exact pattern for any database object. SQL Server 2008 can track the performance and other data in a central location and raise a report. In SQL server a provider for power shell is including. This helps the user to save scrip programs and for windows, Microsoft exchange, and Microsoft office too. The SQL Server provider deals with SQL Server Instances, Databases and Database Objects . this let the user deal with them in perceptive way. Reporting services has been built in SQL server 2000 and to SQL server 2005 and next other modern versions. The feature helps the user to do their work through SQL server directly via the browser. 3.2.3 Research on Oracle The Oracle Database [12]referred to RDBMS or as Oracle (RDBMS). As of 2009[update], Oracle remains a major presence in database computing. Oracle RDBMS stored data logically in table spaces and in data files if the it is in physicaly form. Oracle DBM tracks the data stored with the help of the information that is stored in the system table space itself. In 1970, oracle was the first commercial relation database based on the relational language SQL. It is goes in such development; oracle tools could support many methodologies. Oracle users would purchase the database, but it was possible to purchase some tools that make up the oracle product rang but not others. Designer 2000 was formally known as oracle CASE, and is helpful on data and process modeling. Developer 2000 is used to build a application, once it has been designed using oracle designer 2000. Discoverer 2000 consists of a suite of user friendly query tools designed for ad-hoc reporting. The oracle database management system is central to these tools, through many ends -user are hardly aware of its presence. The main method of communicating directly with the oracle database is by using the SQL language. Although this stands for SQL. It enables the experienced user to do more than just handle queries. There are extensions to the basic SQL language provided on Oracle and together they from PL/SQL. The SQL optimizer attempts to make each SQL statements as efficient as possible when executed. SQL procedure can be trigger by certain events, for example after updating or deleting a record. The security feature are now very sophisticated; you need system previleges to access the database and object level privileges at different levels to query, insert, delete and updating, any object stored in the database. Data is validated through data constraints, that is, only allowing permitted values of data to be entered into the database Oracle database management tracks its data storage with the help of information stored in the system space table. Oracle RDBMS is supported localy managed table space which help store space management information in their headers better than in the table space. The history of Oracle database. (1979) was the first released Oracle version 2 (1982) released Oracle version 3 (1984) released Oracle version 4 (1986) released Oracle version 5 (1988) released especial version for OS mackintosh Oracle version 1 (1989) released Oracle version 6 (1993) released Oracle version 7 (1997) released Oracle version 8 (1999) released Oracle version 8i (2001) released Oracle version 9i (2003) released Oracle version 10g (2007) released Oracle version 11g 3.4 Research into Methodologies 3.4.1 Research into Traditional System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) The rapid increase in the power[13], speed and capacity of computers, and the demands of clients and the market-place have encouraged software developers to attempt to develop ever more ambitious systems. First attempt was in 1960s and early 1970s but this was a complex and system, it was difficult to maintain and did not do what was required. The system life cycle was an attempt to establish a structured approach to analyzing designing and building software systems. The system life cycle divided the development of system into stages. Feasibility Study: the development team visits the customer and studies their system. They investigate requires in the given system. End of the feasibility study, the team supply a document that holds the different specific recommendations for the candidate system, personnel assignments, costs, project schedule, target dates etc. The purpose of this phase is to find out the need and to define the problem that needs to be solved. Analysis and design: The software development process, the softwares overall structure and its nuances are defined. In terms of the client/server technology, the number of tiers needed for the package architecture, the database design, the data structure design etc are all defined in this phase. A software development model is thus created. Analysis and Design are very crucial in the whole development cycle. Any glitch in the design phase could be very expensive to solve in the later stage of the software development. Much care is taken during this phase. The logical system of the product is developed in this phase. Code Generation: The design must be translated into a machine-readable form. The code generation step performs this task. If the design is performed in a detailed manner, code generation can be accomplished without much complication. Programming tools like compilers, interpreters, debuggers etc are used to generate the code. Different high level programming languages like C, C++, Pascal, Java are used for coding. With respect to the type of application, the right programming language is chosen. Testing: The software program testing begins when the code is generated. There are Different testing methodologies are available to solve the bugs. Maintenance: Once the software delivered to the customer, maintenance phase is important for many reasons could change once the system is used by the clients. Bugs could happen because of some unexpected input values into the system and system directly affects the software operations. The software should be developed to accommodate changes that could happen during the post implementation period. 3.4.2 Structured System Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) it is one of the methodologies that launch to analysis and design of IS. It is consist into sequence of stages: Feasibility Stage Analyze the case that you have at a high level, by using Data Flow Diagram to explain how system is work and to think about the problems. These parts are including to this stage: Build up a Business Activity Model(BAM). Study the requirements. study the processing. Study data. Get logical view of present services. Define Requirements Stage Get an idea about the old environment, by know the system requirements and recognized the business environment by modeled them by using a DFD and Logical Data Structure. Requirements Specification Stage This stage is to assist the management, by using BSOs will telling the range and functionalities to provide and present them. They also need financial and risk evaluations to be prepared, and require to be supported by outline implementation reports. These parts are including to first stage: Develop mandatory data model. Receive system functions. Grow user job specifications. Enhance mandatory data model. Develop specification samples. Build up processing specification. Verify system objectives. Logical System Specification Stage Officially this stage is to choice the feasible options. The development/implementation environments are particular based on this choice. Logical System Specification Stage In this stage Both Processes and logical designs should update, as well the dialogs are specified these parts are including to this stage: Classify user dialogue. Define the updating processes. Classify enquiry processes. Physical Design Stage The purpose of this stage is to denote the physical data and process design. The way to define them is to use the language and features of physical environment and incorporating installation. These parts are including to this stage: Arranging for physical design. Supplement the specification of functions. Increase developing for both data and process designs. 3.4.3 Rapid Application Development (RAD) [15] Rapid application development is one of the agile method, it is shorten the life cycle and to produce information system more quickly in order to respond to rapidly changing business requirement . it develops the projects faster and higher quality by using groups to gather requirements. Requirement planning User design constructions cutover in requirement phase , developer seek to obtain input from users in order to determine set of system requirements. In the user phase, is based on the sample cycle, involving experienced users and developers. This phase is consisting of a sequence of workshops, each one of them may be takes three days. During this phase the Tool CASE is used to build the prototype. The construction phase is to produce or generate the code from the CASE prototype, and the new system is validated by users. The final phase is cutover. It is cover the system testing, users training and introduction of the system into the client organization. RAD has a number of obvious advantages: Resistance to change in the organization is minimized and the new system is welcome, because of the high degree of users participation in the whole process. The system is developed and delivered more quickly than with traditional development approaches. The speed of the development and the use of relatively small teams means that the RAD tend to be cheaper than their traditional counterparts. The speed of RAD means also it is closely related to current needs of the business. 3.4.5. Soft System Methodology Soft systems methodology (SSM) was developed by Peter Check land and his colleagues at Lancaster University in the 1970s [19]. It is designed to shape interventions in the problematic situations encountered in management, organizational and policy contexts, where there are often no straightforward problems or easy solutions. Though informed by systems engineering approaches, it breaks with them by recognizing the central importance of perspective or world-view in social situations. It differs significantly from the systems science approaches developed in the 1960s, and is more reflective of action research in its philosophy and approach. SSM is widely described as a seven-stage process, as follows: 1. Identifying the problematic situation that it is desired to intervene in 2. Researching the situation and building a rich picture (interpretive representation) of it 3. Selecting perspectives and building root definitions (key processes that need to take place within the desired system) 4. Developing a conceptual model of the change system 5. Comparing the model with the real-world situation 6. Defining the changes to be implemented 7. Taking action. Stage 1: finding out is concerned with identifying and providing a brief description of the situation it is desired to intervene in. Stage 2: modeling This stage is concerned with producing definitions of transformation processes that should achieve the desired intervention(s). Stage 3: dialogue Conceptually the dialogue stage involves examining the change model against the real-world situation, usually as represented by the rich picture and associated analyses, and checking that it makes sense. Often the change model needs adjusting, and sometimes the rich picture needs to be developed further. Stage 4: defining and taking action This stage will vary depending on the specific change project, but essentially it involves developing the (revised) change model into a concrete

Herzog And De Meuron, The Phil :: essays research papers

Herzog and de Meuron work together as architect partners. Their designs for most of their buildings have a common or similar nature. This nature carries out the simplicity of the shape of a box, which consists of a flat roof and large windows. This design gives the characteristics of Herzog and de Meuron’s buildings. In other words, we can say that this is their buildings’ identity. Indeed, this design is very similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s design, which also shows today’s modern style of architecture. Their designs both carry the philosophy of â€Å"organic architecture†. This means the building is designed to fit its natural surroundings. Even the form of the building is designed to develop from its environment. So to speak, we can say that the building seems to grow out of its natural surroundings. In short, Herzog and de Meuron, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright, both design building in their natural form, assimilating its form to the environment. As we notice the design in Herzog and de Meuron’s Plywood House shows the organic form of architecture, we can say that they believed that the architectural form must ultimately be determined in each case by the particular function of the building. Thus, the building’s environment and the type of materials employed in the structure carries out the reason why such material is chosen for the building. Clearly, plywood is the main architectural material for the Plywood House. Indeed, this is a very suitable material for the surrounding environment. The reason is because this material provides the organic feel of the countryside. In fact, this chosen material has very much influenced the shapes of the building. There are no curves, nor bay window in the design of the building, and therefore, as we can see from the plan of the building there are only straight lines of the walls of the building. (See plan of drawing) Metaphorically speaking, the building is like boxes that co nnect to each other. Consequently, we can say that plywood is not a very flexible material that it would be difficult to provide curves for the building. Plywood consists of several layers, or plies, of wood thoroughly bonded to one another by glue or synthetic resins. The layers are laid with the grain in different directions, generally perpendicular to one another, and therefore, the resultant sheet of plywood is equally strong in all directions.

Truth Disguised By Words :: essays research papers

Truth Disguised by Words Throughout history people have used disguises to deceive others to hide their true identity. Hiding ones true identity is a predominant theme throughout King Lear for characters dress up to deceive their friends and family. Another use of disguise in this play is using words to hide ones true emotions and personality. Words have a strong importance to the characters in this play which leads to easy manipulation. Three characters use words that do not reflect their true feelings to deceive and manipulate their friends and family to do things that they would otherwise not do if their true intentions were know. These three characters are Goneril and Regan, the two eldest daughters of King Lear, and Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester. They lie, deceive, fabricate evidence, overpower and betray their father and the other people closest in their lives, including each other. All three of these characters have used their mastery of the English language to portray an intention differe nt from their true feelings and emotions and succeed in fooling the other characters in the play to obey them. Throughout King Lear cruelty and selfishness is an ongoing theme and sentiment which is mainly generated from Lear's two eldest daughters, Goneril and Regan. Though these two sisters are virtually one character during most of the play they do even turn on each other when need takes over their heart. Goneril and Regan begin the play by professing their deep undying love for their father. These speeches were necessary if they wish to aquire their deserved piece of land and power from their father. In these two speeches Goneril and Regan use such phrases as "A love that makes breath poor and speech unable"(I, i, 60) and "And find I am alone felicitate / In your dear highness' love." (I, i, 75-6) while the daughter with the truest love towards her father refuses to speak for she "cannot heave / My heart into my mouth."(I, i, 91-2). The love Cordelia could not express in words her sisters were able to so insincerely, for if their love was true love it wo uld not be able to be expressed in just words because emotion would take over any meaning words had. This is the first time we see them speak in the play and their first words are insincere which is definitely a sign of the lack of respect they give to the meaning of words throughout the continuation of the play.

Glee Essay

Topic 2. ‘There is nothing ironic about show choir! ’ – Rachel Cohen Is Rachel’s assessment of the musical performances on Glee correct? Discuss the interplay of melodrama, irony and intertextuality in Glee. Your essay should contain detailed analysis of at least two scenes from Glee’s 1st season. Your essay should also make reference to your core course readings on television and postmodernism. Due 14 September heir true voice; and this one was, to me, ultimately about the series demonstrating its own voice and its space within the world of contemporary musicals. I don’t know what exactly I expected when I heard Joss Whedon would be directing, although it did send me diving for my Buffy The Vampire Slayer sing-along DVD. What I didn’t expect was an episode that didn’t feel like Whedon at all but felt intensely like Glee, more specifically the Glee that endeared itself to me in the first half of the season.What has always appeale d to me about Glee, and apparently to Joss Whedon based on this episode and his interview on Fox’s website , was the show’s delicate balance of tongue-in-cheek bitter cynicism, which keeps Glee blessedly away from High School Musical territory, and a sometimes heartbreakingly authentic sentimentality that draws me into a deeply emotional engagement with the characters and a desire to see them triumph.As others on this blog have mentioned, the stunt shows, focusing around a musical theme or dance conceit, are fun but can bring the show away from its narrative engagement and this mix of sincerity and cynicism that musical numbers have often been harnessed in service of. â€Å"Dream On† brought back this dynamic and foregrounded it in contrast to some of the more music-themed recent episodes. Neil Patrick Harris is the king of bitter(sweet) cynicism, and his performance as Bryan Ryan maintained the comedy in what otherwise was in danger of becoming a maudlin episod e.Rachel and Artie’s storylines gave both characters an opportunity for growth. Artie’s triumphantly joyful flash mob scene (fangirl moment – thank you Glee, for a flash mob! ) in particular made his final moments of aching vulnerability that much more poignant. There has been reflection on this blog about the way that Glee sometimes uses, one might even say exploits, disabled characters for emotional endings and to humanize its more difficult characters (Sue and Rachel), and Artie’s storyline comes dangerously close to becoming part of this trend.There are certainly issues with how Artie’s storyline is presented in this episode, and I leave those issues for other commentators more knowledgeable in these areas. Problematic though this is, it is consistent with the series’ ethos from the beginning. The show has always undermined its own after-school special themes, or at least made them less saccharine, by unabashedly drawing on stereotypes a nd refusing after-school special endings: Artie cannot dance, Tina doesn’t do the â€Å"right† thing. All is not well in McKinley High.If it were, it wouldn’t be Glee. That this episode spoke most clearly with what I feel is Glee’s unique voice is made even more important through its intertextuality, which evoked a self-awareness on the part of the series about its place amongst contemporary musicals. Here again we return to Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris. Both figures have had important roles in bringing contemporary uses of the musical to television and the web. They worked together on the web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.Neil Patrick Harris has performed in musical episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and Whedon’s musical episode of Buffy often makes lists of the best musical television episodes of all time. In this same episode that the guest director and guest star positioned Glee within th e contemporary use of the musical on television, we discover that Shelby Corcoran is Rachel’s mother. Shelby is played by Idina Menzel, who originated Maureen in Rent and Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway, with Glee guest star Kristin Chenoweth.Menzel and Chenoweth further link Glee to the tradition of the contemporary musical that may be a much more appropriate reference here than for the more obvious, but deceptive, High School Musical. Contemporary musicals have become increasingly mature, cynical, parodic and subversive, trends that Glee falls squarely within. In an episode so drenched in references to the contemporary musical context, it was all the more important that Glee followed the examples of its characters in the last episode and emphasized its own unique voice.Whedon showed himself to be a true Gleek by emphasizing the voice of the show over his own. egardless of whether you are a Gleek (if you don’t know this term, read on), you may have noticed the buzz surr ounding FOX’s musical comedy, which returned Tuesday to the second-best ratings of the night after a â€Å"Gleek Week† of promotional appearances and news coverage. Created by Ian Brennan, Brad Falchuk, and Ryan Murphy, Glee focuses on a diverse group of teenagers participating in a high school show choir, treating the participants in â€Å"New Directions† with alternating doses of warmth and snark.It also is one of the first series in the last few decades to successfully incorporate musical numbers; its music has become a lucrative cross-promotional element of the Glee phenomenon. The series has garnered ardent fans, or Gleeks, around the world — evident in the many websites dedicated to it, such as Gleeks United, Glee Club Online, Forum Francais de Glee, Glee Brazil, and my favorite, What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear? , inspired by the fashions worn by the eponymous guidance counselor with a penchant for all things sterile and for sexy-librarian sweaters.J ust as notable, it appears to have been embraced as particularly American. The cast was invited by First Lady Michelle Obama to sing at the White House’s annual Easter egg roll last weekend, and they followed that up with a Glee-themed episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show (she praised them as the â€Å"hardest working cast on television†). News coverage on the return of Glee and spoilers have followed in most major news outlets—including two dueling reviews in The New York Times—and in scholarly forums (a shout out to In Media Res, which recently hosted a Glee-themed week).What is it about Glee that has inspired this phenomenon? Based on my own experience, as a Gleek and as a scholar focusing on the series in my research, I find the show’s play with diversity equally satisfying and frustrating, and always compelling (arguably, it is â€Å"post-racial† and reinforcing of traditional racial stereotypes). And it seems that for many fans, the showà ¢â‚¬â„¢s focus on underdogs overcoming challenge, sly satire, and feel-good musical numbers are clear pulls.With respect to these and other appeals, Glee is a prime illustration of what Valerie Wee has described as hyper-postmodern media culture. A mash-up of generic influences, intertextual references, music, and ideological content that is both eerily nostalgic and forward-thinking, the series can be read and enjoyed by fans in multiple and diverging ways. This week’s episode, â€Å"Hell-o,† provided a full helping of these and other pleasures.We witnessed cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)’s return to the high school and renewed mission of obliterating the glee club and the long-awaited blossoming of two romantic relationships, Mr. Shuester and Emma and Rachel and Finn, although difficulties naturally arise for both couples. In these and other entanglements as New Directions looks toward regionals, the timing and humor are spot on, not the least of which was the limiting of the musical numbers to songs with the word â€Å"hell† in the title.The hilarious mix that ensues includes â€Å"Hello, I Love You,† â€Å"Highway to Hell,† and â€Å"Hello, Goodbye. † And the narrative may not be important as the sum of Glee’s parts; they include the hyper-postmodern mash-up described above, exciting and talented performers, upbeat music that can be enjoyed in other arenas, sweetly geeky fandom, and the overall ethos of embracing the loveable loser in all of us. Are you a Gleek, and if so, what do you think encourages its appeal? What do you make of the series as a contemporary television, music, or theatrical text?In response to this complicated series we plan to follow Glee, its paratexts, and its fandom on a weekly basis as it continues to air this season. We hope you’ll take part in the discussion Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic. com, the leading online journa l of Catholic faith, culture, and politics. The musical comedy-drama Glee debuted on Fox just over a year ago. The story of a high school Spanish teacher's attempts to resurrect the Lima, Ohio, high school glee club surprised critics by ending its first season ranked at 33 in the Nielsen ratings.Now in its second season, the show's ratings have only gone up, as it climbed to the #15 spot last week. On May 23, the plans for a third season of Glee were announced. While there's no reason its popularity won't continue to climb, the challenge of producing a primetime musical series to appeal to a generation not brought up on the traditional musicals like Camelot, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music is obvious: How do you combine a contemporary story and characters with music and dance in a way that does not send viewers, especially younger ones, groaning in the direction of their PS3s and iPhones?The producers of Glee found their solution in the example of Chicago, the Broadway show where the musical numbers were always performed in the context of a cabaret. The characters of Glee don't burst into song in the manner of, say, Rodgers and Hammerstein; rather, the strongly choreographed musical numbers – five to eight each episode – are usually staged as the glee club's performances or rehearsals. Thus, Glee retains enough of a realistic feel to appeal to a younger audience. The music, a combination of pop and Broadway standards newly rranged by Adam Anders, appeals to all ages and has been a phenomenal success on CD and downloads, with over $2 million in digital sales. The cast of Glee had 25 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2009, more than any artist since the Beatles in 1964. Their performance of â€Å"Don't Stop Believin'† went gold last November, with over half a million dollars in sales. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Glee's achievement its ability to keep three generations of viewers – children, parents, and grandparent s – in front of the TV together.The choreography of Zachary Woodlee, sexy without being sleazy, evokes Broadway's Jerome Robbins rather than Bob Fosse, much less the crotch-grabbing antics of tuneless rappers. Viewers with memories of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, or even the June Taylor Dancers on The Jackie Gleason Show, find themselves smiling once again. The producers and cast members also maintain tasteful control over material chosen – from older classics like â€Å"Over the Rainbow,† â€Å"One Less Bell to Answer,† â€Å"Smile,† and â€Å"I Could Have Danced All Night,† with newer ones such as â€Å"Proud Mary,† â€Å"Piano Man,† â€Å"Jump,† â€Å"Bootylicious,† and Josh Groban's â€Å"You Raise Me Up. When a Rolling Stone critic snidely chides Glee's leading actor, Matthew Morrison, saying he â€Å"couldn't rap his way out of 98 ° rehearsal,† he seems oblivious to the fact that more than an occas ional nod to rap would immediately begin thinning its audience (starting with me). The choice to offset the Disney-like innocence of Will Schuester, played by Morrison, with the cynical cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), works perfectly. The conflict between Schuester and Sylvester becomes nothing less than the perennial clash of ars gratia artis (arts for arts sake) with the cultural philistines.The writing for Sylvester's character is so good it has spawned its own wiki thread. Take, for example, her attitude toward intimacy in marriage: â€Å"I, for one, think intimacy has no place in a marriage. Walked in on my parents once, and it was like seeing two walruses wrestling. † But beyond the Schuester and Sylvester rivalry, Glee fails to achieve the generational integration of taste in its characters and storyline that it has attained with its music and dancing. Will's wife, Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig), seems like a refugee from John Sayles' Serial Mom, where the ent irety of middle-class family life is cynically, and hilariously, parodied.The viewer is left constantly questioning how Will, whose fundamental decency and kindness are repeatedly evoked, could have married such a demented twit as Terri. Such jarring contrasts of character abound in Glee. Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), the lead singer of the glee club and quarterback of the football team, doesn't seem to know a hot tub cannot serve as a medium for impregnating his cheerleader girlfriend, Quinn Fabray; meanwhile, his best friend, Puck Puckerman (Mark Salling), who did get Quinn pregnant, is rampaging though the neighborhood sleeping with the â€Å"cougar† mothers of his classmates.There are also politically correct touches. Kurt Hummel (Chris Kolfer), the member of the glee club who likes to dress in black lace, not only â€Å"comes out† in the course of the first season but also leads the winless football team to their first victory by teaching them all how to dance. Yet Kurt's character is not made into a complete caricature: While his achievement on the gridiron is simply silly, the scene where he admits to his blue-collar father his same-sex attraction is quite affecting – and, I might add, realistic.Not to be outdone, Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), who has the best voice in the cast, is also the most neurotic, having been raised by two homosexual fathers. Rachel eventually discovers that her birth mother is the coach of the rival glee club. Such is the search for postmodern innocence in Glee – there is too much water under the cultural bridge to directly revive the musical idiom and heritage of the 1940s and 1950s that became second nature to so many baby-boomers.Before Glee, of course, there was Stephen Sondheim, who throughout his career as a composer and lyricist struggled with the same question of how to extend the musical to an audience that no longer believed in the univocal meaning of â€Å"I love you. † We can be grate ful to the creators of Glee for making an effort to bring us a popular entertainment with such a high level of singing and dancing. The temptation will be to lose sight of the initial choices that have led to its success and, particularly, the generational breadth of its audience.Just as American Idol has found out the hard way from its plunging ratings, once you start trying to please only the teenagers, the whole enterprise will quickly collapse Mid-April, with its tax deadline, is a time that many people dread; this year, however, millions looked forward to it with great eagerness, because April 13th brought the first episode of â€Å"Glee† after a four-month hiatus. The Fox show, set in the fictional William McKinley High School, inLima, Ohio, is part satirical comedy, part musical, and—since its setting is high school—a bit of a drama. It’s not exactly a high-school musical, and it’s not exactly â€Å"High School Musical,† the Disney so ng-and-dance franchise, although, like that TV movie and its brand extensions, it has a long tail of tie-in merchandise and live performances. It also has over-the-moon fans—â€Å"gleeks,† they happily call themselves—which is a notable thing for a mainstream, non-niche network show that began only last fall.The first post-hiatus episode had more than thirteen million viewers; the second, which featured the songs of Madonna, was close behind. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the show follows â€Å"American Idol† on Tuesday nights—though the pairing did pain many people a couple of weeks ago, when a live edition of â€Å"Idol† ran long, causing DVRs across the land to cut off the last minutes of â€Å"Glee. † And â€Å"Glee,† although a work of fiction, is â€Å"Idol† ’s spawn, part of the current craze for watching star-making (and dream-crushing) machinery at work. Glee† was created and is written by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan. Of the three, Murphy is the best known, having created the just ended FX psychomelodrama â€Å"Nip/Tuck† (for which Falchuk was a writer and a producer) and the 1999 WB comedy â€Å"Popular,† which was also a sendup of teen-age archetypes—as in â€Å"Glee,† there was a star football player who was torn between sports and the stage—but involved much more extracurricular activity among parents and families.Except for the teachers and the administrators at McKinley High, few adults appear in â€Å"Glee,† which gives the series a cartoonish feel that’s reinforced by the fact that the grownups we do see, well meaning though they may be, are as cluelessly wrapped up in themselves as the young people are. (Oddly, or not, of the group of about ten students we hang out with two have lost a parent.It seems like a lot. ) The success of â€Å"Glee† depends on the energy and the obvious talent of its young (but way beyond high-school age) performers, and on Jane Lynch, who plays Sue Sylvester, the acid-tongued, sneaky, and completely loony cheerleading coach, whose every line of dialogue is quotable (and is duly quoted, minutes after being delivered, on Facebook pages and in Twitter feeds).Sue’s counterbalance, and nemesis, is Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison, who has a solid Broadway background and Leyendecker good looks, including thick, wavy hair that Sue mocks, in elegant variations, pretty much every time she sees Will), a youngish Spanish teacher and a graduate of McKinley High in the days when it had a top-notch show choir. Will makes it his project to bring back that glory, and he starts by tricking the captain of the football team (Cory Monteith), whom he hears singing in the shower after practice one day, into joining his ragtag crew.If Will gets funding for his group, the economy being tough—Sue’s cheerleading crew will lose theirs. Will also wants some of Sue’s girls—the Cheerios—for his group. She tells him that he doesn’t get it—that he can’t blur the lines in the rigid caste system that is high school: â€Å"Your jocks and your popular kids—up in the penthouse. Your invisibles and the kids playing live-action druids and trolls out in the forest—bottom floor. † What about the Glee kids? Will asks. What category are they in? â€Å"Sub-basement,† she says. from the issue * cartoon bank * e-mail this The real engine of the show isn’t the machinations of its characters or its unfolding plot but its basic structure. Because â€Å"Glee† is actually about a group of singers, it doesn’t seem artificial when the cast breaks into song; the music fits into the proceedings organically. The songs—which Murphy chooses—range from oldies to newies, so that there is, theoretically, something for everybody, from â€Å"Sing Sing Sin g† and â€Å"Sweet Caroline† to â€Å"Gives You Hell† and â€Å"Single Ladies. Still, it must be said, even people who love these songs may find something to hate in the style of singing sometimes showcased in â€Å"Glee†Ã¢â‚¬â€the earsplitting, maniacally melismatic car-alarm whine that Whitney Houston popularized—but, thankfully, there are quiet ballads to balance things out. Rachel, one of the choir members, has a bit of that pleading quality in her voice, but it suits her desperate ambition. She’s played by Lea Michele, who, at twenty-three, is a fifteen-year Broadway veteran.Yet her large talent doesn’t extend to the non-singing parts of her performance. I give it up for her gifts, but I don’t feel soul there. Rachel takes herself very seriously, and things very literally; one of the other kids, Artie (Kevin McHale), is wheelchair-bound, and Rachel complains to Will that Artie shouldn’t be singing â€Å"Sit Down Y ou’re Rockin’ the Boat† because he’s already sitting down. Artie’s take is that Will’s choice was meant to be ironic, and Rachel responds, â€Å"There’s nothing ironic about show choir! Of course there is, but there’s more, too—there’s also real glee, when things come together and when the characters get as much fleshing out as the stereotyping and the time constraints allow. With several production numbers per episode, almost all of which have remarkably weak choreography and poorly synched lip-synching, the writers haven’t been able to go very deep into anyone’s lif Read more http://www. newyorker. com/arts/critics/television/2010/05/10/100510crte_television_franklin#ixzz25UpjRdrc And then there’s Glee.Because there are no original songs, they’ve got to reference other works multiple times in every episode. When the show is at its best it takes cultural referents such as the video for Beyonce’s â€Å"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)† and turns it into something else by putting it in the context of trying to win a football game. It’s an utterly ridiculous and goofy scene that belies the reality of the way football works, but it’s also enormously satisfying and pretty funny to boot.The show’s musical numbers are to me more successful when they transport their sources to locales away from the stage or the classroom. And even when a musical number starts within the walls of William McKinley High School, if there are sequences that take us to other places and/or elsewhere in time, such as when Kurt recently sang â€Å"I Want to Hold Your Hand† for his classmates, that can also work incredibly well.But when their numbers are stagebound things often become stagnant, sucking the life out of the song and leaving a strong distaste in the mouths of many viewers, or at least those who know the original. Kurt poses for photos when he ’s not transporting us through time via the power of song. The apotheoses of these occurrences take place in the episode titled â€Å"The Substitute,† which features renditions of classic numbers from Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly 1952), which were themselves new takes on old songs.I’m not saying some texts are untouchable, but if you’re going to cover something so culturally iconic, you might want to do something totally new with it. So Gus Van Sant’s shot for shot remake of Psycho (1998)? Probably not a good idea. Conversely, Martin Scorsese’s reimagining of Ford’s The Searchers (1956) as an urban western in Taxi Driver (1976)? That works. If you don’t approach homage in this way it becomes nothing more than imitation, which might be the highest form of flattery but doesn’t make for good TV or cinema.So Glee’s rendition of Singin’ in the Rain’s title song incorporates a mash-up with Rihan na’s â€Å"Umbrella† and takes place on a stage full of water featuring the cast re-enacting moves from Gene Kelly’s classic sequence while also incorporating new moves into their set-piece number. There’s revision, and there’s imitation, and then there’s shitting on sanctity. I’m no purist and I’m not saying they shouldn’t have done it, but I would argue that despite the attempt at innovation, it doesn’t go far enough in its departure from either original.And the one thing that it’s missing that makes the movie’s original so great is passion you can feel. Kelly’s rendition takes place within the context of his falling in love with Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) and it results in Dionysian abandon, bringing to Technicolor life the giddy exhilaration that comes with new love, whereas Glee’s version is akin to watching craftsmen make shoes: there’s artistry in their production and the fin ished product is expertly made, but it lacks the soul that still makes Kelly’s sequence so resonant.Worse still is their take on â€Å"Make ‘Em Laugh,† which features Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr. ) in a duet that is at times a near step for step imitation of Donald O’Connor’s version. Again, failing to revise the setting and context in an interesting way leaves their rendition flat. It lacks the visceral joy of O’Connor’s sequence, the best part of which is that it makes the audience do what the title suggests, which is laugh.Will and Chang are great dancers, but as there’s no real reason for the scene other than to show that they can do a rote imitation of the steps, their version is totally devoid of life and spontaneity, making it seem as though it’s performed by technically proficient but non-sentient automatons. There’s no reason you can’t do a scene that’s al most identical to the original, so long as you update it in such a way so as to give the audience a new way to interpret it. Take Spike Lee’s incorporation of the Love/Hate tattoo sequence from Night of the Hunter (Laughton 1955) into Do the Right Thing (1989).Robert Mitchum’s iconic scene is as seemingly inviolable as anything from Singin’ in the Rain, but by transposing it from a depression era white psychopathic murdering preacher in the deep south to Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), a socially aware young African-American male living in what was at the time contemporary Bedford-Stuyvesant, Lee both pays homage and avoids pastiche, creating something new in the process, a model of artistic quotation that I’m afraid might be falling out of favor in our current media landscape, as evidenced on Glee and elsewhere * Why a blog and not a website? TUESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2011 Project: Art History. † Evolution of musical film genre†. â€Å"Williams and Hall both have argued that culture is not so much a set of things (television shows or paintings, for example) as a set of processes or practices through which individuals and groups come to make sense of things, including their own identities within and even against or outside the group† Stunken ; Cartwright (2009) The intention of the essay is to link evolution in cinema genres with the changes in the structure of popular culture.The quotation expresses the approach to culture as a process in which individuals interact, and this is the way the essay would like culture to be seen. Cinema is the perfect method to analyse popular culture from this point of view. Since its invention, it has given human beings a new and different opportunity of enjoying simulated worlds. Musical genre is particularly interesting because it has been present since the beginnings of cinema as one of the main Hollywood genres, and it has needed to introduce new strategies to survive. There are periods whe n it nearly disappeared before coming back in a new form (Hayward 2000).This essay is structured in such a way that it describes the periods of the genre and how its codes and conventions have been applied in each, and then analyses the main ideas from a social and theoretical point of view. But first, it may prove useful to discuss genre theory. Genre can be considered a strategy created by the cinema industry to identify a category of film. But it also can be described as a cognitive mechanism to help the viewer and filmmaker to know the expectations and hypothesis of the viewers when sitting in front of a screen to watch a film.Any genre is formed by a set of codes and conventions that the spectator has learned and can decode automatically and unconsciously. He or she feels pleasure in identification. This last point of view agrees with the one of the essay, as its aim is to connect the research on genre with what spectators experience when watching a film (Nelmes 2007) (Hayward 2000). It is also interesting to analyse what makes the spectator enjoy watching a film. Hayward (2000) identifies three stages in spectatorship theory. The first stage in the 70's treats the spectator as a passive subject.It is inspired on Freud's idea of the Oedipal complex and on Lacan's idea of the â€Å"mirror stage† that says that our identity is not coming from within, but from the way we see ourselves for the first time from the outside. In our adulthood we are in a constant state of desire that cannot be fulfilled because our unconscious mind cannot be influenced by the world around us. Freud's ideas associate the mirror stage with the relationship between the child and his mother. The male character sees his mother as an object and identifies with the father to try to meet the child's feeling of â€Å"castration† of not having access to the mother (Ward 2003).The spectator identifies the cinema screen with this â€Å"mirror†. The second stage, from the middle of the 70’s, is influenced by Laura Mulvey. She introduces the idea of sexual difference in identification with personalities and criticises the masculine point of view in cinema narrative that fetishizes women. The option for the female spectator is to identify with the passive female or with a masculine third character. In the third stage, from the 80's, we find investigations derived from the debate started by Mulvey. Some ideas talk about the bisexual position of the female child after her mirror stage.She first has the mother as her object of desire and then she has to change to the father as her object of desire. And the male spectator can also position himself bisexually, when identifying with the active and passive modes of the male character. The spectator is treated as an active subject, he or she does not occupy just one position in relation to the characters. Dyer considers that there are three periods in a genre: primitive, mature and decadent (Hayward 20 00). On the experimental primitive period, before the 30's, musical is generated as a hybrid from European operetta and American vaudeville and music hall (Hayward 2000).On the mature period, from the 30's to the 60's, first we find a director such as Busby Berkeley. His films do not pay attention to the plot, but rather, are vehicles for song and dance that are introduced in an artificial way. It is pure spectacle and sensuality. Sex is offered through the gaze (Hayward 2000). Later, songs and dances move with the narrative and are introduced on a more natural way. Fred Astaire develops an elegant, stylised style and Gene Kelly develops a more energetic one. The music was often composed by talented authors brought from Broadway.In the 50's, it is the first time the studio system pay special attention to the youth audience, linked to the rise in the music record industry. Singers as Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard became actors (Hayward 2000). For Altman musicals of the mature perio d are an â€Å"ode to marriage†. The narrative is based on the principle of pairing and mirroring. Male and female are paired, maturity is paired to immaturity. The main characters are mirrored in other couples; settings are mirrored in other settings (Hayward 2000). This conclusion was made following a synchronic analysis, i. . , just focusing in a moment in the film, specifically in the final scene. Recently, this same author has reflected about that approach and has analysed musical films diachronically. He proposes two hypotheses. Following the first one, in musicals main characters are first paired with a â€Å"wrong† partner to be finally paired to the â€Å"right† one. Films such as â€Å"An American in Paris† (Minnelli, 1951) follow this structure. The second hypothesis is more speculative. It is based in the idea that the relationships of the characters turn from homosocial to heterosexual.This structure is found in many films, from â€Å"An Ame rican in Paris† (Minnelli, 1951), to â€Å"Grease† (Kleiser, 1978). In â€Å"Grease†, the main actress and actor belong to a group where all members are women or all men, respectively, and eventually left these groups to become a couple. This can be seen as an evolution from childhood to adulthood. The author also speculates on whether this structure tries to avoid the character moving from a homosocial relationship to a homosexual relationship (Altman 2010). Cohan (2010) considers that the dual register between narrative and performance is one of the distinctive conventions of the genre.It breaks the dominant codes of realism in cinema, whose aim is to guide the audience through the story, so the codes and conventions become â€Å"transparent† to avoid distracting them (Nelmes 2007). The concept of diegesis refers to the fictional world described inside the story. In musicals, filmmakers can add extra-diegetic shots that have no logical reason for being t here. And they can add a diegetic to call public attention to the star, to show that they are amazed when they see and hear the main characters dancing or singing, and to create the illusion that the real non-diegetic audience is part of that public (Hayward 2000).Dyer (2002) distinguishes three tendencies of musicals: one that keeps narrative and number separate, another that identifies narrative with problems and numbers with scape, but trying to integrate the number through signals, and a last one that dissolves this distinction between narrative and number, which makes this narrative also utopian. Richard Dyer writes that the strategy of the genre is to â€Å"provide the spectator with an utopia through the form of entertainment†.Any film reflects these categories: abundance, energy, intensity, transparency and community in opposition to the real society, where we can find: scarcity, exhaustion, dreariness, manipulation and fragmentation. Abundance is shown through the lu xurious costumes and huge settings. Energy is shown through the dance and also the camera work. Intensity refers to experiencing emotions directly. Transparency refers to spontaneity. Community refers to the sense of belonging. This utopia is associated with the specific mainstream ideology of this period: capitalism, economic and social stability (Hayward 2000), (Stacey 1994).Of the decadent period, from the 60's, codes and conventions are questioned. Musicals are more realistic; subjects such as racism and delinquency are treated. Examples are â€Å"West Side Story† (Wise, 1961), â€Å"Saturday Night Fever† (Badham, 1977) and â€Å"Grease† (Kleiser, 1978). We also find Julie Andrew's films such as â€Å"The Sound of Music† (Wise, 1965). This is identified as a family film that follows traditional conventions. But its structure differs from the classical one. There is no more a duality, instead, there is a female main character and the male character has a secondary role.She represents liberated femininity. In Barbra Streisand's films – â€Å"The Way We Were† (Pollack, 1973) – the girl needs a partner but does not always achieve it. When she fails to do it, the film shows her drive for freedom and female independence (Farmer 2010), (Robertsib Wojcik 2010). This reflects how conventions in cinema have changed with changes in society; in the 70's women rebelled against the traditional patriarchal society. It has been almost 50 years since the period of decline of the musical genre begun. It looked as if it was going to disappear. But lately, we are seeing a revival of the genre.Sometimes it is successful, such as â€Å"Moulin Rouge! † (Luhrman, 2001), â€Å"Chicago† (Marshall, 2002) and â€Å"Mamma Mia† (Lloyd, 2008), sometimes it is not, such as â€Å"Nine† (Marshall, 2009). At this point, we can ask ourselves about the reasons for bringing back musicals. Cohan (2010) mentions David R ooney and Jonathan Bing describing them. They mention how development of new technology can help with the task of shooting and editing, and reducing costs. Also, the after-market of the fans of musical can be economically attractive, as they are repeating viewers, so DVDs and soundtracks would sell well – as well as merchandising would do.Another interesting fact is that the youth audience has grown up watching music videos and Disney's animated films. Finally, another reason can be that the golden period of musicals happened during the 30's Big Depression. Maybe it is not a coincidence that in the actual moment of economic recession, the public is going back to watch films that supply escapism (Burgess-Alllen 2010). Feuer (2010) argues that in the decline period, there are reconstructive musicals and deconstructive musicals. Reconstructive musicals can be â€Å"Moulin Rouge† (Luhrman, 2001), â€Å"Chicago† (Marshall, 2002), â€Å"Nine† (Marshall, 2009). Cabaret† (Fosse) in 1972 already has influences of art cinema (Hayward 2000). They are targeted at art-house audiences, while keep the classical conventions, and show an interest in aesthetic and nostalgia for the past. Following the these, â€Å"Moulin Rouge† (Luhrman, 2001) mixes cinematic references, historical intertexts and cultural allusions, this makes it difficult to define which genre it belongs to as it can be considered a musical, a melodrama, and author film, or even a music video (Nelmes 2007).Deconstructive Musicals are oriented towards the teenage public and create new conventions, they do not represent lead performers but amateurs that love singing and dancing, they â€Å"take up the position of spectators of Old Hollywood musicals in a world where it is no longer possible to be Fred Astaire† (Daldry, 2000). Following these, there are productions for TV, such as â€Å"High School Musical† (Ortega, 2006) and, more recently, â€Å"Glee† (Murphy, 2009). Conventions in â€Å"High School Musical† (Ortega, 2006) follow the traditional ones. It follows the principle of duality with two main characters.What it adds new to the genre is a contrast between authenticity, represented by the main couple, and manipulated artistry, represented by another couple. It also adds a reflection of a rigidly hierarchical world, where the characters move between conformism and rebellion. The characters are stereotypes: jocks, cheerleaders, and brainiacs. â€Å"Glee† (Murphy, 2009) takes the idea of â€Å"High School Musical† and exaggerates it. We again find the same stereotypes but they are taken to the extreme of satire. All the characters know that to be someone at the school they have to belong to a group: cheerleaders, football team†¦Wearing a distinctive uniform is important for them. â€Å"Glee† also adds being playful with reality. It highlights being a simulation of reality and reminds us often about it, advising us not to take it too seriously. The narrative is an utopia in the same way as the performances. And this utopia again follows a specific ideology. Subjects that affect teenagers are treated: pregnancy, alcohol, sexuality, family relationships, †¦ (Cohan 2010), (Payne 2010). Another thing these films have changed from classic films is that musical soundtracks are not created specifically for the film, now it appropriates pop music or music from other films.The concept of film genre is directly related to the concept of intertextuality. The film is always going to be framed by the genre as each film belonging to it uses conventions previously used by other members of it (Nelmes 2007). But this can be a contradiction, because intertextuality is also associated with taking the text beyond the boundaries of the genre. This semiotic term was first used by Julia Kristeva, who understands that the text connects in two ways, first the author to the reader and then t he text to other texts (Chandler 2009). The growing preponderance of visuals in ads has enhanced the ambiguity of meaning embedded in message structures. Earlier advertising usually states its message quite explicitly through the medium of written text†¦ , but starting in the mid-1920s visual representation became more common, and the relationship between text and visual image became complementary – that is, the text explained the visual. In the post-war period, and especially since the early 1960s, the function of text moved away from explaining the visual and towards a more cryptic form, in which text appeared as a kind of ‘key' to the visual.In all, the effect was to make the commercial message more ambiguous; a ‘reading' of it depended on relating elements in the ad's internal structure to each other, as well as drawing in references from the external world. † Leiss (1997) This paragraph talks specifically about the use of intertextuality in adverti sing, which is not the subject of the essay, but it is included here because it expresses that the way creatives communicate messages has evolved from being explicit to being ambiguous. Leiss talks about how the â€Å"receiver's brain is an indispensable component of the total communication system†.Explaining it clearly, the spectator is no longer considered stupid. Viewers have a wider visual knowledge that make them able to understand messages transmitted on ambiguous ways. We have grown with the rapid association of images in film, TV, and advertisement (Kolker 2002). The visual knowledge of the spectator has helped to make it more sophisticated. The basis of the plot remains simple but the filmmaker can and must introduce mechanisms to appeal a target audience that has become highly media literate.As a result of the the research can be taken the most interesting ideas about the way contemporaneous filmmakers apply the codes and conventions of the genre. They follow some o f the conventions of films from the classical era: keeping a simple plot, selling an ideology. And they add to the genre: using soundtracks from pop music or other films instead of creating it specifically for the film, the creation of fictional worlds that make reference to another fictional world, playing with reality and stereotypes, playing with the dual register between narrative and performance.It can be found in several essays and articles that talk about contemporaneous musical films being postmodern, as the following one written by Edwards (Cohan 2010): â€Å"The charm and artistic merit of the original High School Musical movie lies in its ability to consider a sophisticated theatrical and musical heritage and consequently revise it for a modern audience †¦ it simultaneously conforms to genre expectations and pays homage to its textual influences while taking a postmodern delight in exposing its own limitations and playing with some gentle pastiche of literary and ci nematic predecessors†.Flanagan (2002) wrote about the features of a film that can be identified as postmodern. The first ones are playfulness and self reference. It reminds us that it is a construction, that is not real, and that we must not take it seriously. The musical film's creators play with the way they integrate the performances in the narrative, with the stereotypes. It follows the tendency of dissolving the distinction between narrative and number, meaning that this narrative is also utopian. The second ones are generic blurring and intertextuality.The use of references to other texts is very usual in musicals. The third ones are popular and commercial media mixed with high culture. Current musical films do not have a soundtrack created for them, but they appropriate music. The fourth ones are fragmentation and death of representation. This refers to the way audience make sense of things through representations of reality instead of doing it through the reality itsel f. And finally uncertainty and the loss of context as consequence of the previous ones. According to this, films such as â€Å"Glee† (Murphy, 2009) can be considered postmodern.But probably to label a film as postmodern is not going to influence the audience as to whether to be interested on it or not, what probably can be considered more important is the â€Å"sophisticated hyperconsciousness† in contemporaneous popular entertainment, i. e. , the high degree of media literacy in the audience that allows playing with the conventions (Collins 1993), (Nelmes 2007). Why is Glee Postmodern In this blog and our discussion of postmodern television, the TV showGlee  has come up as an example.. One of the theories we’ve learned about postmodernism is that it rejects the idea of metanarratives (stories about stories).In postmodernism there is not black and white, good vs. evil, etc. In the show  Glee  there is the character Puck, a football player who seems to be y our typical tough-guy bully. However, even though Puck is a bully and even shoves around some of the other characters that we like, we still do not dislike him. We don’t see him as the villain even though typically the jock/bully is seen as the â€Å"bad guy. † Plurality is another term we learned regarding postmodernism, and this is when there are multiple stories and multiple identities.This show has so many characters, each with their own personal story and all of their stories get told in one way or another. Within Season 2 episode 8 the character ‘David’ is focused on and he is being questioned about whether he is gay or not. The glee club is a dance singing club but within this is another story. This gives the program room to expand and here for example the program deals with modern day issues that are publicised in the media. Grand narratives are clearly contradicted in this episode as homosexuality is put in the limelight and is praised.One of the male characters shows very feminine attributes and in their rehearsal wears a top which says â€Å"Likes Boys. † This is done to try to numb the shock of homosexuals coming out and normalise it so that the program can move forward. There are different races, different personalities, different handicaps; different cliques, all represented in this show and all of their stories are being told. Nostalgia is another postmodern term represented in  Glee. Many of the songs performed on this show are songs from the past for example Les Miserables – Kareoke and Born this Way.The teacher in charge of Glee Club, Mr. Schuester, loves doing songs from when he was younger and this really brings nostalgia to the show. Convergence, the flow of media content across a range of different platforms is also part of this show. You can download the songs performed on the show, many viewers discuss the show online, and many people attempt to win parts on the show by creating videos of thems elves singing and performing and posting them online. There are many forms of media involved with this show other than simply watching the show.Not to mention the fact that you can also watch the show online, just one more form of media regarding this show Glee draws people in by creating stereotypical situations and characters, each with their own flaws that the audience can easily identify with. This identification process allows viewers to become more intimate with the show, especially when the actors begin to sing songs that modern viewers already know and love. Fox originally took a chance on the new musical project, but hedged their bets with innovative marketing strategies and with a huge lead in audience from American Idol.The use of cultural classics and songs that recently premiered on the top 40, drew in the American Idol audience members specifically, and music lovers generally. This target audience was strong in the 18-49 demographic, and particularly strong with women. The strength in these demographics enabled Glee to become the 3rd most expensive show to buy advertisements on. This advertising revenue is supplemented with a steady stream of money made from selling singles on ITunes. This model has been so successful that Glee has now become a tent-pole of its own and anchors the entire comedy lineup on Tuesdays. contrast, in recent years American television has brought us Scrubs, Ugly Betty and now Glee, shows that combine boldly imaginative approaches to narrative with a humour and humanity that is often exhilarating to behold. While we seem to be mired in an endless debate about platforms, content, news values and the multimedia revolution, the Americans have managed to retain an enthusiasm for the dramatic possibilities of television. And what's clear is that those possibilities are founded upon an enduring belief in sharp, savvy writing and deeply committed performances.At first sight, Glee (C4) follows a stupefyingly familiar path. It's se t in a midwest high school, amid the over-fictionalised world of geeks and jocks. And in a nod to the High School Musical fad, it focuses on a glee club, or singing society. However, Glee takes these tropes and cliches and stretches them in surprising directions to create a whole new form, as different to its original source as a butterfly is to a caterpillar. Last week, teen pregnancy, the difficulty of coming out in high school, and sexual attraction between teacher and pupil were plot themes but, unlike many American shows, not moral â€Å"issues†.Glee is possessed of a liberal heart but its balls, as well as some of its most memorable lines, belong to the politically incorrect coach, Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch). Like two opposing grammarians, kitsch sentiment and killer sarcasm wrestle over every line. Yet, at the point where conventional drama plunges into pathos, Glee slips into song. At one moment the school quarterback was singing â€Å"I'll Stand by Youâ₠¬  to the ultrasound of his unwanted child (which isn't his), the next his friends were rallying round in a stirring rendition of â€Å"Lean on Me†.A lot of the humour stems from snappy social observation, but the show also boasts the kind of verbal extravagance that, in the wrong hands, can sound written rather than said. Typical was the scene in which a former schoolgirl stalker, who once responded to rejection by eating a lethally hot pepper, advised her equally deluded successor: â€Å"Let me tell you a few things I learned from two years of intense psychotherapy and an oesophagus transplant. The reason that line worked is the same reason the songs and outrageous storylines work: because the characters are immersed in their own reality. They never act as if they've said something funny. There's no pause for laughter, no nods or winks, as Glee shows the same faith in its audience as it does in its characterisations. Laughter isn't forced, so isn't false. In common with U gly Betty and Scrubs, there is plenty of cultural commentary and knowing asides but failure to spot the reference doesn't undermine the scene. The action just moves swiftly on.If Glee is postmodern, it doesn't bother knocking twice. The show has attracted a lot of plaudits, particularly in America, so it's probably soon due for a backlash. This might be an opportune moment, then, to say that the hype is deserved. It's a rare and heartening pleasure to watch so much energy and emotion expended in the unfashionable cause of family entertainment. Some of its fans might say Doctor Who performs a similar feat, though really the nearest British television comes, or attempts to come, to Glee is in shows like Strictly Come Dancing.Where US networks can be persuaded to invest in good writing and acting, our TV executives prefer to back the all-dancing duo of celebrity and reality. Only in an atmosphere in which originality is viewed as marginal or suspect could a series like Life of Riley (B BC1) be produced. It may seem unfair to pick out this harmless sitcom as an illustration of the failings of British comedy drama, but perhaps not quite as unfair as the decision to recommission another series. Why is Glee Postmodern?Glee is an American musical-comedy drama series. It started in 2009 and is produced by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, who originally wanted Glee to be a film, but decided to make it more interesting as a series. The episode I have chosen to focus on is the ‘Britney/Brittany’ episode, which pays tribute to Britney Spears when a member of the club Brittany Pierce experiences an anesthesia-induced hallucination in which she recreates iconic Spears moments, and comes to self-realization.I believe that this episode shows examples of being postmodern, as for a start the songs are in the past, and therefore have been created from an idea that’s already happened, Postmodernism postulates that many, if not all, apparent realities a re only social constructs and are therefore subject to change so Glee supports this view, it highlights that it is taking the original idea (song) that we all know from Britney Spears, and constructing it into their own, like the ‘Toxic’ version they performed on stage, straight away it’s obvious that this episode is showing pastiche, as the hole episode is making tributes to classic pop culture, and it gives us as audience ( or those who are old enough) a nostalgic feeling. One of the theories learned about postmodernism is that it rejects the idea of metanarratives (stories about stories). In postmodernism there is not black and white, good vs. evil, etc. There is the character Puck, a football player who seems to be your typical tough-guy bully.However, even though Puck is a bully and even shoves around some of the other characters that we like, we still do not dislike him. We don’t see him as the villain even though typically the jock/bully is seen as the â€Å"bad guy,† and in this episode, he shows examples of this by fitting in with the rest of the club and wanting to perform the Britney songs, when typically you’d expect the ‘jock’ to go against this idea as it wasn’t ‘cool enough’.Plurality is another term regarding postmodernism, and this is when there are multiple stories and multiple identities, and this is shown in this particular episode when although the focus is on Britney, there are several storylines going ahead with each individual character like with Will coming to terms that the girl he loves if with someone else, and then the high school problems the glee club members are all facing.The characters are also known for having multiple identities, this episode especially shows the members like Brittany and Rachel dressed up mimicking Britney Spears, and Santana also comes across as being tough, but in this episode she performs with Brittany in ‘Me Against the Musi c’ and we find out she is also in love with Brittany. Many of the songs performed on this show are songs from the past. The teacher in charge of Glee Club, Mr.Schuster, loves doing songs from when he was younger and this really brings nostalgia to the show, but in this episode he rejects the idea of doing Britney week, as he believes she gives out the wrong messages, but eventually he comes around and performs with them, which causes outrage to the school, which is also very postmodern, although Glee is a fun, light-hearted comedy series, it can also have many adult references in, especially in this episode, which I believe to be very postmodern as it ignores the typical conventions of a ‘high school drama’ and actually takes the stereotypes to an extreme but twists them.Glee has also been quoted to be described as hyper-postmodern media culture. A mash-up of generic influences, intertextual references, music, and ideological content that is both eerily nostalgic and forward-thinking, and this episode is a prime example showing all these things, the fact that the students go to the dentist to get their teeth fixed which is an ‘underlying’ important message, influencing the audience to take care of their selves, its then twisted when they get put under an anesthesia, and hallucinate Britney Spears fantasies, Glee is known for taking simple, conventional ideas and turning them to almost inappropriate. Like two opposing grammarians, kitsch sentiment and killer sarcasm wrestle over every line. Yet, at the point where conventional drama plunges into pathos, Glee slips into song† was quoted by a news article, showing how Glee takes a completely different take on high school drama. Convergence, the flow of media content across a range of different platforms is also part of this show.You can download the songs performed on the show, many viewers discuss the show online, and many people attempt to win parts on the show by creating videos of themselves singing and performing and posting them online. There are many forms of media involved with this show other than simply watching the show. Not to mention the fact that you can also watch the show online, just one more form of media regarding this show. In conclusion, I believe that Glee is postmodern because it uses examples of hyperreality, pastiche, intertextuality and is not your ordinary high school drama.