Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Study Of Japanese Animation, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper takes a sociological approach to the question of popular culture’s ability in Japan--specifically that of Japanese animation--to be reflective of the country's sociological concerns. This is not to say that all anime shows consciously reflect Japanese life, but by extrapolation of recurrent themes one can construct a model of certain sociological issues in Japan. The author split the paper up into five sections each of which tackles a different theme. These sections are: Education, Social and Class Differences, Environment, Post-Nuclear Visions, and An Emergent Feminism. The main point that the author conveys in each section is a way …

The Santa Barbara Public Library: History And Thematic Identifications, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The paper describes the history of the public library in Santa Barbara from 1870 to 1926 while taking into account two of the thematic underpinnings of the American library tradition: women in the profession and the importance of books and libraries in the community. It is divided into three sections including, the importance of books and libraries, women librarianship, and the history of the Santa Barbara Public Library. The library’s ideology and history espouses the themes inherent in American library history. At the same time, some of the qualities of Santa Barbara’s library contradict prevalent ideas of the times—especially in …

Twentieth Century Economics Of Child-Rearing In Japan, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In order to explain the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Japan, it is necessary to look at the social factors affecting women and raising children in Japan. By examining historical factors surrounding women in Japan—their education, their presence in the workforce, and the cultural stigmas attached to their stereotypical representation—I will attempt to describe the deteriorating TFR in Japan as an economic problem with political and social repercussions. In conclusion I will also try to provide a prognosis and a recommendation for a solution.

Asia Country Risk Analysis Cambodia, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Cambodia, as it currently stands, does not make for an attractive or viable investment area. Based on a realistic point of view, Cambodia poses many security risks to potential investors based on their current domestic situation. In order to understand why this is so, this risk analysis will outline Cambodia’s internal domestic situation as it comes out of their tumultuous history. In addition to this the risk analysis will identify Cambodia’s bilateral and multilateral relations and explain how these do not provide strong support for investors looking to do business in Cambodia. In conclusion the risk analysis will provide a …

South Korea, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

An brief introduction and overview to South Korea's economic history touching on reunification attempts with North Korea, chaebols, and product wars with Japan, America, and China.

Traditional Tropes And Familial Incest In Banana Yoshimoto’S Kitchen, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Kitchen, written in 1983, by Banana Yoshimoto, contains one novella and one short story. The novella is entitled Kitchen and the short story which follows it is called Moonlight Shadow. In Moonlight Shadow, the structure of a Japanese Noh drama enfolds, wherein the ultimate end of the main character is to live on in a semi-incestuous relationship with her dead boyfriend’s brother. In Kitchen, the images that one is assailed by are those of desire coexisting with food, and love contingent on incest. The idea of food as a comfort conflates into that of a woman as comforting.

These two …

Defining The Feminine Impact On The Progression Of Japanese Language: An Inquiry Into The Development Of Heian Period Court Diaries, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

From the split of the private and public lives of gender divides, men lived on the outside imbibing Chinese language styles, while women on the inside established and preserved a uniquely Japanese form of language. This paper asserts the theory that the Heian period was one of the first times in which the schism was produced through the female’s power to embody a written language which the Japanese could claim as their own independently of the effect from other cultures. In its focus this paper aspires to analyze the public/private, male/female origins by placing them within the Heian period, from …

Homosexuality In Fushigi Yuugi And Gravitation: An Investigation Into The Cultural Background Of Homosexuality In Japanese Animation, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper will delve into the following issues: how the Japanese view homosexual males and how the agency of the reader and/or viewer impacts the depictions of visual displays of intimate behavior by homosexual males. The purpose of this paper will be an attempt to define some sort of answer to each question within the context of the Japanese cultural products of manga and anime. I am going to dissect shifting sexualities as they are represented in two different examples of Japanese anime aimed at slightly differing audience groups. The two shows that I will focus on are: Fushigi Yuugi …

Japan’S War With China: Context And Stakes, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The context in which Japan was drawn into war with China, and what they had at stake going in, are flip sides of the same coin. The contexts and stakes are: democratic government, will of the people, international status, foreign trade, the Emperor, and racial superiority. In the 1920’s and 30’s, Japan was losing the ideal of democracy, the desire to have democracy, and the will of the people. They were drawn into the war with China in order to reunite the citizenry and because of a failed democratic leadership being supplanted by right wing militarists. International status and foreign …

Enjo Kosai: Brand Name Marketing, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Media is a contributing factor in creating a market for the prostitution of minors in Japan today. Media creates an image to which the girls aspire by placing the trendiest items in the hands of music and movie idols who the girls look up to . The drive to then own these trendy, and expensive, products forces the girls into marketing their bodies to strangers. Though in many ways media can be seen as the root of all evil through print and film advertisements, there are some forms of media which work as a caution instead of an encouragement to …

Ono No Komachi: Love And Desire, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The poetry of Ono no Komachi can be read in many lights. The two ways in which I feel its message and context can be best appreciated are through feminine independence and masculine subjection. Ono no Komachi wrote poetry that was evocative of the feminine ideal of longing for a male, but she also wrote poetry which denigrated the need for a woman to rely on a male. Through a self-critical reader analysis of some of her poems, I will show that Komachi’s poetry can be read as comprising a longing for the world of men, and men in particular, …

Rule By Right Vs. Rule By Force, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

There are at least two ways to legitimize a power base. One is to prove you have the right to rule, the other is to rule by force. In Japan’s feudal period, three leaders came to power and each ruler utilized some of the preceding ones principles of government, while at the same time adapting his mode of dominion on the prevailing factors of the day. Only one of these rulers had the right to rule by virtue of his lineage; perhaps this is why his reign lasted so much longer than the other two, or perhaps it is simply …

Gandhi And The Ego Ideal, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

If the individual self is not equal to the subject self and “agency”, as Wimal Dissanayake defines it, is seen as the link between the two: can the agency of Gandhi be described as utilizing the Freudian mirror stage development to overthrow subjectivity? I believe that, in fact, Gandhi’s reaction to British imperialism projects a reflected ego ideal which is used to combat the subjectivity of colonization and create an Indian “self”.

The Inter-Relations Of Geography And Human Advancement, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

When I think about what factors into creating a culture, I seldom think of geography. But when one gets right down to it, geography plays an incredibly pivotal role in two of the most important categories of human interaction with the earth: agriculture and war. Both occupations go towards feeding a need in society and both produce innumerable advances in technology and human relations. According to texts currently under study in this class, the importance of geography (in the senses of features and border lines) is of paramount importance. But what makes them so important? How have the major geographical …

Tibetan Buddhism In Northern California, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

When the Dalai Lama was forced to flee Tibet before a Chinese invasion force in the 1950’s, Tibet became an icon in the eyes of the West as an underdog; albeit an incredibly spiritual and exotic one. Due to a dwindling of the religious followers and resources within the community of Tibet in exile, Tibetan Buddhists ventured out from their self-imposed isolation to spread the teachings to any who would listen, (Coleman, 2001, 72). Buddhism, already a source of fascination in America due to the Beat poets and Zen Buddhism, became a craze between the years 1960-1997, (ibid, 103). California …

Evolving Hinduism: Comparing The Bhagavad Gītā, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Hinduism was a semi-fluid belief system in the medieval period of India. At first it was built around the Brahmin class who were the priests that had the ritual authority to perform elaborate sacrifices for the other three caste levels. There was also then the canon of Vedic literature, one aspect of which was the Upanişads. The Upanişads preached a solitary, hermit-like existence which emphasized meditation. This produced a strong ascetic body, but did not contribute to the continuation of society as a whole. The Upanişads themselves were a reaction to the earlier traditions of priestly worship and predominance of …

Narcissistic Self-Love, Male Body Objectification, And Homoeroticism In John Woos’ The Killer And Face/Off, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

A theme of homoeroticism/sexually charged appreciation of the male body exerts itself as a clear visual in The Killer and Face/Off. In this paper, some of these homoerotic images and the theoretically gender-based reasoning behind them will be explored. In some ways, Woos’ films The Killer and Face/Off, can be “read” as both example and counterexample to masculine-feminine discussions of gendered cinema. Laura Mulvey, for instance, posits the thesis that cinema is a vision dominated by patriarchal society. Both films I will be analyzing exemplify the superior role of male societal functions; such as males in positions of authority, or …

The Long Shot As Loss Of Faith In Kurosawa’S Ran, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The final shot in the movie Ran by Akira Kurosawa betrays a crushing pessimism about the state of the society. In a world where the heroes die, the presence of a benevolent God is brought into serious scrutiny. With the dropping of the Amida Buddha scroll the movie establishes as its “moral” the chaos of man in a world without religion. In discussing the movie in connection with the final images I will be analyzing one of the most important themes of the film: withdrawal from humanity.

The Fragmentation Of Self Within The Indian Novel, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

With the novel Midnight’s Children, Rushdie forged a new path for novel-writing. In his epic story the main character became split into two in order to show the many facets of Indian culture. Instead of gaining an understanding of just one way of life, the reader became privy to all the stories being lived in such places as the Methwold estates, the surreal Sundarbans, and the Magician’s Ghetto. The story of one, single individual was lost in the cacophony of voices that each had their own tale to tell in Rushdie’s novel. This new form of writing, which favored the …

A Feminist ‘Attack’ On Post-Structuralist And Psychoanalytical Readings Of Hamlet, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper will do three things, the first of which will be to describe Jaqueline Rose’s argument within her essay, “Hamlet—The Mona Lisa of Literature.” The second task of this paper will be to explain what is at stake within Rose’s essay as it relates to previous criticism such as that of Irigaray, Freud, Woolf, and Derrida. Finally, by drawing upon the idea (in Rose’s paper) of femininity as a fetishisized concept that equals the opposite of “good” a correlation in opposition will be drawn between what she is trying to accomplish and what Freud argues in “The Theme of …

Goddess Of Death: The Pleasure Principle At Work In Shakespeare’S Texts, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In the essay “The Theme of the Three Caskets,” Freud discusses man’s altering of a representation of death into one of love. This course of action is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s claim in Truth and Falsity in an Ultramoral Sense, where he claims that man invents truth to suit himself. Freud psychoanalyzes that man is altering reality out of a fear of his own mortality, while Nietzsche makes a similar claim by saying man does it out of a desire to live peacefully with others in a manner which preserves life.

The World Seduces Man. His Home Grounds Him., Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Between Untouchable and The Bachelor of Arts there is a world of difference in the basic situations of the main characters. One is an uneducated street sweeper and the other is a University graduate, and both have a different conception of the British. However, there is also a common thread that unites the two novels in the main characters concluding acceptance of the “home”/India over the “world”/England. Thus, although different values are assigned to the importance of British colonialism within the texts, in the end each novel comes to a stand wherein Indian culture is favored over the British.

Contradicting Theories Of Art By Nietzsche And Plato, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Plato proposes that there are ultimate, pure forms created by God behind every object in the world. Nietzsche, in response to this, argues that not only is there a multitude of differences between each object that have been disregarded to keep the illusion of the ideal, but that man himself creates the ideals and not an omnipotent deity. For Plato, art imitates the imitations of the pure form: thus confusing mankind, hindering their path to finding the pure, and tying them to a reality that is an appearance only. But for Nietzsche, art can save man from reality by producing …

Wordsworth’S Romanticism, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In moving from the poetry of Thomas Gray to that of William Wordsworth, a shift in perception occurs and the age of Romantic poetry really begins. Gray emphasizes the ideas of loss and pessimism, while Wordsworth counters loss with recompense and an optimistic outlook instead of a pessimistic one. By looking at the poetic content of one of each of their works, the use that they both make of memory can be seen. However, the uses that they make contrast markedly against one another in the feelings they provoke. Gray’s utilization of memory in “An Ode on a Distant Prospect …

The Setting Sun: Japanese Post-War Sensibility, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Osamu Dazai wrote The Setting Sun in the years directly following the end of World War II. The effects of Japan’s defeat in the War were clearly still felt, as evidenced by the characters and situations being expressed in this novel. In looking at the novel through a historical lens, I plan on placing it within the greater context of the times. I view Dazai’s work as a masterpiece at evoking the feelings that were seething beneath Japan’s conquered surface. In consequence of this, I believe that by examining the words, actions, and feelings of the characters, one can extend …

Spiritual Quest In Hojoki And Hosshinshu And The Duality Of Art And Religion, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The individual’s quest for enlightenment in Japan is a serious one. One such individual from the medieval Japanese period will be the subject of this paper. Kamo no Chomei, a recluse, poet, and priest who lived from 1155-1216 strove to attain a religious awakening of the mind during the latter half of his life. The question of whether he succeeded or not is a difficult one to answer, however, by examining two of his major works—Hojoki and Hosshinshu—the nature of Chomei’s quest should become clearer. Although I do not believe Chomei found the enlightenment he sought; the quest itself and …

Self Gratification And Unity In The School For Scandal, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Behind Sheridan’s play, The School for Scandal, rests a history of convention and forms already accepted in the theatrical world. In the tradition of a Comedy of Manners, Sheridan is mocking the society that he is a part of. He takes the foibles of human beings and turns them into fictional characters in order to provide a mirror for the society that he sees as licentious and focused on scandal. The whole point of the Comedies of Manners is to put down accepted norms and build up new ones for the betterment of society. For Sheridan, the accepted form in …

Alexander And Anne: Adamantly Arguing Against Anarchy, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Today I will turn my eye and yours to two “visions of order” by Alexander Pope and Anne Finch. In these “visions,” obviously meant to influence their audience into agreement, Pope and Finch present two widely differing ideals. On the one hand there is Finch who, in a solitary nighttime ramble, contemplates the harmony and order of nature without man or God. Then there is Pope, whose order is all centered on God and how God created Order for Man. The one thing they both have in common is that they view man as a being who constantly disrupts these …

Paragons Of Virtue With Carnal Appetites: The Women In Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, And Antony And Cleopatra, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

A theme that Shakespeare treat several times in his plays is the sexual mistrust of women and their subsequent testing and vindication. It appears that men “perceiving sexuality as power over women, fear its loss through female betrayal,” (VIII, 41). Specifically I am choosing to look at three plays, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, and Antony and Cleopatra, in order to examine the different ways in which females in these plays, Desdemona, Hero, and Cleopatra, cope with the male insecurities that they are confronted with. In so doing, I hope to point out that Shakespeare’s reasoning in continually bringing up …