3/27/2020 0 Comments Cowboys in Kilts: The Failure of the Scenic in Rob Roy & Braveheart :: essays papersCowboys in Kilts: The Failure of the Scenic in Rob Roy & Braveheart There was recently a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine.The cartoon shows a group of kilt-clad Highlands charging up a hill, claymore swords drawn and waving, as one of them says to another, "You know, if we didn't wear this damn skirtsmaybe we wouldn't have to defend our manhood every five minutes." My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western. Howard Hawkes' 1948 Red River will serve as our example of the western model.The opening credits rise literally out of the landscape, and we're told in the opening narration that this is a story of the landscape, in that it recounts the first major cattle drive along the Chisholm trail from Texas to Abeline, Kansas.In the 1st scene we see a vastly open prairie with a small wagon train almost lost in its expanse.We discover immediately that Dunson (John Wayne) is leaving the wagon train to strike out on his own.The signature trait of Dunson is the first of the western hero's trademarks: once he's made up his mind, "nothing anyone says or does can change it"; despite the entreaties of the wagon master and his putative girlfriend, Dunson sets out south with only his friend, Tom Groot (played by Walter Brennan). Cowboys in Kilts: The Failure of the Scenic in Rob Roy & Braveheart :: essays papers Cowboys in Kilts: The Failure of the Scenic in Rob Roy & Braveheart There was recently a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine.The cartoon shows a group of kilt-clad Highlands charging up a hill, claymore swords drawn and waving, as one of them says to another, "You know, if we didn't wear this damn skirtsmaybe we wouldn't have to defend our manhood every five minutes." My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western. Howard Hawkes' 1948 Red River will serve as our example of the western model.The opening credits rise literally out of the landscape, and we're told in the opening narration that this is a story of the landscape, in that it recounts the first major cattle drive along the Chisholm trail from Texas to Abeline, Kansas.In the 1st scene we see a vastly open prairie with a small wagon train almost lost in its expanse.We discover immediately that Dunson (John Wayne) is leaving the wagon train to strike out on his own.The signature trait of Dunson is the first of the western hero's trademarks: once he's made up his mind, "nothing anyone says or does can change it"; despite the entreaties of the wagon master and his putative girlfriend, Dunson sets out south with only his friend, Tom Groot (played by Walter Brennan).
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History of Solar Advancements Our sun provides us with a virtually unlimited resource that we have used for centuries in a multiple of ways. We use it to keep us warm, to grow our food and generate millions if kilowatts of electricity. Everyday the sun showers the earth with more potential energy that we produce in that day or even that week. According to the Go Solar Company (1999-2003), â€on an acre of land with the sun overhead is receiving more the four thousand horsepower, which is equivalent to a large railroad locomotive, and in less than three days of the same intensity will match the estimated total of all fossil fuels on the earthâ€. Many of the visionaries I will be talking about explored almost all the renewable energy options familiar today, and in less than 50 year they (independent and jointly) developed an impressive array of technologies for harnessing solar radiation and converting it to energy in the way of steam to power the machines of their respective eras. You will see that prior to World War 1, they were using all of the solar thermal conversion methods now being considered, but after the War and for a better part of 50 years their work was nearly forgotten in the rush to develop fossil fuels for an “energy-hungery†world (Smith , 1995). When the term “solar energy†is mentioned the common thought is of recent technologies, or rather a young approach to energy production, this in fact is not entirely true. What is true is that since the dawning of the space age solar-conversion used for energy production has grown with leaps and bounds but this technology has been around for some time. In fact the first documented usages of solar-conversion are found in the writings of Homer (Iliad and the... ...e energy needs. As Frank Shuman declared more than 80 years ago, it is "the most rational source of power." Work Cited: History of Solar Energy. Broadcast on Sun. 16/12/00. Reported by Alexandra de Blas: Interview of John Perlin. Internet: Online Sept.16, 03. Bailey Howe lib. UVM Available: www.abc.net/ “History of Solar Powerâ€. Go Solar Company. L.A. California. Copyright 1999-2003. Internet: Online Sept. 27, 03. Bailey Howe lib. UVM. Available: www.solarexpert.com Smith, C. History of Solar Energy: Revisiting Solar Power’s Past. Tech. Review. July 95. Internet: Online Sept. 16, 03. Bailey Howe lib. UVM. Available: www.solarenergy.com “The History of Solar Energyâ€.The Solar Energy Science Project. Environmental Portfolio. Penn State. 1999. Internet. Online Sept. 27, 03. Bailey Howe lib. UVM. Available: www.personal.psu.edu
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