Midterm Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Midterm Paper - Essay Example Sheiks, on the other hand, were young men with ukeleles, racoon coats, and bell-bottom trousers. Therefore it is correct to deduce that music plays a major role in the development of fashion trends. In the early 1910s, there arose a craze for orientalism after the performance of Rimsky Korsakovs Scheherazade in Paris by the Ballets Russes. Paul Poiret, a couturier, was the first to bring orientalism to the fashion industry. It marked the end of the tight corsets and the birth of clothing that was less restrictive. It is during this era that the harem pants were created. Harem pants are long and baggy trousers that are caught in at the ankle. Harem pants were also called harem skirts and were inspired by styles from the Middle East. Poiret is credited as the person who single-handedly invented trousers for women. At inception, harem pants were quite popular with the public because they offered more comfort and eased mobility1. However, Poirets sense of fashion was not a unanimous hit. Critics looked down upon the pants often referring to them as indecent and immoral. The critics’ views were based on the conventional beliefs that it was unnatural for Western women at that time to put on trousers. In contrast, the designer insisted that he only designed them to flatter the full image of the chic woman. The pants also liberated the fashion limitations of the Western women. Poiret’s new fashion trend consequently influenced Paquin, another couturier, and one of Poirets worst critics. Other designers who also invented trousers for women include: Jeanne Margarine Lacroix, and Bourniche2. Sheherazade was composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888. It is based on pictures from One Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as the â€Å"Arabian Nights† as well as other unconnected episodes. Considered the composers most popular work, it combines a bright and dazzling orchestration, and a unique interest in

Ethics and the Criminal Justice Profession Essay

Ethics and the Criminal Justice Profession - Essay Example In common ethical issues arising in the society, the criminal justice decides whether such act(s) could be ethically defended or not through the study of ethics. A case of ethical issue is shoplifting for the welfare of everybody in the family. In the utilitarian viewpoint of ethics, the above act could be defended provided that it is done because of providing the welfare of other individuals. Although the case is providing the necessaries for the family, such could still be considered utilitarian. In â€Å"retributive justice,† if an individual does an act of misconduct without any beneficial purpose, it is a manifestation of â€Å"imprudence,† but if it is done for a constructive purpose, it is justifiable (Hall, Dennis, and Chipman 348). In every act of an individual there really is a corresponding verdict. Yet, in cases concerning ethical judgments, more value of ethical justification is given to those acts which are done for beneficial purposes. Yet, it should also not be forgotten that in deciding over ethical issues, the rule of law and justice should always take its dominion. Furthermore, the ethical issues which are given greater ethical defenses could also be subjects to further justifications and scrutiny for an â€Å"other† party is also

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Essay Example for Free

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Essay I can get no satisfaction †¦ Rolling Stones Now here we are, standing near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Fashioned from stark slabs of black granite, this memorial perfectly represents America’s collective memory of its longest war and first defeat. The memorial, like the memory, is both somber and ambiguous. On the polished face of the memorial appear the names of some 58,000 U.S. military personnel who died in Indochina. My friend’s name is one of those names. This was the greatest cost of the war of our country. There were others as well: the bitterness of over 3 million Vietnam veterans who returned to more scorn than gratitude from their fellow citizens; the inflation that followed years of deficit financing to help cover more than $150 billion in war expenses; bruising divisions within American society about responsibility for the nation’s defeat and the devastation of the peoples and lands of Indochina; and a public cynicism about government, reinforced by the Watergate scandal, that was to mark U.S. politics for many years. However, I wouldn’t like to put the card before the horse and thus I’ll try to tell you the whole story about the America of those days in all possible details.   I’ll tell you how everything started and where it ended; about our youth and our epoch, which nowadays one can easily call the Vietnam War Era. We had had very poor knowledge of Vietnam by July 27, 1964. On that exact day the news reported that 5,000 US military advisors were ordered to South Vietnam to join other American militaries and support the government of South Vietnam in its struggle against the Communists of the North. Today I say that day marked the beginning of new era for all of us. How it started    I should tell that the very beginning of the Vietnam War had contained much controversy that later generated negative attitude of our society towards that military campaign. Now I understand that the initial problem lay in following. Congress passed the resolution in 1964 to support Johnson in taking measures to protect U.S. armed forces in Indochina. As requested by Johnson, Congress passed the resolution in response to incidents between U.S. naval destroyers and North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam. But this resolution was not the official declaration of the war against North Vietnam however served for Johnson as justification for sending 500,000 troops into South Vietnam. The President’s administration to avoid disquieting people did not use word â€Å"war† and invented a devious substitute for it: the â€Å"functional equivalent† of a declaration of war. We started discussion as regards the appropriateness of treating that resolution as declaration of the war. And as time went by our society split up into two camps: the supporters and detractors of war. Political division of society    Moreover, we felt that not only Americans are dubious of their attitude towards the war. The whole world was also divided into two hostile camps: supporters of American invasion into Vietnam (capitalistic democratic countries) and opponents of the military actions (communistic totalitarian countries). You must know that America has always been the proponent of democratic principles. What should you also keep in mind is that it was the time of the Cold War development. I must admit that the existence of external foe (the Communism) was permanently felt by every American. We witnessed of the development of the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis when the Third World War nearly started, we watched how the nuclear power of the Soviet Union was rising. The fear of nuclear war haunted our country throughout the decade. Increase of social well-being    The threat of war had impacted all spheres of our life. We witnessed how police spent much time training for the very real possibility of nuclear attack. You would not believe but it is a fact that the threat of war was the reason for building of the Interstate Highway System during the 1960s. Our highways and roads expended quickly. Consequently, automobile became a common thing at the end of World War II and the demand for it was continuously growing. In the 1960s I and almost all my friends had a car and the number of young people driving a car reached an unprecedented level. At the same time our every day life contained the events not related to the Vietnam War. First of all it was a time of the unprecedented change in U.S. society. For the first time for the whole history we felt what the prosperity is! Technological advances in electronics, telecommunications and transportation changed the American lifestyle. A car became an affordable luxury for every American and since that time we could freely travel around the country.    Social protests The changes in our material well-being caused the drastic changes in the social order of our nation. I and my peers were born during the American first wave of the â€Å"baby boom† caused our young adult moms who followed the open rebel against society and those who represented its authority. To my view it was one of the implications of prosperity of American society. Only the prosperous people have courage to express their ideas freely.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Nevertheless, even well-being could not shield the upheaval rising within our nation. As U.S. troops and hardware poured into Vietnam, the casualty figures mounted and domestic unease intensified. Here I have to mention the anti-war movements of the Vietnam War Era. So, in the 1960s The New Left movement appeared. At those days the mass media treated them as parasites rejecting American values. But today I understand that they were young people with radical standpoints who attempted to change our society for better. The New Left was a movement of self-understood radicals, mostly students. Most of the central figures were my peers in their twenties during that decade, and were born during or just before World War II; most of the rank and file were born after the war and too were part of the mentioned baby boom, which filled the expanding colleges and universities. Although the central figures began as student activists, the New Left grew into an intellectual tendency that included academics, principally in the social sciences and humanities; professionals (doctors, lawyers, social workers, etc.) who shared its concern for the rights of helpless and victimized people. So where did they spring from, you wonder. Seeking intellectual coherence, student activists borrowed the term New Left from British intellectuals who had left the Communist Party and helped form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (it was in 1957). Unlike the Britons, most of the U.S. New Left were not Marxists. They hoped to find other social constituencies with the social commitment to transform society in an egalitarian and democratic direction. I cannot help but describe the activity of this organization in details as my view of them has changed since then. We were continuously informed through TV, radio and newspapers on communist threat. We were told the communists had allegedly penetrated all spheres of our life and due to this the New Left made a noise in our society. From 1965 on, the main force that swelled the New Left was the Vietnam War. Gathering strength, the New Left spun off a movement against the war, and in the popular mind became principally identified with that movement. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which had nine chapters and some 600 members in 1963, grew to some 300 chapters and 100,000 members in 1969. National demonstrations against the war grew from 25,000 people (April 1965) to 500,000 (November 1969). As the war escalated, the New Left (or what increasingly called itself â€Å"the movement†) became not only larger but more militant.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   During this time, however, the core of New Left organizers came to regard themselves as more than a protest movement. They increasingly saw themselves as committed to a radical transformation with an antiauthoritarian spirit. Pragmatic, many were reluctant to call themselves â€Å"socialist† or â€Å"anarchist†; they borrowed elements from both traditions, as well as from liberalism. Toward that end, they experimented with community organizing among the poor; with projects in student-centered education; with attempts to radicalize factory workers. But their principal base was the university campuses. Best represented among elite universities at the beginning of their movement, their class base later moved progressively downward. By 1970, demonstrations against the draft, against military education, against corporate recruiters, against disciplinary rules, and in favor of ethnic studies departments took place on hundreds of campuses and turned into a real trouble for authorities.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   By 1967, most of my friends in the New Left had moved (in the words of their own slogan) â€Å"from protest to resistance.† We, observing the massive disaffection of college-educated youth as signaled in drug use, popular music, hippie clothing, long hair, and so forth came to feel that a radical transformation of the society was necessary, although they had little conception of a new order. By 1968, we saw institutions from university administrations to the Democratic Party as hopelessly oppressive. Opposition to draft In relation to the protests of the young generation I want to stress upon such phenomenon of those days as draft evasion. Some of those who opposed the war were driven by the fact that as Johnson’s policy escalated, more and more young people were drafted into the armed services and sent to Vietnam. By 1967, half of the military servants were draftees. By 1969, more than the half of all combat deaths were draftees. These were extremely discouraging data.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   I cannot but stress that no other war produced so much opposition to the draft. This fear was partially caused by its unfairness. Until 1968 senior students were entitled to defer military service by the time they finished their study. Another fact that evoked our rejection was the class injustice; many young middle-class men joined the National Guard and Reserves on the likely gamble that they would not be called up for duty in Southeast Asia. Consequently, the Vietnam War appeared to many to be a working-class war. There was a disproportion in numbers of draftees and enlisted men who mostly came from blue-collar class. During the war a lot of my male contemporaries preferred exile to Canada and Sweden to avoid the draft. The prospect of the draft also served as impetus for eligible guys to start family and have children, or continue their education.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   As it could have been expected increasing draft resistance took form of civil disobedience and severe discipline problems. The poorly motivated behavior of militants in the field made the government think of dramatic reform. The president Nixon established a lottery system trying to make the draft system at least a little fairer. But we took it as a cynical joke. In September 1971, Nixon’s proposal for All-Volunteer Force was passed by Congress, and in July 1973, Nixon terminated the draft. Fight for you right      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   There is one important figure whom I cannot skip in my story of public protests. I am speaking about Martin Luther King. King started his social discussion attacking segregation as he hopscotched the nation. Later King attempted not only to achieve civil rights, but also to stop the Vietnam War and to eliminate American poverty. On 4 April 1968, an assassin’s bullet killed Martin Luther King Jr.; riots exploded in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Another horrible assassination occurred the same year. In June, Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy’s brother and a presidential candidate in his own right, was shot and killed in Los Angeles. These terrifying events considerably undermine government’s credibility in our minds. Nonetheless, no assassinations could stop public protests which did their job gradually. The antiwar movement dramatically affected our national domestic policy. After 35,000 mostly young people besieged the Pentagon on 21–22 October 1967, Lyndon Johnson launched a public relations campaign that emphasized how well the war was going. When the Communists of the North Vietnam launched their seemingly successful nationwide Tet Offensive on 30 January 1968, most of us felt that we had been deceived by our own government. It caused even more severe protests. That widespread public disaffection led to Johnson’s decision on 31 March 1968 not to escalate further and not to stand for reelection. We carried our point and finally a man who had initiated war in Vietnam stopped being our president. Cultural Revolution As I already mentioned at the beginning our society was split in terms of political views. The divisions were cultural and generational too. A youthful counterculture expressed its alienation in more open sexuality, free love; long hair, and cast-off clothing; rock music, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Doors and Rolling Stones; and marijuana and other consciousness-altering substances. At Woodstock, New York, in August 1969 I witnessed the greatest youth gathering. About half a million of young people stayed there for a three-day music festival, laced with political and cultural protest. What we may conclude    As you can see from my story the Vietnam War Era was a complicated period for our society from which I hope it had derived correct conclusions. In my point of view these conclusions can be expressed by one sentence: â€Å"Win quickly or stay out†. Regardless of the camp to which you belong to those emphasizing the former or to those emphasizing the latter, you should feel that you are a part of one nation. I believe that the memorial near which we are staying now will help us remember this simple principle. Bibliography:    George C. Herring, Americas Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 2nd ed. New York, 1986.

Impact of E-Commerce on Amazon

Impact of E-Commerce on Amazon Existing E-Commerce sites For around 2 decades or so e-commerce has proved to be a success for businesses. It has changed the way that business and consumers work and operate. Companies such as eBay and Amazon have become a success because of the high demand that high-street market places cant provide. eBay and Amazon are some of the more popular e-commerce sites as they only operate online with no stores anywhere in the world. They are some companies which started before the internet came about such as Asda or Tescos so they have adapted and incorporated an e-commerce site in order to keep up with the trend, consumer way and demand. Amazon Amazon is an e-commerce company founded in the United States of America in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and was launched in 1995. Amazon was very well known since it was first brought to the public eye, as it was one of the first big companies to sell goods on the internet. It started out as an online bookstore which then quickly developed and started to add other items such as VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, video games and the list goes on. Amazon is now one of the biggest online sellers today, offering over two hundred million different products. How it works Amazon now offers all sorts of products ranging from gardening to high tech. Amazon makes possible attempt to customize the buyers experience. When on the homepage of Amazon, you will find special offers section and featured products. If you have visited Amazon before and have used the service you will have a history with products which Amazon will use to their advantage and advertise relating items on the special offers and featured products to draw your attention. Infrastructure and Technology Amazon runs on Linux. In 2005 Amazon had built databases so big they were officially the worlds largest Linux databases, with a total capacity of 7.8 Terabytes, 18.5 Terabytes and 24.7 Terabytes. The central Amazon data warehouse is made up of 28 HP servers, with four CPUs per node. Amazon became so big they processed a top-end one million shipments and twenty million inventory updates in one day. The amount of sales Amazon were doing daily meant thousands of customers where giving debit and credit details were being sent to Amazons database, this meant security was a top priority as hackers would steal, sell and use details. Amazon already encrypted card numbers during the checkout process, however they went a step further by others customers the choice to encrypt all information such as name, and their address. Amazon employs the Netscape Secure Commerce Server using the secure socket layer protocol. This is where all credit and debit card information would be stored. It would not be accessible by internet meaning no hackers could gain entry. Reference: http://money.howstuffworks.com/amazon1.htm Website Analysis Amazon is very simple and easy to use. The main search bar is at the very top of the page, which is a convenient place, being right below the URL bar. If you have an account with Amazon it is right above quick links to your account as well as Your Amazon, Todays Deals, Gift Cards, Sell and Help links. The search bar is very useful as it has predictive text on what it thinks you may be searching for. Once a specific word has been entered it gives you a choice of departments which you can choice from to help narrow down the search for the customers product(s). User Friendly Amazon has a section named Your Amazon. This is a personalized section that Amazon offers anyone who is signed up for the website. In this section you can quickly view the number of orders they have. They also show basic customers information such as the year they became a customer. It also gives recommended products based on what the customer looks at on the site as well as what the customer has previously bought. Log In The log in process for returning customers and the sign up button are very easy to use as well as very quick to access. The sign up process is very simple to follow and is quick to complete. You will need an email, you will also need to create a password for your account. Any other information such as address and card details can be given on a later day when making a purchase. When logging in after already creating an account before all you need to do is enter the email you registered with as well as the same password you register with. From the log in page Amazon promotes its security, by adding Sign in using out secure server. Promotions Amazon offers a wide range of offers on all different types of products. Amazon is well known for its daily deals, which is located under the search bar. There is a quick link that will take you to the deals named Daily Deals. There are so many deals, that amazon have a handy refinery tool on the left hand side of the page. The customer can select departments which products might interest them and it will narrow the products down. Statistics The graph below shows the net revenue for Amazon from 2006 to 2015 in billion U.S. dollars. In 2014, Amazons net revenue amounted to 88.99 billion U.S. dollars. 33.52 billion was through international revenue channels. Reference: http://www.statista.com/statistics/266289/net-revenue-of-amazon-by-region/ Impact of E-commerce   Ã‚   If it wasnt for online shopping and e-commerce Amazon may not have existed today. Amazon is one of the most well-known e-commerce sites today and has been greatly impacted by e-commerce. Platforms Amazon is available on most platforms. There is an Amazon app that is available on iOS for apples users, it is also available for android users. This covers most mobile phones and tablets, however it is also available on windows 10 operating system which most windows phones and tablets now run on. Amazon is also compatible with all internet browsers such as windows explorer, google chrome, Firefox and all the others. Tesco Tesco was founded in 1919 by a man named Jack Cohen. Tescos was originally a market stall in Londons East End. Over the years the business grew and they now operate in 12 countries around the world, which helps employ over 530,000 people. In the century leap year 2000, Tescos launched their website of Tesco.com and it has grown to serve over 500,000 customers each week (Tesco, 2015). How it works Tescos stock over one million products on their online store, which they then deliver to all over the country and other countries they operate in. Tescos use cookies to track what their customer has looked at and bought. This is then used to personalize each customers experiences a lot like how Amazon base there website on. Unlike Amazon though Tescos is mainly a grocery shop however do sell some other products. Tescos will adapt their site according to the time of year to help with demand, for example if it is Christmas season they will increase the stock for turkeys and Christmas festival treats to help meet demand. Infrastructure and Technology Tescos teamed up with Verzion not so long ago, this is to provide secure connectivity to Tescos suppliers, partners, customers and colleagues in 12 countries around the world. The infrastructure offers a solid foundation and enables Tescos to develop and roll out new and upcoming technologies and services. Just like Amazon, Tescos also use secure socket layer when it comes to customers checking out using their precious card details. They also state this during the check-out process to help reassure the customer that their information is safe. Website Analysis When first entering the site you will be placed on the homepage. From here you will see that everything is easy to see and read. The search bar is in the right upper-hand corner, which is like most sites. The main departments of Tescos are easily displayed and again like Amazon offering quick links to each department making shopping fun, easy and fast. The homepage will adapt according to the time of year it is, so for example if it is Christmas time they may have Christmas themed pictures on their website. Log in The log in and sign up process are a lot like Amazons however Tescos ask for your name, address, email address and password in order to set up an account unlike Amazon who only asked for an email address and a password. If already signed up and need to log in all that will be needed is the email that was used to create the account with as well as the password. Impact of E-commerce Tesco was around before the internet came about. Since the launch of the internet e-commerce has become a big part of it offering benefits for companies such as Amazon and eBay. Tescos developed a demand for things to go online therefore Tesco decided that they should make their products available online and implemented one in 2000. Since then, Tesco have seen a rise in sales and therefore have increased their overall profit and market share. Platforms Tesco is now accessible from most app stores such as android, iOS, and Windows app store. Tescos is also compatible with all internet browsers just like Amazon. Financial Impact When an organisation is thinking about developing an e-commerce site, they need to take in account of financial impacts. The investment will be high, but they need to consider other investments that will need to be made such as website development, e-commerce package and many other investments. E-commerce site plan Below is what I feel like is an appropriate e-commerce site for MFP.

Who Stole My Cheese? Self-Analysis Essay -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Change, like time, is always happening. There is no way to stop it, not even for a second. Whither or not you realize it, you are always changing in every possible way. However, we commonly simplify change to only the large differences in our normal routines each day or week, whither they are expected or unexpected. These large problems can sometimes become problems for people, which is not surprising. They should be problems, whither they are good problems to have, or bad. It is our job to adapt to these changes, and to adapt quickly. All of the time it takes you to adapt, is time lost, time you will never regain. This principle is easily explained by Spencer Johnson, M.D. in his book Who Moved My Cheese?.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hem, Haw, and two speedy mice running through a maze looking for cheese first sounded like a very odd way to analyze how people deal with change, however, after reading a section, the comparison between two different people and mice is a very creative and correct comparison. The mice, are concerned with one thing, their cheese. They do not worry about having a permanent home or structure to fall back on. They are like Indians following the buffalo wherever they roam. They are constantly on the move following their source of life. The little people, Hem and Haw, however, are more concerned with have a home, and a schedule. A life that stays the same with themselves always perfectly content. They do not want to hav...

The Kate Moss Effect :: Beauty Media Modeling Self Esteem Essays

The Kate Moss Effect â€Å"Women, you know that crummy feeling you get after leafing through a fashion magazine chock full of models who, let’s face it, look way better than you? A new study, The Kate Moss Effect, suggests that it‘s not all in your head† (Jennifer Thomas, HealthScout). There have been so many times in my life, and I’m sure in other women’s lives as well, that I feel totally inadequate in comparison to, let’s say, a Victoria’s Secret Model. I just have one question: How is a woman ever supposed to feel good about herself when the only thing being consistently promoted is perfection? There have been many experiments done, in which doctors study the effects that the pressure to have a perfect body has on the average female. However, I am going to concentrate on the Kate Moss Effect for the simple reason, that of all the studies I looked at, The Kate Moss Effect seemed to be the most realistic, and straight forward. So let’s get back to that good old feeling of sifting through the many discouraging pages of a modern day fashion magazine. The Kate Moss Effect is a study based around the simple everyday activity of viewing a publication crammed with aptness. Basically, women were gathered to look at pages bubbling with models who were virtually flawless and their reactions to this exposure were then observed. To be exact, researchers divided 91 Caucasian women, ages 18 to 31into two groups. One group was shown advertisements for various everyday products such as nail polish, toothpaste, and gum. However, these ads featured rail thin females, the virtual living, breathing representation of faultlessness. The second group was shown ads for the same types of merchandise. Except the second group’s ads didn’t have people in them. â€Å"Researchers found that women who looked at advertisements featuring stereotypically thin and beautiful women showed more signs of depression and were more dissatisfied with their bodies after only one to three minutes of viewing the pictures. Depression levels registered a slight uptick, while self-esteem was unchanged† (Jennifer Thomas, Health Scout). Laurie Mintz, the lead author of the study and the associate professor of educational and counseling psychology at University of Missouri-Columbia said, â€Å"The women who registered the biggest drop in self image after viewing the

Curb Your Enthusiam †an in Depth Analysis Essay

In the year 2000, the legendary comedian, Larry David ,created curb Your Enthusiasm. It is a comedy television series produced by HBO about Larry David, starring Larry David himself. He plays himself as a retired comedian producer and writer. The show follows him through his day to day life, which frequently puts him in awkward situations as he often gets annoyed with the status qua and normal social situations. Larry is extremely vocal about his irritations, involving not only him, but the other characters on the show. The show depicts an unflinching, self-deprecating depiction of his life and the lives of his family and friends. The show is called Curb Your Enthusiasm because Larry David feels that most people live their lives by means of false enthusiasm. He thinks they do this in order to give off the impression that â€Å"we are better than you†. Larry also called the show Curb because he did not want his audience to expect too much from the show following seinfelds enormous success. Curb eventually became one of the most critically acclaimed television series, reaping in numerous awards and fans. There are many versatile characters on Curb Your Enthiusiasm, which makes the show extremely dynamic. His wife and eventually ex wife, Cheryl, played by Cheryl Hines is usually Larrys voice of reason. She often guides Larry in the right direction of the social norms, and vociferously expresses her annoyance with him on his many social faux passe. Larrys best friend, Jeff Greene, played by Jeff Garlin, is another major influence on Larry’s character. He is known to be without morals and scruples, paying little regard to the fact that he is married and with a child. Many times, Jeff gets Larry involved in his infidelities, constantly building to Larrys own drama. His wife, Susie Green , played by Susie Essman, is a bully. She is constantly putting down her husband,Larry, and friends, often using profanity and sheer uncouth behavior. Although she has a foul mouth, she walks on the straight path of morality versus her husband and Larry. Last but not least, Larry himself. Larry is an uncivilized, crude, and neurotic individual. He usually has good intentions, but they are blinded by his selfish and stubborn personality. He is not shy about his thical principles and morals, and continuously voices his opinion when a situation does not go his way. Generally, he initiates his situations on petty details, which snowball into major issues and dilemmas. He pursues what he perceives to be the right path, although the social norms may dictate something else entirely. His actions continuously lead him into awkward, entertaining, and side splitting situations which he is persistent about correcting. His misjudgments are so extraordinary that Larry David created a place for himself in pop culture termed a â€Å"Larry David Moment†: an extremely awkward social situation. Some of Larry’s most famous indiscretions are â€Å"stopping and chatting† with acquaintances and tipping at restaurants. Larry David himself is an extremely talented comedian. He, along with Jerry Seinfeld co-wrote and produced the mega popular Seinfeld. After nine seasons of Seinfeld , it was an end to an era. Seinfeld ran its last episode in 1998. In 1999, Larry produced the first Curb Your Enthusiasm. Originally It was meant to be a one time exclusive, a one hour mockumentary- when the characters are aware of the precense of the cameras and crew. The show turned out to be a major success. The Larry David show quickly snowballed into Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of the greatest and highly acclaimed shows of all time. Television has many different popular genres, styles, and programs. Before Curb Your Enthusiasm arrived on the scene, the most popular programs from the nineties were Roseanne, Friends, Full House, Family Matters, and Everybody Loves Raymond. These television shows formed TV into new directions and defined the humor of the decade. They were the start of television sitcoms- shortened for situation comedies. A sitcom is a show that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue. Originally, sitcoms started as radio shows, but as we evolved to a television-oriented society, sitcoms acclimated as well. One of the most famous original sitcoms is I Love Lucy, known for being one of the best and most popular shows of all time. It was the first show to perform in front of a studio audience. Lucy showed and influenced society in many ways such as the difference between the sexes. â€Å"The I Love Lucy show continued the ever-popular and age-old â€Å"battle between the sexes† scenarios. Ricky and Fred would try to â€Å"teach† the girls a lesson now and then, and vice versa. In many ways the â€Å"Ricky & Fred† team vs. The â€Å"Lucy & Ethel† team put men and women on equal ground, as the two continually schemed against one another with similar rates of successful schemes and backfired ones. This was one way for Lucy to escape the submissive housewife image with some defiance of her own. There was a constant desire to outdo the other sex, which perhaps was a signal of the changing times and changing roles men and women would hold in the coming decades†. Sitcoms used single camera filming style, which was more practical given the visual effects used in these shows. This allowed for the careful creation of special effects and sharp editing, features which were not possible with the same finesse in a multi-camera production. Many of these programs were not filmed before live audiences, and featured a laugh track. Jerry Seinfeld, in 1989, created Seinfield, the mega popular sitcom, known to be one of the greatest shows of all time. Seinfield follows the life and creator Jerry Seinfeld, as he lives his life using absurdism- conflict between the human tendencies to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any. The characters of Seinfeld have no morals, hope, ambition, and compassion. Everything they do leads to failure. The show is a show about â€Å"nothing†, meaning there is no climax or moments of pathos for any of the characters. Curb also uses many of the same attributes. The show is based on absurdism, with the characters having little or no morals whatsoever. It is also a show about â€Å"nothing†, following the characters mundane day to day tasks. Television shows have a major cultural affect on society. Friends, for example, was so popular that its influences still affect us till this day. Of example, Rachels haircut is called â€Å"The Rachel†, Joeys catchphrase â€Å"How you doin† and the Central Perk Franchise are just a few of the cultural affects Friends had on our society. It also changed the format of love and family, thriving on the concept that â€Å"all you need is good friends†. The sitcom depicts the idea that we can choose our family and live life in a more unconventional manner. According to pop-culture expert at the University of Buffalo, Friends is â€Å"one of those rare shows that marked a change in American culture†. Most of the Television shows that premiered when Curb Your Enthusiasm came out were complete opposites of it. For examples, shows such as Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Scrubs, and Degrassi were extremely popular. These shows are all drama comedies, scripted, and the fictional opposite of documentary style. Another popular television show is Grey’s Anatomy. Grey’s Anatomy is a medical drama about a group of surgeons working at Seattle Grace Hospital. The show centers on Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and her life as a resident at the hospital. In addition to her relationship with her neurosurgeon husband, Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), and best friend Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), it also explores her relationships with her peers and the other doctors around her. It is filled with romantic drama and ethical dilemmas that are extremely unrealistic. The characters are also very good looking and impracticable. Curb is unique in many ways that makes it exceptionally hilarious and an instant cult classic. The show is mostly improvised, meaning that there is no real script that the show sticks to. The characters have a storyline, based off of a couple of pages written by Larry David himself. The actors then improvise their dialogue based on the story outline, direction, and their own creativity. Unlike most other popular sitcoms, Curb has basically no writers, no script, and no rehearsal. The characters are raw, and easily believable. They do not dress in high fashions, look like models, or act like people normally would. There is no epic romances or crazy drama. The show is just Larry taking on the social scene in his own unique way. In many episodes, Curb—like its predecessor Seinfeld—tied together apparently unrelated events woven throughout a given episode into an unforced climax that resolves the story lines simultaneously, either to Larry’s advantage or detriment. For example, in the episode The Black Swan ( season seven, episode 7) that is exactly the case. In the beginning of the episode, Larry discovers that his mothers gravestone is misspelled and vows to fix it. Larry and his buddies are then seen at the snobby golf club, which has many rules that Larry constantly breaks, including accidently killing the owners swan and other golf member and refusing to tip the waiter. At the end of the show the grave says â€Å"mother of swan killer† and Larry gets caught. The whole show ties together beautifully, with every detail eventually playing a part in the ending. Another example of the show is Every show displays this brilliance, making it hilarious and highly enjoyable to watch. The show also uses a single camera setup. The single camera setup is generally utilized on comedy series that either require or strive for specific shots and camera angles and visual set-pieces. When the potential of the single camera filming style is fully maximized the camera movement, the way shots are composed and edited, and other directorial flourishes, will be as much a source of comedy as the behavior of the characters. The shows asthetics are also plain and simple, making it seem as if its real life and easy to believe. This leads to the style of the show- a mockmentary. Mockumentarys are in the same style as a documentary, yet shot when the cast is fully aware that the cameras and crews are there- like a fake documentary. It is highly improvised, meaning the characters do not memorize a script and just act. They must be creative with the story and put their own â€Å"sparkle† in it. The show is not filled with the typical dramas and unrealistic actors that other leading television series are famous for. It is therefore easily relatable and loveable. Another example using all these elements is from season eight, episide three- The Palestinian Chicken. Larry relishes his role as a â€Å"social assassin† until it becomes a liability with his friends, on the golf course and at a Palestinian restaurant. The story once again has a beginning, middle, and ends which all ties together towards the end of the episode. Another appealing aspect to the show is its depiction of Jewish characters. Vincent Brook stated, â€Å"Curb’s commitment to Jewish identification greatly enhances its storytelling capacity, as it lends greater realism and dimension to the characters and opens the show up to episodes with meaningful Jewish themes. † Larry’s character mirrors the â€Å"schmiel† from Yiddish folklore. The schlemiel is usually a comic character whose actions lead to his inevitable downfall, but also stands as a form of resistance to social and cultural values and norms. David Gillota wrote: â€Å"As a true schlemiel, Larry’s failure serves as a direct challenge to the status quo and encourages viewers to question the myriad unwritten rules that we follow in our everyday lives. † Gillota also observed: â€Å"Whereas the schlemiel of Eastern Europe encountered problems that mostly affected Eastern European Jews (such as anti-Semitism and economic survival), Larry encounters problems that affect contemporary middle- to upper-class American Jews, namely, Jewish assimilation, secularism, intermarriage, and, as all of these uggest, the Jews’ precarious ethnic identity in an increasingly multicultural environment. â€Å" Alec Berg, one of the writers for Curb and Seinfeld said, â€Å"Structure, structure, structure. Every single thing in a script must advance the plot or define a character more deeply (ideally both, in a hilarious way) or it will die in the edit†. Larry David himself is nowhere near as vivacious as the Larry David he plays onscreen. Larry lives vicariously through his character, acting as a total social piranha wherever and whenever he pleases. He has said in an interview that, â€Å"he is my version of Superman. The character really is me, but I just couldn’t possibly behave like that. If I had my druthers, that would be me all the time, but you can’t do that. We’re always doing things we don’t want to do, we never say what we really feel, and so this is an idealized version of how I want to be. As crazy as this person is, I could step into those shoes right now, but I would be arrested or I’d be hit or whatever. I find the character to be honest. And honesty comes off as cranky or rude, I suppose. But that character is way happier than I am. I’m cranky. He’s not cranky. I’d be much happier if I were more like him. † He also said â€Å"From the character I play on the show? The only difference is he’s much more honest than I am. He’s brutally honest, and I am not. People seem to think that he’s cranky, I get that. I don’t see him as a curmudgeon. I just think he’s honest, and he gets in confrontations with people because he’s honest. I am not honest. Because of this very delicate, socially balanced world we live in, you can’t talk like that†. He feels as if he is breaking through a barrier, an inhibition that he couldn’t do as himself. In conclusion, Curb Your Enthusiasm is not your average Television show. Thanks to the comedic genius, Larry David, the show has become a smash hit success, running a full eight seasons and counting. It has become part of pop culture, establishing its own terms and concepts. The use of mockumentary, absurdism, dry humor, and realism are a major part of the shows charm and success. Filled with quirky and dry humor, Curb continues to break barriers, pleasing and shocking its audience’s episode after episode.