Biography of Al Capone, Prohibition Era Crime Boss

Biography of Al Capone, Prohibition Era Crime Boss Al Capone (January 17, 1899–January 25, 1947) was a notorious gangster who ran an organized crime syndicate in Chicago during the 1920s, taking advantage of the era of Prohibition. Capone, who was both charming and charitable as well as powerful and vicious, became an iconic figure of the successful American gangster. Fast Facts: Al Capone Known For: Notorious gangster in Chicago during ProhibitionBorn: January 17, 1899 in Brooklyn, New YorkParents: Gabriele and Teresina (Teresa) CaponeDied: January 25, 1947 in Miami, FloridaEducation: Left grade school at 14Spouse: Mary Mae CoughlinChildren: Albert Francis Capone Early Life Al Capone (Alphonse Capone, and known as Scarface) was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian immigrants Gabriele and Teresina (Teresa) Capone and was the fourth of their nine children. From all known accounts, Capones childhood was a normal one. His father was a barber and his mother stayed home with the children. They were a tight-knit Italian family trying to succeed in their new country. Like many immigrant families at the time, the Capone children often dropped out of school early to help earn money for the family. Al Capone stayed in school until he was 14 and then left to take a number of odd jobs. Around the same time, Capone joined a street gang called the South Brooklyn Rippers and then later the Five Points Juniors. These were groups of teenagers who roamed the streets, protected their turf from rival gangs, and sometimes carried out petty crimes like stealing cigarettes. Scarface It was through the Five Points gang that Al Capone came to the attention of brutal New York mobster Frankie Yale. In 1917, 18-year-old Capone went to work for Yale at the Harvard Inn as a bartender and as a waiter and bouncer when needed. Capone watched and learned as Yale used violence to maintain control over his empire. One day while working at the Harvard Inn, Capone saw a man and woman sitting at a table. After his initial advances were ignored, Capone went up to the good-looking woman and whispered in her ear, Honey, you have a nice ass and I mean that as a compliment. The man with her was her brother, Frank Gallucio. Defending his sisters honor, Gallucio punched Capone. However, Capone didnt let it end there; he decided to fight back. Gallucio then took out a knife and slashed at Capones face, managing to cut Capones left cheek three times (one of which cut Capone from ear to mouth). The scars left from this attack led to Capones nickname of Scarface, a name he personally hated. Family Life Not long after this attack, Al Capone met Mary (Mae) Coughlin, who was pretty, blonde, middle-class, and came from a respectable Irish family. A few months after they started dating, Mae became pregnant. Al Capone and Mae got married on December 30, 1918, three weeks after their son (Albert Francis Capone, a.k.a. Sonny) was born. Sonny was to remain Capones only child. Throughout the rest of his life, Al Capone kept his family and his business interests completely separate. Capone was a doting father and husband, taking great care in keeping his family safe, cared for, and out of the spotlight. However, despite his love for his family, Capone did have a number of mistresses over the years. Plus, unknown to him at the time, Capone contracted syphilis from a prostitute before he met Mae. Since the symptoms of syphilis can disappear quickly, Capone had no idea that he still had the sexually transmitted disease or that it would so greatly affect his health in later years. Chicago About 1920, Capone left the East Coast and headed to Chicago. He was looking for a fresh start working for Chicago crime boss Johnny Torrio. Unlike Yale who used violence to run his racket, Torrio was a sophisticated gentleman who preferred cooperation and negotiation to rule his crime organization. Capone was to learn a lot from Torrio. Capone started out in Chicago as a manager for the Four Deuces, a place where clients could drink and gamble downstairs or visit prostitutes upstairs. Capone did well in this position and worked hard to earn Torrios respect. Soon Torrio had increasingly important jobs for Capone and by 1922, Capone had risen up the ranks in Torrios organization. When William E. Dever, an honest man, took over as Chicagos mayor in 1923, Torrio decided to avoid the mayors attempts to curb crime by moving his headquarters to the Chicago suburb of Cicero. It was Capone who made this happen. Capone established speakeasies, brothels, and gambling joints. Capone also worked diligently to get all the important city officials on his payroll. It didnt take long for Capone to own Cicero. Capone had more than proven his worth to Torrio and it wasnt long before Torrio handed over the entire organization to Capone. Crime Boss Following the November 1924 murder of Dion OBanion (an associate of Torrio and Capones who had become untrustworthy), Torrio and Capone were seriously hunted by one of OBanions vengeful friends. Fearing for his life, Capone drastically upgraded everything about his personal safety, including surrounding himself with bodyguards and ordering a bulletproof Cadillac sedan. Torrio, on the other hand, did not greatly change his routine and on January 12, 1925, he was savagely attacked just outside his home. Nearly killed, Torrio decided to retire and hand his entire organization over to Capone in March 1925. Capone had learned well from Torrio and soon proved himself to be an extremely successful crime boss. Capone as a Celebrity Gangster Al Capone, only 26 years old, was now in charge of a very large crime organization that included brothels, nightclubs, dance halls, race tracks, gambling establishments, restaurants, speakeasies, breweries, and distilleries. As a major crime boss in Chicago, Capone put himself in the publics eye. In Chicago, Capone became an outlandish character. He dressed in colorful suits, wore a white fedora hat, proudly displayed his 11.5-carat diamond pinky ring, and would often pull out his huge roll of bills while out in public places. It was hard not to notice Al Capone. Capone was also known for his generosity. He would frequently tip a waiter $100, had standing orders in Cicero to hand out coal and clothes to the needy during the cold winters, and opened some of the first soup kitchens during the Great Depression. There were also numerous stories of how Capone would personally help out when he heard a hard-luck story, such as a woman considering turning to prostitution to help her family or a young kid who couldnt go to college because of the high cost of tuition. Capone was so generous to the average citizen that some even considered him a modern-day Robin Hood. Cold-Blooded Killer As much as the average citizen considered Capone to be a generous benefactor and local celebrity, Capone was also a cold-blooded killer. Although the exact numbers will never be known, it is believed that Capone personally murdered dozens of people and ordered the killing of hundreds of others. One such example of Capone handling things personally occurred in the spring of 1929. Capone had learned that three of his associates planned to betray him, so he invited all three to a huge banquet. After the three unsuspecting men had eaten heartily and drank their fill, Capones bodyguards quickly tied them to their chairs. Capone then picked up a baseball bat and began hitting them, breaking bone after bone. When Capone was done with them, the three men were shot in the head and their bodies dumped out of town. The most famous example of a hit believed to be ordered by Capone was the February 14, 1929 assassination now called the St. Valentines Day Massacre. On that day, Capones Henchman Machine Gun Jack McGurn attempted to lure rival crime leader George Bugs Moran into a garage and kill him. The ruse was actually quite elaborate and would have been completely successful if Moran hadnt been running a few minutes late. Still, seven of Morans top men were gunned down in that garage. Tax Evasion Despite committing murder and other crimes for years, it was the St. Valentines Day Massacre that brought Capone to the attention of the federal government. When President Herbert Hoover learned about Capone, Hoover personally pushed for Capones arrest. The federal government had a two-pronged attack plan. One part of the plan included collecting evidence of Prohibition violations as well as shutting down Capones illegal businesses. Treasury agent Eliot Ness and his group of Untouchables were to enact this part of the plan by frequently raiding Capones breweries and speakeasies. The forced shut down, plus the confiscation of all that was found, severely hurt Capones business- and his pride. The second part of the governments plan was to find evidence of Capone not paying taxes on his massive income. Capone had been careful over the years to run his businesses with cash only or through third parties. However, the IRS found an incriminating ledger and some witnesses who were able to testify against Capone. On October 6, 1931, Capone was brought to trial. He was charged with 22 counts of tax evasion and 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act (the main Prohibition law). The first trial focused only on the tax evasion charges. On October 17, Capone was found guilty of only five of the 22 tax evasion charges. The judge, not wanting Capone to get off easily, sentenced Capone to 11 years in prison, $50,000 in fines, and court costs totaling $30,000. Capone was completely shocked. He had thought he could bribe the jury and get away with these charges just like he had dozens of others. He had no idea that this was to be the end of his reign as a crime boss. He was only 32 years old. Alcatraz When most high-ranking gangsters went to prison, they usually bribed the warden and prison guards in order to make their stay behind bars plush with amenities. Capone was not that lucky. The government wanted to make an example of him. After his appeal was denied, Capone was taken to the Atlanta Penitentiary in Georgia on May 4, 1932. When rumors leaked out that Capone had been receiving special treatment there, he was chosen to be one of the first inmates at the new maximum security prison at Alcatraz in San Francisco. When Capone arrived at Alcatraz in August 1934, he became prisoner number 85. There were no bribes and no amenities at Alcatraz. Capone was in a new prison with the most violent of criminals, many of whom wanted to challenge the tough gangster from Chicago. However, just as daily life became more brutal for him, his body began to suffer from the long-term effects of syphilis. Over the next several years, Capone began to grow increasingly disoriented, experienced convulsions, slurred speech, and a shuffling walk. His mind quickly deteriorated. After spending four-and-a-half years at Alcatraz, Capone was transferred on January 6, 1939, to a hospital at the Federal Correctional Institution in Los Angeles. A few months after that Capone was transferred to a penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. On November 16, 1939, Capone was paroled. Retirement and Death Capone had tertiary syphilis, which could not be healed. However, Capones wife Mae took him to a number of different doctors. Despite many novel attempts at a cure, Capones mind continued to degenerate. Capone spent his remaining years in quiet retirement at his estate in Miami, Florida while his health slowly got worse. On January 19, 1947, Capone suffered a stroke. After developing pneumonia, Capone died on January 25, 1947, of cardiac arrest at age 48. Sources Capeci, Dominic J. Al Capone: Symbol of a Ballyhoo Society. The Journal of Ethnic Studies 2.33–50 (1975).Haller, Mark H. Organized Crime in Urban Society: Chicago in the Twentieth Century. Journal of Social History 5.2 (1971): 210–34.Iorizzo, Luciano J. Al Capone: A Biography. Greenwood Biographies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2003.

The Ultimate Strong Verbs List Thatll Instantly Supercharge Your Writing

The Ultimate Strong Verbs List Thatll Instantly Supercharge Your Writing 249 Strong Verbs Thatll Spice Up Your Writing Do you ever wonder why a grammatically correct sentence you’ve written just lies there like a dead fish? I sure have. Your sentence might even be full of those adjectives and adverbs your teachers and loved ones so admired in your writing when you were a kid. But still the sentence doesn’t work. Something simple I learned from The Elements of Style years ago changed the way I write and added verve to my prose. The authors of that little bible of style said: â€Å"Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs.† Even Mark Twain was quoted, regarding adjectives: â€Å"When in doubt, strike it out.† That’s not to say there’s no place for adjectives. I used three in the title and first paragraph of this post alone. The point is that good writing is more about well-chosen nouns and strong verbs than it is about adjectives and adverbs, regardless what you were told as a kid. There’s no quicker win for you and your manuscript than ferreting out and eliminating flabby verbs and replacing them with vibrant ones. How To Know Which Verbs Need Replacing Your first hint is your own discomfort with a sentence. Odds are it features a snooze-inducing verb. As you hone your ferocious self-editing skills, train yourself to exploit opportunities to replace a weak verb for a strong one. At the end of this post I suggest a list of 249 vivid verbs you can experiment with to replace tired ones. Want a copy of the 249-verb list to read, save, or print whenever you wish? Click here. What constitutes a tired verb? Here’s what to look for: 3 Types of Verbs to Beware of in Your Prose 1. State-of-being verbs These are passive as opposed to powerful: Is Am Are Was Were Be Being Been Have Has Had Do Does Did Shall Will Should Would May Might Must Can Could Am I saying these should never appear in your writing? Of course not. You’ll find them in this piece. But when a sentence lies limp, you can bet it contains at least one of these. Determining when a state-of-being verb is the culprit creates a problem- and finding a better, more powerful verb to replace it- is what makes us writers. [Note how I replaced the state-of-being verbs in this paragraph.] Resist the urge to consult a thesaurus for the most exotic verb you can find. I consult such references only for the normal word that carries power but refuses to come to mind. I would suggest even that you consult my list of powerful verbs only after you have exhausted all efforts to come up with one on your own. You want Make your prose to be your own creation, not yours plus Roget or Webster or Jenkins. [See how easy they are to spot and fix?] Examples Impotent: The man was walking on the platform. Powerful: The man strode along the platform. Impotent: Jim is a lover of country living. Powerful: Jim treasures country living. Impotent: There are three things that make me feel the way I do†¦ Powerful: Three things convince me†¦ 2. Verbs that rely on adverbs Powerful verbs are strong enough to stand alone. Examples The fox ran quickly dashed through the forest. She menacingly looked glared at her rival. He secretly listened eavesdropped while they discussed their plans. 3.  Verbs with -ing suffixes Examples Before: He was walking†¦ After: He walked†¦ Before: She was loving the idea of†¦ After: She loved the idea of†¦ Before: The family was starting to gather†¦ After: The family started to gather The Strong Verbs List Absorb Advance Advise Alter Amend Amplify Attack Balloon Bash Batter Beam Beef Blab Blast Bolt Boost Brief Broadcast Brood Burst Bus Bust Capture Catch Charge Chap Chip Clasp Climb Clutch Collide Command Commune Cower Crackle Crash Crave Crush Dangle Dash Demolish Depart Deposit Detect Deviate Devour Direct Discern Discover Dismantle Download Drag Drain Drip Drop Eavesdrop Engage Engulf Enlarge Ensnare Envelop Erase Escort Expand Explode Explore Expose Extend Extract Eyeball Fight Fish Fling Fly Frown Fuse Garble Gaze Glare Gleam Glisten Glitter Gobble Govern Grasp Gravitate Grip Groan Grope Growl Guide Gush Hack Hail Heighten Hobble Hover Hurry Ignite Illuminate Inspect Instruct Intensify Intertwine Impart Jostle Journey Lash Launch Lead Leap Locate Lurch Lurk Magnify Mimic Mint Moan Modify Multiply Muse Mushroom Mystify Notice Notify Obtain Oppress Order Paint Park Peck Peek Peer Perceive Picture Pilot Pinpoint Place Plant Plop Pluck Plunge Poison Pop Position Power Prickle Probe Prune Realize Recite Recoil Refashion Refine Remove Report Retreat Reveal Reverberate Revitalize Revolutionize Revolve Rip Rise Ruin Rush Rust Saunter Scamper Scan Scorch Scrape Scratch Scrawl Seize Serve Shatter Shepherd Shimmer Shine Shock Shrivel Sizzle Skip Skulk Slash Slide Slink Slip Slump Slurp Smash Smite Snag Snarl Sneak Snowball Soar Spam Sparkle Sport Sprinkle Stare Starve Steal Steer Storm Strain Stretch Strip Stroll Struggle Stumble Supercharge Supersize Surge Survey Swell Swipe Swoon Tail Tattle Toddle Transfigure Transform Travel Treat Trim Trip Trudge Tussle Uncover Unearth Untangle Unveil Usher Veil Wail Weave Wind Withdraw Wreck Wrench Wrest Wrestle Wring Yank Zing Zap Click here or below to download the expanded list (now 249 powerful verbs!), along with the three types of verbs to watch for in your writing. Suggest in the comments three (only) vivid verbs that should be added to my list.

Reflective Essay, Scottish Higher Grade English Essay

The Mistreatment is of Animals - Essay Example My first impressions were reserved, as I attributed such differences in behavior to their nature as animals. However, reason quickly turned into apprehension when I realized why they were located discreetly; they were separated in order to avoid possible skirmishes with other dogs. We were told that these dogs were so badly treated by their previous owners that they could not be reintegrated into a normal family home due to their antisocial behaviors. At that point, the whimpering of a small brown dog caught my attention. Witnessing it cower in the corner in its malnourished state immediately aroused a sense of compassion within me. When we were told that the scars on its back were caused by the previous owners extinguishing their cigarettes on its back, a sense of helpless rage momentarily filled me up inside. It only heightened my degree of compassion for the animals. We moved on, taking notes as to which dogs might make for suitable pets. I had a particular interest in a black and white cross breed that appeared visibly sad in its caged state. I was subsequently told by the RSPCA advisors that this dog was not suitable to go into a home environment that had children as a result of mistreatment by the previous owner. The news sent a wave of shame and disgust up my spine for the cruelty of those responsible. I embarrassingly moved on to my next choice, which was a small white dog with black flashes. This dog was deemed suitable and was brought by a handler to the walk area. It was noticeably unhappy in the environment, barking at every dog it passed; this dog clearly had spirit but, having heard the severity of mistreatments, I had reservations regarding its aggression. When brought into the large meeting area, the dog proceeded to sprint two laps of the area and only then came to meet us.   Ã‚  

How Architecture Transformed the Objectives of Edifices Essay

How Architecture Transformed the Objectives of Edifices - Essay Example The main idea of the essay is found in the third paragraph after a considerable discourse on the background of hospitals and medical treatments from the 1900s. To quote: â€Å"In a quirky continuation of past thinking about the need for a civic image for the hospital, designers and administrators began emulating community center, the shopping mall. As a result, hospitals entrances became more welcoming, waiting rooms more inviting, facilities reintegrated more fully into daily urban life, and patients (or even better clients) treated more as guests or consumers.† (p. 82) The argument is that by adopting an environment of domesticity and emulating community-center, hospitals were able to change the old negative perception into something pleasant even without any significant alteration to the patient-doctor relationship. From cold, clinical and drab institution into a welcoming public space, Sloane successfully depicted how hospitals were effective in taking control of their dev elopment and their future by using architectural design in their strategy to adopt. Meanwhile, Cultural Infrastructure investigated the influence of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal on the modern design of American public space. It immediately opined that such â€Å"brief and rich period of commitment to public building produced many of the works that define the public space we now use†. (p. 226) It was cited that Roosevelt Administration resulted in the widest public building program ever that left a lasting mark on what Leighninger called as cultural infrastructure – roads, bridges, schools, courthouses and other public facilities such as parks, museums, gardens, civic centers and city halls, among others. The paper is well researched and has outlined impressive figures and data to support arguments made. For example, a list of new and modified infrastructures and edifices were provided, showing the number of constructed buildings ranging from schools to rodeo gr ounds. An important claim made by the author was the fact that the flurry of construction completed during the period was driven by the need to address the unemployment and economic stagnation of the Great Depression. The reference to this variable allowed Leighninger to explore the distinct contribution of the New Deal to the way public spaces were designed. A case in point was the suggestion that public spaces were designed in such a way that they might discourage dissent. This is supposedly demonstrated in the way the construction of large spaces was avoided and instead more neutral and distracting ones were erected such as zoos and gardens. While there are pieces of evidence of large public spaces constructed such as the Orange Bowl and Cow Palace, Leighninger maintained that there was, indeed, the presence of bias in favor of smaller spaces that constrained politically charged atmosphere. (p. 230) A more important claim, however, was made when the author discussed how public sp ace – as approached by the New Deal architects and urban designers – is not all about the economic consideration.

Business the Richard Branson Way Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business the Richard Branson Way - Assignment Example The paper tells that Branson delegates the duty to his management staff and inspires innovation and meaningful change in the Virgin Group. The leader is approachable and accords time to everyone in the group despite being the head of many ventures. Branson influences and motivates the workforce in his group through the power of personality. The leader spurs others into action and raises the morale of the Virgin Group. Transformational leaders create an environment for others to apply the innovative skills in solving problems and developing competitive products and services. The motivated workforce and the innovative ideas have facilitated the expansion of the Virgin Group to take a strong position in the marketplace. Branson works in consultation with the management team, especially during the formative stages of a new venture. After the venture peaks, Richard Branson gives the management and the subordinate workforce the space to implement viable ideas to run the enterprise. Branson does not practice the hierarchical organizational structure. Transformational leadership style believes in the distinct set of skills that every member of workforce possesses can drive organizations to achieve success. In essence, Branson promotes teamwork. Transformational leadership style holds that leaders in the organization should realize that leadership does not imply to the positions or titles. Rather, leadership entails an interactive process between the leaders and the followers. The character is a strong foundation of the leadership, and Richard Branson has maintained charismatic attributes since the foundation of the Virgin Group. The transformational leaders should motivate and inspire their followers through assisting them to achieve the best results in different tasks within the organizations.

Photography Essays Monstrous Imagery

Photography Essays Monstrous Imagery Chasing the Dragon: Capturing the Significance of the Monstrous Chapter One: What is a monster? There are perhaps two kinds of monster: the monster that sprung from our own hands and changed into something uncontrollable, and the monster that is experienced as alien, preternatural, generally an unfathomable creature, and frightening because of its mystery. It is impossible to decide which is more frightening, since both suggest an Other, something resistant to human power, and while the first kind draws attention to man’s mortal limits and potential for self-destruction, the second highlights the extent of human ignorance and insignificance in relation to external forces. Both kinds of monster, however, share an ability to induce extraordinary fear, and both have a solid foundation in mythology, since man has always feared what he could not explain and has translated his fears into metaphorical shapes of fearful creatures since time began. Both man-made and alien monsters, too, share a self-referential semiotic structure in literature, art, psychology and mythology. In t he history of the human subconscious, fears have always preceded monsters. Monsters are representative. They are representative of all the things we are unable to control, and the uncontrollable fear that is generated by these things. They are representative, then, on more than one level, as they are simultaneously our fear and the object of our fear. All (â€Å"bad†) monsters are synonymous with fear – our fearand as such the monstrosity we perceive in even â€Å"external† beasts like aliens, dragons, sea monsters and circus freaks, is something generated by us, the beholder. They are also representative of anything threatening, as Robert Thomas’ definition in â€Å"The Concept of Fear,† explains â€Å"not only what is likely to threaten life, injure our bodies, cause physical pain, which is seen as   ‘dangerous’ or ‘threatening.’ The monster retains an almost unique power to represent, subjectively, something different to whoever beholds it. But its representative power operates on a universal level too: in Judith Halberstam’s book Skin Shows (1995) she seems to suggest that the semiotics of a monster’s meaning should maintain a certain fluidity, as its interpretation is so unstable, and contingent upon social, political and religious climates. Halberstam expounds on the role of literary and cinematic texts in channelling our fear of monsters, since â€Å"the production of fear in a literary text (as opposed to a cinematic text) emanates from a vertiginous excess of meaning† While one might expect to find that cinema multiplies the possibilities for monstrosity, the nature of the visual always, in fact, operates a kind of self censorship, whereby our visual register reaches a limit of visibility surprisingly fast. It is our imaginations that make the invisible nature of monsters, the very essence of their unknown-ness, so enduringly frightening. As Paul Yoder eloquently expresses it, â€Å"What we cannot see frightens us most. Reason competes with   imagination to establish boundaries around the external stimuli and, thus,   clearly establishes a means of remaining separated from that which harms us.   But reason will ultimately prove ineffective without a frame of reference grounded in a context of physical reality to establish a solidified boundary between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural. Without this definitive context, reason is unable to mark the separation between two modes of perception, so as an audience or a reader, we are forced to hesitate, resulting   in a moment of suspense, the first stage in   externalizing the feeling and producing an externally constructed emotion of   fear.† The monster walks the line between life and death, and the most terrifying monsters transform others into fearful beings too, removing their essence, or everything they cherished. Medusa, for example, had no natural animation herself, just wriggling snakes that performed a grotesque impersonation of the natural and winsome effects of wind through hair.   In some ways she epitomises monstrousness, as her fearful power was an extension of her fearful quality – her deathly stillness. Medusa, of course, used petrification to turn others to stone, and inadvertently brought about her own end through the reflection of her enemy’s shield. Thus Medusa is a warning to all monsters: eventually, the supernatural force of the deadly stillness will be turned onto itself by the superior power of animated defences of the natural. My aim in this study is to juxtapose the metaphorical â€Å"monsters† that have permeated our language and mythologies with the visual interpretations of the monstrous, as it has been translated into photography and the assumptions of pop culture. The ultimate goal in this study is to arrive at some definition of â€Å"monster† based on a societal interpretation of the outsider and examine how fear of the â€Å"Other† is internalized. It is the manner that we, as a society, perceive our â€Å"Other†, which will ultimately control the paths our visual representations of monsters take, as mythical archetypes within the horrors of our minds. Chapter Two: Creating and defining the monstrous: the codes of photography Monsters have long been obeisant to a certain visual code, albeit a very difficult one to define. Sometimes they are brightly coloured, sometimes scaled up or down, humanoid, hairy, toothy, slimey, legless, millipedal, whatever they look like, they look exaggerated, surprising, startling, unexpected. If we read about them, the mental image is a perplexingly blurry one; if we see them in horror movies, their most frightening moment is always just before they appear. Monsters vary so wildly in their representation because the visual properties of the monster are actually incidental to its fear-producing power. The monster can look like anything, the more surprising the better – a chair; a beachball; the Prime Minister because the fear is our fear, and the fear created the monster: it was there first, deep inside us. The visual arrangement of the monster is merely a trigger to that primal fear. It seems to me that the writer with the most monstrous pen is Herman Melville, and the photographer with the most monstrous eye is Ansel Adams. Both contrast light and dark incessantly: for Melville with his extraordinary white whale, pallor is something to be afraid or suspicious of, perhaps even suggesting the diabolical. Whiteness is both, â€Å"the most meaningful symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian deity,† and â€Å"the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind†. In a world controlled by Christian orthodoxy, the whiteness of purity, the shroud, and death, lead to life everlasting. On the sea, however, white represents a loss of hope, for it â€Å"shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation.† A photograph remains an abstraction, even in its most primitive state as a sort of document or record and Adams’s skill lies in his ability to conceal his role as contriver, abstracter, imaginist, within the rhetorical apparatus of scientifically objective reality. He shuttles, perpetually, between the reality of texture and the affectation of emphasised texture; his is a statement about the difference between something existing and something being noticed, which partly accounts for his famous privileging of black and white. When unnecessary distractions arise from ranges of colours are removed, the impact of an image can be multiplied. In efforts to define- or perhaps contain it, the practice of photography has been laboriously distinguished from other visual forms and practices, particularly painting and film. Adams is interesting because he refuses the forces of classification, not static enough for photography, too theatrical and contrived for regular representational convention. In the article Looking at Photographs, Victor Burgin writes: â€Å"The signifying system of photography, like that of classical painting, at once depicted a scene and the gaze of the spectator, an object and a viewing subject. Whatever the object depicted, the manner of its depiction accords with laws of geometric projection which imply a unique point of view. It is the position of point-of-view, occupied in fact by the camera, which is bestowed upon the spectator.† Even more emphatically than painting, photography maps an animated, infinitely subjective and ever changing world into a two dimensional, static image of a finite moment.   Classical and highly stylised black and white images, such as those that have made Adams most famous, take the abstraction one step further by removing all colour from our inescapably multicoloured world. What remains is one of two things which really amount to the same: an alien – monstrous landscape, or our own landscape from an Other’s point of view. The use of colour in photography has been shunned repeatedly by many purists working to a realist agenda. Compared to black and white it is considered more superficial, crassly realistic, mundane, less abstract, ultimately less artistic. Altering light and shade in the darkroom enables a degree of artistic dishonesty. The camera may not lie, but the photographer very frequently does, especially the photographer with an artistic agenda. Whenever he dodges shadow detail and fires up highlights, increasing contrast or altering tone, Adams exercises and demonstrates a contrivance that amounts to a sort of visual poetry. Adams is on record confessing to severe manipulationof Moonrise over Hernandez, but more significant still is probably his interest in striking, unusual, dehumanised scenes and subjects which lend themselves so well to monochrome representation. These subjects I would characterise as â€Å"monstrous†: their stillness the only feature protecting us from terror †“ the brink of fear kept just out of reach by the amazing stationary quality of the images. Monsters are frightening when they are animated, but this is also when they are at their weakest, as we have seen. Adams’ works have the frozen, petrified, feel of a final visual imprint of a paralysed, dying beast. The night scene is extraordinarily affecting, partly because, as a genre, it is most famous for high contrast monochrome. It is the only time in our world really does seem black and white, so the image is almost an accurate representation, but not quite. It is the slightly alienating quality of this image, the slight lack of fit between representation and mental expectation, which makes it so beautiful. Many of Adams’s images are arresting because they are tuned to the timing of our mental calculations: they are ready to predict and confound our expectations by subtle acts of artifice and they play constantly, and good-naturedly, on the moment of our realisation. The monochrome of Adams is not a symptom of self-aggrandising pride in his iconic â€Å"artist† status, but a device to play with emphasis and expectation, a way of forcing us to look at the world in different ways. The British scientist and psychology pioneer, Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), was responsible for many studies we might now associate with â€Å"monstrous† photography in a different sense. Galton generated controversy in many ways even in his own time; as an early eugenicist he was the first to study the nature-nurture debate through the use of real pairs of twins. Galton’s Eugenics experiments in the 1870s had the ostensible aim of â€Å"improving† the human race by selecting individuals with desirable traits and encouraging them to breed, while simultaneously to check the birth-rate of the Unfit. Perhaps his most famous means of studying behavioural traits across different social demographics was photography. Galton aimed to surpass individual behavioural idiosyncrasies and arrive at generalisations about human behaviour, through a crudely arranging a number of photographs into a composite. His most famous study of this sort aspired to investigating criminal behaviour – and this was the study which most clearly demonstrated both a fear of and damaging assumptions made about Victorian society’s â€Å"Other†: the monstrous convict. Galton took a number of face-shots of men convicted of murder, manslaughter and other serious crimes, then carefully printed them all to the same dimensions. By photographing a number of them, then carefully aligning the images onto the same photographic plate, a composite photograph was assembled. Rather than Galtons enabling him to produce a clear image of a criminal face, Galton’s results produced pictures that of men with a generic kind of working class look. Galton’s â€Å"monster† seemed to be created from the false confidence of new technologies and that afforded by the new shamanism surrounding his â€Å"science†. His results seemed to show that any member of the lower classes was a potential criminal and advised that selective breeding could be used to replace the lower classes by those from superior stock. An extension of the same reasoning and method, and extraordinary bias towards the visual, could come to the conclusion that some racial groups were inherently superior to others, and indeed this was what happened, as Eugenics, while starting as an attempt to scientifically improve the human condition was of course later used to support Nazi policies of extermination of Jews, gypsies and others. Photography theory has traced something undeniably monstrous integral to the abstract, literary property of the photograph. After his father’s death, Paul Auster was compelled to sort through the house full of the objects left behind. Despite the fact that all his father’s artefacts, everything from an electric razor, to tools and cancelled cheques—bore a kind of ghostly trace of their owner, Auster prefers to focus on the photographs he finds stored in a cupboard in the bedroom. It is as if he hopes they might reveal some information about his father that unusually real, through their power to capture his image. Roland Barthes’s work Camera Lucida affords Auster’s grim quest with some context. After a determined effort to define photography â€Å"in itself,† the second half of his book sees Barthes turning to a kind of personal dialogue with a photograph of his recently deceased mother. While sorting a stack of photographs of his mother, Bar thes notices that â€Å"none of them seemed to me really ‘right’†that is, although he â€Å"recognized a region of her face, a certain relation of her nose and forehead, the movement of her arms, her hands† Barthes can’t â€Å"find† his mother’s essential â€Å"being† in any of her pictures. Barthes’s task then changes from sorting photos to â€Å"looking for the truth of the face I had loved† in the stack of images. There is something intrinsically alien about the meaning of photographs, and to this extent they are monsters to us, and our memories. Auster, too, seems to be seeking â€Å"truth† in the photographs of his lost parent. He writes, â€Å"It seemed that they could tell me things I had never known before, reveal some previously hidden truth† Unlike Barthes, who is looking for something he knows about his mother but can’t find in her images, Auster hopes that his father’s photographs will betray some evidence of a private man, some part of his father that had been carefully concealed from the world. The â€Å"very essence† of photography, according to Barthes, is that it shows what has been. Chapter three: Reacting to monstrous imagery Many spaces are terrifying to us, and soon become populated by â€Å"monsters† of the cosmic psyche. The arctic wasteland is crawling with yetis, every dark corner has a ghost, and every desert is thick with monstrous mirages, terrifying to the extent that they represent a void, a nothingness, at best, the fear of the unknown. They are alien landscapes- mammals struggle to survive, and the plants we do find in deserts barely seem designed to aid our survival. There is a certain security about filling the void with sign-posts, even if, in the ultimate post-modern irony, those signs only point to themselves. In this sense the iconography of the desert shares a metaphorical shape with Barthes’ self-reflexive definition of photography; it is as if the horrors of the desert, the horrors of the self-created metaphor, and the fearful void constructed by the photograph that signifies nothing are all connected and perhaps even the same. Auge’s words explain the problem of imaging the desert, If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity then a space which cannot be defined as relational, historical or concerned with identity is a non place. The spaces which negate are unbearable and must be somehow psychically redeemed. Laura Cinti attempts this by attaching hair to the spineless cactus, for the cactus itself has of course beco me yet another iconographic space of complicated nothingness. Cinti’s work, if it demonstrates or states anything, demonstrates or states the extent to which the desert symbolism has been anxiously harvested from the plant. What looks like nothingness is mere misunderstanding, and what looks like improvement and liberation is naà ¯ve, appalling, abuse. Yet we are all guilty of some of this. None of us can bear the silence of the desert or make sense of the mute perpendicular. Michael Fried’s work in Realism, Writing, Disfiguration makes much of the damaging and paradoxical symmetry that exists between the hand and the eye. That is, the way we see the world is affected by the way we recreate it, but the way we reproduce it damages the way we see it. The whole theory operates on a larger metaphor controlled by vertical/horizontal semiotics. The desert cactus image is always a vertical formation on a horizontal axis: the opposition of life and death is present visually and immediately. But the desert is unique, as a horizontal space. We would normally expect a great expanse of flat ground to be bursting with life and promise, to oppose and define the sky. The desert, however, rejects life. Those who think cacti ugly must perceive them as canker sores, signifiers only of scorched earth. The desert space is an inversion of all th at we, as animals, have come to associate with health   and life. The cacti in the vista, then, can be interpreted in two almost completely opposing ways. Either they are the anti-tree, the anti-life, or they are vegetation and water, albeit in a different form- and consequently just as alienated from the sandy plains as we are. Despite the obvious oppositions, the desert is more like the sea than it appears. While the water reflects light, the desert reflects heat- and the art historian Michael Fried cites reflections as the connection between the inner and the outer. To the extent that they are concerned with reflections, indoor and outdoor scenes are treated as having the same character and affect. I feel sure the notion can equally be applied to a pair of iconographically opposing images. Interior and exterior scenes are, to Fried, clear metaphors for the inside and outside of the body, so perhaps the â€Å"external† hostility of the desert might set alongside the â€Å"internal† of the humane well-vegetated landscape. Perhaps the images represent a horizontality that reflect along a flat axis. The reflection must always be slightly imperfect for the object to be seen at all- and it is interference on the vertical axis that disrupts the reflection and reveals the illusion. In the desert, th is interference is embodied by cacti, which are surely the most authentic part of the landscape. Conclusions We have seen how monsters can be created and destroyed, and discovered that it is more interesting to explore their legacy as metaphorical forces in our language and psyches. In closing, I would like to look briefly at the example of Narcissus, whose monstrous transformation into a flower is richly representative and relevant, and resonates with much of the discourse surrounding art and spectatorship today. Turning to ancient mythology, we often find a wealth of instances where change itself is the terrifying aspect of the monstrous. Ovid’s metamorphoses provide a catalogue of such stories, and, more interestingly, represent the different ways that the metaphors of monstrosity are used to generate fear and alienation. Narcissus and Echo is a particularly rich example, among several in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, of a beautiful youth who died as a result of spurning sex. In Ovids retelling of the myth, Narcissus is the son of Cephissus, the river god and the nymph Liriope. The seer Tiresias foretold that the child would live to an old age if it did not look at itself. While many nymphs and girls fell in love with him, he rejected them all. One such nymphs, Echo, became so distraught that she withdrew to a lonely spot and faded until all that was left was a plaintive whisper. Meanwhile the rejected girls’ prayers for vengeance reached the goddess Nemesis, who caused Narcissus to fall in love with his own reflection. He remained transfixed by his reflection until he died. It is possible that the connection between Echo and Narcissus was an invention of Ovid, since there do not seem to be any earlier instances of the Narcissus myth which incorporate Echo. This myth lends itself to extensive and adventurous literary interpretation. When Narcissus eliminated the distance between his image and its reflection by touching the water with his face, the distance disappeared and took the image with it, as the water rippled and broke the reflected into pieces. The desire, however, remained, not disappearing with any distance covered by his attempts to escape it, and his difficulty with his passion for himself was not solved. The story is compelling to artists because it is about the power of sight, its dangers and its rewards. For Narcissus, salvation is possible as extension of distance, not as elimination of it. If he can cease to see his own image he will be saved but is precisely the need to see his face that is compelling and destroying him. As Angel Angelov writes, â€Å"Narcissus’ face is a metonymy of integrity, enraptured by its reflected self. The general paradox upon which the story is built comprises various details – in this case, the simultaneity of shapelessness and fixed contour – Narcissus’ image on the water surface was cut like chiseled Paros marble. Certainly, we can think about Alexandrinian influence (getting petrified because of amazement) but also about the Roman practice of sculpting, creating firm outlines. However, the presence in a definite social environment considered eternal, is a characteristic that is contrary to the out-social transience of Narcissus’ reflection.† In Narcissus: the mirror of the text. Philip Hardie explores various ideas around Narcissus as a post-modern signifier. The surface of water, that fragile barrier, becomes a Lacanian mirror and operates as an interface between Self and Other, dividing reality and illusion, as Narcissus, just like the reader, confronts an image that can never be real, but representative only of the viewer’s unfulfilled desire. Hardie argues that the story of Narcissus and Echo is Ovid’s cautionary treatise on the dangerously deluding, deceptively subjective property of sight and sound. Narcissus as Lucretian fool and Lucretian lover will be the victim of simulacral delusions, a frustrated lover situated ironically in a bountiful, pastoral landscape filled with false promise; inappropriately wistful even after his acknowledgement that the Other can only ever be a hollow reflection of the Self. According to this reading, all hope of something extraneous to the self, something objective, to love and life, is prohibited by this tale’s morality. The story is essentially tragic and ontologically didactic: indeed Ovid’s Theban histories are infused with the theme of empty signifiers and the dangers of useless introspection. Indeed the story’s equation of the bewitching power of sight with the sight of oneself has inspired recent writers to construct a kind of literary psychosis to describe the subjective subject, â€Å"The eye would be about the I, the subject, part of a monocular system perpetuating an illusion of wholeness, an Imaginary dyad, a tradition of the eye/I that would move through Kant, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, while the ear would be aligned with the other, with a fragmentary existence cut across by the Symbolic, by having subjectivity determined by and through an other,† It has been said that the product of every metamorphosis is an absent presence, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Narcissus/Echo episode, a story irresistible to artists transfixed with the metaphysical paradoxes and word games. One artist well known for his precocious interest in semiotics was Nicholas Poussin. Poussin’s Echo and Narcissus depicts, unusually, a trio of figures in a triangular formation. Narcissus lies prone across the base, limp but muscular, his face a mask of sadness, his eyes empty. Echo behind him resembles a Greek statue, History, perhaps, again posing strangely in a balleric semaphor of sorrow. In fact, for all the story’s appeal Echo and Narcissus poses an obvious challenge to artists: Echo is said to have wasted away until only her voice was left. But a voice is rather difficult to represent in painting. From the outset, then, the story demands that mimetic pictorial realism must be suspended. The story gives artists like Poussin free license to create symbolic, literary pieces, with figures whose bodies are sculpted and whose faces are masks. We have seen how the image lends itself to ontological paradoxes, and it could be argued that the putti, the third figure in th is image, is a kind of representation of the artist’s presence inside his own artificial world. The putti carries a flaming torch, and stands next to a spear, clear indicators, Michael Fried would argue, of the artist’s palette and paintbrush. The art historian Michael Fried’s writing synchronises very well with the Echo and Narcissus myth, as it could well be characterized as the doomed ambition to structure impossible desire. Poussin’s works present a displaced metaphor for the mental and physical effort of painting. Thus Fried’s theory takes the anti-mimetic definition of realism one step further- although painting does not have to relate to what it depicts, it will resist immediacy, but relate in specific indirect ways to the person who depicts it. For Poussin, the impossible, yet desired, merger is one of inscriber and inscribed; for Ovid it is one of reader and listener. An erotics of the word and image is then as inevitable as one of ear and eye, and we find the transformation that characterizes the monster has as much to do with desire as it has to do with fear. This notion is borne out by Kristeva’s definition of the abject. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines abject as Brought low, miserable; craven, degraded, despicable, self abasing, describing abjection as a state of misery or degradation, definitions which can be understood more fully through their expression: religious hatred, incest, womens bodies, human sacrifice, bodily waste, death, cannibalism, murder, decay, and perversion are aspects of humanity that society considers abject. As Barbara Creed sees it, â€Å"The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I am not. The abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self.† Hence the abject is something we deliberately exclude to preserve our illusion of a meaningful world. In Powers Of Horror:An Essay On Abjection, Kristeva identifies that we first experience abjection at the point of separation from the mother. This idea is drawn from Lacans psychoanalytical theory as she identifies abjection as symptomatic of a revolt against that which gave us our own existence. As Samantha Pentony explains it, â€Å"At this point the child enters the symbolic realm, or law of the father. Thus, when we as adults confront the abject we simultaneously fear and identify with it. It provokes us into recalling a state of being prior to signification (or the law of the father) where we feel a sense of helplessness. The self is threatened by something that is not part of us in terms of identity and non-identity, human and non-human.† Kristeva definition of the abject aligns it to what I have described as the â€Å"Other†,   The abject has only one quality of the object and that is being opposed to I. There will always be a connection between the abject and the subject: they define one another. When we find ourselves flailing in the world of the abject, we lose our sense of subjectivity, our imaginary borders disintegrate, and the abject becomes a real threat because there is no alterior – no sense of reality or self – to neutralise the threat or remind us of its illusory nature. So Kristevas theory of abjection is concerned with those suspended realms, changing forms, states of transition or transformation, â€Å"The abject is located in a liminal state that is on the margins of two positions. This state is particularly interesting to Kristeva because of the link between psychoanalysis and the subconscious mind.† Like Narcissus facing his reflection, or Medusa facing hers, we are attracted and repelled simultaneously by the abject. It induces nausea in our bodies and fear in our hearts. For Kristeva, these feelings arise from memories, specifically the first memory of separation from our mother. There is a thrill about horror and the macabre, and monsters represent ourselves in a state of change – when Kristeva describes one aspect of the abject as jouissance she suggests that through exciting in the abject, One thus understands why so many victims of the abject are its fascinated victims if not its submissive and willing ones. And furthermore, The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them,† The abject, then, the monstrous, is metaphorically powerful as a force of manipulation, even more sinister in its unknowable nature, because we suspect it is up to no good. Yet for all its subversion, perversion and fear, we are excited by the abject, drawn to the monstrous, and we always will be because it comes from inside us. Bibliography Angelov, Angel Images Transformation/Disappearance online here: http://www3.unibo.it/parol/articles/angelov.htmThe Original/The Print/The Copy: Installations Of Nadezhda Lyahova Auge, Marc, â€Å"From Places to Non-Places† in Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity UK: Verso Books, 1995. Auster, The Invention of Solitude, UK: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1989. Bann, Stephen (ed) Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity US:Reaktion Books Ltd, 1994. Barthes, Camera LucidaReflections on Photography UK: Vintage (Vintage Classics), 1993. Creed, Barbara The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fiction S.) UK: Routledge,an imprint of Taylor Francis Books Ltd, 1993. Creed, B. Horror And The Monstrous Feminine : An Imaginary Abjection . London Routledge, 1993. Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Hardie, Philip Ovids Poetics of Illusion Cambridge:   Cambridge University Press, 2002.   Pp. viii, 365 Hargreaves and Hamilton The Beautiful and t

Colors of Slavery Essay -- History Slavery

When Americans think about slavery, they tend to think about "Africans" being brought to the New World against their will. Which upon their arrival were sold, the same as livestock, as permanent property to the white landowners. They may visualize in their minds a person of color shackled, chained, beaten, and forced to labor under the control of their white master. Their picture is that of chattel slavery; black and white. Americans have come to the assumption that slavery was imposed on people of one color or race. However, the Africans were not the only people force to endure the harsh and unjust enslavement by the white society. The Native Americans, as well as indentured servants were used as slaves in the New World. When slavery began in the New World, the color of a person's skin was of little significance. Slaves were white, red, and black. What mattered most was a labor force. Columbus discovered the New World (America) in 1492, soon after, many other European colonies followed and expanded. One Spanish conquistador stated, "that he and his kind went to the new World to serve God and his Majesty, to give light to those who were in the darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do" (Parry, p.33). The majority of Europeans that would follow, desired the same. In order to achieve this goal the Europeans murdered, starved, enslaved, stole land, and brutalized people for centuries to follow. During Columbus second voyage to the New World, he had captured 1600 Native Americans, and enslaved 550. At this point, the Native Americans lives were changed forever. The Spaniards continue to explore the new world, leaving a wake of death and destruction in their path. Along with the Europeans came diseases that th... ...s not merely identified by color. By 1800 it is only an issue or race and only an issue of color" (Thomas Davis). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1i3048.html) . Works Cited (Thomas Davis). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1i3048.html) Quoted in J.H.Parry, The age of Reconnaisance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450 to 1640 (New York, 1963), p.33. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr5.html (equiano) Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, edition of 1838, i, p. 390; ii, p. 40. Witnessin America pg. 30 Gottleib Mittelberger Blight, D.W. A People and a Nation: A History of the United States. Houghton Mifflin Company; 6th edition (2000) Walsh, Robert, Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829 (1831). "Aboard a Slave Ship, 1829," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000).