Purpura 1
Anna-Maria Purpura
Professor: Luke Vasileiou
ENG 103
May 24, 2011
There are many aspects between real-life in New York City in the 1950s and a movie called Rear Window where there are similarities. One of the ways you can tell this movie is filmed in New York City is because of the apartments. The apartments are very close in distance, because the man in the movie can see into the apartment a crossed from his. Not only because of the distance between the two buildings but also because of the distance between the windows. You can even see multiple apartments at once. Another reason is the skyscrapers in the beginning of the movie when they scan down to show you the main characters apartment. Not only that but there’s also taxi’s driving passed the rear apartment. Also by the same street being crowded. With all the information I have gathered, I have come to find out this movie does depict how it really was in the 1950s in New York City, except for a few minor differences. The people in the movie and in real-life both share similar attributes of lifestyles.
When it comes to employment there were many help wanted ads. There are many different wages for the various job listings. They list it by week, month, year, and hour. Hourly wages listed range from $1.10 to $3 an hour. You can even get paid anywhere from $20 dollars a week to $200 a week. There weren’t many jobs that listed wages per month but with the listings it would range around $250 per month. Salesmen made between $6,000 to $10,000 dollars a year. Weekly wages for a salesman could be between $300 to $600 dollars, and Photographers made about $10,000 to $15,000 a year (which is roughly $5.00 - $7.50 an hour).
In Greenwich Village during the 1950s the apartments that were a close match to the main characters apartment in the movie costs $124 for three rooms, which included a fireplace, and an overlooking garden. The apartments that are similar to the ones in movie vary in price anywhere from $85 a month to $145 dollars a month. The encyclopedia of New York City states that the apartments in the 1950s were for the people who were considered middle-class. According to American Decades 1950-1959 the apartments had lower ceilings and the sizes were smaller because it lacked closets and extra rooms.
When it came to women of the 1950’s they were still at the point of being housewives. Around this time the women were marrying younger, they started to date at a younger age as well. If the women were married, they would clean and cook for their husbands. The way they dressed was silk blouses and slim skirts that stopped at the knee with pearl jewelry, just when they were around the house. When they were to go out at night they would wear more flowing skirts that went down to their ankles. Any type of clothing that emphasized their curves. Fashions for men were just a simple suit and dress shoes.
The popular music they played on radios at this time was pop, country and r&b. Although television watching was taking over radio listening. Television became a big hit in the 1950s where it became more popular and was selling more commonly. Toys for children that were getting popular were hula hoops, toy guns, holsters, silly putty, and slinkies. In the encyclopedia of New York City it states that between 1952 and 1955 the homicides that occurred were 4.3 percent out of 100,000 residents. Rather low then the past and upcoming years. It later states that most of the crime was formed in Harlem.
3. We are taken into an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City in a movie called Rear Window. A man that lives in this apartment is named L.B. Jeffries, ‘Jeff’ for short, and he has broken his left leg. A magazine photographer confined in his mediocre apartment. He can’t help but look out his window. There is where he starts watching all the people in their apartments, in the building behind his. While obsessively watching the building next door he spots a couple (Lars Thorwald & bedridden wife), and some weird things occur in the process. Jeff realized the wife is no longer in the apartment. He starts to watch the husband and what is going on in that apartment. He starts to analyze the actions of this man and becomes convinced that this man has killed his wife. This movie was filmed in California, but the director Alfred Hitchcock had to make the town somewhere in New York City because of the way the apartments were.
4. In the movie Rear Window they don’t really scan the city for you, it is a simple movie where you see only Jeff’s apartment, the apartments a crossed from his and the little alley way on the side of both buildings. In this movie, other than the main characters you can see the inside of about seven apartments. That is how we know these apartment buildings stand in New York City, for the fact that you can see into so many apartments, from one window of an apartment next to the other.
When it comes to Jeff, he is a photographer. In the 1950s he would be making at least $200 a week (if he worked 40 hours). That would mean he got $800 dollars a month. His apartment type costs around $124 a month. From what we see in his apartment he doesn’t have many things. When looking through other peoples apartments he looks at them from binoculars which cost $32.50. One of the main things he owns is a 35mm camera, in which he uses to keep Lars away from attacking him. In the 1950s 35mm cameras cost anywhere from $19.50 to $199.00 depending on what features you wanted the camera to do. Now if the man got $800 dollars and paid his rent he would have $676.00 dollars to spend. He would definitely be able to afford the camera and many other things. Along with eating exquisite candle lit dinners with wine and lobster tails.
The murderer Lars Thorwald is a salesman. As a salesman he would make around $1,200 a month. He lives in a studio apartment, which would be cheaper than the apartment that Jeff lived in. He doesn’t have much in his house so you can tell he seems to be a pretty simple man. He is seen with suitcases when packing to leave, which costs about $4.95.
Some of the items seen in the movie are: lawn chairs at $14.88, a phonograph around $200 dollars, and fancy hair-dos depending on what you wanted from $3.00 to $25.00. There were many sales that went on daily. With all the sales there was and with the careers these tenants had, I do believe they were able to afford all of the above and more. On a rainy day you see people pass through the street seen by the alleyway, in the 1950s raincoats cost somewhere between $7.95 - $16.50 depending on which brand or kind of coat.
Cited Works:
"Classified Ad 3 -- No Title." New York Times 24 Aug. 1953, Print.
"Classified Ad 7 -- No Title." New York Times 20 Jul 1954, Print.
"Classified Ad 20 -- No Title." New York Times 17 Oct. 1954, Print.
"Classified Ad 40 -- No Title." New York Times 14 Nov. 1954, Print.
"Display Ad 3 -- No Title." New York Times 30 Dec. 1954, Print.
"Display Ad 22 -- No Title." New York Times 29 Dec. 1954, Print.
"Display Ad 24 -- No Title." New York Times 30 Dec. 1954, Print.
"Display Ad 153 -- No Title." New York Times 23 Mar. 1952, Print.
"Display Ad 167 -- No Title." New York Times 18 May 1952, Print.
"Display Ad 692 -- No Title." New York Times 15 Apr. 1952, Print.
*Note: The sites that I have added I got from the web, because the books I’ve been looking through don’t have actual prices… I still have the web cited works and I will put them in the paper. You had just said you don’t want websites as resources so I turned them into ‘print’ cited works, if they are not correct, let me know and I will put the ‘web’ cited works.
Ps. This is not a full draft but I do have most of the rest of the information I am going to add to finish it. I just have to organize it and research a few more things.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Blog 17
The movie Minority Report and the two passages Free Will and Determinism in the world of minority report and Oedipus the King all share a common discussion, if humans have free will when they know the future. Humans do have free will. It is their choice to find out about their future and it is also their choice to try to change whatever their future sentence may be. There are many different examples of knowing the future and deciding what to do about it in the movie and two passages.
In the movie a man named John Anderton works for the ‘precrime’ police. He is to stop people from murdering before it happens, with the help of three different humans with special powers (‘precogs’) to see murders being committed before they actually happen. They later find that the two of the three precogs thought one way of the murder and the other one thought another, later finding out that the one precog was seeing the correct murder. In the beginning of the movie the precrime police bust into an apartment of a man who they believe will murder his wife for cheating on him. They arrest him for the ‘future murder’ of killing his wife. John Anderton and the people who arrested the man don’t even know for a fact if he was really going to kill his wife.
While watching more of the movie you will see John Anderton with the more accurate precog. It has come to this part because the precogs had foreseen Anderton murdering a man, he didn’t even know. When he arrives to the place where he is supposed to murder this man, the precog tells John, he has a choice and doesn’t need to kill the man. He chooses to not kill the man. Right there you see that he did have free will, when the current events seemed to be his destiny in murdering a man.
In the passage called Free Will and Determinism in the world of minority report, they talk about how the only way to have free will is to have “two things: alternative possibilities and self-control.” It mentions how robots don’t have free will because they don’t have alternative possibilities, but when it comes to humans they almost always have alternative possibilities. They even have self-control it’s just their choice whether they practice it or not. If people were to be in a situation whether life or death, for example if someone is trying to shoot them and the only escape is to jump off a bridge into water, it’s his choice in which to make.
No matter if you get yourself in the situation or the situation comes to you, you always have a choice in the matter what to make. Like we mentioned in class, addiction can get out of control. When it comes to addiction, we have a choice to start it, than to keep going back to it, once we hit the addiction it’s your choice not to go to rehab. You may not want to stop or go to rehab but that doesn’t mean you don’t have free will. You might not like either choice that’s set upon you but you still have one, showing that people do have free will.
In the story of Oedipus and the King it starts out by Oedipus’ father going to an Oracle to find out the future about his soon to be born son Oedipus. The Oracle tells him that Oedipus will kill him, his father. With that the father goes to have him killed but the servant sends him away. There was no way to tell if he could stop Oedipus from killing him or not. So Oedipus grows up in a faraway land, to be nowhere near his father. The passage explains when Oedipus grows up he also goes to the Oracle to find out about his future. He hears the same thing his father had heard, that he will kill his father and because he does not know that he is ‘adopted’ he runs away to the land he was born to avoid killing his father. He enters the land he was born in and events occur in which he kills his real father. With these series of events it was all choice. He might not have known who his real father was but he chose not to stay where he was and make sure he did not kill the father he thought was his real father. That’s also when self-control would come into the picture, if he were to stay with the man he thought was his father. He would make sure that anger didn’t overpower him and kill the man, but because he tried to avoid it, it ended up coming true anyways.
People always have free will. With all the scenarios it’s uncertain if these things were to have happened, if they did things differently and if they weren’t so cautious, the previous events might not have come in play. When people know the future and they are not happy with it they try to change it and that’s what makes them achieve what was told to them. Even if you don’t know the future things may all fall into place or turn out bad depending on the choices you make. So when it boils down everyone has a choice in everything they choose to do. Which means that everyone has free will.
In the movie a man named John Anderton works for the ‘precrime’ police. He is to stop people from murdering before it happens, with the help of three different humans with special powers (‘precogs’) to see murders being committed before they actually happen. They later find that the two of the three precogs thought one way of the murder and the other one thought another, later finding out that the one precog was seeing the correct murder. In the beginning of the movie the precrime police bust into an apartment of a man who they believe will murder his wife for cheating on him. They arrest him for the ‘future murder’ of killing his wife. John Anderton and the people who arrested the man don’t even know for a fact if he was really going to kill his wife.
While watching more of the movie you will see John Anderton with the more accurate precog. It has come to this part because the precogs had foreseen Anderton murdering a man, he didn’t even know. When he arrives to the place where he is supposed to murder this man, the precog tells John, he has a choice and doesn’t need to kill the man. He chooses to not kill the man. Right there you see that he did have free will, when the current events seemed to be his destiny in murdering a man.
In the passage called Free Will and Determinism in the world of minority report, they talk about how the only way to have free will is to have “two things: alternative possibilities and self-control.” It mentions how robots don’t have free will because they don’t have alternative possibilities, but when it comes to humans they almost always have alternative possibilities. They even have self-control it’s just their choice whether they practice it or not. If people were to be in a situation whether life or death, for example if someone is trying to shoot them and the only escape is to jump off a bridge into water, it’s his choice in which to make.
No matter if you get yourself in the situation or the situation comes to you, you always have a choice in the matter what to make. Like we mentioned in class, addiction can get out of control. When it comes to addiction, we have a choice to start it, than to keep going back to it, once we hit the addiction it’s your choice not to go to rehab. You may not want to stop or go to rehab but that doesn’t mean you don’t have free will. You might not like either choice that’s set upon you but you still have one, showing that people do have free will.
In the story of Oedipus and the King it starts out by Oedipus’ father going to an Oracle to find out the future about his soon to be born son Oedipus. The Oracle tells him that Oedipus will kill him, his father. With that the father goes to have him killed but the servant sends him away. There was no way to tell if he could stop Oedipus from killing him or not. So Oedipus grows up in a faraway land, to be nowhere near his father. The passage explains when Oedipus grows up he also goes to the Oracle to find out about his future. He hears the same thing his father had heard, that he will kill his father and because he does not know that he is ‘adopted’ he runs away to the land he was born to avoid killing his father. He enters the land he was born in and events occur in which he kills his real father. With these series of events it was all choice. He might not have known who his real father was but he chose not to stay where he was and make sure he did not kill the father he thought was his real father. That’s also when self-control would come into the picture, if he were to stay with the man he thought was his father. He would make sure that anger didn’t overpower him and kill the man, but because he tried to avoid it, it ended up coming true anyways.
People always have free will. With all the scenarios it’s uncertain if these things were to have happened, if they did things differently and if they weren’t so cautious, the previous events might not have come in play. When people know the future and they are not happy with it they try to change it and that’s what makes them achieve what was told to them. Even if you don’t know the future things may all fall into place or turn out bad depending on the choices you make. So when it boils down everyone has a choice in everything they choose to do. Which means that everyone has free will.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Blog 16
The movie I have chosen Rear Window is about a man who is stuck in a wheelchair and decides to spend his time looking out his window. When looking out the window he starts to spy on what people are doing. While looking out his window he watches many different people live their lives. When people come over to his house he constantly talks about what he sees. He starts watching this man and his wife. After watching them for awhile he realizes the wife is no longer in the apartment and that the man is acting suspicious. He puts all the clues together and tries to figure out what happened. So he keeps on spying on the apartment they live in and tries to see for sure if he did indeed kill his wife.
I cannot really say how the movie relates to NYC for the fact that it is filmed with one kind of view in such a small area. I wouldn’t be able to say that it is definitely based around a New York area or not because it doesn’t show the city at all. I would have to base everything on characters, their actions and objects alone.
In this movie we do not really see NYC. In Rear Window New York City is not shown at all. One of the characters is a young woman who is a dancer. She gets dressed up in her dress, heeled shoes and pearl jewelry and goes out. If she does not go out she has a little get together in her apartment. Another man who has a piano in his living room also has parties in his apartment. It portrays a lot of city aspects in the movie, such as the ‘night life’ and people are always walking around outside. There are little things like seeing children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. You see the reflection of street lights on. The men are always dressed up in suits. There is a character that is a woman who plants and sun-bathes in her backyard. There isn’t even a lot of communication between people who live in the same building.
I cannot really say how the movie relates to NYC for the fact that it is filmed with one kind of view in such a small area. I wouldn’t be able to say that it is definitely based around a New York area or not because it doesn’t show the city at all. I would have to base everything on characters, their actions and objects alone.
In this movie we do not really see NYC. In Rear Window New York City is not shown at all. One of the characters is a young woman who is a dancer. She gets dressed up in her dress, heeled shoes and pearl jewelry and goes out. If she does not go out she has a little get together in her apartment. Another man who has a piano in his living room also has parties in his apartment. It portrays a lot of city aspects in the movie, such as the ‘night life’ and people are always walking around outside. There are little things like seeing children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. You see the reflection of street lights on. The men are always dressed up in suits. There is a character that is a woman who plants and sun-bathes in her backyard. There isn’t even a lot of communication between people who live in the same building.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Blog 15
There are two choices in this matter. One of the choices is in order to have a so-called safe and secure world, you privacy must be taken away. The other choice is the exact opposite. To have an un-safe world where you can have whatever privacy you want. We live in an un-safe world today, but our privacy isn’t all ours. To have a completely safe world seems so futuristically untrue. Both options are not realistic. If I had to choose between either I would definitely have to choose to have an un-safe world where I have the amount of privacy I have.
In this world we live in now we do not have complete privacy but we still have a certain amount. A good enough amount to where we don’t have to worry about stopping in the midst of something so mechanical spiders can scan us. It is what everyone is used to. We have the freedom to say almost anything we want as long as it is not against the government. I don’t know about people outside of America but as far as American’s we do have a certain level of both. We have a neutral level of security and privacy.
We may be recorded on certain phone calls but there are not enough people to constantly listen to what we are saying over the phone. If someone were to call their phone company there is even a message that lets you know the phone call is recorded for certain purposes such as training. We are tracked. What we do on the computer, our phones, or even walking in person can all be detected. The computer keeps track of what you search of so that if you want to find it again you’ll be able to. Even with Facebook it keeps track of people you may know based on your computer code or calculates what you have based on your own Facebook. The phones that we have nowadays are easily traceable. With the GPS systems in them you can even find out what stores are closest to you. When you walk around you may not be tracked as easy but there is a application called Google Maps where it takes satellite pictures of different areas and you might get caught in the picture.
As you can see we don’t have the best amount of privacy but at least when we use the bathroom we don’t have a camera on us. There are certain rules that we have now that don’t invade our privacy. However our security isn’t a safe matter. There are people being murdered everyday. If you look deeply into that, we do have freewill. The people, who murder, choose to murder, whether it’s a crime of passion or not. The people who get murdered decide what direction they were walking in which they get murdered. Everyone has a choice. Addiction, you have a choice, just not once you are addicted… but you had a choice up until the point of addiction.
There is a flaw in everything as Danny Whitmore states in the movie Minority Report. If we had the system of a safe world, there could be something that may go wrong. We would definitely have to be safer than how Minority Report portrays how their security works. We would have to have more than having our retina scanned. There would have to also be a stronger system on finding the murderers. The ‘precogs’ are human and humans are imperfect. You cannot rely on something 100% to keep you safe if the system that is keeping you safe is imperfect.
A safe world is a perfect world, and that is impossible. If you’re okay with being strip-searched than I would assume you wouldn’t mind not having any privacy. However I would mind. I like the amount of privacy I am allowed. I don’t mind the un-safe world because it is what I am used to. We don’t have enough crime going on that makes me watch my back every second. I am just fine with how things are now because it’s realistically thinking.
In this world we live in now we do not have complete privacy but we still have a certain amount. A good enough amount to where we don’t have to worry about stopping in the midst of something so mechanical spiders can scan us. It is what everyone is used to. We have the freedom to say almost anything we want as long as it is not against the government. I don’t know about people outside of America but as far as American’s we do have a certain level of both. We have a neutral level of security and privacy.
We may be recorded on certain phone calls but there are not enough people to constantly listen to what we are saying over the phone. If someone were to call their phone company there is even a message that lets you know the phone call is recorded for certain purposes such as training. We are tracked. What we do on the computer, our phones, or even walking in person can all be detected. The computer keeps track of what you search of so that if you want to find it again you’ll be able to. Even with Facebook it keeps track of people you may know based on your computer code or calculates what you have based on your own Facebook. The phones that we have nowadays are easily traceable. With the GPS systems in them you can even find out what stores are closest to you. When you walk around you may not be tracked as easy but there is a application called Google Maps where it takes satellite pictures of different areas and you might get caught in the picture.
As you can see we don’t have the best amount of privacy but at least when we use the bathroom we don’t have a camera on us. There are certain rules that we have now that don’t invade our privacy. However our security isn’t a safe matter. There are people being murdered everyday. If you look deeply into that, we do have freewill. The people, who murder, choose to murder, whether it’s a crime of passion or not. The people who get murdered decide what direction they were walking in which they get murdered. Everyone has a choice. Addiction, you have a choice, just not once you are addicted… but you had a choice up until the point of addiction.
There is a flaw in everything as Danny Whitmore states in the movie Minority Report. If we had the system of a safe world, there could be something that may go wrong. We would definitely have to be safer than how Minority Report portrays how their security works. We would have to have more than having our retina scanned. There would have to also be a stronger system on finding the murderers. The ‘precogs’ are human and humans are imperfect. You cannot rely on something 100% to keep you safe if the system that is keeping you safe is imperfect.
A safe world is a perfect world, and that is impossible. If you’re okay with being strip-searched than I would assume you wouldn’t mind not having any privacy. However I would mind. I like the amount of privacy I am allowed. I don’t mind the un-safe world because it is what I am used to. We don’t have enough crime going on that makes me watch my back every second. I am just fine with how things are now because it’s realistically thinking.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Complete Archive Reseach Paper
There were many problems in the 1970s. The main problem was planned shrinkage. Many people lost their jobs because of this decision. These job losses were a disaster to the community of Brooklyn. A man named Roger Starr (New York City’s Administrator of Housing and Development) had something to say and do about the events that were happening in Bronx. He used a system called ‘planned shrinkage’. The proposal he conducted was to cut down the employment of public service employees. Such as: police officers, fire fighters, teachers, the people that help the city (sanitation, construction, plus other such occupations), and even the education field (teachers, and librarians). He may have helped the city become restored, but it was at a cost.
Roger Starr was someone who had an idea to fix this problems going on in the Bronx. He also had the guts to stand up about it and try to make his plan become a reality. He wanted to put in effect planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage has to do with cut-backs on jobs. It also has to do with bringing people from where they live to a new town so they can fix up the deteriorating town they once lived in. The jobs that were cut were of: police officers, the fire departments, teachers, and the people that help fix the city.
On an interview with Roger Starr, conducted by Robert Fitch, Starr talks about his concern for the city. Starr began to speak about the problem with public housing. He thought rent control was a problem. Not just that but the problems of the people who were living in those apartments. His first problem is rent control. He stated that it was “destroying private housing stock” (Starr). Starr also believes that the problem was making sure the tenants that were in the rent controlled apartments, were good tenants, that would always pay their rent and take good care of the apartments by not destroying them.
Starr talks about the different programs (FAJ 236 program, Section 8, etc…) and mentions a man named Edward Brook, who was a Massachusetts Senator. Brook a man who had created the Brook amendments. This amendment consisted of taking people who couldn’t pay rent and move them into the rental controlled apartments. This affected the state of the houses and the neighborhood. This is because the people who were now moving into these places were destructive.
That made the ‘good’ tenants move out if they could. Because of that it made the problems escalate in the 70s. Starr also mentions that people are not alike and that Brook was treating them as if they were. In the fact that some people were good tenants (paid their rent and didn’t destroy property) and some of them weren’t and did the opposite. Some of the problems which was incurring was peeing in the elevators and doing drugs on the roof. Those problems weren’t the only ones. There were financial problems as well. With this project it took a lot of the cities money.
To fix the financial problems that they had lost from relying on all people to be good tenants, Starr suggested for a planned shrinkage to come in effect. When planned shrinkage finally came in effect there were many jobs that were lost. The statistics in a newspaper article called 3,432 City Jobs Cut in a Month state: “Police 4,879…, Fire 1,926…, Sanitation 2,612…, Board of Education 11,116…, and Health and Hospital Corp[orations] 8,130. (Lombardi) With all of those cut-backs in two years and two months, the town of Brooklyn was becoming even more destructive.
The city had the idea that they were spending too much money on areas of the city where people were constantly dying. The population of the city was devastatingly decreasing. People were losing so many jobs that there was a depression going around. When a person loses their job there can be many things that a person will do. A person can be depressed and mope about in the house. Most will commit crimes to get what they want or need. Some people may steal food because they can’t afford any, with families back home. Other people can just get vengeful and destroy property.
A devastating thing was going on in the Bronx. It was part of the reason Roger Starr wanted to make a change and start the planned shrinkage process. It was the Bronx fires. With so many people dying as it is, these fires were of no help. Whoever didn’t stay in the area, tried to help themselves in their money situation to be able to move out. The city was a disaster because all of the money they took to fix the city was borrowed. That is why Roger Starr had come up with the plan for planned shrinkage.
This situation became a domino effect. First they thought that they could change the city by moving people around and away from the area, than fixing up that area. They also felt they had to get rid of jobs to save money in order to do this fixing up. By taking peoples jobs away from them it created more deaths and crime. Along with that came the fires. All because the city wanted to save as much money as they thought they could.
By taking away the cops and fire departments, the city started to crumble even more. If there were crimes already why would they take these jobs away from people, who are supposed to help the situations if there were no law enforcements. I would think that they should have brought more into the picture, not less. The crimes just escalated from taking away these peoples important jobs. If there were multiple fires, like there was, going around with less firemen how would they be able to stop them all from happening. People were getting hurt or even killed and with these job services disappearing in front of their eyes, how could they have faith that it would eventually stop.
Roger Starr believes that this planned shrinkage will keep happening. People will keep losing their jobs as well as people gaining jobs. He says in his interview with Robert Fitch that “stocks don’t just go up.” (Starr) There will be a drought in the employment rates but then it will pick up and it will go back and forth. They were losing the people who were under the classifications of “middle-class”. People were either rich or they were poor. It was not a happy time for the people of the poor category. For they were having to find new places to live with the jobs declining and having to save for a new place.
In a statement by Mayor Abraham D. Beame he mentions that the president puts stockholders above the eight million people in the city. People were dependent on their pensions, life savings, and securities. Instead of President Ford and the government giving those who needed help, actual help they got a lecture. There is no good from just a lecture these people wanted real help. And they needed it fast! The people were turning to destruction. The fires that were spreading all over the Bronx were more than likely all arson. They were destroying the city themselves, over how Mayor Beame was treating them.
Many people believed it was a racial thing. I don’t think anyone will ever know if it was or wasn’t. It was said to believe that Roger Starr only cared about the people who were rich and wealthier. The city thought they were just picking on people from the poor neighborhoods or just the non-white American people. To take their homes away from them and just move them to another place to live like they were moving boxes. They wanted help but with emotion as well. They treated the people of the city as if they were inanimate objects. The wealthier people were able to get up and leave, while Roger Starr and Mayor Beame decided to fix the city. The poorer people didn’t have anywhere to go, especially with the shrinkage of jobs. They couldn’t save up the money to get a new apartment. It was difficult for them as it was and this just made things worse.
In the movie Taxi Driver they portray how the city was like in the 70s. Back then, the city was filled with drugs, violence, sex, prostitution. The world was highly corrupt. The people wanted a change, just because there are people who do wrong doesn’t mean everyone does wrong. The good people shouldn’t have to suffer for what the wronged people do. The city needed some cleaning up and the moment of being laid off from jobs weren’t of any help. I don’t know how the man, Roger Starr, did it and cleaned the city up… but he did it.
Roger Starr along with Mayor Beame did eventually help save the city from complete destruction. Things were done, such as the fires and things were also thought, like the people thinking it was about race. Now I am not saying these things aren’t true. Although it was recorded the thoughts and opinions people had, along with what went on. All we really know is Roger Starr wanted to fix the city by planned shrinkage and to move the people out of the damaged areas and for them to move to another neighborhood. Starr just wanted to create a whole new town by re-construction so that everyone could live more peaceably.
Roger Starr was someone who had an idea to fix this problems going on in the Bronx. He also had the guts to stand up about it and try to make his plan become a reality. He wanted to put in effect planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage has to do with cut-backs on jobs. It also has to do with bringing people from where they live to a new town so they can fix up the deteriorating town they once lived in. The jobs that were cut were of: police officers, the fire departments, teachers, and the people that help fix the city.
On an interview with Roger Starr, conducted by Robert Fitch, Starr talks about his concern for the city. Starr began to speak about the problem with public housing. He thought rent control was a problem. Not just that but the problems of the people who were living in those apartments. His first problem is rent control. He stated that it was “destroying private housing stock” (Starr). Starr also believes that the problem was making sure the tenants that were in the rent controlled apartments, were good tenants, that would always pay their rent and take good care of the apartments by not destroying them.
Starr talks about the different programs (FAJ 236 program, Section 8, etc…) and mentions a man named Edward Brook, who was a Massachusetts Senator. Brook a man who had created the Brook amendments. This amendment consisted of taking people who couldn’t pay rent and move them into the rental controlled apartments. This affected the state of the houses and the neighborhood. This is because the people who were now moving into these places were destructive.
That made the ‘good’ tenants move out if they could. Because of that it made the problems escalate in the 70s. Starr also mentions that people are not alike and that Brook was treating them as if they were. In the fact that some people were good tenants (paid their rent and didn’t destroy property) and some of them weren’t and did the opposite. Some of the problems which was incurring was peeing in the elevators and doing drugs on the roof. Those problems weren’t the only ones. There were financial problems as well. With this project it took a lot of the cities money.
To fix the financial problems that they had lost from relying on all people to be good tenants, Starr suggested for a planned shrinkage to come in effect. When planned shrinkage finally came in effect there were many jobs that were lost. The statistics in a newspaper article called 3,432 City Jobs Cut in a Month state: “Police 4,879…, Fire 1,926…, Sanitation 2,612…, Board of Education 11,116…, and Health and Hospital Corp[orations] 8,130. (Lombardi) With all of those cut-backs in two years and two months, the town of Brooklyn was becoming even more destructive.
The city had the idea that they were spending too much money on areas of the city where people were constantly dying. The population of the city was devastatingly decreasing. People were losing so many jobs that there was a depression going around. When a person loses their job there can be many things that a person will do. A person can be depressed and mope about in the house. Most will commit crimes to get what they want or need. Some people may steal food because they can’t afford any, with families back home. Other people can just get vengeful and destroy property.
A devastating thing was going on in the Bronx. It was part of the reason Roger Starr wanted to make a change and start the planned shrinkage process. It was the Bronx fires. With so many people dying as it is, these fires were of no help. Whoever didn’t stay in the area, tried to help themselves in their money situation to be able to move out. The city was a disaster because all of the money they took to fix the city was borrowed. That is why Roger Starr had come up with the plan for planned shrinkage.
This situation became a domino effect. First they thought that they could change the city by moving people around and away from the area, than fixing up that area. They also felt they had to get rid of jobs to save money in order to do this fixing up. By taking peoples jobs away from them it created more deaths and crime. Along with that came the fires. All because the city wanted to save as much money as they thought they could.
By taking away the cops and fire departments, the city started to crumble even more. If there were crimes already why would they take these jobs away from people, who are supposed to help the situations if there were no law enforcements. I would think that they should have brought more into the picture, not less. The crimes just escalated from taking away these peoples important jobs. If there were multiple fires, like there was, going around with less firemen how would they be able to stop them all from happening. People were getting hurt or even killed and with these job services disappearing in front of their eyes, how could they have faith that it would eventually stop.
Roger Starr believes that this planned shrinkage will keep happening. People will keep losing their jobs as well as people gaining jobs. He says in his interview with Robert Fitch that “stocks don’t just go up.” (Starr) There will be a drought in the employment rates but then it will pick up and it will go back and forth. They were losing the people who were under the classifications of “middle-class”. People were either rich or they were poor. It was not a happy time for the people of the poor category. For they were having to find new places to live with the jobs declining and having to save for a new place.
In a statement by Mayor Abraham D. Beame he mentions that the president puts stockholders above the eight million people in the city. People were dependent on their pensions, life savings, and securities. Instead of President Ford and the government giving those who needed help, actual help they got a lecture. There is no good from just a lecture these people wanted real help. And they needed it fast! The people were turning to destruction. The fires that were spreading all over the Bronx were more than likely all arson. They were destroying the city themselves, over how Mayor Beame was treating them.
Many people believed it was a racial thing. I don’t think anyone will ever know if it was or wasn’t. It was said to believe that Roger Starr only cared about the people who were rich and wealthier. The city thought they were just picking on people from the poor neighborhoods or just the non-white American people. To take their homes away from them and just move them to another place to live like they were moving boxes. They wanted help but with emotion as well. They treated the people of the city as if they were inanimate objects. The wealthier people were able to get up and leave, while Roger Starr and Mayor Beame decided to fix the city. The poorer people didn’t have anywhere to go, especially with the shrinkage of jobs. They couldn’t save up the money to get a new apartment. It was difficult for them as it was and this just made things worse.
In the movie Taxi Driver they portray how the city was like in the 70s. Back then, the city was filled with drugs, violence, sex, prostitution. The world was highly corrupt. The people wanted a change, just because there are people who do wrong doesn’t mean everyone does wrong. The good people shouldn’t have to suffer for what the wronged people do. The city needed some cleaning up and the moment of being laid off from jobs weren’t of any help. I don’t know how the man, Roger Starr, did it and cleaned the city up… but he did it.
Roger Starr along with Mayor Beame did eventually help save the city from complete destruction. Things were done, such as the fires and things were also thought, like the people thinking it was about race. Now I am not saying these things aren’t true. Although it was recorded the thoughts and opinions people had, along with what went on. All we really know is Roger Starr wanted to fix the city by planned shrinkage and to move the people out of the damaged areas and for them to move to another neighborhood. Starr just wanted to create a whole new town by re-construction so that everyone could live more peaceably.
Draft Archive Reseach Paper
There were many problems in the 1970s. The main problem was planned shrinkage. Many people lost their jobs because of this decision. These job losses were a disaster to the community of Brooklyn. A man named Roger Starr (New York City’s Administrator of Housing and Development) had something to say and do about the events that were happening in Bronx. He used a system called ‘planned shrinkage’. The proposal he conducted was to cut down the employment of public service employees. Such as: police officers, fire fighters, teachers, the people that help the city (sanitation, construction, plus other such occupations), and even the education field (teachers, and librarians). He may have helped the city become restored, but it was at a cost.
Roger Starr was someone who had an idea to fix this problems going on in the Bronx. He also had the guts to stand up about it and try to make his plan become a reality. He wanted to put in effect planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage has to do with cut-backs on jobs. It also has to do with bringing people from where they live to a new town so they can fix up the deteriorating town they once lived in. The jobs that were cut were of: police officers, the fire departments, teachers, and the people that help fix the city.
On an interview with Roger Starr, conducted by Robert Fitch, Starr talks about his concern for the city. Starr began to speak about the problem with public housing. He thought rent control was a problem. Not just that but the problems of the people who were living in those apartments. His first problem is rent control. He stated that it was “destroying private housing stock” (Starr). Starr also believes that the problem was making sure the tenants that were in the rent controlled apartments, were good tenants, that would always pay their rent and take good care of the apartments by not destroying them.
Starr talks about the different programs (FAJ 236 program, Section 8, etc…) and mentions a man named Edward Brook, who was a Massachusetts Senator. Brook a man who had created the Brook amendments. This amendment consisted of taking people who couldn’t pay rent and move them into the rental controlled apartments. This affected the state of the houses and the neighborhood. This is because the people who were now moving into these places were destructive.
That made the ‘good’ tenants move out if they could. Because of that it made the problems escalate in the 70s. Starr also mentions that people are not alike and that Brook was treating them as if they were. In the fact that some people were good tenants (paid their rent and didn’t destroy property) and some of them weren’t and did the opposite. Some of the problems which was incurring was peeing in the elevators and doing drugs on the roof. Those problems weren’t the only ones. There were financial problems as well. With this project it took a lot of the cities money.
To fix the financial problems that they had lost from relying on all people to be good tenants, Starr suggested for a planned shrinkage to come in effect. When planned shrinkage finally came in effect there were many jobs that were lost. The statistics in a newspaper article called 3,432 City Jobs Cut in a Month state: “Police 4,879…, Fire 1,926…, Sanitation 2,612…, Board of Education 11,116…, and Health and Hospital Corp[orations] 8,130. (Lombardi) With all of those cut-backs in two years and two months, the town of Brooklyn was becoming even more destructive.
The city had the idea that they were spending too much money on areas of the city where people were constantly dying. The population of the city was devastatingly decreasing. People were losing so many jobs that there was a depression going around. When a person loses their job there can be many things that a person will do. A person can be depressed and mope about in the house. Most will commit crimes to get what they want or need. Some people may steal food because they can’t afford any, with families back home. Other people can just get vengeful and destroy property.
A devastating thing was going on in the Bronx. It was part of the reason Roger Starr wanted to make a change and start the planned shrinkage process. It was the Bronx fires. With so many people dying as it is, these fires were of no help. Whoever didn’t stay in the area, tried to help themselves in their money situation to be able to move out. The city was a disaster because all of the money they took to fix the city was borrowed. That is why Roger Starr had come up with the plan for planned shrinkage.
This situation became a domino effect. First they thought that they could change the city by moving people around and away from the area, than fixing up that area. They also felt they had to get rid of jobs to save money in order to do this fixing up. By taking peoples jobs away from them it created more deaths and crime. Along with that came the fires. All because the city wanted to save as much money as they thought they could.
By taking away the cops and fire departments, the city started to crumble even more. If there were crimes already why would they take these jobs away from people, who are supposed to help the situations if there were no law enforcements. I would think that they should have brought more into the picture, not less.
Roger Starr believes that this planned shrinkage will keep happening. People will keep losing their jobs as well as people gaining jobs. He says in his interview with Robert Fitch that “stocks don’t just go up.” (Starr) There will be a drought in the employment rates but then it will pick up and it will go back and forth.
In a statement by Mayor Abraham D. Beame he mentions that the president puts stockholders above the eight million people in the city. People were dependent on their pensions, life savings, and securities. Instead of President Ford and the government giving those who needed help, actual help they got a lecture.
Roger Starr was someone who had an idea to fix this problems going on in the Bronx. He also had the guts to stand up about it and try to make his plan become a reality. He wanted to put in effect planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage has to do with cut-backs on jobs. It also has to do with bringing people from where they live to a new town so they can fix up the deteriorating town they once lived in. The jobs that were cut were of: police officers, the fire departments, teachers, and the people that help fix the city.
On an interview with Roger Starr, conducted by Robert Fitch, Starr talks about his concern for the city. Starr began to speak about the problem with public housing. He thought rent control was a problem. Not just that but the problems of the people who were living in those apartments. His first problem is rent control. He stated that it was “destroying private housing stock” (Starr). Starr also believes that the problem was making sure the tenants that were in the rent controlled apartments, were good tenants, that would always pay their rent and take good care of the apartments by not destroying them.
Starr talks about the different programs (FAJ 236 program, Section 8, etc…) and mentions a man named Edward Brook, who was a Massachusetts Senator. Brook a man who had created the Brook amendments. This amendment consisted of taking people who couldn’t pay rent and move them into the rental controlled apartments. This affected the state of the houses and the neighborhood. This is because the people who were now moving into these places were destructive.
That made the ‘good’ tenants move out if they could. Because of that it made the problems escalate in the 70s. Starr also mentions that people are not alike and that Brook was treating them as if they were. In the fact that some people were good tenants (paid their rent and didn’t destroy property) and some of them weren’t and did the opposite. Some of the problems which was incurring was peeing in the elevators and doing drugs on the roof. Those problems weren’t the only ones. There were financial problems as well. With this project it took a lot of the cities money.
To fix the financial problems that they had lost from relying on all people to be good tenants, Starr suggested for a planned shrinkage to come in effect. When planned shrinkage finally came in effect there were many jobs that were lost. The statistics in a newspaper article called 3,432 City Jobs Cut in a Month state: “Police 4,879…, Fire 1,926…, Sanitation 2,612…, Board of Education 11,116…, and Health and Hospital Corp[orations] 8,130. (Lombardi) With all of those cut-backs in two years and two months, the town of Brooklyn was becoming even more destructive.
The city had the idea that they were spending too much money on areas of the city where people were constantly dying. The population of the city was devastatingly decreasing. People were losing so many jobs that there was a depression going around. When a person loses their job there can be many things that a person will do. A person can be depressed and mope about in the house. Most will commit crimes to get what they want or need. Some people may steal food because they can’t afford any, with families back home. Other people can just get vengeful and destroy property.
A devastating thing was going on in the Bronx. It was part of the reason Roger Starr wanted to make a change and start the planned shrinkage process. It was the Bronx fires. With so many people dying as it is, these fires were of no help. Whoever didn’t stay in the area, tried to help themselves in their money situation to be able to move out. The city was a disaster because all of the money they took to fix the city was borrowed. That is why Roger Starr had come up with the plan for planned shrinkage.
This situation became a domino effect. First they thought that they could change the city by moving people around and away from the area, than fixing up that area. They also felt they had to get rid of jobs to save money in order to do this fixing up. By taking peoples jobs away from them it created more deaths and crime. Along with that came the fires. All because the city wanted to save as much money as they thought they could.
By taking away the cops and fire departments, the city started to crumble even more. If there were crimes already why would they take these jobs away from people, who are supposed to help the situations if there were no law enforcements. I would think that they should have brought more into the picture, not less.
Roger Starr believes that this planned shrinkage will keep happening. People will keep losing their jobs as well as people gaining jobs. He says in his interview with Robert Fitch that “stocks don’t just go up.” (Starr) There will be a drought in the employment rates but then it will pick up and it will go back and forth.
In a statement by Mayor Abraham D. Beame he mentions that the president puts stockholders above the eight million people in the city. People were dependent on their pensions, life savings, and securities. Instead of President Ford and the government giving those who needed help, actual help they got a lecture.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Special Activity: MOMI
On my visit to the Museum of Moving Images, everything our tour guide explained to me was completely new. I really enjoyed learning what I did. I don’t remember the names of the programs/exhibits we went to but I do remember what they do and what I learned from them.
I learned about the recording studio. There I learned that when actor’s lines aren’t caught on the microphone, dubbing for other languages, voice-overs for censorship, and for animation, they go into a similar place like we did to do so. They read their scripts while looking at their mouths to line up what they are saying so that it will look proper. We had a rehearsal try and then it recorded us so that we hear back and see if our lines matched up with the mouths. My line was from Coming to America where Eddie Murphy character says, “When you think of garbage, think of Akeem!” It was a bit confusing to hear his voice in the headphones but I got it right on the recorded try. I also learned that if they miss a simple word in their lines, they will have to re-do that line over again. I would say doing this can be very strenuous.
Another thing I learned was how live television works. We didn’t get to spend much time on this subject because it was a pretty simple concept. We saw two big television screens one with nine small squares inside of it and another with the cable viewing screen taking up about a third of the screen with the people in the office, doing absolutely nothing but looking at their screens. The TV with the nine small screens was to show us the different camera views of what the audiences will be watching. It also showed us of the people that were in charge of announcing what the people were watching, each person was in charge of their own square. In the booth we say the director giving direction to what was going on.
One of the things I found most interesting was the voice and sound effect area. We went over shots of the movie Titanic. We saw parts of the movie with no sound at all just moving images, with just the voice, than just the sound effects, after we viewed all of them separately the tour guide than played it all together. We learned that when there are distant scenes or shots of a movie, such as when they are in a swimming pool to do the scene of the boat sinking. The people will go into the recording studio to say their lines because at the distance that they are in and record the lines they may have. When it comes to the sound effects, the tour guide explained to us the people who find and put together these effects are called Foley artists. The reason for them is they want to amplify the sound so that the audience watching these movies can feel like they are really there and that it is more realistic.
She had us try to guess how they created the sounds before actually telling us. Some of the sounds they make themselves or simply download it from the internet. There was a shot where Rose jumped off a part of the ship and onto the wooden floor. That sound was created by an actually wooden board. There was another shot where the cords of the ship snapped off and hit the water, which was created by a whip. The last shot we saw was where the ship was breaking in half and slammed into the water. This sound effect I found most interesting. It was made with crushing a soda can and an elephant. When she played it back for us with all the sounds, it was a little disappointing because you can now tell what everything was and it sounded pretty fake. However I still enjoyed learning about this.
We than went on to see different props from different movies. Things like the sweater from Nightmare on Elm Street I believe the third movie from the series. This prop was used for when they had to get live people to stretch through the sweater in a gooey skin. Another prop was a doll from The Exorcist for when the character Regan (a little girl who was possessed by a demon) head turned in a full circle. Of course the actress Linda Blair couldn’t really do that so they got a doll with a rotating head for the movie. We also saw miniatures of houses so they can get close ups of really big buildings.
We also saw what people used to watch ten minute films in (forgot the name). It was a podium looking stand where it had a small piece to put your eyes through and inside of it had the reel of film. It was pretty interesting to see this because of how it was constructed. We then went into a room where we say the different make-up and wax they used to make young actors/actresses look older, like the mask Robin Williams used in Mrs. Doubtfire. Also the cut and stitched legs of Winona Ryder’s from Black Swan
In that room we also saw different pictures of actors/actresses – primary the white ones. This is where the tour guide explained to us that the reason why they had mostly white people on the wall was because the film (along with the rest of the world at the time) was segregated. That the three ‘colored’ people on the walls played parts like housekeeper. We also learned about an Asian actress named Anna May Wong. We were informed that she was a pretty famous colored actress who tried to get a part of an Asian woman but was turned down because she was ‘too Asian’. Instead they got a white woman to play the part and put makeup on her to make her look Asian.
The last thing we saw and learned about was video games. We learned about the first video game ever made. It was a simple black background screen with two squares (the players) and a line between them and a smaller square which was the ball. The controllers were bulky and it had two big knobs, a smaller knob below and a knob on the side. The games played on this console were rather simple kinds of games. This game was similar to tennis. It was pretty fun to play but I would definitely get bored of it quick.
Overall I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this trip. I will definitely be going again. As a media student I feel this will be really helpful for having some background knowledge if I want to get into the movie industry. Thank you for coming up with this trip.
I learned about the recording studio. There I learned that when actor’s lines aren’t caught on the microphone, dubbing for other languages, voice-overs for censorship, and for animation, they go into a similar place like we did to do so. They read their scripts while looking at their mouths to line up what they are saying so that it will look proper. We had a rehearsal try and then it recorded us so that we hear back and see if our lines matched up with the mouths. My line was from Coming to America where Eddie Murphy character says, “When you think of garbage, think of Akeem!” It was a bit confusing to hear his voice in the headphones but I got it right on the recorded try. I also learned that if they miss a simple word in their lines, they will have to re-do that line over again. I would say doing this can be very strenuous.
Another thing I learned was how live television works. We didn’t get to spend much time on this subject because it was a pretty simple concept. We saw two big television screens one with nine small squares inside of it and another with the cable viewing screen taking up about a third of the screen with the people in the office, doing absolutely nothing but looking at their screens. The TV with the nine small screens was to show us the different camera views of what the audiences will be watching. It also showed us of the people that were in charge of announcing what the people were watching, each person was in charge of their own square. In the booth we say the director giving direction to what was going on.
One of the things I found most interesting was the voice and sound effect area. We went over shots of the movie Titanic. We saw parts of the movie with no sound at all just moving images, with just the voice, than just the sound effects, after we viewed all of them separately the tour guide than played it all together. We learned that when there are distant scenes or shots of a movie, such as when they are in a swimming pool to do the scene of the boat sinking. The people will go into the recording studio to say their lines because at the distance that they are in and record the lines they may have. When it comes to the sound effects, the tour guide explained to us the people who find and put together these effects are called Foley artists. The reason for them is they want to amplify the sound so that the audience watching these movies can feel like they are really there and that it is more realistic.
She had us try to guess how they created the sounds before actually telling us. Some of the sounds they make themselves or simply download it from the internet. There was a shot where Rose jumped off a part of the ship and onto the wooden floor. That sound was created by an actually wooden board. There was another shot where the cords of the ship snapped off and hit the water, which was created by a whip. The last shot we saw was where the ship was breaking in half and slammed into the water. This sound effect I found most interesting. It was made with crushing a soda can and an elephant. When she played it back for us with all the sounds, it was a little disappointing because you can now tell what everything was and it sounded pretty fake. However I still enjoyed learning about this.
We than went on to see different props from different movies. Things like the sweater from Nightmare on Elm Street I believe the third movie from the series. This prop was used for when they had to get live people to stretch through the sweater in a gooey skin. Another prop was a doll from The Exorcist for when the character Regan (a little girl who was possessed by a demon) head turned in a full circle. Of course the actress Linda Blair couldn’t really do that so they got a doll with a rotating head for the movie. We also saw miniatures of houses so they can get close ups of really big buildings.
We also saw what people used to watch ten minute films in (forgot the name). It was a podium looking stand where it had a small piece to put your eyes through and inside of it had the reel of film. It was pretty interesting to see this because of how it was constructed. We then went into a room where we say the different make-up and wax they used to make young actors/actresses look older, like the mask Robin Williams used in Mrs. Doubtfire. Also the cut and stitched legs of Winona Ryder’s from Black Swan
In that room we also saw different pictures of actors/actresses – primary the white ones. This is where the tour guide explained to us that the reason why they had mostly white people on the wall was because the film (along with the rest of the world at the time) was segregated. That the three ‘colored’ people on the walls played parts like housekeeper. We also learned about an Asian actress named Anna May Wong. We were informed that she was a pretty famous colored actress who tried to get a part of an Asian woman but was turned down because she was ‘too Asian’. Instead they got a white woman to play the part and put makeup on her to make her look Asian.
The last thing we saw and learned about was video games. We learned about the first video game ever made. It was a simple black background screen with two squares (the players) and a line between them and a smaller square which was the ball. The controllers were bulky and it had two big knobs, a smaller knob below and a knob on the side. The games played on this console were rather simple kinds of games. This game was similar to tennis. It was pretty fun to play but I would definitely get bored of it quick.
Overall I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this trip. I will definitely be going again. As a media student I feel this will be really helpful for having some background knowledge if I want to get into the movie industry. Thank you for coming up with this trip.
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