Star Wars was one of those magnificent films that was an instant phenomenon when it hit the box office and continues to be a hit today. Why not take a moment to follow the intriguing history of Star Wars.
After a successful run in the early 1970s with the box office hit American Graffiti; in 1975 George Lucas writes a basic story about Anakin Skywalker’s rise, fall, and redemption. The story is so long that it needs to be divided into 2 trilogies.
The first trilogy focuses on Anakin Skywalker’s young life while the second focuses on the life of Anakin’s son Luke Skywalker. Since the second trilogy is the most interesting, Lucas decides to film it first.
He offers the film to Universal Studios who had financed his American Graffiti film, but they chose to pass thinking it was a ridiculous movie. They would live to regret this decision which would cost millions of dollars in lost profits. But they wouldn’t be alone in those regrets as every Hollywood studio passed on the movie. That is except for 20th Century Fox who came up with $10 million for Lucas to make his first Star Wars movie a reality.
In May of 1977 Fox released Episode 4 of Star Wars, A New Hope. The tone was quickly set. The film was instantly seen as the biggest adventure ever on film. The special effects were considered magnificent and outstanding. In fact, nothing remotely close had ever made it to the big screen before.
On opening day, the Star Wars movie ran in only 32 theaters, but it still produced an amazing $254,309 in ticket sales. By the end of its first run it had become the most successful film ever in North American history grossing more than $290 million.
Lucas reportedly received $50 million of those profits. When Lucas cut his deal with Fox he was more interested in control of the film then he was in his percentage. He wanted all rights to the final cut and all rights to future sequels, Star Wars merchandise rights, and 40% of the gross. This deal ultimately made Lucas a billionaire.
By 1978 Lucas had purchased the more than 1800 acre Bulltail Ranch in San Rafael and soon production of the sequel to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, was underway. Lucas was financing it out of his own pocket and it had a budget of $18 million; however due to budget overruns the actual filming cost more than $30 million. In May of 1980, The Empire Strike Back, hit the theaters grossing $222 million, making it the highest grossing film of the year.
In May of 1983, Return of the Jedi, hit the theaters grossing $265 million in North America and Lucas decides to retire from Star Wars projects to pursue some of his other interests. He made a vague promise to make the Prequel Trilogy someday if special effects ever become advanced enough.
That day arrived in 1994 when Lucas announces he will begin working on the Prequel Trilogy with a tentative release scheduled for 1998. In 1996 Lucas signs the biggest deal ever seen in the industry with PepsiCo for movie tie ins, and later in the year he announces that the pre-production has started, and in May of 1999 Episode 1 titled, The Phantom Menace, was released, followed by Episode 2 titled, The Attack of the Clones.
Many believe that 100 years from now Star Wars will still have a following. In fact by then it may have grown to epidemic proportions.
Related posts:
- What themes in American History are present in the movie Forrest Gump?
- Star Trek and American History: SDSU ViewPoints
- An interview with our Star of “Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian”
You can literally go in any direction from Detroit’s riverfront and see why this is such a major center for African American culture. From the world’s largest museum of African American history or Hitsville U.S.A., where all Motown stars were born, when it comes to African American culture and history, all roads eventually lead to Detroit.
Near the riverfront, trace the turbulent and dramatic history of the Underground Railroad at the Second Baptist Church, the Midwest’s oldest African-American church and major Underground Railroad in the 19th century. More than 5,000 slaves passed through Second Baptist on their way to Canada. Tours of the basement, which served as the station, are available by appointment.
Just eight miles east of the Windsor/Detroit border, visitors can also explore the John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad. The property is owned by descendants of John and Jane Walls, former slaves who made the trip from slavery in North Carolina to freedom in Canada in 1846. Tour leaders, or “Conductors,” together with historic buildings provide a first-hand look at what kind of challenges fugitive slaves faced.
Also in Ontario, Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site offers visitors a look at what it was like to live as a former slave in the 19th century. Visitors look through the settlement’s original buildings, including the home of Reverend Josiah Henson, who found the settlement for escaped slaves. There’s also an interpretive museum and galleries providing information on early African-American communities in Canada.
The world’s largest museum dedicated to African American history, the Charles H. Wright Museum features “And Still We Rise,” an interactive walk-through exhibit that begins on a slave ship where casts of slaves lay crowded together and simulated sounds of the Atlantic surround you. In another section of the exhibit, visitors find themselves on an early 20th-century city street in the middle of the museum. Guests can walk into the Horseshoe Bar and Grille or watch black and white TV through an appliance store window. A replica of the Paradise Theatre allows visitors to check out a classic black movie playing on the theater screen.
Part museum, part vibrant historical village, The Henry Ford is the largest indoor/outdoor history attraction in North America. Here, visitors can enter the restored bus where Rosa Parks made history by refusing to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama on Dec. 1, 1955. The act galvanized the American Civil Rights Movement. The bus is the centerpiece of the “With Liberty and Justice For All” exhibit, which focuses on the American struggle for freedom. In Greenfield Village, the Mattox House was the home to three generations of the Mattox family who lived outside of Savannah, Georgia from Reconstruction through the 1930s.
Aside from the automotive industry, perhaps nothing put Detroit on the map like Motown. Revisit the glory years that produced such stars at Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Supremes, and the Jackson Five in Detroit’s cultural center. Motown’s headquarters, founded by Berry Gordy, a one-time auto line worker, has been restored to its 1960s glory. Originally converted from a photographer’s studio, the Motown headquarters and studio stayed open 22 hours a day and 7 days a week during its peak years. Visitors are able to see the upstairs offices and the studio where vocalists and the Funk Brothers created the Motown Sound. Rare photographs, gold records, and Michael Jackson’s sequined glove are on display.
The nation’s fifth-largest art museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts was one of the first major art museums to have a permanent showcase for African art. The DIA collection features works from more than 1,000 African cultures placing it among the most extensive collections in North America. The DIA’s Egyptian collection features a wide range of artifacts including linen-wrapped mummies, sculptures, and coffins. The museum’s selection of West African art includes amazing Benin royal brass sculptures and a wood palace door carved from wood by the artists Olowe of the Ise culture. The museum’s modern and contemporary art collection features African American artists including Augusta Savage, Hughie Smith-Lee, and Benny Andrews.
Related posts:
- Boston African American National Historic Site – A Historical Glimpse In To The African-American Struggle For Freedom
- Museum Of African American History
- Unknown People in African American History
When they asserted that our postmodern society has reached the “end of history,” theorists Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Francis Fukuyama launched a compelling debate that has persisted for over a decade. They argue that we no longer believe in teleological metanarratives, that our concept of history has become spatial or flattened out, and that we inhabit a perpetual present in which images of the past are merely recycled with no understanding of their original context. In short, they think that postmodern culture has lost a sense of historical consciousness, of cause and effect. Jameson, in particular, sees literary postmodernism as a by-product of this new worldview. Such a controversial stance has, of course, provoked numerous antagonists to speak out. Linda Hutcheon, for example, has written two studies of “historiographic metafiction,” suggesting that much of postmodern fiction is still strongly invested in history, but more importantly in revising our sense of what history means and can accomplish. My project is to examine how Toni Morrison’s acclaimed historical novel Beloved (1987) enacts a hybrid vision of history and time that sheds new light on issues addressed by Jameson and Hutcheon in their theories of the postmodern - topics such as the “fictionality” of history, the blurring of past and present, and the questioning of grand historical metanarratives. I argue that while the novel exhibits a postmodern skepticism of sweeping historical narratives, of “Truth,” and of Marxist teleological notions of time as diachronic, it also retains an African American and modernist political commitment to the crucial importance of deep cultural memory, of keeping the past alive in order to construct a better future. Morrison’s mediations between these two theoretical and political camps - between postmodernism and African American social protest - enable her to draw the best from both and make us question the more extremist voices asserting that our postmodern world is bereft of history.
Since the term postmodern has been at the center of many highly charged cultural debates, I am aware that describing Beloved as such, even as a “hybrid” postmodern novel, is a gesture that might draw criticism. Clearly, the novel’s status as part of the African American tradition of social protest, and Morrison’s investments in agency, presence, and the resurrection of authentic history, seem to make the novel incompatible with poststructuralist ideas at the root of postmodernism. Morrison herself has spoken out against a postmodernism that she associates with Jameson’s terms. In my view, however, Morrison’s treatment of history bears some similarity to Hutcheon’s postmodern “historiographic metafiction,” but her relationship to this discourse is affected by her aim to write “black-topic” texts. Morrison acknowledges that history is always fictional, always a representation, yet she is also committed to the project of recording African American history in order to heal her readers. Instead of a playful exercise in deconstructing history, Morrison’s Beloved attempts to affect the contemporary world of the “real.” While the novel should not simply be assimilated into the canon of postmodernism, Morrison’s work should be recognized as contributing a fresh voice to the debates about postmodern history, a voice that challenges the centrism and elitism of much of postmodern theory. Beloved reminds us that history is not “over” for African Americans, who are still struggling to write the genealogies of their people and to keep a historical consciousness alive.
The relationship of African American writers and their work to the discourse of postmodernism has been hotly contested, and there has unfortunately emerged a dichotomy that I would like to question. This relationship has become even more vexed since the Nobel Prize committee bypassed postmodern guru Thomas Pynchon to select Toni Morrison as their 1993 literature winner. Morrison claimed her prize as a victory particularly for African Americans.(1) Black critics such as Barbara Christian continue to argue that Morrison’s work must be understood as an expression of African American forms and traditions, and are concerned that “the power of this novel as a specifically African American text is being blunted” as it is being appropriated by white academic discourse (Christian 6). I too share her suspicion of the increasingly popular move to read Morrison’s fiction through the lens of postmodernism, poststructuralism, or “white” academic theory, a tactic that underestimates the crucial importance of Toni Morrison’s black cultural heritage to any interpretation of her works. While we must question the tactics of critics like Elliott Butler-Evans, who simply and somewhat blindly plot poststructuralist and postmodernist theory onto Morrison’s “black-topic texts,” we should be equally wary of concluding that postmodernism is a “white” phenomenon. Any claim that the lives of black people have nothing to do with postmodernism ignores the complex historical interrelationship of black protest and liberal academic discourse. As Andreas Huyssen, Kobena Mercer, and Linda Hutcheon have noted, racial liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s (as well as the feminist movement) contributed to the loosening of cultural boundaries that is seen as characteristically postmodern.(2) White liberal theorists of postmodernism and African American critics often share an oppositional relationship to the bourgeois state or to the universalizing “objectivity” of some humanist intellectuals. A rigid demarcation between postmodern texts and African American texts merely perpetuates a false dichotomy of academic theory and social protest, ignoring that they emerged in response to a similar set of lived conditions.
http://bestfriendsanimals.blogspot.com
Related posts:
- “Postmodern blackness”: Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ and the end of history - novel by Black female author
- “Postmodern blackness”: Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ and the end of history - novel by Black female author
- Black History Month: History of Black History Month
President Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill’s mother had something in common. They both wore tattoos. While Jennie Churchill’s tattoo was allegedly covered for the sake of reputation, and Teddy Roosevelt’s was simply in a location which was not readily visible, this caused quite a stir amongst most of their day as well as modern-day history buffs.
President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice had a tattoo also in a concealed location. Neither Mrs Churchill nor President Roosevelt’s artwork lent itself to gaining a sense of respectability amongst the average citizens. Even whilst such notable figures possessed tattoos, they were still found to be socially unacceptable
Ancient Tattoos
Going as far back as any studies go on the question, it is claimed that the “Ice Man” who lived some 3300 B.C., had some manner of tattoos. Upon discovering the remains, researchers could do little rather than guess that this primitive kind of tattoo was for the purpose of warding off evil spirits, or that it may be some type of rite-of-passage award.
Merged on his spine and behind one knee and on one ankle, the Ice Man had roughly fifty-seven tattoos. It is impossible to do further than speculate as to the actual rationalization for them, it most certainly shows that tattoos aren’t unique to current eras nor to the individuals in the present-day world. As the Ice Man was the oldest mummified human remains found in Europe, modern day tattoo fans have history on their side - there’s nothing whatever new about tattoos.
In the past, tattoos were connected to an altogether varying nature than during the in recent decades. There was nothing notorious or rebellious about them at all. It used to be that tattoos were reserved for those of high social standing, and were not available to average individuals. Tattoos were only available to and a sign of those who were wealthy, important, and mostly in some high position. Sweden’s King Oscar had tattoos; also England’s King George IV. In that period tattoos were considered a status symbol.
In other time-periods, tattoos also served specialized purposes. Going the furthest back in American history, assorted Native American tribes utilized tattoos; it was primarily for the goal of showing their position to one’s individual tribe. For the Polynesians, tattooing was a mode of relating family history; each individual had his own distinct tattoos to show the story of his family. Some of the earliest explorers on the American continent are said to carry gotten this background from the Polynesians’ forms of tattoos.
Two of the oldest Egyptian mummies were discovered to have even had tattoos. These tattoos, which are only found on female mummies, consist of patterns of lines, dots and dashes. As the women themselves were connected to ritualistic practices, it is assumed that the tattoos they had were in some way representative of that fact. It is only speculation on the parts of the researchers, due to their knowledge of the lifestyles of that period in time.
Although Oriental symbols are undeniably trendy for tattoos in America, it is not widely known that both the Japanese and Chinese cultures have held a strong opposition to the occupation of tattooing all through history. With both societal and religious viewpoints agreeing that tattooing is something which ought to not be done, it is still widely held to be a means of contaminating one’s body. For the ancient Chinese, tattooing was used as a punishment for criminal practice, putting such visible marks on an individual to forever brand him as a felon.
Related posts:
- History of Acupuncture
- What influential individual in history can I write about for my history fair project?
If you are wondering how to delete porn history then the answer for you is simple… It is not easy by a long shot but you can delete porn history permanently if you use the right software! To delete porn history permanently you really need the right porn deleting software and the free porn deleting software just do not cut the mustard and actually create huge problems on your computer! They damage your registry and your hard drive permanently and it generally costs over $100 to get your computer fixed at the computer shop! So, if you want to delete porn history permanently then the first step is to stay well clear of free porn deleting software as it causes a lot of damage to your computer and downloads more spyware and porn fragments! As you know, these days there is no such thing as a free lunch unfortunately so i suggest you buy a windows certified porn deleting software and filter just like i did!
If you are wondering how to delete porn history permanently then i just about answered your question, it is only a matter of using the right software and you will be able to delete porn history permanently and no one will be able to find any porn history on your computer! The best software how to delte porn history is of course the Porn Terminator! I was wondering how to delete porn history once also when i received a virus and several porn pop ups started to open up… I did not want any body to think that i was looking up porn on the intrernet so i started searching for how to delete porn histrory and stumbled upon porn terminator! This porn deleting software got rid of all the porn from my computer once and for all and now it also filters other porn files and subfiles from enterning into my computer automatically! If you are looking for how to delete porn history permanently then you deffinetly have to try this software as it is the best thing out there that is guaranteed to solve the problem!
I downloaded and tried Porn Terminator and it found and cleared over 132 porn files and fragments from my computer hard drive and registry and deleted all porn history permanently and once and for all! If your are looking for ways how to delete porn history permanently then you must Download Porn Terminator And Try It Today Here!
Related posts:
- Delete Porn History Permanently, Ways to Delete Porn History Permanently
- Ways to Delete Porn History, Delete Porn History Permanently
- How to Erase Porn History Permanently! How to Permanently Erase Porn History
When they asserted that our postmodern society has reached the “end of history,” theorists Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Francis Fukuyama launched a compelling debate that has persisted for over a decade. They argue that we no longer believe in teleological metanarratives, that our concept of history has become spatial or flattened out, and that we inhabit a perpetual present in which images of the past are merely recycled with no understanding of their original context. In short, they think that postmodern culture has lost a sense of historical consciousness, of cause and effect. Jameson, in particular, sees literary postmodernism as a by-product of this new worldview. Such a controversial stance has, of course, provoked numerous antagonists to speak out. Linda Hutcheon, for example, has written two studies of “historiographic metafiction,” suggesting that much of postmodern fiction is still strongly invested in history, but more importantly in revising our sense of what history means and can accomplish. My project is to examine how Toni Morrison’s acclaimed historical novel Beloved (1987) enacts a hybrid vision of history and time that sheds new light on issues addressed by Jameson and Hutcheon in their theories of the postmodern - topics such as the “fictionality” of history, the blurring of past and present, and the questioning of grand historical metanarratives. I argue that while the novel exhibits a postmodern skepticism of sweeping historical narratives, of “Truth,” and of Marxist teleological notions of time as diachronic, it also retains an African American and modernist political commitment to the crucial importance of deep cultural memory, of keeping the past alive in order to construct a better future. Morrison’s mediations between these two theoretical and political camps - between postmodernism and African American social protest - enable her to draw the best from both and make us question the more extremist voices asserting that our postmodern world is bereft of history.
Since the term postmodern has been at the center of many highly charged cultural debates, I am aware that describing Beloved as such, even as a “hybrid” postmodern novel, is a gesture that might draw criticism. Clearly, the novel’s status as part of the African American tradition of social protest, and Morrison’s investments in agency, presence, and the resurrection of authentic history, seem to make the novel incompatible with poststructuralist ideas at the root of postmodernism. Morrison herself has spoken out against a postmodernism that she associates with Jameson’s terms. In my view, however, Morrison’s treatment of history bears some similarity to Hutcheon’s postmodern “historiographic metafiction,” but her relationship to this discourse is affected by her aim to write “black-topic” texts. Morrison acknowledges that history is always fictional, always a representation, yet she is also committed to the project of recording African American history in order to heal her readers. Instead of a playful exercise in deconstructing history, Morrison’s Beloved attempts to affect the contemporary world of the “real.” While the novel should not simply be assimilated into the canon of postmodernism, Morrison’s work should be recognized as contributing a fresh voice to the debates about postmodern history, a voice that challenges the centrism and elitism of much of postmodern theory. Beloved reminds us that history is not “over” for African Americans, who are still struggling to write the genealogies of their people and to keep a historical consciousness alive.
The relationship of African American writers and their work to the discourse of postmodernism has been hotly contested, and there has unfortunately emerged a dichotomy that I would like to question. This relationship has become even more vexed since the Nobel Prize committee bypassed postmodern guru Thomas Pynchon to select Toni Morrison as their 1993 literature winner. Morrison claimed her prize as a victory particularly for African Americans.(1) Black critics such as Barbara Christian continue to argue that Morrison’s work must be understood as an expression of African American forms and traditions, and are concerned that “the power of this novel as a specifically African American text is being blunted” as it is being appropriated by white academic discourse (Christian 6). I too share her suspicion of the increasingly popular move to read Morrison’s fiction through the lens of postmodernism, poststructuralism, or “white” academic theory, a tactic that underestimates the crucial importance of Toni Morrison’s black cultural heritage to any interpretation of her works. While we must question the tactics of critics like Elliott Butler-Evans, who simply and somewhat blindly plot poststructuralist and postmodernist theory onto Morrison’s “black-topic texts,” we should be equally wary of concluding that postmodernism is a “white” phenomenon. Any claim that the lives of black people have nothing to do with postmodernism ignores the complex historical interrelationship of black protest and liberal academic discourse. As Andreas Huyssen, Kobena Mercer, and Linda Hutcheon have noted, racial liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s (as well as the feminist movement) contributed to the loosening of cultural boundaries that is seen as characteristically postmodern.(2) White liberal theorists of postmodernism and African American critics often share an oppositional relationship to the bourgeois state or to the universalizing “objectivity” of some humanist intellectuals. A rigid demarcation between postmodern texts and African American texts merely perpetuates a false dichotomy of academic theory and social protest, ignoring that they emerged in response to a similar set of lived conditions.
Related posts:
- “Postmodern blackness”: Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ and the end of history - novel by Black female author
- “Postmodern blackness”: Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ and the end of history - novel by Black female author
- Black History Month: History of Black History Month
When I first started studying the history of music, I did not know what I was getting into. I had a notion that music history was somewhat of a trivial pursuit…
Honestly, I only followed my history of classical music course because I needed the credits. I am sure some of you out there can relate to that. I did not know how fully interesting music history could be. You see, in our culture many of us do not really study to comprehend music. For much of the world, music is a language, but for us it is a thing that we consumed passively.
When I started to study about the history of Western music, however, it changed all that for me. I have had some experience using musical instruments, but I have never mastered one enough to really comprehend what music is all about. This class showed me.
When a lot of us think about the history of music, it means the history of rock music. We presume that the history is plain because the music is plain. In fact, neither is the case. The history of music, whether you’re talking about classical music, rock music, jazz music, or any other kind, is always complex. New chord structures are set up carrying with them new forms of understanding humanity. New rhythmic patterns are established, carrying with them new methods of understanding history. And music shows all of it.
History of music nowadays is even more interesting. Even when the class was ended, I could not stop learning about the history of music. It had stimulated my appetite, and I wanted more. I acquired all the music history volumes that I could discover. I even started to examine forms of music that had not interested me before in the hopes of improving my musical knowledge further. When I was in school studying toward a very different subject - a degree in engineering - I had thought about giving it up and going back to obtain a degree in musicology. That is how much I am fascinated by the subject.
If you have never taken a course in the history of music, you don’t know what you are missing out on. You do not miss what you don’t know about in a way but then again… Believe me the CDs will never sound the same to you again. Actually not only the Cds but any type of media you are or will be using to play your favorite music. The whole thing will seem much more rich, much more luminous, and much more important. A new song can reflect a new way of being, and a new way of imagining existence in the world. This is what learning about the history of music means to many of us. Just try it and you will see.
Listening to music now has a whole new meaning. You can imagine all the different types of musical patterns there are in the world. It make your musical mind really expand.
Related posts:
- Discover How History Of Music Will Make Your Music More Luminous
- Discove the Importance of History of Music
- Discove the Importance of History of Music