Relevant Concept Of Celebrity Endorsements Marketing Essay

Relevant Concept Of Celebrity Endorsements Marketing Essay Introduction In the introduction this research paper will be providing an insight about the research area. It would begin by briefly discussing the background and relevant concept of celebrity endorsements and how it affects the consumer pre-purchasing behavior. 1.1  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Background Advertisement came into existence in early 18th Century. Since then the concept started playing an active role in the development of the society in the early 1930s.Most of the celebrity back then used their status in society to promote product, service or charity. These celebrities performed stage shows; modeling, sports activities and most of them were from movie industry (Kambitsis, Harahousouy, Theodorakis and Chatzibeis, 2002). In the early 19th century, worlds first celebrity endorser Lillie Langtry (British actress) appeared in the advertisement for pear soap. It marked the beginning of the brand representation by endorsers. These endorsers according to the Tellis (1998) can be divided into three major groups experts, lay endorsers and celebrities. Here experts are those people who know about the product and they have limited knowledge about the product which they have assembled during study, training or experiences. Such an instance can be shown in advertisement where dentist for toothpaste advert or nutritionists for healthy food items as both of them are able to provide an expert opinion about the product. Secondly lay endorsers are people who may be real or fictional, which resembles to the target groups and can be quite effective to provide message. Thirdly comes celebrity endorser who can be defined as the people who enjoys public recognition and who uses this on the behalf of a consumer good by appealing with it in an advertisement (McCracken, 1989, p.310). Celebrity endorsements are used for advertisement just because they can create an appeal and can increase its attractiveness for the viewers and consumers. For example Michael Jordan acted in advertisement for Nike; David Beckham for Gillette and newly made football cup advert of coca cola where Roger Millas celebrates wonderful world of football goals. According to Ohanian (1999) both theory and practice proves that the use of super stars in advertisements generates a lot of publicity as well as draws the attention of public. Most of the companies try to utilise the already made image of the celebrities to attract more customer base and increase their loyalty. As in this highly competitive business environment brand loyalty has become the utmost important for success. Companies use celebrities endorsement in the advertisements so that they are able to associate with celebrity and are able to cash there image for a long period of time. It is said that, If the consumers are able to see the link between the celebrity and the product then the endorsements can be highly effective (Hsu and McDonald, 2002). It is believed that attractive endorsers can be highly affective while promoting products and can be used to enhance consumers attractiveness. Attractive people have greater influences on the consumers compared to unattractive people (Till and Busler, 1998). Till (1998) states companies used celebrity endorsers either sporadically or opportunistically at the whim of the client or the agency. Paying back for the investments in the celebrity endorsement usually comes from using the celebrity regularly over time. The reputation strengthens the associative link for those consumers who were already aware of the celebrity endorsement. It also increases the pole of consumers who begins to make themselves aware of the link between the brand and the celebrity. Some marketers change celebrity endorsers very frequently which weakens the benefit expected to be derived from the endorser. Such as Nikes consistent use of Michael Jordon has encouraged customers to think about Nike when thinking about Jordon and vice versa these have shown that Nike and Jordon have become a part of each others association similarly association of the Nike and Tiger woods have made same impact as whenever customers think of golf products they think of the Tiger woods and its endorsed Nike product. McCracken (1989) proposed the hypothesis that endorsers are more effective when there is a fit between the endorser and the endorsed product. Byrne et al (2003, p.289) states celebrity can help the brand to rebuilt and even create a new identity with new dimensions. Celebrity endorsement boosts brands attractiveness among the consumers and saves valuable time in terms of creating the credibility. When consumers see a credible celebrity endorsing a product they think the company has to be good and reputed. The major job for the company is to choose the right kind of the celebrity for the endorsement and its the job of the advertisers within the company to match the companys image or product with the personality of the celebrity and characteristics of the target market to establish effective message and mass expectance. According to the Shimp (2003) two general attributes which are important when determining the effectiveness of the endorsers as well as the communications effectiveness are credibility and attractiveness. The first attribute concerns endorsers quality of being believable or trustworthy and the achievements and skills of the celebrity which could correlate with the brand image. The latter attribute refers to the celebrities ability to appeal, attract and engage large consumer base on the basis of their attractiveness. A good example of these would be golf star Tiger Woods whose scandalous image resulted in his ruining his credibility among the consumers which lead to his sponsors (ATT, Gillette, Tag Heuer and Accenture) dropping his advertisements and Anna Kournikova who although has never won any pro-level tournament but was still used by Swiss watch maker Omega to endorse their products because of her international reputation and appealing looks. Purpose and research questions Many of the previous studies on the celebrity endorsement have been focused on how celebrity endorsements influence consumer behavior. But there has been less consideration on the empirical   research on celebrity endorsement specifically on sport celebrity endorsements and in what manner do they use celebrity and how do they addresses the future returns on the investments in celebrities. The lack of proper research in this area inspires the present dissertation. So the main aim of this research would be to gain deeper understanding of the celebrity endorsement and how it influences the consumers behavior specifically in sports industry. To be able to achieve that following question were formulated: 1. Why does sports industry uses celebrity endorsements for promotional strategy? 2. How does celebrity endorsement affect the consumer behavior in sports industry? 3. How does company select the celebrity? 4. How effective are celebrity endorsement for sports industry? Demarcations This topic falls into the very broad area. Limits of both time and resources have led this research to focus on the very specific questions. Therefore the research paper will concentrate specifically on sports industry and will analyses the prominent companies in the field.   Furthermore there are several viewpoints which could be adapted in the research of the celebrity endorsement. There is consumers view point as they are affected by celebrity endorsement and then there is a companys point of view as they use celebrity endorsement as there promotional strategy. The research is done by keeping in mind that both points of views are highly important in understanding the consumer behavior as well as companys approach in promoting celebrity endorsement. Literature review This section of the research paper would be discussing what has already been done by other authors on the topic and their conclusion about the effect on consumer pre-purchasing decisions. Celebrity image is one of the major concerns for the endorser. Whichever company is endorsing celebrity the major issue they have to see is the compatibility between the celebrities and their brand. Advertising companies look for celebrities who compete and maintain an image (Kambitsis et al, 2002). Mostly companies are looking for the some basic properties such as likeability, expertise, trustworthiness and similarity thats what makes celebrity endorser to become a source of persuasive information and this creates a sense of certainty .Physical attractiveness of the endorser is also considerable and can be highly effective in producing an effective message. Acceptance of a message by a receiver could be influenced by celebrity endorsers as believable sources of information about a product or a firm (Amos et al, 2008). The use of celebrity endorsers to support products is explained by balance theory principles too. According to theory, successful companies establish an emotional rela tion between the observer and the endorser and a relation between endorser and brand too (Mowen, 2000). One of the important issue which arises here is whether there is a link between the consumers purchasing intention and celebrity endorsement. Many researchers have concluded that they have observed that many customers will pay a premium price for the product which have been endorsed by celebrities then product which have not been endorsed by celebrity. But the consumer should be able to see associations between the product and endorser as well as his/her intentions and purpose with the endorsers. The question that arises here is how does consumer associates itself with the celebrity endorser, to make a connection and association. It can be simply identified as most of the   companies choose an endorser who uses the product and where the use of the product is reflected due to endorsers professional expertise (Daneshvary and schwer, 2002). An athlete endorser such as David Beckham endorses football shoe then association can be seen but if he endorses golf products or racing car then customer will not be able to identify association. Therefore companies have to be very careful while associating with brand and product with the endorser so that they are able to utilize endorsers capabilities according to their need. Celebrity endorsement based on attractiveness is common among everyday consumers which, most of the time, effect consumers positively. Michael Jordon is an example of an attractive endorser but his effectiveness is likely greater when endorsing to this athletic ability is more rather than the products which are not relate to athletic performances. Consumers often have the positive effect towards the product and the celebrity despite the fact it is well known that the endorser earned a lot when promoting a product. (Cronley et al., 1999) Its more effective to use celebrity endorsement constantly to increase the strength of the link between the celebrity and the endorsed brand. Its also more effective to use celebrity who is not associated with another product (Till, 1998). When a Celebrity endorses only one or two products it is significantly more trustworthy than a celebrity who endorses even more products (Tripp at al., 1994). Celebrity endorsement can have both positive and negative effect on companys image e.g., many celebrities who switch their endorsement to the rival brands increase the risk of negative impact and confusion among the consumers. Pros and cons of celebrity endorsement Erdrogen (1999) states that academic findings and company reports safely argues that celebrity endorsers are more effective than non celebrity endorsers   when it comes to generate all desirable outcomes (attitudes towards advertisings and endorsed brands, intension to purchase and actual sales). Companies mostly utilize celebrities whose public image and personality match with product and the target audience and who have not endorsed previously. It has been clearly understood by the advertisers that celebrity endorsement has the significant potential to increase the recognition of the product and the brand. The increasing competition and new product increase in the market have made companies and marketers to use attention creating media stars to assist product marketing (Erdogan, 1999). With recent technology such as remote controlled televisions, video controlled systems, internet and satellite television, the power over programmed advertisements have increased and has made advertising more challenging. These threats with increased products, competition and technology development can be eased by the use of the celebrity endorsements as celebrity presence in the advertisement tend to   make impact on consumers reaction toward the advertisement and can help making advertising stand out from the clutter(Erdogan, 1999). Advertisers use celebrity to develop the communication between the consumers and the brand by cutting down excessive noise in the communication process. Some of the most complicated problem with the global marketing is to enter foreign countries due to cultural roadblocks such as time space, language relationships, a powerful risk, masculinity, femininity. And to overcome this problem companies hire local celebrities as they are powerful means to enter the foreign market. It makes it easier for companies to make the local people understand and associate the product with them. But it can also bring too many risks as well mostly because celebrities loss of credibility due to the frequently changes in endorsements or if celebrity drops in popularity. Therefore celebrity endorsement is a creative as well as risky tool for the companies. The whole process of celebrity endorsements needs a proper strategic plan before risking their investment.   Celebrity Endorsers Effect on consumers attitude Marketers and advertisers are particularly interested in consumers attitudes towards advertisements and brands. They always need to be aware of how sensitive consumers are about the adverts and brands. And they should know how do consumers start liking the product and consider it. It very much depends upon the consumers attitude towards certain product or brand or celebrity endorser. An attitude shows whether we like something or not. Attitudes have three basic components: affective, cognitive and behavioral. Affective component is related to our liking or feelings about an object. Cognitive is referred to beliefs about an object and behavioral component regards actions we take about that object (Severin and Tankard, 2001). Attitude towards advertisement is defined as a learned tendency to respond in a consistently desirable or undesirable approach toward advertisement in general (Haghirian, 2004). Determinants of advertisement consist of attitude towards the advertiser, assessment o f the advertising execution itself, the mood evoked by advertising and the extent to which the advertising affect viewers encouragement. A successful advertisement in one country or region is not necessary it will be successful in other parts of the world as what makes advertisement impressive will change noticeably in cross-culturally. Many researchers have concluded that the use of the celebrity endorsement in advertising creates constructive impact on attitudes of the consumer towards products and brands with which they are associated. Agarwal and Malhotra (2005) have defined brand attitude as consumers general evaluative judgment of a brand based on brand beliefs. Such beliefs concern product-related attributes, like practical and experimental benefits. A successful endorser is able to enhance intentions and preferences towards brands directly or indirectly. An endorser who has major source factors of credibility (like expertise, trustworthiness and effectiveness) is able to imp ress purchase intentions of the consumer considerably (Liu et al, 2007). Information from a credible source can impress ideas, attitudes and behaviour through a process called internalization(Belch and Belch, 1993).   Internalization occurs when the receiver is motivated to have an issue. The receiver learns and accepts the idea of the credible spokesperson, since he supposes that information of this person represents an accurate position on the issue. Therefore, if such spokesperson who is known to be an expert endorses a product, consumers will more probably have a desirable idea about that advertisement and brand and they will consider it in their shopping list the next time they go shopping. Researchers have used the identification process of social influence in order to explain the effectiveness of celebrity endorsers (Basil, 1996). This theory suggests that if an individual identifies with another individual, then he is more likely to accept an attitude or behavior of that individual or a group. The internalization process of social influence occurs when an individual accepts influence because the induced behavior is congruent with his value system. An individual accepts the influence, since it provides a solution to a problem (Daneshvary and Schwer, 2000) A successful endorser strategy can enhance the level of consumers recalling towards product information, reinforces consumers recognition to endorsed brands, positively influences consumers attitude to low-involved products and even enhance consumers purchase intention and preference towards brands (Liu et al, 2007) Celebrity endorsement and its involvement sports industry Sports industry is becoming the vital revenue generator in world economy and it is mainly due to increase in the broadcast coverage of important sporting events like Olympics, World Cup football, UEFA Cup, Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open, French Open, Formula 1 racing, World Athletic meet, NBA and Basketball championship .Due to increase coverage sports persons have started becoming celebrities as more and more people know them and consider them as their idols. Sports celebrities have become major spectacles of todays media culture. Sports celebrities have been looked upon as role models from the todays young generation.   Most of the sports companies (Adidas, Nike, Wilson, Puma, Slazenger, Stiga, Dunlop and Yonex ) which have international recognition wants to have an international sport celebrity which is recognised by the most of their consumers and has enough credibility and attractiveness to appeal to large customer base. Due to which, Celebrity endorsements in the sport i ndustry continues to grow both in number and value. Certain athletes are utilized by brands as endorsers of their products because of the celebrity status gained by these athletes as a result of their success in their chosen sports. Most models of celebrity endorser effectiveness proposed by previous researchers have been based upon two basic models: the Source Credibility Model (Hovland, Janis, Kelley, 1953; Hovland Weiss, 1951) and the Source Attractiveness Model (McGuire, 1968). The Source Credibility Model significances that the effectiveness of the message is largely determined by the expertise and trustworthiness of the celebrity endorser, which offers explanations for why certain athlete endorsers such as highly successful mens tennis professionals Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer could easily represent any brand of tennis equipment. In a different vein, the Source Attractiveness Model significances that similarity, familiarity, and liking of celebrity endorsers primarily determine their effectiveness, which attempts to explain why some athletes such as Manning, Woods, and racecar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. can endorse brands in many different product categories. A general measure of physica l attractiveness has often been used to assess celebrity endorser effectiveness, assuming what is beautiful is good (Dion, Berscheid, Walster, 1972). However, mixed findings suggest that caution should be exercised in basing endorsement decisions on this model alone, since consumers perceive physical attractiveness differently. The Product Matchup Hypothesis (Forkan, 1980; Kahle Homer, 1985; Kamins, 1989; Kamins, 1990) emphasizes the need for a matchup, also referred to as congruency or fit, between the celebrity and the product. For example, the fit between Woods and Nike Golf is undeniable. However, according to sport marketing consultant Marc Cagins, Woods has failed as an endorser for Buick because of a lack of fit: People always shook their head as to why he did the deal anyway with Buick. If hes going to do a deal with GM, you would have thought Cadillac more than Buick (Thomaselli, 2008, p. 28).Research based on attractiveness matchup and expertise matchup has supported the hypothesis that celebrity/product fit remains critical to endorsement success. Kamins (1990) tested the matchup hypothesis based on attractiveness and found that the physical attractiveness of a source only mattered when an attractive source was paired with an attractiveness-related product, resulting in increased perceived source credibility and attitude toward the advertisement. Current examples would include the female tennis professionals and sisters Serena and Venus Williams Avon cosmetics campaign and the European mens soccer star Thierry Henry/Woods/Federer Gillette campaign. In a study examining the impact of gender and physical attractiveness on responses to motorsports sponsorships (Roy, Stewart, Goss, 2003), attractiveness played a greater role for female drivers than for male drivers, with the more attractive female drivers perceived as possessing greater expertise with products such as shampoo, tanning products, and dietary products. However, Bower and Landreth (2001) found that highly attractive models were not more effective than normally attractive models for problem-solving, attractiveness-related products and attributed these results to the premise that consumers perceive highly attractive models to have never faced an attractiveness-related problem and therefore have little expertise using these products. To illustrate, this premise would suggest that the current campaign utilizing female tennis star Serena Williams for ProActiv acne medication would be unsuccessful. However, a moderately attractive model may be more likely to be perceived to have faced an attractiveness-related problem and overcome it using the advertised product, fully illustrating the premise that the expertise of the source is more important than the attractiveness of the source.   Chapter 3 Methodology Research can be defined as the search for information or as any organized investigation to establish facts. There are two main types of research methods: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative study uses numerical data to test hypothesis under investigation, which is flexible and objective. Qualitative study uses softer approach to look at perceptions and insights of people based on few samples but in great depth (Silverman, 2006) In quantitative research usually numerical data is collected through surveys.  So that they are able to observe surveys and develop it into the meaningful results. In quantitative research it is important to collect large sample to develop fairly accurate results, small the sample less chances to develop proper results. Qualitative Research Qualitative research helps in developing more meaningful complex researches. It has been characterized into four main approaches: they are observation, record, interpretation and conclusion. In qualitative research data is collected by focus groups or by interviews and then the data is observed thoroughly. Once observed data is collected or recorded in meaningful way so that it is able to be interpreted into understandable form. Then finally conclusion is constructed in a suitable way. Observational study has been criticized to be unreliable and subjective depending on observers understanding of the data. This form of research would be more appropriate at preliminary phase of research (Silverman, 2006). Researcher also uses other approaches to investigates, it is mostly done by reading of various materials on the subject to develop and recognize relevant information. This method of research is less common among qualitative research. Most common method among qualitative research is interviews and focus groups (Silverman, 2006). In interviews, participants respond to questions asked by researcher to investigate their understanding of the subject and allows respondent to elaborate further with his or her ideas and feelings. Focus group method is a more costly approach to carry out than methods mentioned, but often criticized for limited sample size which may not be representative of the population under investigation (Silverman, 2006) Research Method The purpose of this research seeks to investigate the insight and opinions of the consumers over the celebrity endorse and does it really affect the consumer behaviour during the purchasing. To support my research and to understand the consumer behaviour in depth survey will be conducted where common people/consumer from all walks of life and will be collected and interpreted into meaningful results and conclusion.   To understand the subject in the perception of the company interviews will be conducted with the people, who have understanding of the market and know how companies generate profits from the celebrity endorsement and what they make of celebrity endorsements effect on consumers attitude.   Primary Data Collection Primary data is information gather first-hand to contribute to what could be explored further into the research and also to justify. It involves collecting data using basic methods such as interviews, questionnaires, observations and abstractions. But the key point here is that the data collected should be unique and should not resemble with already done researches. The primary data, which is generated by the above methods, may be qualitative in nature (usually in the form of words) or quantitative (usually in the form of numbers or counts of items assessed). In this research both questionnaires and interviews are utilise so that   consumer behaviour could be understood fully from   both prospective consumer as well from companies.in this research questionnaire will have both open and closed ended questions so that prà ©cised options and answers could be obtained and it will be more accurate in interpreting the data. For the interviews, semi-structured pattern with open-ended qu estions will be develop in order to understand   interviewees opinion and belief about a particular matter or situation and not restrict respondents answer to confined questions. Semi-structured questions are used in this research to encourage respondent to elaborate on points they feel appropriate and provide a blueprint for them to understand the progression of the interview (Ruane, 2005). Although qualitative and quantitative data collection can be time consuming, but it is reasoned that this form of research provides more accurate results. Participants for survey are the common people whom answered to a posting on Facebook, tweeter and collage email. Participants for the interview are the managers of the different companies which have international experiences and have some sort of knowledge and understanding of the celebrity endorsements. Researcher carefully examined each participants position and company background to ensure they correspond to requirements of this research. The final participants were chosen upon their qualification and availability. Interviews were conducted personally in their respected office due to their availability in the London U.K .The time assumed for interviews were 20 to 30 minute but Interviews were longer than predicted, as participants were remarkably eager to elaborate their answers with personal experiences; each interview lasted about 30minutes to 60 minutes. 3.5 Limitations An extra care is need in preparing the questions for the interview and questionnaire as if researcher conducts the structure too loosely then it may lead to undesirable information making the result and concision less effective. Therefore structure of interview and questionnaire should be in a way that appropriate information is collected. Even semi-structured interview and questionnaire are criticized for possibility of missing information if researcher follows the structure too closely. Availability of the time restricted the research by creating the boundaries such as limited respondents for surveys as well as restricted participation of interviewers. The research was concluded in a limited time frame.

Identity Crisis in Don Delillos White Noise Essay -- White Noise Essa

Don Delillo's White Noise is a novel set in twentieth century Middle America. The story follows the life and journey of Jack Gladney, a teacher of Hitler studies and his family through their lives invaded by white noise, the constant murmur of American consumerism. The narrative follows these characters as they struggle to live life distracting themselves from their sense of reality. White Noise explores a host of character's deep underlying fears and uncertainties that keep them from discovering and revealing their true identities. The first character I would like to discuss is the protagonist, Jack Gladney. It seems as if Jack distracts himself from discovering his own identity, without it life is a mystery to him and it makes death even more mysterious. As Jack talks to Murray about death, he states that The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is death. This is all I think about. There's only one issue here, I want to live. (270) Jack is obsessed with his fear of the unexpected. He explains to Murry that death does not make his life more satisfying, but only filled with anxiety. Jack does not want to know any information predicting his own demise, he is afraid of finding out his own "code", as in the case of his medical report that forecasts his death. There are many indications of Jack's identity crisis throughout the story-- a more prominent one is that of his identity as a teacher of Hitler studies. It seems as if Jack is fascinated with a man so in touch with death, and when teaching he hides behind large dark glasses and... ...sulting in death, Murry considers the idea that one can become an instrument of death, by taking death into one's own hands. Murry may mask his character in a way to deflect death, but he is not afraid to take interest in the mystical concepts such as religion and science, the two sources that can cause and possibly cure death itself. Fear in a person's life can cause him or her to withdraw themself, or hide from certain situations thought to be associated with his or her underlying anxieties. In White Noise, the fear of death is a prominent factor that provokes the identity crisis these characters face. It is not until a person can face, and possibly overcome, these internal fears that one can obtain his or her true identity and understand truly who he or she really is.

Essay --

The World of Cyberspace and its Effects on Social Relationships Many studies have been conducted on the various features of cyberspace, its connection to social media, and how it influences professional, intimate, and cordial relationships. Although many spectators are convinced that society’s frequent use of cyberspace has taken a turn down the wrong path, cyberspace has opened up many opportunities for professional relationships to establish, such as the relationship between Facebook usage and an increase in work values in Taiwan (Lin, Le, Khalil, & Cheng, 2012). However, contradictory results suggest that heavy use of the internet by young children, specifically adolescent girls, may be a factor of negative social well-being (Pea et al., 2012). In order to fully understand how social cyberspace affects everyday relationships, all forms of interactions must be examined. This paper will examine the positive and negative effects of cyberspace connections and whether they should be utilized and in what manner. Primary Issues Cyberspace Cyberspace is a time-dependent set of interconnected information systems and the human users that interact with these systems (Ottis & Lorents, 2010). In recent years the term â€Å"cyberspace† has been used to explain things that pertain to any type of network system and anything to do with the use of computer technology. However, given the frequent use of cyberspace and its different qualities that people use daily, human relationships are affected by the information systems. The everyday use of cyberspace has changed the way in which social identity, social interaction, and relationship formation is formed differently online than in real life (McKenna & Bargh, 2000). Cyberspace has affected the way ... ...various businesses. Social media is now used in order to recruit and hire employees for different companies. For instance, the social media site, LinkedIn, has many social profiles of individuals that are thrown in a candidate pool for different jobs. Many recruiters can find their ideal candidate by searching for key terms that may match individual’s background or show up on their personal profile (Blacksmith & Poeppelman, 2013). Although this process may make it easier for recruiters to scout potential employees, the method has its limitations. Recruiters are basing their decisions off of information provided by the unknown individuals, information that could potential be false. Also, other trivial things, like people not updating their profiles or revealing photographs of themselves that are accurate may influence the recruiter’s decision to hire someone or not.

The Joy Luck Club Essay -- Papers Amy Tan Essays

The Joy Luck Club 1. From the film The Joy Luck Club, Chinese girls were supposed to act obedient and respectful to their parents and elders. This included the girls having to abide by each and every Chinese tradition that their parents instilled in them. Girls were also expected to be quiet and considerate to their parents and elders. They were only supposed to speak when spoken to at all times. Acting out against anything their parents enforced upon them was completely unacceptable. 2. Much like to their parents and elders, Chinese girls were supposed to be quiet and obedient to their husbands and mothers-in-law. Girls were supposed to respect, and not openly question the decisions that were made in the household. These women were taught to always ask what the husband wants and to ignore their own wants and needs. Chinese wives were there mainly to provide the mother-in-law with grandsons. 3. Chinese victims of rape were treated with complete disrespect and disbelief. As with the one mother in The Joy Luck Club, she was kicked away by her own family for making such a claim. These rape victims were seen as disrespectful to their families and themselves. One social consequence of claiming rape is that their families shun the women and force them to leave their homes. Secondly, the community shuns them as well. As with the woman in the film, she was denied work and abandoned by her neighbors. She was eventually forced to marry her assailant in order to save her child. 4. One of the main psychological consequences of having the system of many wives and concubines is that not only the husband, but also wives have complete power over each other as in a hierarchical system. As in the film, the secon... ... did not afford her these things, Lindo is being very cautious, often critical, of her daughter and the choices that she has. 10. The daughters in this film struggled with traditional sex roles mainly due to the influence of their mothers. In many cases, the mothers tried desperately hard to encourage their daughters to have power over their lives, be successful, and have a strong self-esteem. This over-encouragement to lead a life that they could not, led many of the daughters to feel inferior because they could not live up to their mother's expectations. In some cases, this led to the daughters getting involved in relationships in which they relied on their husbands for power and support. So in essence, it was their mothers' extremely high hopes for their daughters that led them to feeling inferior as women when these hopes could not be fulfilled.

A Sorrowful Woman

Gail Godwin beckons a woman to know herself as a woman and not as mere in a relation to other in her much thought provoking story, â€Å"A Sorrowful Woman†.Michael Meyer said that, † Goodwin selects several key events that e place over a period of year to show us the slow decline of the Woman in her role as wife and mother.†(geocities.com, online).Marriage calls upon woman to obey and serve as a traditional good wife and mother but at the cost of her individuality, which made our protagonist to take life on a very pessimist note. We find woman in a â€Å"Sorrowful Woman† as totally tired of her relationship as a mother, a wife and of her life. Godwin says,   â€Å"The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to ever see them again† (Gail, 35).This story was initially titles â€Å"Sorrowful Mother†, as whose obsession of motherhood was putting question on her individuality. But it is not a story of only mother but the question o f independent identity and individuality of all women. This dilemma brought them onto the verge of depression and ultimately their downfall. Therefore it is not the Sorrowful mother but A Sorrowful Woman.WORKS CITED Godwin, Gail. â€Å"A Sorrowful Woman† in Dream Children. Ballantine Books, 1996. Micheal Meyer, A Plot, Sorrowful Woman, Online, 22th May 2008 Available at http://www.geocities.com/davidjohntoth/102/plot.html  

Critical Movie Review Psychology: Girl, Interrupted Essay

Critical Movie Review â€Å"Girl, Interrupted† This movie revolves around a young woman named Susanna in the 1960s who is experiencing mental issues and ends up in a mental institution. Her journey focuses on her relationship with several of the other patients and nurses. At first she doesn’t believe she is ill, and resists her treatment, instead befriending another patient, Lisa, who takes her on many adventures inside and outside of the hospital. Lisa leads her down the wrong path which ends in the death of a former patient. This event leads Susanna down the right path and she dives into focusing on making herself well. The lead characters include Susanna, a young woman with borderline personality disorder. She doesn’t know what she wants to do or where to go in life. She finds herself admitted into a mental institution after taking a bottle of aspirin and drinking a bottle of vodka. Lisa is a â€Å"lifer† patient in the ward, and she clearly has some major personality, social and mental issues. It was never clearly spoken what her diagnosis was, however, some of the other girls on the ward mention sociopath, and criminally insane. She has no empathy for others around her unless it benefits her. She is manipulative and conniving. She uses the weakness of the minds in her circle to get what she wants. This intrigues Susanna, who befriends Lisa, to Susanna, she personifies freedom. Another character is Valerie, a black woman, and head nurse of Susannas ward. She doesn’t take any lip, and is a very strong mother figure in the story. Valerie is a single mother, and I believe this ad ds to her strength with dealing with the girls in the ward. There are several mental disorders depicted in Girl, Interrupted. Susanna has borderline personality disorder. This was portrayed very well, considering the clinical description of the disorder. She feels that time can go backward and forward, she frequently has flashbacks, is generally pessimistic, tends toward the company of men, whereas she is quite promiscuous. Susanna also made a feeble attempt at suicide by taking aspirin and vodka, which is what landed her in the hospital. Our book states that one thing borderline disorder sufferers do is threats or attempts at injuring themselves for attention. I believe that the talk and attempts at death are more a call for help than a desire to injure oneself. Lisa, well, she is textbook sociopathic. She is classically crazy, and portrayed well. Lisa has no empathy or feelings unless she can be benefited. She latches herself onto Susanna because she sees that Susanna can be manipulated. Lisa shows a lot of violence and false threats to acts of violence. I also believe that Lisa loves the attention, and craves it. She also gets off on pushing peoples buttons, to see how far she can push a person. This was perfectly shown when she and Susanna run away and stay with a former patient, Daisy. Lisa pushes Daisy’s buttons to a point that she hangs herself. This was a turning point in the movie where Susanna realizes that she needs and wants to get better, as well as being able to see Lisa for who she really is. Susanna initially has issues coping with her diagnosis. She believes that her being in the mental hospital is a ploy and a way to hide her by her parents. She doesn’t really understand why she is the way she is, or why she thinks the way she thinks. Befriending Lisa, is her way of rebelling in a small way. She struggles with her diagnosis but after Daisy’s death, she becomes committed to getting better. She uses the resources of the hospital to get everything off her chest, which makes her feel more normal. Wynona Rider and Angelina Jolie did a fantastic job portraying Susanna and Lisa. Ms Rider has always been a fantastic actress and her look is perfect in portraying the malaise of Susanna. You really begin to believe and feel what Susanna feels. One begins to understand the pain and suffering that Susanna is going through. She wants to fit in, maybe too much. Yet she does not want to be like her mother. She wants to be different. She is ambivalent. Ms Jolie, well, she gets the Oscar for being able to show how smart a crazy person can be. Sometimes we think of a person with a mental issue as drooling and head banging. Lisa is very smart. She sees the world like no other person can see it. Lisa believes this is an advantage, that she can see the real truth. Ms Jolie put you right in the middle of that image and almost made one afraid to open their door to a stranger. I love this movie. It has been in my collection for years and I have watched  in many times. This time through though, I was really focused on the girls’ behavior and the symptoms they displayed. I’ve always thought this movie applied to me a lot, helping me to suppress some of the feelings I have sometimes, and revealing that I need to stay on my meds as well. It also helps me know that â€Å"crazy† isn’t always â€Å"crazy† and that there is a way to get well, and stay well.

Yayoi Kusama Biography

Yayoi Kusama  is 82 years old. But when she is wheeled in, on her blue polka-dotted wheelchair, she looks more like a baby, the sort you might see played by an adult in a British pantomime. Her face is large for a Japanese woman and at odds with her smallish frame. Apart from her intense, saucer-shaped eyes and the arc of deep red lipstick across her mouth, there is something masculine about her features. She wears a lurid red wig and a dress covered in engorged polka dots. Coiled around her neck is a long red scarf decorated with worm-like black squiggles.When she is out of the spotlight, without her splashy red wig and garish outfits, she looks like a nice, grey-haired old lady. But in public situations Kusama’s art and Kusama the artist converge. It is as if the patterns she has obsessively replicated since childhood have seeped off the canvas and into the three-dimensional world of flesh and blood. Rarely has an artist so clearly articulated the art of the Sixties as the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The significance of her work has to do with the specific time period in which she grew up and her perception of art is determined by an inner energy.Her work also transcends earlier established and traditional border lines between disciplines of art and between art and life itself. Kusama’s career is rooted in her Japanese origin. Born in Matsumoto in 1929 she studied at the Arts and Crafts School in Kyoto. In 1957 she moved to New York, which was at the time the world center of contemporary. This move was based on her early awareness that only in New York could she continue her development as a contemporary artist.During the years she lived in New York it become apparent that compared to the conventional image of the Japanese woman, she was a human dynamo of creative energies and abundant human resources. The results of these first years in the art of Kusama were large paintings, one of them 33 feet long, of white nets which, without center and compositional features, obsessively covered the canvas with such intensity that one had the feeling the nets could continue beyond the borders. â€Å"My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvasses I was covering them with.They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was standing at the center of the obsession over the passionate accretion and repetition inside me. † (Kusama) These early works with their radical and hypnotic repetitive energies were first exhibited in small, unknown galleries in New York and Washington. It wasn’t long before they made an international impact and were shown in the Monochrome Painting Exhibition in the Museum Schloss Morsbroich in Leverjusen, Germany in 1960.This international exhibition was a comprehensive documentation of a new concept in the arts after World War II and included works by Lucio Ponatana and Piero Manzoni from Italy, Mark Rothko from the USA, Yves Klein from France, and Otto Piene an d Guenter Uekcker from Germany. Yayoi Kusama was the only representative from Japan, and her work was a unique and independent articulation of the new art. The early Sixties in New York were years of experimentation, and one of the prime innovators in context became the Japanese immigrant Kusama.She expanded the thematic core of her work into themes like sex obsession and repetitive imagery which only much later were related to terms such as Pop Art and artists such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein. Since 1962 Kusama has created soft sculptures, sometimes also referred to as a sewing-machine sculptures, and pieces of phallic furniture which gave expression to her underlying obsessive motif of sex.In connection with one of her early shows in the Gertrude Stein Gallery in New York in 1963 she said â€Å"these new types of sculptural works arose from a deep driving compulsion to realize in visible form the repetitive image inside of me. When this image is given fre edom, it overflows the limits of time and space. People have said that presents an irresistible force†¦that goes by its own momentum once it has started. † It is evident that the artist liked to be part of these new works of sculpture as she often posed in the nude on her own creations of phallic furniture.The Infinity Nets helped Kusama stay absorbed in her life. She wasn’t concerned about Surrealism, Pop Art, Minimal Art, or whatever, just staying in her own head. I interpret the dot motifs as representing a hallucinatory vision. Proliferating dots append themselves to scenes around Kusama, trying to flee from psychic obsession by choosing to paint the very vision of fear, from which a person would ordinarily avert their eyes. The dots make you lose yourself and then that makes you face more of what’s real within your mind.Kusama said â€Å"I paint them in quantity; in doing so, I try to escape†. Mirror Room (Pumpkin) was an installation with a neat conflation of two of her mirror installations from the mid 1960s, the Peep Show and the Infinity Mirror Room, the 1993 Mirror Room (Pumpkin) consisted of a large gallery papered floor to ceiling with a yellow and black polka dot pattern. In the centre of the space stood a mirrored box the size of a small room, with a single window in a manner reminiscent of the 1965 Peep Show.At the opening of the exhibition Kusama appeared in the room dressed in a long sorcerer’s robe and peeked hat, both of which matched her surroundings and caused her to merge with them in a manner that recalled early interactions with her Infinity Nets and Accumulations. Visually a part of the installation, Kusama was also an active agent, offering tiny yellow and black polka dotted pumpkins to anyone who entered the space.These little pumpkins were a direct reference to the 2,000 lire mirror balls that the artist had outrageously hawked from her Narcissus Garden at her first Venice Biennale. In recent y ears, the practice of Yayoi Kusama, now in her eighties, has developed in astounding ways. Already, she has transcended gender and generation, coming to resemble no less than some eternal being liberated from the cycle of reincarnation. But, come to think of it, Kusama has defied categorization for a long time, perhaps even transcending our very notion of art.In the Asian view of the cosmos — in particular, the ancient Indian cosmology of the Vedic period — the fundamental principle of the universe involves that of Brahman, enveloping the entire cosmos, and Atman, the self, with the two connected by an invisible energy; while the unification of Brahman and Atman allows an escape from reincarnation and the endless cycle of life and death. This is an idea widely accepted by Brahmanism, Hinduism and the Jains.In Buddhism, however, though the idea of reincarnation and escape from its cycle by attaining nirvana is accepted, the Buddha stressed the cosmic connectedness of al l things as causal interdependence, or pratityasamutpada. This way of thinking, which views human existence, consciously or unconsciously, as one part of the whole of creation believes in an invisible connectedness or relationship of cause and effect, and could also be described as the spatial concept underlying everything Eastern. Contemplating Yayoi Kusama’s practice in light of this cosmic view, we begin o see how her awareness of existence shares this same vast sense of scale. The hallucinations, both visual and auditory, Kusama experienced from her younger years have been attributed to a nervous disorder known as depersonalization syndrome. Those afflicted are said to perceive and experience the self as if observing from outside, divorced from their own mental processes and corporeal body. This is also explained by Kusama’s comment that, through the acts of painting and performance, ‘I have released this into a chaotic vacuum’;  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœthis' being t he mysterious something that only she can see and hear. I do find the small works on paper from the Fifties and Sixties has this world in a grain of sand, this minute but galactic quality to it. When looking, you have that feeling of, ‘my God what scale am I? ’ You get lost in this extraordinary cosmos and then are taken aback when you consider that they’re only four inches wide. I think these macroscopic realms are really extraordinary. And they’re incredibly beautiful. I was completely stunned when I first saw them. I managed to see her exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.I think it’s extraordinary that somebody so young, so far away and brought up in such a traditional environment was so able to absorb the influence of Miro and Ernst and Klee whose work she probably only saw in reproduction, then taking it all on and going on to produce work of such originality and in such great quantity. What I love is the idea that all the dayglow â€Å"br andiness† of her spots all comes back to this incredible energy from her early twenties. She also staged dozens of Happenings—what you could call â€Å"Body Festivals†Ã¢â‚¬â€in her studio and in public spaces around New York.Some were sites of authority, such as MoMA or Wall Street. Other sites, such as Tompkins Square Park and Washington Square Park, were associated with New York’s psychedelic hippie culture. She played the role of high priestess and painted the nude bodies of models on the stage with polka dots in five colors. When a Happening was staged at Times Square under her direction, a huge crowd flocked to it. Yayoi was never nude, publicly or privately. At the homosexual orgies she directed, she always stayed at a safe place with a manager in the studio to avoid being arrested by police.The studio would have been thrown into utter confusion if she had ever been arrested. The police were primarily after a bribe. When she was arrested while direc ting a Happening in Wall Street and taken into police custody, they demanded that she pay them if I wanted to be set free. Bribes ranged from $400 to $1,000. Since she paid them every time I was arrested, my Happenings ended up as a good out-of-the-way place for them to make money. Painting bodies with the patterns of Kusama’s hallucinations obliterated their individual selves and returned them to the infinite universe. This is magic.Nudity was central to Kusama’s work in those years: in addition to the Happenings, she opened a fashion boutique offering clothes she designed that were â€Å"nude, see-through, and mod. † The shop had private studios and nude models available for body painting or photographing. Kusama also opened the Church of Self-Obliteration in a SoHo loft, appointing herself the â€Å"High Priestess of Polka Dots† so she could officiate at a wedding of two gay men in 1968. She designed a large bridal gown that both men wore. Minimal art, or Minimalism, was one of the major artistic tendencies to emerge from the United States in the 1960s.Though never a unified movement — the majority of the artists associated with it actively rejected the term — it described a significant trend toward interrogating the communicative authority of the artist and the exalted status of the art object by reducing it to its basic components. The term is notoriously slippery, but it has generally come to be associated with the reductive paintings, sculptures and ‘specific objects’ — neither paintings nor sculptures — of Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Blinky Palermo, Richard Serra and Frank Stella, occasionally extending to Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Anne Truitt and others.Unlike many of their abstract expressionist predecessors, the minimalists steadfastly avoided emotionally charged gestures, often to the point of having their works industrially produced. Minimalism did not e merge in isolation, developing in dialogue with Pop art, color field painting and concrete art. Nor was its prominence particularly long-lasting; indeed, part of the tendency’s importance was the influence that its questioning of artistic convention had on subsequent developments like conceptual art and Postmodernism.When Kusama arrived in New York in 1958, the city’s powerful art scene was still in thrall to the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. The net paintings she began producing shortly after her arrival, and first exhibited the following year, were therefore received as a major revelation. Abstract expressionist critic Dore Ashton called her show a ‘striking tour de force’, while Sidney Tillim declared the artist ‘one of the most promising new talents to appear on the New York scene in years’.Though never a ‘pure’ monochrome painter, Kusama was one of the few artists working in the city who proposed that a surface could be r educed to a single, undifferentiated field, unbroken by figuration or abstract compositional devices. As Donald Judd observed on first encountering the works, her net paintings took the expansive color fields of ‘cooler’ abstractionists like Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman as a point of departure, but added something entirely new. In his review of the exhibition for  Art News, Judd described the paintings as ‘strong, advanced in concept and realized’.He continued: â€Å"The space is shallow, close to the surface and achieved by innumerable small arcs superimposed on a black ground overlain with a wash of white. The effect is both complex and simple. Essentially it is produced by the intersection of two close, somewhat parallel, vertical planes, at points merging at the surface plane and at others diverging slightly but powerfully. † (Pollock) Unlike Abstract Expressionism, the optical effects of the net paintings’ undulating f ields owed more to the material qualities of the painted surface than to any illusions of pictorial depth.Nor was their composition bound by a relationship to the painting’s frame; they were, as Kusama herself described them, ‘without beginning, end or centre’. The nets propagated according to their own internal logic, a system in which they could go on reproducing themselves across an entire room if it weren’t for the edge of the canvas, which, as a limit, was purely physical, rather than structural. This suggested that painting might be considered as a phenomenal, rather than illusory, practice — a painted surface could be thought of as a single plane of a three-dimensional object, rather than a two-dimensional pictorial ‘window’.Kusama is engaged in a never-ending mission to release the microcosms within herself to the outside, in order to project it on the macrocosms and the infinite space to which our imaginations do not extend. By facing up to this endless mission, Kusama herself is also elevated to the status of eternal being, so to speak — one who, though but a speck of dust in the universe, also has a bird’s-eye view of the entire universe.It is her infinite consciousness that transcends the time, generation, gender, region and culture, as well as the various vocabularies of contemporary art. It is also the reason Yayoi Kusama is so well-received around the world — and the reason why the force driving her is like an eternally bubbling spring. Bibliography Chadwick, Whitney, and Dawn Ades. Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-representation. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1998. Kusama, Yayoi, and Lynn Zelevansky. Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968.Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1998. Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama: Recent Works. New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 1996. Kusama, Yayoi, and David Moos. Yayoi Kusama: Early Drawings from the Collection of Richard Castellane. Birmin gham, Ala. : Birmingham Museum of Art, 2000. Kusama, Yayoi, and Bhupendra Karia. Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective. New York: Center for International Contemporary Arts, 1989. Pollock, Griselda. Psychoanalysis and the Image: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. , 2006.