Rupert Read Writing

I am going to analyse Edmund Burke's and Oscar Wilde's use of the, respectively, letter and dialogue formats for this essay. I will give a description of how the two thinkers have used these formats, starting with Burke. At the same time I will mix in my own thoughts on how the benefits of their format and style contributed towards their individual arguments and then conclude with an overall ascription. For Edmund Burke's work I am going to focus mainly on his piece Reflections on the Revolution in France. Published in 1790 it is the most well known critical analysis of the French Revolution and subsequently went on to provide the bedrock for the modern political philosophy of conservatism. The French aristocrat Charles-Jean-Francois Depont asked Burke for his view of the Revolution and Burke replied with two letters. The second, longer letter became Reflections on the Revolution in France and, when published, proved extremely popular and was widely read. Its initial pop...

For this essay I am going to to discuss Plato and Aristotle's approach to what literature or art represents, should represent and what this representation leads to. I will take the first two of these three questions and answer them from the perspective of both thinkers and then conclude with an answer to the third question from the perspective of today. Plato argues that literature and art take us away from the truth and further into a world of deception and illusion. The basis of his argument is founded on a conception that there is a seemingly separate world of immutable and timeless ideas called Forms, organised beneath the Form of Good. Plato says that all art and literature are merely copies (mimesis) of the Forms. Direct access to the Forms is only available through intense philosophical discussion and thought rather than through the senses. Aristotle, on the other hand, rejects Plato's idea of Forms altogether and, instead, works from induction. Unlike Plato, instead ...

I was a massive fan of Bill Hicks when I was about 20. I ordered every single VHS tape, CD and T-shirt that his best friend Kevin Booth had available. It all arrived (just, the VHS tapes were half way out of the packaging when it turned up) along with some of the other comedians and such like that Kevin was doing stuff with at the time such as a pre-internet Alex Jones and others. I watched and listened to everything over and over and then invited friends round for viewings or brought the material round to their houses. A lot (in fact all) of that merchandise I sadly no longer have but I still have all the books ever written on Bill Hicks that I bought in the following years. Shaun Ryder and the Happy Mondays is another. Anything to do with Shaun Ryder I have to read/listen/watch. This obsessive quality even went as far as being friends on Facebook with Kevin Booth, Alex Jones, Bill Hick’s brother Steve and Paul Ryder (Shaun’s brother). Remembering back to when the Internet first...

I am going to analyse the SAIH Norway video Let's Save Africa! - Gone Wrong. Ostensibly a satirical work (the YouTube video description states 'We're messing with you'), I hope to argue that this video is in fact promoting discourse opposite to its intention. To do this I am going to use the concepts of contrapuntal reading (Said) and the reality effect (Barthes). Contrapuntal reading is reading with an "awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts" (Said 51). It also means reading a text "with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England" (Said 66). With this in mind what follows is my own close contrapuntal reading of the SAIH Norway video. The video starts with Thomas Newman-esque lig...

I am going to closely analyse a fragment or clip from the 1999 film The Matrix to demonstrate how it uses film making technique to move effectively between complex narratological containers while still allowing the audience to follow the story line. The particular scene that I will be analysing is the Construct scene (1) where Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) explains to a bewildered Neo (Keanu Reeves) what the Matrix of the title is. The clip opens with an establishing two shot of Morpheus and Neo. Morpheus is confirming to Neo whether he does really want to know what the Matrix is. We then switch to a camera perspective of Morpheus looking at Neo and over his shoulder to Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). Morpheus then prompts Trinity (who looks Neo in the eyes to also confirm that this is what he wants) to take him to the seat where he will be plugged in. Our focalisation is through Neo with Morpheus acting as a homodiegetic narrator throughout. Trinity is seen taking care that ...

I am going to analyse the 1999 film The Matrix and, more closely, the Construct scene (1) where the character Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) is describing what the Matrix of the title is to the main protagonist Neo (Keanu Reeves). To do this I am going to use the two post modern concepts of High vs Low Culture and Hyperreality. The Matrix is explicitly a science fiction action adventure. It is fair to say that a mindless popcorn special effects laden film such as this would not generally be considered high culture (intellectually challenging, elitist). The Matrix succeeds in its post modern attitude towards the high vs low culture debate by effectively merging the two. For the average (low culture) cinema goer their needs will be satisfied by the visual spectacle and exciting action set pieces but for the more intellectually inclined it has many underlying themes in relation to various types of philosophical and religious ideas. As an example of how this was achieved members...

I am going to analyse the Degas painting The Dance Class using the sites of production and circulation combined with the social modality (Rose, p.25). The painting, as typical of Degas during this period, depicts a behind the scenes/rehearsal scene. By investigating the movement of this painting from its commissioning to the current day I will go behind the scenes of the image itself. John-Baptiste Faure, a celebrated French operatic baritone, commissioned the artwork. He, as an opera singer and therefore emanating from the elitist and traditionalist world of culture at that time, was an anomaly in his support for Impressionist artists (his important collection included works by Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Ingres and Prud'hon). A previously abandoned and slightly different version of the work exists known as The Ballet Class. The change from 'ballet' to 'dance' for me also reflects the changing attitudes of the Impressionists away from tradition/elitism (balle...

For me the speaker of The Fish, although ostensibly a fisherman, doubles as someone experiencing the thrill of 'catching' (in the sense of there being plenty more fish in the sea or someone being 'quite a catch') a suitor, maybe for the first time. The poem is written in free verse with no consistent rhyme or metre. The use of free verse here and its original associations with liberation and naturalness support the idea of a person in an innocent state speaking. It is also all one stanza which reflects a curious, unstructured and wandering tone much like that of someone venturing into the unknown. The minimalist nature of the line lengths could also be associated with a child like or innocent-state form of narrative. In the first line the speaker describes how they have caught a fish and then how they hold them 'beside the boat'. This holding beside the boat conjures a sense of wonderment at what has been discovered which the speaker than builds on throughou...

I am going to analyse the performance and incident Ai-Weiwei created at the Cinema for Peace gala in Berlin 2016 using the concept of performativity. The original definition of performativity set out by language philosopher J L Austin encompasses the idea that words we speak are not only used for describing things but can also be responsible for actions that occur as a result of their utterance. He later redefined this to explain that all utterances are performative in some manner. This particular Ai-Weiwei work of getting celebrities attending the gala to take selfies wearing metallic emergency blankets does not use spoken language per se but selfies and additional photos of the entire audience taken by journalists to act as a type of performative language. In much the same way that philosopher Andrew Pickering has proposed a shift from a representative idiom to a performative idiom in the field of economics so to can we use the concept of performativity on photos instead of only ...

A light misty rain accompanied my walk to the venue for tonight’s local Oxford poppy band showcase. I’ll admit now that I left before headliners Alphabet Backwards played due to a combination of hangover from the previous night and the fact I had seen them several times before. This is not a diss to the band who have performed professionally and precisely on each occasion I have seen them but also that they are not really my thing coming as I do from an underground dance music background. First up were Minor Coles who, following a slightly nervy first couple of tracks, went on to capture the substantial crowd. This group of bands attract a healthy variety of fan across all age spectrums and I suspect there were some proud parents in attendance. One thing that stood out first though was the high proportion of very fit ladies in the building! Once Minor Coles’ lead singer Mark Stephenson found his footing he let rip with an amazing vocal performance that enthralled the crowd. Several...

Last week the world of music saw the departure of one Chris Moyles from the breakfast show on the UK’s largest radio station BBC Radio 1. Now, when Moyles started I was a massive fan and spent many drives to work laughing loudly in my car to his show. Originally he started out on a radio station local to Milton Keynes and it felt like a victory for the area I love. Then though, after a while and for whatever reason, his show began feeling tired and repetitive and I tuned out only to really listen again (mostly out of curiosity) during his last week just gone. Moyles now holds the record for the longest running breakfast show on Radio 1 and you can only come to the conclusion that he holds that title for the wrong reason. Radio 1 has relatively recently been told by the licencing authorities (remember that uniquely all UK citizens who own a TV have to pay £100+ a year to fund the BBC) that it needs to lower its average listener age and it seems Moyles’ exit was directly connected to t...

Who watched that programme on clubbing on Channel 4 last night? Was not bad and pleased that ecstasy was voted as the number one most influential thing in electronic dance music culture. If you've never tried the drug then it's hard to fully appreciate its significance but there is a famous true story about the band Happy Mondays which gets close. I was reminded of this as currently reading the lead singer Shaun Ryder's (one of my heroes) autobiography 'Twisting My Melon' which has just been released in paperback. The book is phenomenal and even if you have only a passing interest in music or the Happy Mondays I would strongly recommend you pick it up. It is full of unspoken but communally thought insights into how the world has changed over the last 40 years and, despite Ryder's reputation as a huge drughead, a beautifully crafted piece of writing (much like his lyrics). The story I was referring to about ecstasy basically involves him and his band in a sma...

War, famine, terrorism, AIDS, murder, rape and divorce are but a few things that each and every day we suffer as a race.  Presently we try our best to curtail these problems in many various ways but mainly through prevention.  Unfortunately these prevention tactics, although helpful in many ways, are not providing us with a cure. There is a loss of hope at the moment of ever finding these cures amongst many people and this is in turn causing a loss of faith in society.  People are discussing anti-capitalist ideas, conspiracy theories and there is a resurgence in punk attitudes.  This is all well and good, and represents an acceptance of a problem, but it is the cure that eludes us and causes us to adopt nihilistic and destructive habits which eventually provide an unhappy end. Punk was the most exciting thing to happen to us musically and thought-wise for many years.  It was a realisation that things are going in the wrong direction and something important w...

The nineties were the decade of ‘lad culture’.  So strong was this concept that the tail end of it is still with us five years into the 21st century.  Monthly magazines such as ‘FHM’ and the popular weeklies such as ‘Zoo’ and ‘Nuts’ carry the flag today and it seems that not much has changed. A life dedicated to tits, lager, kebabs, fights and football distinguish the lad from his peers.  “What’s wrong with that?” I hear you say.  Well, lad culture has certainly had its place for the pre-pubescent wanting to learn about new experiences.  What is worrying are those who are older and still hold onto these values despite surely knowing better.  My explanation is a fear of change, a holding onto of youth.  I get the feeling that those who won’t let go are paralysed into staying put with their ideas from regular perusal of corporate owned tabloids and television with their messages of hate and fear.  Every time I look at the news it is terrorism, war...

It seems that fairly recently the view that religion is a load of bollocks and is responsible for wars and so on has become very popular.  There is no doubt that there is heart-felt sentiment in support of this view but to dismiss a belief that has been held for over 2,000 years so flippantly was not enough to fully convince me of this standpoint.  I mean, how exactly did Christianity start?  I wanted to find out a bit about it but there was no way I was going to read the bible with its image problems and the fact that it seems to be written in some sort of code, such is the antiquity of the text.  Luckily I managed to find a children’s bible stories book which handily summarised for me most of the writing from the hallowed tome. Upon reading it my reaction was that it was a collection of extremely good stories on the subjects of life and love.  So why have people and, in particular, those in power accepted it as a truthful account of human history and still d...

William Melvin Hicks is a bonafide genius.  Despite suffering from pancreatic cancer and leaving this world at the age of only 32 he managed to forge a career as a comedian, social commentator and, most importantly, prophet.  Bills message to the world was one of love and evolution.  His routines were all about unveiling the hypocrisy and absurdity of the world around him and serving them up to audiences in an angry, often crude, but devastatingly funny way. Such was his confidence in his beliefs that he would often turn his back on the audience while he contemplated what he was saying or was going to say next.  While he won most audiences over with ease he occasionally came across a hostile crowd in some backward hillbilly county and suffered a couple of attacks after these shows.  One particular time two rednecks came up to him after the show and began to threaten him.  “Hey buddy, we’re Christians and we don’t like what you’re saying”.  Bill retor...

February 26th 2004 marked the 10th anniversary of underground comic Bill Hicks passing.  One of my favourite routines of his was where he asked the audience to put up their hands if they thought drugs had never done anything good for us.  Before allowing the audience to react he would continue “Well, if you do then take all those great albums and tapes with all that amazing music that has enriched your lives and burn them.  Coz, you know what?  All those great musicians were……..real fucking high on drugs.” What I want to look at is how drugs affect us positively.  Lets start with Cannabis.  From my own personal experience the main benefits of this drug are that it heightens your emotions and encourages creativity.  It will open your mind up from its sleepy everyday slumber and force you to confront issues you otherwise would not.  Weed is generally not as socially acceptable as alcohol but then it doesn’t numb your senses or encourage stupidity ...

Kierkegaard (philosopher, 19th century) believed that there were three different forms of life.  He himself used the term 'stages'.  He calls them the Aesthetic Stage, the Ethical Stage, and the Religious Stage.  He used the term 'stage' to emphasize that one can live at one of the two lower stages and then suddenly leap to a higher stage.  Many people live at the same stage all their life.

He who lives at the 'Aesthetic Stage' lives for the moment and grasps every opportunity of enjoyment.  Good is whatever is beautiful, satisfying, or pleasant.  This person lives wholly in the world of the senses, and is slave to his own desires and moods.  Everything that is boring is bad.

A person who lives at the Aesthetic Stage can easily experience 'angst', or a sense of dread, and a feeling of emptiness.  If this happens, there is also hope.  According to Kierkegaard, angst is almost positive.  It is an expression of the fact that the individua...

Do you see the desperation in my eyes?  Can you see my want?  That loss of confidence makes you wonder.  What has caused this pain but it is only love.  My awe at my mistake, that ignorance of pain that has caused my look.  Now it manifests inside me all the deeper. Am I paranoid?  I have laid myself bare to you and now you know me.  I would rather show my true self in all its frailty and wrong so that you will understand my recovery and witness a building strength so strong it will make you realise there is nothing to be afraid of.  Everything happens for a reason.  I am not paranoid. I can be successful at anything.  Nothing is beyond me.  Nothing but love.  Trying to capture that has been a mistake.  Love cannot be controlled yet it does not control us.  More it guides us.  Fail to listen to it, to listen to that centre in yourself, and it will happily let you drift.  Take comfort in its existence for...

To love is to forgive.  If you only think in terms of love then you are on the right road.  If you are concerned with career progression, money, and possessions then you are treading a dangerous path which will lead to oblivion unless a change is made.  If you believe in love then there is nothing to fear and if you don’t, then fear is what every decision you make is based on.  To have no fear is to love. Money you may make, but money is not real.  It is love reduced to a possession.  Possessions are not real and therefore love is not real in your life.  Money and possessions must be discarded before we can move on.  Without these things cluttering our minds the love and forgiveness inside us all is revealed. Murderers, rapists and worst must be forgiven.  Their actions were a cry for help.  If you cannot forgive the most heinous crime to your own family that you can imagine then we will not progress.  When terrible actions no l...

The pain of losing someone is great.  It affects everything you do.  In fact, everything that happens to you in this life is determined by your feelings.  When you are happy in your life then good things will happen to you.  The opposite is also true.  So how do you get happy?  First of all you need to have somewhere to live where you can feel comfortable and enjoy being.  Secondly, you need to provide for yourself by doing something you enjoy.  When you have achieved happiness in these two areas you are free to pursue happiness at the next level.  The first stage of this next level is with personal relationships.  Repair broken friendships, don’t worry about how others perceive you, help others unselfishly, using your experience.  The things you have experienced are what have made you who you are.  Find ways to express yourself – with which to cleanse your soul.  Acknowledge your mistakes but also your achievements. ...

When I was younger and first getting into music it was the whole baggy, ‘Madchester’ thing which caught my attention.  For some reason I missed listening to any of the Happy Mondays stuff properly until recently and only then after a prompt from watching the film ‘24 Hour Party People’. The track which caught my attention in the film was ‘Tart Tart’ which had such an effect on me that I decided to read Bez’s autobiography and then get hold of two Happy Mondays videos ‘Call The Cops’ and ‘Rave On’.  My instincts had not failed me and since then I have been almost constantly watching the vids and finished reading Bez’s book in a day and a half. To me they represent a movement which should have exploded during the Nineties but was limited to the underground raves in an impure form.  Bands like Joy Division and Nirvana expressed everything that was wrong with the world but imploded as a result.  The Happy Mondays took this and added everything that was good about the...

There is a fundamental problem with the whole concept of racism that ignores the fact we are all the same race - human beings. Some people might find certain colours more attractive to look at or interact with as is personal preference but one is not better than the other if we believe we are all born equal. Today though we look at everything from a business perspective.  Business is very black and white when it comes down to it - make money however you can. This attitude has come to the forefront over the last twenty years or so and infiltrated the way we think about things that do not work as a business does. Slowing down global warming is a relevant example. However, the business attitude has brought a great many people a huge amount of success and power and hence has become a way of life for them especially as it has often proven useful in non-business situations.  Being able to organise, delegate etc must be very useful in disaster situations, or something like decidi...

A friend of mine was visiting Ocean & Collins the other day and, while ordering a drink, was told by a fellow partygoer that the bar did not accept ‘Next vouchers.’  Elsewhere, in a lecture room somewhere, a class were being asked to write down the name of their favourite magazine (and why) on separate pieces of paper.  A group of girls all wrote the same thing – Tatler, because, ‘I can see my friends in it.’  My hometown of Milton Keynes is often credited as a ‘chav’ stronghold and so it is with great interest and amusement that I now find myself in virtually the opposite. One good initial difference are the girls who obviously have plenty more money with which to keep themselves looking attractive.  The uniform of drainpipe jeans, gilet, ugg boots and large belt endures, yet its flattering effect makes it preferable to some of the fashion on parade in Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre most Saturdays.  The men also drift towards certain brands as they...

The world of book publishing is going through a highly significant evolution at present born out by the research for this coursework on internet publishing, lads’ mags and the Booker Prize.  The rise of the personal computer and sophistication of the human mind are reflected clearly in the publishing industry. Whereas before publishing consisted of writing, printing and selling its product through retail shops the computer and, most significantly, the internet have opened up boundaries in our world to allow the free and easy access of information un-thought of as little as twenty years ago.  The rise of Amazon.com is already threatening traditional booksellers with its “no mess – no fuss” attitude to selling that does not rely on demographics such as the educated and upper classes for its customer base.  Rather it chooses to focus on making the purchase of a book more convenient so that anybody given five minutes break and access to a PC can order from an incredibly div...

In today’s world it seems that, in the UK at least, an atheist or agnostic view of religion is now the prevalent viewpoint among the majority of the population.  Fair enough but where are these people finding solace when it comes to that occasional deep emotional crunch?  Obviously friends and family are the first to be turned to yet sometimes they may not fully understand certain pains or problems being experienced.  When there’s no one around who understands, including even such saints as the Samaritans, then what are you left with?  Before it was religion but this is now no longer considered and generally seen only as an excuse for violence.  The result of this view whether correct or not is the slow removal of the only significant source of faith and moral guidance available for many in today’s society. In search of answers the average person looks to the messages those with access to such forms of communication as the television or radio may be sending an...

What has happened to the youth movement?  Having now passed the halfway mark of decade number one in this twenty first century it seems that the values of modern youth are to be no more complicated than whether Eastenders is on, alcohol is available and Dominos are operating.  Gone are the activity and hope embraced so widely and by so many in the twentieth century as a hippy, mod, punk or raver.  Conformity and ridicule of alternative ideas have replaced the rebellion, free thought and community previously provided by these youth groups.  Persons with a view that differs from the mainstream are on their own and fair game for those who fear that which they do not understand.  Existence of a dissenting group fuels evolution and, most importantly, provides a fundamental building block in the structure of democracy and therefore our very way of life.  There are many possible explanations for this change from increased financial security in the West to paranoid...

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved”.  Helen Keller (1880 - 1968).  Stories of all kinds from the beginning of time reflect our own lives in even the most abstract of ways simply due to the fact they originate from the human mind ultimately.  That human history is often measured in terms of conflict highlights the importance we place on such events and conflict as a central notion in human existence and evolution.  For me evolution is the key principle for the use of conflict and represents nature’s trial and error technique with regard to moving forward.  Stories in themselves attempt to subvert this tradition being in most part documents of thinking or experience created in some part of the writer’s mind as a tool to negate error and prevent similar trial as those told. Jane Austen’s book ‘Emma’ is a virtuoso demonstration ...

Money is the route of all evil. This I believe to be a fairly truthful comment. I often have discussions with people about money and how it corrupts and I’m often told a similar argument in its defence. Lots of people believe we couldn’t function without some kind of monetary system. They say that it's just not fair that a doctor should get paid the same as a bin man. The argument is that we are all worth something to society and the race as a whole to varying degrees. As appropriate people should be rewarded according to this. This makes things fair and encourages people to achieve more. I’ve thought about this a lot and haven’t really come up with some alternative that would work until now. Bear with me but this is how it goes: If you do something such as provide food then it is your duty to provide this for everyone in your community. Why should they have to do this I hear you ask?  Because you surely love your own kind and want to see it prosper. Even those who do nothing des...

In the last few years I believed in love. Before this I didn’t. I found something more relevant and encompassing than any other religion while staring into the abyss. The funny thing was it was all inside of me, already there, I just need to find it and then believe it. Believe it I did after a lot of self-questioning. I felt more confident than ever before. I gave up my shit career and went to university to do something I wanted to do. Everything started going right for me and I started to feel like I did when I was younger for the first time in years. I had found what I was searching for. My confidence rose and I began to want a relationship rather than good looking girls for sex. Love found me and my life was complete. I rose up on life’s wheel and took everything on. I discovered that my university course wasn’t for me and left to try and start my own projects that would make me a living. Life became easy and I could achieve anything. My projects failed to bring me the money I ...