The definition of desegregation that is most widely-known, otherwise known as segregation, is 'enrolling students of different racial groups in the same schools' (341). Even more specifically, integration is making a conscious effort to balance out the disadvantages of minorities and help form good interracial relationships. There have been several steps taken towards integration in the past by many people. These include bussing students to schools to even out the disproportionate races; pairing schools, which is bringing two schools together to form one larger zone; de-facto segregation, which is segregation by housing patterns rather than laws; and creating new laws and rights for minorities in schools and the workplace. Much improvement has been made since the 1960's in helping races and different ethnic groups to happily coexist.

However, many people have disagreed with this notion, saying that there has been little, if no improvement in interracial mixing. Reasons for this take on the issue may include reasons like the following: many schools mainly consist of Caucasians or minorities, thousands of scholarships and grants for solely minorities–which some people call 'segregation reversal' (or, Caucasian discriminated rather than minority discrimination. Also, opposition to segregation has been prevalent. Many parents have refused to send their children to schools with predominantly low-income families enrolled.

Although there are many arguments stating that there has been little change in integration, several improvements have occurred. For example, in the past, the Constitution provided total representation for everyone but slaves, who were only given 3/5 representation. Other advancements for minorities that were made after the Civil War include inclusion in schools, equal employment, and the right to vote. So, although our society may not seem extremely integrated to many, the government has taken many measures to provide equality for all Americans.

One major plan for desegregation, mostly tested in major cities, is the idea of magnet schools. These schools are 'schools that use specialized programs and personnel to attract students throughout a school district' (347). In plain terms, this means drawing non-minority students to schools that are largely minority and vice versa–drawing minority students to schools that are mainly non-minority. Cities that have tested magnet schools include Boston, Dallas, Minneapolis, and San Diego.

There have been arguments for and against magnet schools. Arguments pro include attracting more middle-class to public school system, and huge resources in magnet schools that can possibly offer better education. Cons include the fact that they are fairly expensive, leaving behind public schools with a high percentage of low achievers, and magnet schools are extremely selective.

All personal feelings towards desegregation aside, there are two highly compelling reasons for integration. One being that our national educational policy must show support towards nationwide equality. Also, separately existing (and separately educated) societies (minorities and non-minority) cannot coexist in harmony (351).

Note: My paper is unfinished. I have only used one source so far, and my paper is going to
be about integration, particularly in the schools, and if it works in society
when races are forced to get along, rather than let integration work itself
out.

'Get your facts first...then you can distort 'em as much as you please.'
–Mark Twain, quoted by Rudyard Kipling in From Sea To Shining Sea

Ernest Hemingway was once asked what a writer should do, if approached by Hollywood to turn the writer's work into film. His response: take the money and run. Unfortunately, the dead cannot run–and so Hollywood takes advantage of long gone historical figures, whose stories are compelling, but whom Hollywood does not have to pay. Historical accuracy in Hollywood films is a game of hit and miss, missing much of the time. One of Hollywood's latest attempts is Shakespeare In Love.

So little is known about Shakespeare's life, that any film or work of fiction concerning his life will have to take liberties in that regard. That having been said, the main plot of the movie–Shakespeare's romance with a woman betrothed to a nobleman–is almost certainly pure fiction, though not altogether ludicrous. Marriage was very much a business transaction in Elizabethan England, as the movie portrays, and so there were probably some romances that died because of social constraints. Even Queen Elizabeth herself experienced this firsthand: her tryst with Lord Robert Dudley was cut short by political opposition among the aristocracy. ¹

Only slightly more unbelievable is the prospect of a woman posing as a man on the Elizabethan stage, and then being exposed without any repercussions whatsoever to her or anyone else. At the end of the film, when Elizabeth is exonerating Gwyneth Paltrow's character Violet, she says, 'I know something of a woman in a man's occupation.' Now the Queen was sympathetic to her own sex, but she was also 'no modern feminist; she believed in the traditional subordination of women to men–except, of course, herself.'² It is doubtful she would have condoned such a thing.

In the film, Violet is the daughter of a wealthy merchant who is married off to Lord Robert of Wessex; this transaction restores wealth to the titled noble, and brings some measure of nobility to the merchant. This type of arrangement had been occurring since the Middle Ages. But their was no Wessex county in England, now or then; the lordship's domain is fictional, but this is not so bad a touch by the film makers: in the early Anglo-Saxon Days of England, there had been a kingdom of Wessex. And the late Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy created a fictional county named Wessex as the setting for his novels, so the writers of the film are in good company. But when Violet goes away with her husband at the end, doing her wifely duty, she goes with him to Virginia and his rich tobacco plantations. This would have been a very extraordinary event indeed, when you consider that the film is set in 1593; because the first English settlers would not arrive in what is now Virginia till 1607, when Jamestown was founded. Violet's fate is cruel: she is not only being taken away from her love to a far off, foreign land; she is also being thrust fourteen years into the future.

Shakespeare In Love does succeed fairly well in portraying the milieu of Elizabethan England. It does a fair job of showing how dirty London would have been. At one point, Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare) falls face first into a murky looking puddle after finding out that Christopher Marlowe has been murdered. Such a puddle would probably have been filled with human refuse. The costumes were perfectly Elizabethan, which means they were perfectly hideous: from the large, ruffled collars that some of men wore to the bombastic outfits of Elizabeth. The area where the Rose theater was situated, is very accurately portrayed in the tavern scenes, where prostitutes are abundant. The Southwark area of London had been a den of criminals and prostitutes for centuries; when Phillip Henslowe (played by Geoffrey Rush) originally took out his lease the Rose, it had been a brothel.³ And the name 'Rose' was also a street euphemism for a prostitute.⁴ So most of the bawdiness of the film is pretty accurate as well.

The movie only goes half way in giving a sense of the mood among the people in England in 1593. It does an okay job of showing you the passion for life and for their craft of writers like Marlowe and Shakespeare; Shakespeare in the film changes the title of his play from 'Romeo & Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter,' to 'Romeo & Rosaline' to 'Romeo & Juliet,' depending on who his 'muse' is at the time. He also runs out of a rehearsal for the play to write a sonnet when he is seized with inspiration. But it does not show you why their brilliance and unbridled optimism were so unique. Our image of what the times were like is shaped by writers like Shakespeare, who portrayed as Elizabeth as the beloved 'Gloriana' and her court and country as idyllic ones. And it was an exciting time to be alive, to be sure. But you must remember the old Chinese curse: 'May you live in exciting times.' Things were not so glamorous as you would think. Diseases ran rampant: three fourths of all marrying men had no living father by the time of their weddings; fifteen percent of all children died after a year; ten percent died before they were ten.⁵ Economically, wages with regard to inflation, were at an all time low in Elizabeth's reign. In 1593, England was still fighting a war with Spain, and memories of the Armada still lingered; Elizabeth dreaded the assault of another Spanish fleet.⁶ Witchcraft trials reached their zenith during the last years of Elizabeth, and a few years after in 1601, one of her favorites at court would rebel against her, though quite unsuccessfully.⁷ In short, things were rotten in the state of England at that time.

It is true, the film does depict the closing of the theaters due to the plague; but it treats this as merely an inconvenience, and not as a human tragedy. The number of hardships people endured during this time was great, and knowing this makes the achievements of Marlowe and Shakespeare, the daring of Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, and all of their faith and enthusiasm seem quite remarkable. But the film gives you no sense of this. It is more concerned with getting its out clever dialogue, and squeezing in as many scenes of a mostly-naked Gwyneth Paltrow as good taste will allow. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, mind you.

The one good thing the movie accomplishes at least, or tries to, is to make Shakespeare human. The film shows him struggling at his work, going to an astrologer for help. It shows his jealousy of Marlowe, who is the more eminent writer at the time. Everywhere he goes in the film, people rave about Marlowe, and he becomes so jealous that when discovered by Lord Wessex, he gives the name 'Christopher Marlowe,' putting his rival in harms way. It depicts him receiving names, titles, and ideas from other playwrights and actors, showing that he was not a literary machine, unconsciously spitting out lines like, 'But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?' He struggled with his work, just as people do today, and like them got jealous, fell in love, and got laid–a lot in this film.

By depicting his normal, everyday struggles, perhaps it helps fight the idea that history is the steady unraveling of preordained events. It is not. Shakespeare probably had no inkling of what was to become of his fame after his death, and the film shows that, at least for the early part of his career, he was just a novice, not even the best of his day, much less of all time. You would understand better what I mean if you were to see the opening battle scenes of Saving Private Ryan. Any notions that Allied victory in WWII was inevitable disappear completely, when you see American troops walk right into German gunfire at Normandy, being mowed down as if the Germans were shooting skeet. Victory was the result of selfless sacrifice, not fate.

Yet in actuality Shakespeare In Love is really not a bad effort by Hollywood, if you compare it with some of its more recent attempts to dramatize historical events. Take Mel Gibson's Braveheart as an example. That film won many Academy Awards, like Shakespeare In Love. But at least Shakespeare In Love got the costumes right; Gibson's portrayal of the war is historically inaccurate, and many of the figures involved are reduced to simplistic stereotypes. This passage is from a review of the film by a historian:

In many ways, Braveheart is in the tradition of Gibson's earlier Mad Max series, except that this time, the 'good guys' wear kilts and paint their faces blue with woad in preparation for battle (prompting a colleague's suggestion that the film should be renamed 'Woad Warrior'). The film fails to portray accurately either the period or its people. The historical inaccuracies draw on the worst myths of 'tartanism,' a disease against which Scottish historians wage an unceasing battle. The Lowland Scots who made up the majority of Wallace's followers did not wear kilts; woad was last used by the Picts at least five hundred years before Wallace lived. Braveheart portrays the thirteenth-century Scots as 'noble savages,' an image more appropriate to eighteenth and nineteenth century views of the Highlanders than to thirteenth century Lowland peasants. Wallace himself, who was far more than just a warrior, is portrayed in almost exclusively military terms.⁸

In addition to these faults, the reviewer also points out that Edward I, played by Patrick McGoohan, is only shown as an evil figure who viciously suppressed the Scots, which was true, but neglects his role in development of Parliament. That Parliament was first used to pass statutes during his reign is left out, and you only get one side of a complex human being. Like William Wallace, Edward was turned into a 'cardboard character' by the film, as the reviewer puts it.⁹

And in one of the more gross fabrications of the film, William Wallace has an affair with Isabella, the wife of Edward II, son of Edward I. It also implies that Wallace fathered the child who was to become Edward III. As the review of the film says, tongue firmly in cheek, "Since the real Edward III was born seven years after Wallace's execution, and Isabella first came to England for her marriage three years after Wallace's death, this scenario may not gain wide currency among medieval historians."¹⁰

All of this is not to say that Braveheart or Shakespeare In Love are not great films; they are both highly entertaining, and the dialogue in Shakespeare In Love is especially clever and witty, thanks to Tom Stoppard. As movies, I would recommend both very highly to anyone. But I would also caution people, if they were not aware already, not to take everything they see or hear in the movies as gospel. And as to why Hollywood chooses to invent so much, when they have so much stirring material ready made, such as in the life of William Wallace, or the times of William Shakespeare? No one knows. It's a mystery.

Sources:

1 MacCaffrey, Wallace. Elizabeth I. London: Arnold, 1993.
P73-74, p245.

2. Smith, Lacey Baldwin. This Realm of England. Lexington, MA:
D.C. Heath and Company, 1996. P227, p196

3. Thomson, Peter. Shakespeare's Professional Career. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992. P.65

4. "The American Historical Review." Film review by Elizabeth Ewan.
October 1995. P1219-1221.

Hitchcock Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock frightened audiences in a way that very few are capable of. Hitchcock made films for nearly six decades. In those six decades he rightfully earned the title " Master of Suspense". Hitchcock has been an influence on thousands of film makers; He practically redefined the term "thriller". He was so good at what he did that people often refer to a good thriller as having a "Hitchcock effect" or "Hitchcock suspense". So how did Hitchcock become such a legacy in the film world? Hitchcock was quoted as saying,"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it" Let's examine what Hitchcock meant by this along with what "Hitchcock suspense".

First off, we should come up with a definition of suspense. Associate professor of English at Michigan State University, Larry N. Landrum, provides a detailed definition of suspense: "suspense fiction is a variation on the mystery that emphasizes the vulnerability of the central character(s), the power of an adversary, and the immediate danger of the situation rather than the character's growing comprehension of it". Let's now break this definition up into it's three components and see how Hitchcock achieves them in Vertigo and Psycho.

The first part of the definition emphasizes the vulnerability of the central character(s). Ex-police officer, Scottie Ferguson, of Vertigo is an excellent example of an extremely vulnerable character in more than one way. Scottie's accident at the beginning of the film has left him with an acrophobia which causes him to experience vertigo when he is faced with heights. This is exactly the vulnerability that Scottie's old classmate, Gavin Elston, preys on. Gavin knows that Scottie will not be able to follow Judy to the top of the stairwell and therefor will not be able to witness Gavin murder his wife, Madeline. Another one of Scottie' vulnerabilities is his lust for companionship. He quickly falls in love with the woman whom he thinks is Madeline( Gavin's wife ) and then just as quickly falls in love with Judy for the mere reason that he thinks she resembles the deceased Madeline. Near the end of the movie Scottie's most blatant vulnerability of all is exposed. He was fooled by Gavin into thinking that Judy was Madeline. Gavin dressed Judy up to look like his wife, told her what to do, and sent her on her way for Scottie to follow. Scottie fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Hitchcock also does a great job of showing character's vulnerability in Psycho, especially with Marian. He makes Marian seem so innocent and naive ( even though she has just stolen 40,000 dollars). She is a beautiful woman traveling by herself with 40 grand. She sleeps by herself on the side of the road one night and then goes to a creepy old motel the next night. She then lets an amazingly creepy clerk, Norman Bates, fix her dinner and eat with her in his spooky parlor. Talk about vulnerable! The entire time the audience is just waiting for something to happen to her.

The second part of Landrum's definition of suspense talks about a powerful adversary. An adversary is obviously quite important in almost any type of film, but it is important to show that there is an extremely powerful adversary in suspense films. Both Vertigo and Psycho have very powerful adversaries who are capable of doing almost whatever they please. In Vertigo it is made obvious that Gavin can pull off almost anything. He is able to fool Scottie into thinking that one woman is another. He comes up with a master plan and then performs it flawlessly. He even gets away with it in the end proving he has immense mental power. In Psycho Norman Bates may be a mad man, but that doesn't mean he can't be a very powerful madman. He is able to commit murders and then totally conceal any evidence linking him to those murders. Who knows how long he had been killing innocent victims and evading police before Marian came along. If he is powerful enough to believe that his stuffed corpse of a mother is still alive than he is must certainly a strong and dangerous force to overcome.

The third and final part to Landrum's definition of suspense talks about the danger to a character being immediate rather than building over a period of time. This can be confusing when you compare this statement to Hitchcock's statement about the fright being in the anticipation and not the boom. However once you look closely at the two statements you will find that they do not contradict each other. The immediate danger which Landrum refers to does not build over time. For example, Marian does not come into a dangerous situation in her eyes until she sees Norman rip open the shower curtain with a knife. Had the danger built up over time than the story may have gone something like this: Marian stole the money from Norman, Norman gets angry and begins to stalk her, He then kidnaps her and tortures her, and finally kills her. In that story line Marian has complete knowledge of the dangerous situation building up around her. Another key point in Landrum's definition is that the danger is only immediate to the character and not to the audience. The whole beauty of suspense is that the audience knows, or at least has some clue, of the danger which awaits the character while he/she is oblivious to the danger. This ties in with the fact that the character must be vulnerable or unknowing. In Vertigo there is a bit of a variation of this immediate and unknowing danger. Scottie is the one who does not know about the danger, but he is not the one who is in danger....Madeline is. Since we never really see Madeline until she is already dead with a broken neck we never know wether or not she knew of the danger she was in. Scottie does know that Madeline (Judy) is in danger, but he thinks that she is in danger of some supernatural genetic curse when in reality she is in danger of being murdered by her husband. So in a way Scottie is still oblivious to the danger which awaits Madeline.

One way in which Hitchcock elevates the anticipation of the audience, who knows the character is in danger, is by music. When danger is near Hitchcock inserts some heart-pounding music. He uses high pitched violins which almost sound like human screams. The music seems to heighten one's anxiety level. The music starts off slow and then gets faster as the character moves closer to the danger. Music is definitely a key aspect Hitchcock uses to frighten audiences.

Hitchcock was truly a master at what he did. He managed to create a whole new genre of films. "Hitchcock's movies are complex examinations of the human mind and the way it works. He had the ability to prey on people's strongest emotion-anonymous."(anonymous) And scare people he did. No one has ever been able to scare audiences like he could. Many people have tried using gore in horror scenes with no anxiety or suspense. Only Hitchcock could terrify us and still remain dignified and respectable using the art form known as "Hitchcock suspense".