Political science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Political science - Essay Example A country who practices isolationism believes in both of the following approaches: 1. Non-interventionism - Political rulers take decisions of not making alliances with other countries and not to fight against any country except to fight for the self defense. 2. Protectionism - Legal barriers are set to avoid foreign investors and cultural impact on local people. However United States also adopted Isolationism in 18th century by a memorable speech of George Washington in which he said that â€Å"The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.† His speech was the foundation of Isolationism in United States of America and the country followed this approach for more than 100 hundred years. Before the beginning of World War II, the Crash of 1929 was a big economic set back for American government to re-think about its foreign policy of non-interventionism. Howeve r, the World War II was the major fear for America to drop its isolationism and jumped to help the rest of the world.

Is Genre a useful category for the understanding of films made in Essay

Is Genre a useful category for the understanding of films made in China and Japan - Essay Example A scholar that suggests that there is an American genre would be immediately attacked by his colleagues for oversimplifying an obviously complex, multifaceted gamut of movies. So the question of whether there is a Chinese or Japanese genre of film may be answered in the affirmative if one sees "genre" in merely the audience short-hand manner. If, that is, the audience is American or British. The definition of "genre" in this sense will be "having a preponderance of Chinese or Japanese actors, and in either Mandarin or the Japanese language". This is rather simplistic, and might be regarded as offensive or even racist, but it does reflect one of the most simple definitions of genre. China can be divided between Hong Kong, the mainland controlled by the nominally Communist government and then Taiwan, which represents a whole other development both politically and artistically. So it can be said that a "Chinese genre" is redundant beyond the audience-expectation type of definition. Turning to Japanese cinema, while more culturally homogenous, Japan also presents difficulties for the simple definition. Donald Richie, the leading Western scholar of Japanese cinema, states that many Japanese films indeed have a sense of what he calls "Japaneseness". He describes this as "the celebration of evanescence".4 This evanescence is shown by Japanese film-makers within a paradoxical desire to have their films be temporary rather than permanent. Thus Richie quotes the director Ozu, who stated, "the attractive thing about film is this transience, this mist-like vanishing quality."5 The director Naruse goes even further, suggesting that films should "always vanish a few weeks after release, perhaps this is what films should be, things that live on only in the audience's memory, or vanish into thin air."6 The wish to have their films vanish into thin air is rather ironic for two reasons. First, it counters the traditional advantage that film is said to have over theatre: its permanence as opposed to mutability. Second, in darkly humorous irony, this rather intellectual wish has been granted to the vast majority of Japanese film-makers, whether or not they desired the honor. Thus the majority of Japanese films (more than 90% of pre-WWII movies) have vanished because they did not survive the film chemistry or the war of the time. Even with film production since 1945, a majority of Japanese films now no longer exist and can only be referenced within the memories of actors, writers etc.