Did The United States Lose On The Vietnam War Home front Or Battlefield? Essay

In this essay I will discuss whether America lost on the battlefield or the home front. People are still arguing about the war even though it finished over thirty years ago showing it is still an important issue today. It is clear that both sides have made a big impact on the outcome of the war. Like the Iraq war now, it was anunpopular guerilla war due to the amount of soldiers who lost their lives . As the Vietnam War was unpopular, the home front weren’t very supportive of the soldiers. Soldiers who struggled on the battlefield unable to cope with different the environment and the use of guerilla tactics. From when the firstcombat troops got sent to Vietnam in 1965, the public were quite supportive. The army were somewhat arrogance and optimism, the U.S soldiers very much understated the Vietnamese abilities at this point. Although some people had pride in America’s involvement in the war, there were far more people who didn’t agree with the war. People who didn’t agree with the war would usually went to more drastic measures to get their opinions heard, e.g. the Black Panthers, . The Black Panthers believed that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect the black community. They said they would not fight and kill other people of colour in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. Their campaign was huge throughout the black community in America- especially with the racial issues at that time. As the war went, there were more protests. When college students found out that they could be subscribed to the army due to theintroduction of the lottery, they suddenly became a lot more anti-war. They wereoutraged and shocked about the fact that they themselves could become soldiers. Mass demonstrations, often in Washington, would be completely covered by the media. This would lead to the troops at war hearing about people not wanting them to be there- they could find out through letters, radios, phone calls, any form of contact.When the troops hear about people being against them being there- They are obviously going to feel like they are wasting their time, so their morale will be completely devoured. Then with low morale this could make them weaker on the battlefield, giving the North Vietnamese an advantage. The North Vietnamese Army had many advantages, even when the American troops morale were high. At ease with the environment and knowing the land well, the North Vietnamese Army mastered their tactics- using the guerilla tactics. The Viet Cong’s used guerilla warfare because their territory that the Americans had to fight in was so full of plants and growth, that guns and such did not work as well as tactics adapted to the environment such as booby traps and punji sticks. Vietnamese knew that hand to hand combat was the only way to successfully way to win the war as it was less money and Americans were not used to that type of warfare. The Americans set out to win the war by working closely with the South Vietnamese. The U.S believed in using it’s wealth to the maximum, using firepower, new technology, more troops. Thefirepower aspect was pretty much a waste of time and was expensive. They couldn’t use their firepower in urban areas therefore couldn’t kill the North Vietnamese Army as easy as they anticipated. The U.Sworked a lot underpressurebecausewithalot of theirtacticstheyoftenhadtokeep them undercover from the media this would obviously make everything a lot more complex. American plans weren’t full proof and a lot of their own man were killed. This obviously caused a lot of uproar at home. The Vietnam War was the first televised war, so the media would show the USA what happened all the time. This meant people on the home front quickly lost support for the soldiers because they were seeing all of the horrible incidents which were meant to be secret. The media would be completely biased and make the negatives a lot worse then they were. The U.S army tried to cover up a lot of mistakes like the Tet Offensive. While the U.S army were at their weakest agreeing to cease fire. A lot thinking there would be nothing to be bothered about on a Vietnamese holiday, the Viet Cong launched an offensive attacking almost every town and city in South Vietnam. They trapped the U.S embassy in grounds then wiped them out, where as the media claimed VC sappers seized the U.S embassy, which clearly makes the U.S look a lot weaker. The Home front at this point were worried about their troop’s tactics and abilities. Many member of the public were angry at the fact the the American troops let this happen and that they didn’t expect it. The mass of attacks from the Vietnamese led to many people thinking the war was unwinnable. After the U.S troops had fought hard against the Tet Offensive and had a military victory, hearing that the media reported it as a loss their lowered morale again. When people on the home front got enrolled by lottery people of various ages and abilities went to Vietnam. Most fought in Vietnam for 1 a year and spent another year training and being at base camp. By the time they leave the army, that is when their abilities are most excelled. When college students found out they could get enlisted in the war this is when most of the mass demonstrations began. Past experiences made many veterans against the war also arriving home and being with so many people against the war. The scaring memories of the My Lai Massacre of 1968. People were sexually abused, beaten, tortured and killed. Some of the bodies were found mutilated. When the incident became public knowledge in 1969, it prompted widespread outrage around the world. The massacre also reduced U.S. support at home for the Vietnam War. Three U.S. servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were denounced by U.S. Congressmen, received hate mail, death threats and mutilated animals on their doorsteps. The soldier’s welfare while they were away in the army could have easily helped contribute to their withdrawal and loss of the war. They had extremely long active hours running on little food and sleep. Obviously they wouldn’t be fighting to the best of their abilities. The large availability and use of drugs may have put the troops in a better mood making their morale on high, their physicality wasn’t befitting as a lot of fatigue conquered the army. Often this was due to insomnia, people couldn’t sleep simply because of the situation in which they were in. The U.S as the war got longer, they became more scared because they were aware of Vietnamese abilities. The Vietnamese had a lot of advantage throughout the whole war. They were well prepared for all the problems the American’s faced. They were well equipped to the jungle environment and weather. They made cunning yet deadly booby traps which the Americans would fall for. Because of their knowledge of the area, their ambushes were pretty much flawless, the U.S army were clueless beforehand, so the American’s inexperience was a very big help for the Viet Cong. Also the Viet Cong were passionate about the cause and would not give it up. The U.S could not fend the Ho Chi Min trail- this supplied the North Vietnamese army with vital supplies throughout the war, including aid sent from the USSR. The U.S lost on the battlefield due to the many advantages of the Vietnamese. Although the U.S had money, men, and power. The Vietnamese were intelligent and used their knowledge to the best of their abilities. I think though the guerilla Tactics and the troops inexperience are what really made the war a challenge for the U.S. Although their morale was brought down immensely on the home front, had they been winning on the battlefield the homefront may have supported them.

An Event

Aims Good educational background Safety for all students Enjoyable trip Effective and efficient transport Here are the aims in which we are looking at to achieve on the trip which we choose. We have chosen to aim to get a good educational background from the trip because it therefore gives us a higher value on which to evaluate the trip and we then gain good knowledge. Safety for all students is really Important no matter what the trip Involves. The trip being enjoyable by the students Is also Important because then we are also gallon an experience through school work.Objectives Be organized Effective communication throughout the group Ensure everyone is aware – knowing what is going on at all times Make sure everyone is happy with what we are doing – student input Objectives are what are in place in order to achieve the aim therefore we are looking to achieve the aims above which will make the trip a successful one. The main objective on the trip is to be organized bec ause if we are not organized then could end up causing big problems throughout.Outcomes Successful trip Receiving a positive feedback from all Individuals on the trip Show that we can work together as a team and successfully These outcomes are in place as these are what we are looking to have achieved from the trip. Primary Market Research For the primary research in which we were using to use to see which options are best for the trip and will hopefully allow us to meet our aims and objectives, we created a questionnaire and asked 31 people to see what they thought. Here are the questions in which we asked.Out of the following places where would you most likely like to visit? For each of these trips, how much would you be willing to pay for them? For each of these trips which activities would you most likely like to participate in? For each of these trips, which activities would you be most likely to participate in? For each of these trips how much would you be willing to pay for t hem? (Paris) Below are the results In which we received from the questionnaire that we asked and the evaluations to which we could chose most appropriately to the students' wants and needs. Dents would want to visit would be New York. This shows that although some students would like to see some of the other options in which was available New York would be most likely. 15 out of 31 people said they would prefer New York which shows that it is a popular attraction and would be considered for our trip. We asked a number of people how much they would be willing to pay to go to New York. The results show that students would be willing to pay IEEE-IEEE. From these results we know that students are aware of the pricing in which New York would cost.We now know that we would have to keep the pricing of the trip within this pricing bracket as none of the students we asked said that they would pay IEEE-IOW. We think that this is a good result because looking at the graph above, the majority o f the people that we asked said that they would like to go New York, and comparing it to his one they said that they would be willing to pay a reasonable amount of money up to IEEE, this gives us prime reason to plan a New York trip at an affordable price and therefore meet our aims in which we have set.For each trip we go on, we have to organism events on which to visit whilst we were on the trip to make them worthwhile. We asked this question to see not only what activities students would like to participate in but also where they would like to visit within the same question. This particular graph shows the results of where people would like to visit if we were to go on the trip to Paris. The results show that the majority of the people in which we asked would like to go to Chocolate although the other activities in which were asked about had a very popular response as well.The second most popular answer is State De France which is also a very popular attraction. I think that visi ting these areas of Paris would contribute to our aims and objectives within the group well because both of the most popular answers are very good for educational backgrounds and the trip would most definitely be enjoyable. I think that if we were to go to Paris, the prices from the question and results graph above would vary cause of the price of the activities on top of transport; accommodation etc. Loud appear a lot more than EYE. Here we were looking at how much students would be willing to pay if we were to go on the Paris trip. We asked this question so that we could see how much students would be willing to pay and therefore look at how we could afford this price with activities as well. The results show that students would be willing to pay IEEE-IEEE. If we were to choose this trip we would therefore have to keep the price within this price range as not many students would be willing to pay any more.We would also have to look at including the activities in which were chosen in the above graph and including them in the price which would be difficult so we would have to do a lot of research to see what the best strategy would be to overcome this. This question was asked so that we could see how much each student would be willing to pay for each trip if it were to go to Barcelona. The most popular response was IEEE-IEEE. I think that this is a reasonable price to pay for all students and teachers but also it gives us room for negotiation within the trip so as it is quite a lot of money.If we were to go than this amount finally because the other students which answered this said they would pay any more than IEEE. This question was asked so that we could see what activities students would like to participate in if the trip to New York were to go ahead. The most popular answer was Times Square therefore we would look into visiting Times Square if we were to take the trip to New York. To do this we would have to look at the cost in which students would be wil ling to pay for each visit within the place we chose to go and see if Times Square would be an option. Linking back t rap No. , students answered that they would be willing to pay IEEE-IEEE. This gives us enough off range to organism and plan a trip to Times Square. This graph I based on the results that students would be willing to pay for each trip in Berlin. The most popular result from the students was IEEE-IEEE. This is a reasonable price to pay although looking at graph No. L it shows that not as many students would like to go to Berlin compared to New York or Barcelona. Also, looking at graph No. 2, it shows that students would be willing to pay a lot more for a trip further away and also with ore of a reputation.This gives us opportunity to make the trip an experience of a lifetime. The aim of this question on the questionnaire was to get results of what activities students would most likely want to participate in if the trip to Barcelona were to go ahead. The most common re sult based on this question was Non Camp, Poor of Barcelona being the second most popular answer. Looking at graph No. L only around 5 students said that they would rather go to Barcelona over the other three choices therefore it would not be our most popular trip request. Also, looking at graph No. He students were asked how much they would be willing to pay to go to Barcelona and the most popular answer was IEEE-IEEE. This could be a rough asking price for the trip but as Non Camp and Port of Barcelona are well-known tourist attractions, we would have to cater for these swell within the asking price which would boost it up. This graph is mainly relating to graph No. 7. That graph is asking students what they would be willing pay to towards a trip to Berlin, the most popular answer was IEEE- IEEE. This graph shows that 24 students would like to visit Reichstag Dome and the second most popular option being Alex Springer House.This could involve the trip costing more as both of these places are popular tourist attractions. There is a chance that the trip to Berlin and or one of these trips whilst away could cost a lot more than the students are willing to pay for therefore we would have to negotiate the trip payments etc. BMW Motorbike Factory and the Berlin Stock Exchange are alas very popular answers within the results of this question therefore we could look at the prices for each trip in Berlin and see which would be closest to the price in which students would be willing to pay on this trip.Secondary market research The secondary market research below involves us as a group researching the most important information from different websites about each of the trip options available. The research was print screened directly from the website therefore all information is correct and efficient. This print screen states the information in which appropriate place etc. This website could be very useful to use as if offers all the information that we need to make su re we meet our aims and objectives e. G. Health and Safety.This website also sorts and chooses the most suitable accommodation for he needs of the students therefore it would be efficient in helping us to choose the important details within the trip. This screen shot is from European Study Tours which is a very efficient company when dealing with school trips abroad. The website includes all places in which are too available to visit and also enables us to book the trip and accommodation reliably. There is also an option on this website for ‘Educational Visits' therefore we could plan the trip around education and include day trips etc. Ore efficient for this. The website also offers quotes to be given before the rip as well so that we could try and get the closest price to each trip relating to the questionnaire graphs and therefore how much the students are willing to pay to make sure we meet our aims and objectives. The website offers contact details so that we can contact them if we have any UN-answered questions etc. I think that this website looks efficient in booking our trip as they are a reliable company and provide the information possible for making the booking as easy as possible.The screen shot on the left also states that the company advertise discounted school trips and special offers therefore we could use this to our advantage through the company and possibly decrease the price. Here is a screen shot of the Barcelona section within the European study tours website. It states what Barcelona offers for the students. It also has other links to Barcelona educational trips for 6th forms and colleges. On the right of this screen shot the website offers special offers for different options. The website also offers advice on booking trips on the left.I think that the website offers good facilities to book the trips available. This screenings is based on looking at information about Berlin. The website is schools in Europe which is also a well-kn own and reliable company for booking school trips. I think that this website has a lot in favor compared to the screen shot above. This website offers information on day trips and tours etc. On the right therefore giving the students choices. The website also offers different languages and a lot of information on Berlin itself.I think that this would be a suitable website for us to use to book our trip as it is efficient and has all of the information needed to make sure that we have the most efficient trip possible. We I think that the most appropriate website (company) for us to use would be United Airlines. This is because it seems the most efficient out of the ones in which we looked at and also it enables us to look at all of the different options for the trips relating to the questionnaire above. Travel insurance I looked in to finding some research based on travel insurance to see which one most and also at the cheapest price possible.The results are below. This screen shot s hows the research in which we looked in to about travel insurance from www. Directing. Co. UK. The screen shot says what the insurance covers, how to book etc. This particular travel insurance company covers all of the information at the bottom of the screen shot (bullet points). I think that this travel insurance company would be appropriate to cover our trip because it is a well known brand therefore it would be reliable, it covers a lot within the price and also the pricing is reasonable for the amount in which the price covers. This screen shot shows information from Targeted insurance company.This insurance company shows that it offers school travel insurance which is useful to book in numbers as we would do. The screen shot shows what the travel insurance offers which aren't a lot on this site although it looks reliable and covers the main areas of insurance which we would need. Another advantage if we were to use this company would be that we can get a quote online therefore we could chose if this is the right company for us there and then and therefore price up the trip for the students quicker. This screen shot is from Enkindles Travel Insurance. This company also offer school group travel insurance.This covers accidental loss, theft or damage of the group money. The benefits of using this travel insurance company are at the OTTOMH of the screen shot and there are a lot of them which insures us that the company will be reliable for us students going on the trip. You can also get a quote on the first page of the website therefore we can get a quote quickly. The company looks reliable and efficient in insuring they do the best they can at the cheapest price. Here are four travel insurance companies in which we could use and they all give minimal detail about what they offer/cover.Some of them are better than others for example ‘Protect Your Bubble' looks better than ‘LULL Direct' as they offer better over for the insurance which is more suit ed to the students and trips we have the choices to go on. The LULL Direct Company are suited more to the elderly where as the Topped look as though it is more suited to businesses as they speak about trading company insurance. I think that out of these four the most efficient one suited to the needs of our trip and the bases of the trips that we could be going on would be Protect Your Bubble.Coach Comparisons When we planned the organization of the trip we had to plan and see how we would get to the airport and back etc all together. We researched four different coach impasses to see which was cheapest and we got these results. Company Contact number Price (return) Marshall 01 525376077 Souls IEEE(settle) Masons 01296661604 IEEE Cedar 0800731 5105 IEEE Here shows that the cheapest coach traveling company from the four options we chose from is IEEE because although Souls is cheaper at IEEE that was only one way whereas masons are return for a cheaper price.Marshall did not get back to us with a quote therefore we could not state a price in the chart above. Finance for the trip In this part of the assignment I will provide the fixed and variable costs involved in he trip. The fixed costs are costs in which cannot be changed and have to be paid or the trip cannot go ahead, for example the flights and accommodation bills. The variable costs are costs in which can be paid/available but if they are not then it is not going to give any risk towards the trip and it can therefore still go ahead.Variable costs are Variable' to each person. Fixed and variable costs These are the fixed costs involved in the trip in which we go on. The coach is a fixed cost as this needs to pay in order for all students to arrive at the same time and to not be lost. The travel company is a very important fixed cost and needs to be paid in full. This enables the trip to go ahead; the travel company costs cover the accommodation for the trip and the flights. The visas are also very importan t fixed costs as they cover our insurance for the trip.Above are the variable costs within the trip. A variable cost is a cost in which can change from person to person. Spending money is a variable cost because it differs, there is no set cost in which needs to be bought along on the trip, this is up to the individual. Meals are also a variable cost because students are asked to bring their win money for meals therefore they will need the money, yet if they chose not to bring it then they won't be eating on the trip. Souvenirs are also not a necessity it is out of pure choice that students chose to buy souvenirs for others.Fundraising As the cost of the trip in which we go on, including coaches, travel insurance etc. Would cost a lot more than anticipated, there could be a chance in which we would have to ask the students to do some fund raising activities to put some money towards the trip as it could turn out a big sum of money, more than they stated they ere willing to pay on th e questionnaire analysis. The fund raising activities could include outside and inside of school activities involving sports events, year group events, car boots etc.The money in which we raise will go towards the trip but could accommodation. The fund rising may not need to be done but if it does we feel that it is the best way to make the money quickly and also is an achievement. The finance of the trip will be paid in installments, the trip will be held in February when the decisions are finally made as to where we will be going. This will mean that the mount of money in which is needed to pay the fixed costs and the variable costs (if intended) can be paid over the 8 months in which we have until the trip.The cost will be divided in to 8 costs (or as many months as there are until the trip) plus a OHIO deposit to ensure that we have a place on the trip. Finalized trip plan Looking through all of the above research we have decided as a group that we are going to choose to go to N ew York on the trip. We chose this trip above all of the others because we feel that it will benefit the students more also that it is a very exciting once in a life time trip away which students would pay good money to go on. The other main reason in which we chose this trip was because this was the most popular chosen option on the questionnaire analysis chart.The research that we did for New York states those students would be willing to pay around E801E900. This is a reasonable amount to pay for the trip and we think that we could plan and organism a trip around this value of money. The research also states that students would like to visit Times Square, Ground Zero, Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. We have therefore booked these places to visit in New York. We have booked to go to New York using European Study Tours Travel Company as this looked the most efficient and reliable throughout the secondary research.Looking at the coach research, we have chosen to tra vel with Masons to and from the airport as it is cheaper for a return than the other companies offer. Masons are a very reliable coach traveling company therefore we can meet our main aim which is safety for all students. The main details of the trip are below. Where are we going? New York Which travel company are we going with? European Study Tours. This company have planned our accommodation which will be Manhattan Hotel in Times Square (relating back to the visit to Times Square in which students said they would like to visit.They have also arranged for us to fly with United Airlines. Where are we planning to visit whilst in New York? Mustang Harry on 7th Avenue Programmer tour of Financial district stop off at Mooring's Bank Tavern Federal Reserve Ground Zero Liberty & Ellis island ferry Macy's Guided tour Historic Herald Square Location Empire state building Madame Tussahs workshop We have planned these trips based on the questionnaire results and added some ore trips to visit that would make the trip more of an experience.Below is an Itinerary in which we made to show the exact details of the trip and times for parents 17th-21st February Monday 17th February Arrive at London Heathers airport 7. Mama – Check in at United Airlines desk at terminal 10. Mama – Depart London Heathers airport for Newark Liberty Airport – Flight No: AU 28 13. Pm – Arrive at Newark Airport – Skylines – coach transfer to accommodation 3. Pm – Arrive at accommodation 7. Pm – Evening meal in Local restaurant Tuesday 18th February Breakfast – Mustang Harry on 7th Avenue Wednesday 19th FebruaryBreakfast- Mustang Harry Visit Macy's Guided tour Afternoon visit – Empire state building and free time before the evening Thursday 20th February Breakfast – Mustang Harry Visit Madame Tussahs workshop Students given a 45 minute presentation by key members of staff Check out of rooms 2. Pm – meet coach at accomm odation for airport transfer 4. Pm – Check in at United Airlines desk at Newark Liberty airport 7. Pm – Depart Newark Airport for London Heathers on Flight No : CIA 29 Friday 21st February 7. Mama – Arrive at London Heathers Airport Coach from Airport to Cedars Make your own way home from School

Comparison of Leo Tolstoys War and Peace and A Prisoner in the Essay

Comparison of Leo Tolstoys War and Peace and A Prisoner in the Caucasus - Essay Example In general and on a whole, it can be stated that there are more differences than similarities between the two. War and Peace provides ample background as to the war that is taking place, describing in detail the events leading up to the war, the reason for it, the points of view and particularities of both sides involved, and the historical context surrounding the characters and occurrences that are significant to the story. It is a standalone piece that a reader can approach without the need to be versed or even familiar with the history of the time period in which it unfolds, given the fact that all of this information is provided therein, whereas in "A Prisoner in the Caucasus", the only piece of information given as to historical context is that it is taking place amidst the war between the Russians and the Tartars, forcing the discerning and curious reader to research the circumstances of, and time in history when, said war was waged if he/she wishes to obtain some temporal refe rence or detailed contextual information that would serve as a basis for better understanding the tale's time and place. Another general and very important difference between the novel and the short story consists of the fact that the latter was written by Tolstoy based on actual experiences. "A Prisoner in the Caucasus" fictionalizes Tolstoy's first-hand experience as a soldier in 1852 fighting in the war against the Chechenians, Tartars who rebelled against Russian rule. Evidence of actual occurrences that Tolstoy lived during his military career, which he either described in detail to instill realism into certain passages of his story or embellished upon to create memorable scenes, abounds in scholarly biographical works on the author. One such event is beautifully narrated in A Cadet in the Caucasus (Simmons, p. 23): [Tolstoy] and Sado were in a convoy of stores from Fort Vozdvizhenskoe to Fort Groznoe. Although regulations strictly forbade anyone detaching himself from the convoy, because of the danger of being cut off by roving mountaineers, he, Sado and three mounted officers, impatient with the slow pace of the infantry, rode on ahead. Tolstoy and Sado ascended a ridge to see if any of the enemy were in sight. A large band suddenly appeared a short distance away. Shouting a warning to their three comrades below, Tolstoy and Sado galloped for the fort, less than three miles away. The Chechen band divided, seven taking up the pursuit of Tolstoy and Sado and the rest dashing after the other officers. These men had been slow to take the warning and two of them were severely wounded before reaching the convoy. Meanwhile Tolstoy, who had been trying out Sado's spirited new horse and hence might easily have escaped, refused to desert his friend, who was mounted on Tolstoy's slow ambler. The Chechens drew nearer and nearer, while Sado tried to keep them at a distance by threatening them with an unloaded gun. The enemy could have shot them down, but apparently they desired to take them alive, especially the renegade Sado, whom they no doubt wished to torture. Fortunately, a Cossack guard at the post saw their plight. A rescue party at once galloped out and the Chechens fled. This close encounter

Customer Service Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Customer Service - Research Paper Example From this paper it is clear that  managements of these agencies are often turning to human resource training and technology to deliver services fast and competently to achieve satisfactions for all queries, complaints or inquiries. Customers have been accustomed to attention from the private sector, and they now want the same from their government agencies. Government agencies have adopted standards of measuring citizens’ satisfaction in responding to their needs through electronic or manual reviews.This study highlights that there has been a shift in the management systems from an emphasis on product quality to Total Quality Management for customer satisfaction.   This change focuses on continual improvement of organization’s output. Quality of outputs in this case very much includes all products and services and the processes that are involved in the production of the products or services. The shift is intended for the sole purpose of meeting, if not surpassing cu stomer expectations. Customer service provision requires the co-operation of all levels of management within the organization.  Most organizations in the world today are registered with different standardization agencies locally or internationally such as The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI) or the International Standard Organization ISO 900 series.  The ‘Soft’ aspect of total quality management focuses on the principles that guide organizations.... The shift is intended for the sole purpose of meeting, if not surpassing customer expectations. Customer service provision requires the co-operation of all levels of management within the organization. Achievement of excellent customer service is guided by tools and principles. The tools are the so-called ‘hard’ aspects of customer service. They include the analyzing systems of an organization’s performance using a wide array of analysis tools and the presentation of these in a way that all the stakeholders using the information can understand that when recommendations are applied, it would lead to better results. Display of organizations’ performance could be represented in various ways including tabulation, graphs, polygons and charts. Statistical analysis of results is a common method used to evaluate performance of output through, mean, mode, probability analysis, critical path analysis and variance and correlation analysis. When these tools are used, q uantitative data is displayed to help in controlling the output be it products or services. Most organizations in the world today are registered with different standardization agencies locally or internationally such as The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI) or the International Standard Organization ISO 900 series. These set up standards of different kinds that aim at improving excellence in customer service by having a policy that focuses on quality improvement. Results from statistical analysis should be checked against these standards, and the necessary areas of improvement are identified. The ‘Soft’ aspect of total quality management focuses on the principles that guide organizations. Emphasis is put in

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Business Ethics Dealing with Poverty and Pollution in the Environment - Research Paper Example Third world countries, due to poverty and lack of resources, are not able to invest in environmental friendly technologies and devise environmental regulations. This allows corporations to pollute in the third world countries without any problem. In this paper we will discuss the environmental pollution with the reference of businesses and third world countries. We will observe the reasons why businesses ignore pollution related regulations in the developing world. Other aspects of environmental pollution will also be discussed with reference to the case of ‘Poverty and Pollution’. Ethical Implications of Businesses Polluting in the Third World The ethical implications of businesses pollution in a third world country are significant. Environmental pollution affects the whole population of the region and therefore it cannot be ethically justified. There is no doubt that environmentally polluted technology is cheaper and therefore third countries use it in order to remain competitive in the global market. But the economic argument in favor of environmental pollution in the third world country is not justified because pollution affects a great number of pollution and not all people are able to get the economic benefits of businesses operating in their region. This is one of the ethical implications of businesses polluting in the third world. Another ethical implication of businesses polluting in the developing world is that it is not possible to value human life. Environmental pollution caused by firms in the third world countries create all sorts of health problems for its inhabitants and therefore decreases human life expectancy in the region. This is not ethically justified because people living in the region do not have any choice to move to another area as they are extremely poor. This is actually exploitation of human beings which can never be ethically justified. It is therefore proved without a doubt that environmental pollution is not ethical ly justified. Reasons why a Business Ignore Pollution Control Standards Businesses ignore pollution control standards in the third world because it drives down their production cost. Investment in required to reduce pollution for example in order to dump industrial waste in an appropriate manner significant investment is required. This drives the production cost up which hurts the profits of the firm operating in the third world countries. They are in the country just because of the promise of lower production cost and this is why they ignore pollution control standards. Organizations are profit making entities and therefore they do anything in their power to reduce their cost and maximize profits. Lack of will is another reason why businesses ignore pollution control standards. Laws are not strict in the third world countries and corporations therefore feel that they are not obligated to follow them. This is the main reason why firms don’t feel compelled to make a change and follow the pollution control standards. The firms are not willing to change their practices and this is why they lack the will to abide by the pollution control standards set by third world countries. Is Pollution the Price of Progress? It is argued sometimes that pollution is the price of progress. It is said that for developing countries to economically develop they require competitive edge over other developed countries

The Value of a Vanilla Bond Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Value of a Vanilla Bond - Coursework Example Between the two companies it has been observed that Microsoft Corp. has the highest credit rating in the country. Due to the volatility of Aon’s operations and lower credit ratings, interest rates are higher, which makes the investment in Microsoft Corp. safer than that in Aon Corp, from an investor’s point of view. The Value of a Vanilla Bond A vanilla bond is a bond that has no underlying features, a fixed rate is implied and the bond is redeemable in full on maturity. In this paper, the vanilla bonds of two companies will be focused on to determine why the price of one company’s bonds differs from the price of the bond of the other company. The companies that are being focused for this paper are Microsoft Corp. and Aon Corp. According to the financial results reported by Microsoft Corp and Aon Corp. the companies had a total of $11.9 billion and $2.9 billion outstanding in debt. This debt component comprised of different loan notes, each with a varying range o f maturity dates, out of them only the loan notes that fulfill the criteria of vanilla bonds will be considered for this paper. To calculate the present value of these bonds, each lone note will have to be dealt with separately. The list of the amount of these loans, their coupon rates, price and their maturity dates is mentioned below, and on its basis the present value of each note will be calculated. ... October 2020 1,000 3.000% 105.7 941.85 2.27 February 2021 500 4.000% --- 459.79 --- June 2039 750 5.200% 122.0 612.653 3.88 October 2040 1,000 4.500% 113.6 835.607 3.73 February 2041 1,000 5.300% --- 805.150 --- TOTAL 10,750 10,043.51 AON CORP: Maturity Date Face Value ($ Millions) Standard Coupon Rate Price Present value ($ Million) yield to maturity September 2015 600 3.50% 105.0 589.609 2.07 September 2020 600 5.00% 112.1 570.808 3.37 September 2040 300 6.25% 124.8 248.854 4.67 TOTAL 1,500 1,409.271 As it can be seen, the bonds held by Aon Corp are generating higher yield to maturity than the bonds held by Microsoft Corp. Even though the time till maturity of the two companies is same for some bonds, still Aon Corp is charged with a higher rate of interest than Microsoft Corp. For the bonds that will mature till the years 2015, 2020 and 2040, the respective yields to maturity for Microsoft and Aon Corp. are 0.64, 2.27 & 3.73 and 2.07, 3.37 & 4.67 respectively. Thus it is obvious t hat the bonds issued to Aon Corp are receiving a better price than that of Microsoft Corp. According to Standard and Poor’s Rating Services and Moody’s Investor Service Inc. the Microsoft Corporate credit rating is AAA and Aaa respectively, whereas that of Aon Corp is BBB+ with a stable outlook and Baa2 with a negative outlook respectively. The increase in Microsoft’s credit ratings ensures lower borrowing costs and easy access to financial options for the company. Microsoft was assigned top rating right after the company made public a $ 2 billion commercial paper program and according to S&P only five U.S non-financial companies hold AAA rating according to their standards (Linnane, 2008). The commercial paper of Microsoft Corp is rated A-1+ by Standard & Poor and P-1 by moody’s.

HIS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

HIS - Essay Example The author also captures some selected reactions by a section of the early American society on the decisions of the early executive office.] Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print. [In this book, Wood analyzes some of the early themes in American history. He focuses on the birth of democracy in the aftermath of the ratification of the constitution. Wood analyzes competitive interests between the Federalists and Republicans. The inaugural of Thomas Jefferson and his speech is the critical component of this source as far as this paper is concerned.] In the immediate period after the Declaration of Independence, the United States faced many challenges in her political, social and economic spheres of life (Wood 34). This was particularly so given that it was a time when leaders were still searching for the best alternative solutions to issues pertinent to them. Some level of uncertainty and mistrust exis ted even in office of the President. There was constrained freedom of speech as well as the rights of foreign born amongst other things. Essentially, the people’s concerns were the interpretation of liberty. ... He highlighted his vision for the America they wanted. He cautioned that it would not be in the interest of the nation to have political intolerance, which he viewed as wicked and capable of deteriorating to the point of bloody persecutions. In this part, Jefferson was aware that sharp differences existed in the Democrat-Republican political interest. Therefore, he sought to remind them that as a nation that was just discovering itself, there was a need for unity in matters of national importance. He also pointed out to the need to make sure that that nobody would be victimized for expressing his/her political opinion on various matters. As Wood (45) observes, Jefferson also preempted a situation in which the United States would become diverse owing to values that will attract people to its peaceful shores. On this, he emphasized that the country has a responsibility to lead by example. He preempted a situation in which there would also be a majority and minority sides of opinions. C onfirming the values of democracy, Jefferson emphasized in the First Inauguration speech the fundamental of human rights. He said, â€Å"...the minority possesses equal rights, which equal law must protect† (Levy 74). This way, Jefferson’s speech laid foundation for the principles of equality before the law under the United States constitution. It also discouraged discrimination of any sort whatsoever. Jefferson seemed to have a vision of a perfect state where individual liberty would allow them to follow the dictated of their free will not just within the context of the law, but also reasonably. In a way, Jefferson puts in that although the majority may pass a regulation and make something lawful, if reason

Business Plan to create a Maintenance Training in Jakarta Research Paper

Business Plan to create a Maintenance Training in Jakarta - Research Paper Example This document provides an analysis of the market, demand condition and other relevant factors. The plan proposes solutions on how to recruit local staff and potential talent to enter the aviation industry. The scope of the report include corporate strategy, finance, marketing, and human resources. The report includes a feasibility study that examines the relevant risks and other dominant factors and matters which are relevant concerns prior to the commitment of resources into the project. The recipients of this report are the stakeholders that include the government of Indonesia and other players who are going to play various roles. This includes sponsors, institution management and other people at the helm of affairs in the training center. The primary focus of the research will be on the maintenance of investments and comparative analysis with other flight training services. The report invokes some elements of mandatory Full Flight Simulators (FFS) and the use of flight instruction s that will be seconded by ETOPS organization which is headquartered in Toulouse, France. The research concludes that it will be better to maintain infrastructure for Asian Aviation Academy in Asia but retain staff members in France and sending instructors to the Asian unit where necessary. This is because it will be expensive to maintain full-time paid staff members in the Asian unit. Also, it is strongly recommended that Asian Aviation Academy must use local resources to reduce costs and retain attractive offers to consumers in order to gain and maintain market share in contrast with other competitors in the industry. It is recommended that Asian Aviation Academy must commence with the Airbus. To this end, the focus of the business plan is on Airbus. As the company grows and the institution gets rooted in the region, the portfolio could be expanded to train other players like Bombardier, Emirates, ATR and other entities. The market analysis is conducted on the basis of this assump tion. CHAPTER 1 GENERAL CONTEXT This proposal focuses on training staff members in some aspects of the Airbus aircrafts and its relevant aviation management job training. In order to examine it, there is the need to undertake a critical review of the scope of work and the technical components of the Airbus family of aircrafts and devices. The primary focus of the Asian Aviation Academy (hereafter referred to as AAA) will be on the A320 which is the smallest and the most popular airline in the range. To this end, AAA will be positioned to train staff members with the management and running of the A320 aircraft and provide all the basic services in this aircraft. The basic services will provide a model for the integration of other airlines in the range and help to promote an efficient training system and structure. 1.1 Market Analysis In the macrocosmic sense, the aviation industry experienced a major boom after 1980 (Sinha 31). This is because deregulation and other liberalization ar rangements ensured that the number of airlines could be increased in nations. Also, the previous tradition of only allowing governments to own airlines was eliminated with the introduction of reforms and deregulation which allowed private participation in the global airline industry. Asia and the

Research methods and Skills Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Research methods and Skills - Essay Example been found to leach from plastic products, more so in high temperatures and basic or acidic conditions, such as during autoclaving.2 This becomes more alarming with the pressing problem of global warming.3 Food is also considered the most significant source of BPA exposure worldwide. In fact, BPA has already been detected in almost all of urine samples collected from USA.4 When BPA is imbibed, it is metabolized by the liver into BPA glucuronide, which is excreted through the urine.5 BPA is an estrogenic monomer that binds weakly to nuclear estrogen receptors. In fact, its binding to estrogen receptors is 1000 – 10, 000-fold lower than the natural hormone E2.6 Currently, it is now polymerized to make polycarbonate plastic, which is now extensively used in the manufacture of food and beverage cans and dental materials. The potency of BPA partly results from the low dose needed to produce a physiologic response. This is because the activation of the effector is longer than the actual hormone-receptor binding, or the number of receptors is greater than the number of molecules. Thus, despite the low affinity of BPA to the receptor, low concentrations still initiate a response. In fact, the linear concentration between receptor occupancy and hormone concentration is preserved only up to 10% receptor occupancy. Above this, saturation of response occurs first, and saturation of receptor follows.7 BPA mimics the activity of 17ÃŽ ²-estradiol, posing a strong estrogenic activity. With just 10 – 20 nM, it was seen to competitively bind to estrogen receptors, proliferation of MCF-7 breast cancer cells, induction of progesterone receptors, and reversal estrogen action by tamoxifen. It induces proliferative and stimulatory changes in estrogen targets.8 There is a major concern to public health due to its high potential for human exposure and to its demonstrated toxicity (endocrine disruptor effect). A growing number of health experts and consumers are becoming concerned

Compare and contrast Gandhi and Plato on the issue of appearance and Essay

Compare and contrast Gandhi and Plato on the issue of appearance and reality - Essay Example pularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, and in India as the Father of the Nation was that ‘great soul’ in human form who was able to mobilize millions of people towards nonviolence through principles of nonviolence and truth; he rose to lead the Congress in 1920, during British Imperialism in India, and successfully brought an end to the British rule in India through his basic yet revolutionary principles and radical politics (Dalton, p.27). Both Plato and Gandhi, considered as highly learned super souls, possessed an ability to mobilize masses through their principles and values. Plato was the first one to differentiate between appearance and reality through his views of the world as a pale reflection of different forms as they appeared to the eye; he philosophized that the world is actually changing constantly, and all impressions, as seen, are mere forms (Gelb, 29). Plato explained his ideology of ‘world of forms,’ and their reality, through parable of prisoners in a cave; he pointed at the ‘reality’ of prisoners’ view that is restricted to their own shadows seen on the walls of the cave from the light behind them. If these prisoners are not exposed to outside world, they will tend to believe that the shadows that are visible are the forms of the world. When they are exposed to the outside world, which is the truth, they will not be able to accept it immediately and will have difficul ty in understanding and adjusting to the light and other objects of truth in the world. Through this explanation, Plato explained the relationship between knowledge and reality that is connected through wisdom. A true philosopher is the one who is in constant search of wisdom that will enable him to identify the goodness, truth, and beauty of life. Quite different in approach was Gandhi’s perception of appearance and reality, in other words conceptualization of metaphysics; were based on the issues that pervaded India for many centuries. Although Gandhi fought

Quorn Revision Essay Example for Free

Quorn Revision Essay Introduction Branding creates attachments between consumers and brand: the stronger the attachment, the better the branding. Nothing connected with branding should surprise anyone any more (Frank, 2001). Whenever the word is spoken, it seems, there instantly follows some scarcely believable anecdote of corporations expanding, metastasising, covering more and more of our world and our culture, putting their mark in some unthinkable new spot or on some inviolable hero, ransacking the temples of art, laying claim to the legacy of the historical avant-garde, to that of religion, of bohemia, of the civil rights movement, of the left itself. We ride in subway cars whose every surface promotes an allergy remedy or the offerings of a TV network. We hear of masterbrands and megabrands (Frank, 2001).   And the claims attached to brands grow constantly: no longer simple guarantees of quality, brands are now thought to have a more high-minded aspect (Frank, 2001). The brand was everything, the very foundation of economic life. The brand was all that would survive, zealously protected and polished by a core of managerial workers, while the physical operations of the corporation were outsourced to those lands where people work for next to nothing (Frank, 2001). The most important thing to understand about integrated branding is that it is a model for building the most important asset any company hasits relationship with its customers (Lepla, 1999). If you understand that your best customer is the one you already have, then creating a rational system for deepening customer relationships is the logical next step (Lepla, 1999).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Zeneca PLC is a pharmaceuticals company that offers agrochemical and specialties chemicals. The company considers itself as a bioscience company that targets it RD, their abilities in technology and marketing enhance new products that will resolve the scientific problems of their customers and consumers. Zeneca is one of the biggest pharmaceuticals firm globally that holds 2.5% of market share of the said industry, Zeneca’s major competitors are GlaxoWellcome with 4.5% share in the pharmaceutical industry. Zeneca is also offering healthy new products.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Imperial Chemical Industries or ICI and Rank Hovis McDougall or RHM, came up with a synthetically developed, healthy substitute for meat, called Quorn. During the 1980’s there was a great opportunity on this product because of the trend in healthy living, however, true vegetarians snob this product because of egg content. However, after the initial research RHM sold its stocks to ICI.   Quorn became a direct substitute to chicken. The market of Quorn was mixed, QTI was integrated to different recipe cards. Marlow Foods’ tie up with supermarkets localized the distribution of the product and made difficult for them to have control and surpassed the demand of the product. In 1990, Sainburys developed meat alternative pies and penetrated the London market. Quorn was introduced to the supermarkets of Tesco, the direct competitor of Sainsbury, profits increased dramatically. In 1994, Quorn was re-launched with a mainstream advertising campaign and logo. PROBLEMS WITH QOURN The consumers of Quorn are obviously still does not fully understand the product because it has no definite characteristics of its own. The knowledge that it is synthetically produced consumers worry about eating it especially those who want to eat healthy. Although, Quorn has its own loyal consumers, however people view it as a fad and targets vegetarians only. Quorn was relaunched in 1994, it was repackaged with a new logo, and a new advertisement that will put Quorn in the mainstream healthy food instead as a vegetarian food. Recommendation Initially, the understanding of buyer behavior is one of the more perplexing tasks confronting every manager (Schiffman Kanuk 2000). The difficulty arises from the heterogeneity of buyers, from being groups of individuals who differ from one another. But notwithstanding differences, consumers do share attitudes, opinions, reactions, and desires at various times (Schiffman Kanuk 2000). Business experience, marketing research, theoretical constructs and models, and trial-and-error methods help to find some of the common denominators. Practically, Quorn has to make some essential decisions that are taken in developing an effective marketing mix for their products particularly their â€Å"veggie meats,† that should be based in the systematic knowledge of the consumers that make up its permanent target market (Johnson and Mullen 1990). Johnson and Mullen believes that understanding the behavior of the consumer is the most basic step in helping marketing authorities to visualize and predict future trends, reactions, and changes in the marketing mix. It may also serve as a reference in determining the potentials of new products and its adoption. Customers recognize the importance of knowledge in relation to the product being purchased. That is why Quorn should make a consumer behavior study regarding their products and that way the company will be able to identify the needs and wants of their consumers. Wong (2000) argued that a customer evaluates a product or a service. Such action is based on the customer’s reaction from the using the product or service, which means that the product or service should leave a good perception to the customer’s contentment. Ferguson (1992) explained that it can be ensured that a customer is satisfied by taking into importance the value package, which includes: price, product quality, service quality, innovation, and corporate image. Others also stated the importance of maintaining or establishing a uniqueness of the product, while also understanding customers and what pleases them (DeMooji, 1997). Customers should also understand the product and be allowed to set their own standards in order to be satisfied (Frederick and Salter 1995). Because of the implications for profitability and growth,   Quorn should give emphasis to their customer retention is potentially one of the most powerful weapons that companies can employ in their fight to gain a strategic advantage and survive in todays ever increasing competitive environment (Lindenmann 1999). Aside from having a strategic purpose, gaining customer loyalty is also a key corporate challenge today especially in this increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace because of the eventual profitability it will provide (Chow Holden 1997). Every business wants to have a regular customer base because customers dictate profits and how the customer is treated will reflect on whether the customers will remain loyal with the company or not.    This concept is illustrated by Mittelhauser (1997) in a study about the textile and apparel industry. Competition forces certain brand names to become stronger than others because of product loyalty and name recognition. Consumers tend to buy what is already familiar to them. Thus, it becomes imperative for retailing outfits, especially small or exclusive ones to build a steady base of customers to exist in the competitive marketplace. This relationship becomes mutually beneficial with the company, gaining steady profit and the consumer having the product/s of the said company. Consumers tend to buy what is already familiar to them (Farquhar, 1996). It becomes imperative for retailing outfits, especially small or exclusive ones to build a steady base of customers to exist in the competitive marketplace. Foss and Ellefsen, (2002) stressed that the relationship of consumers to certain brands are established through the individual’s concept of oneself. However, the company can go a step further and make additional profits by cross-selling as well as save money from having to acquire new or replacement customers. The consumer, on the other hand, can also do the same, by demanding benefits from being a loyal customer that companies would certainly give to maintain them. Previous researches have concluded that satisfied consumers are more loyal to the product as compared to unsatisfied customers (Aaker and Erich, 1999). Meanwhile, customers may remain loyal for a number of reasons and may not even be happy with the product or service. Customer loyalty becomes evident when choices are made and actions taken by customers (Watkins, 1998). Customer satisfaction refers to the consumer’s positive subjective evaluation of the outcomes and experiences associated with using or consuming the product or service. It refers to either a discrete, time-limited event or the entire time the service or product is experienced (Duffy and Kechand 1998). Satisfaction occurs when the product has been able to meet or exceed the conceived expectations that the customer has (Padilla 1996). Furthermore, customer satisfaction may also be considered as the measure of the high degree of quality of the product (Jacobs et al. 1998).  Ã‚  Ã‚   Crosby and colleagues (2003) deemed that once a product or service has been delivered or sold, its quality is believed to have been established.    Brand Management for Quorn Basing your product or service offerings on an integrated brand allows your organization to develop more saleable products over the long term by keeping it focused on your strengths as an organization. This focus opens it to new possibilities by broadening the corporate aperture from looking at what you are producing right now to looking at the bigger picture. Seeing the big picture is an essential prerequisite to company longevity. Strategy based solely on current product or service uniqueness ultimately results in decreasing market share, lower margins, missed opportunities, and price wars (Lepla, 1999).Integrated branding helps companies understand who they are and how to use that knowledge consistently to create better results. As with all worthwhile change, the process takes some investment in time and elbow grease up front, but results in a huge payoff (Lepla, 1999). Brand breadth is a function of not only the number and variability of products represented by the brand but also of the strength of association between the brand and the products it represents (Dawar, 1996). The strength of association is reflected in the retrievability from memory of product associations. This, in turn, influences the evaluation of fit of brand extensions. Two types of brands were studied: those with a strong association to a single product (and weaker associations with other products) and those with strong associations to multiple products. Results from an experiment showed that for brands with a single product association, brand knowledge and context interact to influence evaluations of fit for extensions to products weakly associated with the brand. For brands strongly associated with more than 1 product, context influences evaluations of the fit of brand extensions (Dawar, 1996). Given the importance of these associations, brand-extension researchers are now focusing on acquiring a deeper understanding of how cognitive representations of brands influence the evaluations of the fit of extensions with the original brand (Dawar, 1996). Ferguson (1991) reported that perceptions of brand-extension fit depend not only on similarity of product-based aspects, such as features or attributes, but also on the consistency of the extension product with an abstract mental representation, such as the brand-name concept. Primarily, Quorn can start the branding of their products with the effective use of media as an advertisement tool. Cultural diversity and the penchant for global fashion are increasingly reinforced in the media. Preferences for clothes, accessories and other fashion items rest on how a product is shown and perceived by the consumers around the world. Thus, advertisements are not only focused on a specific market but rather on the global market by universalizing their product and thus their brands. The potential influence of globally shared television images, the informational power of the Internet, or how displays of popular culture artifacts or consumer goods proffer modes of articulation for sharing surface identities based on styles (Ferguson, 1992). Being, first of all, a pragmatic market instrument, ads have an important side effect: they reproduce dominant ideologies, social structure, power relations and a global cultural. The products consume by individuals are wide spread markers of their social status, and they can be analysed as second-order signs, in Barthess terms, or to put it another way, as myths of consumer society: goods are imagined as magic latchkeys, letting one to come into the dream world (Ross, 2000). Fairytale narrative in a 30-second advertisement. Role of advertisements in socialization and construction of identity; representations of males and females and construction of their subject positions in advertisements (Ross, 2000). New brand extensions are generally supported by substantial communication efforts to build on existing product associations (Dawar, 1996). For brands like Quorn   with a single strong product association, and for extensions close to that product, communication could cue either the strongly or the weakly associated product. However, if the extension is close to the weakly associated product, context cues should primarily focus on it, especially if the target consumers are knowledgeable about the brand. Activating the strongly associated product would be a mistake in this communications should cue the product close to the extension product in order to maximize consumer perceptions of fit (Dawar, 1996). Dawar (1996) argued that the proximity construct refers to the distance of extensions from the brand concept. The strength of brand-product association was used to refer to the relation between the brand and its associations with existing products. However, empirically in psychological research, the two constructs are often treated similarly in that both distance and strength of association are measured using response latency. Quorn should recognize that these two constructs are independent and can be tapped using different measures. In this study we used response latency measures to determine strength of association and a card-sorting task to determine proximity-distance. Future research could provide additional insight into the orthogonality of these constructs by crossing levels of the two constructs. The memorability of a brand name and of copy items in print ads is enhanced by relations between the element to be remembered and other ad elements (Millard and Schmitt, 1993). Differences in brand-name memory were stronger on unaided recall measures than on brand-name recognition or brand-name matching measures. As argued before, this result suggests that interrelations among ad components are especially valuable for retrieval processes (Millard and Schmitt, 1993). It could be argued, however, that related ad elements provide redundant information which allows for guessing; that is, if an individual is exposed to the same information three times, then he or she has to remember less information than when three different items of information are presented. We believe, however, that it is not clear how an individual could find information to be redundant without noticing the relation between the two concepts that supposedly constitute redundancy. Bibliography    Aaker, David and Erich Joachimsthaler. 1999. The Lure of Global Branding.Harvard Business Review, 77 November/December,: 137-144. Chow, S Holden, R 1997, â€Å"Toward an understanding of loyalty: The moderating role of trust† Journal of Managerial Issues, vol. 9, pp. 275. Crosby, LB, Devito, R, Pearson, MJ 2003, ‘Manage your customers’ perception of quality’, Review of Business, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 18+. Dawar, Niraj, 1996, Extensions of Broad Brands: The Role of Retrieval in Evaluations of Fit, Lawrence  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Erlbaum Associates. DeMooij, Marieke. 1997. Global Marketing and Advertising, UnderstandingCultural Paradoxes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Duffy, J Ketchand, AA 1998, ‘Examining the Role of Service Quality in Overall Service Satisfaction’, Journal of Managerial Issues, vol.10, no. 2. Farquhar, Peter, 1996, Impact of Dominance and Relatedness on Brand Extensions, Lawrence Erlbaum  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Associates. Ferguson, M. 1992, in press,. Media globalization: Myths, markets and identities. London: Sage. Hofstede, G 1997, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Jacobs, FA, Latham, C, Lee, C 1998, ‘The relationship of customer satisfaction to strategic decisions’, Journal of Managerial Issues, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 165+. Lepla, Joseph, 1999, Integrated Branding: Becoming Brand-Driven through Companywide Action, Quorum  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Books. Lindenmann, W 1998, â€Å"Measuring relationships is key to successful public relations†, Public Relations Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 18+. Millard, Robert and Schmitt, Nader, 1993, Memory for Print Ads: Understanding Relations Among Brand  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Name, Copy, and Picture, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mittelhauser, M 1997, â€Å"Employment trends in textiles and apparel, 1973-2005†, Monthly Labor Review, vol. 120, p. 24. Padilla, R 1996, Review of literature on consumer satisfaction in modern marketing, Concordia University. Retrieved August 25, 2006 from http://www.pages.infinit.net. Ross, Cassandra, 2000,   Seeing Ourselves: An Analysis of Ideology and Fantasy in Popular Advertising,  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Queens  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   University Film Studies.  Ã‚   Submitted to Jean Bruce for FILM 231*: Media and  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Society I. Watkins, WM 1998, Technology and Business Strategy: Getting the Most out of Technological Assets, Quorum Books, Westport, CT.

Lesbians as Represented in Mainstream Television Essay Example for Free

Lesbians as Represented in Mainstream Television Essay Lesbian images have been entering into mainstream media more and more. Some argue that this is a sign of a wider acceptance of lesbianism in Western culture. In this paper, two mainstream television programs, Grey’s Anatomy and Law and Order: SVU, will be looked at to assess the nature of lesbian images. It will be argued that if and when lesbians are portrayed in mainstream television they are highly feminized, desexualized, and their lives are almost always framed in ways that appeal to heterocentric norms. Thus, mass media almost always fails to provide the viewer with an accurate and unbiased perception of lesbianism or homosexuality in a broader sense. Grey’s Anatomy has emerged onto the lesbian scene in the last couple of years by developing Callie Torres, a beautiful, vivacious, Latino woman, into a lesbian in the fifth season. A friendship develops between her and Erica Hahn, a successful, ‘sassy’, and appealing newcomer, and it gradually progresses into something more until finally the two share a kiss. Before the romance can flourish, Torres wrestles with her sexuality, her fears, and her lack of understanding of lesbianism. Soon after the relationship establishes itself, Hahn unexpectedly breaks up with Torres and leaves the show. Typical or is it? A season later, Arizona Robbins, a semi-regular of the show, comes into focus when she blatantly hits on Torres. Shortly after, the two start to date and later find themselves in a committed relationship. The question is how good a job does the show do of accurately portraying lesbians? To start, all three of the women mentioned above are attractive and feminine. All three have long flowing hair always nicely styled and maintained and pretty faces carefully done up with light make-up. This is what Ann Ciasullo refers to as â€Å"sanitizing of the lesbian through her feminizing† (599). In other words, Grey’s Anatomy offers up an image of lesbians that is not too homosexual for the heterosexual audience. While it could be argued that such representations help to combat the rigid stereotypes of lesbians as ugly, butch feminists, the very widespread nature of the ‘femme’ image in media indicates something more is going on (Tamsin). The book Out of Focus, suggests that such feminine representations act to lower the threat of lesbianism by reassuring viewers that such (beautiful and feminine) women can or must actually be heterosexual (Kath Davies). In fact, in Grey’s Anatomy, as in many television programs, the ‘butch’ lesbian is completely absent. All of this suggests that the lesbian chic of the ‘90s is far from dead (Tamsin). Grey’s is well known for its scandalous call room sex scenes. Characters, heterosexual characters that is, escape to hidden corners of the hospital where they argue, make up, and make love on a regular basis. This is interesting because such scenes are practically nonexistent between Torres and Hahn or later Torres and Robbins. In fact, physical contact of any kind is somewhat limited between Torres and Robbins. An example of this can be seen in Season five episode 13 when Robbins` patient dies during surgery. When she gets home to see Torres has planned a surprise birthday party for her she bursts into tears overcome by her grief. The pair leaves the room and at this point you would expect a comforting hug, a loving embrace, or a reassuring kiss on the cheek from any reasonably intimate couple or from any other couple on the show for that matter, but not in this case. Torres tells Robbins that she will explain the situation to their friends and at that Robbins leaves. Additionally, sex scenes between Torres and Robbins are few and far between; those that exist are cut short by interruption or not shown at all. The latter is evidenced in Season five episode 11 when the viewer is shown only the aftermath them lying in bed together, presumably after making love, eating pizza. It is a cute scene but not a sexual scene. This is a familiar pattern found in most television programs or movies featuring lesbian couples and just one way lesbians are desexualized (Ciasullo). A notable exception to this pattern is The L Word, but it will not be the focus of this paper. Since the beginning of their relationship Callie and Arizona have slept together three times. Three times in an entire season and for a relationship in its beginning stages is incredibly low by Grey’s standards (or anyone’s standards really). One of these scenes is the ‘pizza scene’ previously mentioned. In another â€Å"sex† scene, Lexi Grey walks in on the two in the shower and quickly walks out; the viewer sees what Lexi sees and nothing more. The final scene implies the two may have sex, but it is not pursued any further. Considering the show develops long, sensual sex scenes between its heterosexual characters, following them from start to finish, the unwillingness to do the same for its lesbian characters is problematic. This is not an isolated phenomenon. The pattern of desexualization is evident not just in television but also in movies as noted by Ciasullo and Yvonne Tasker in her book Working Girls (Ciasullo; Tasker). Another problem with the depiction of Torres and Robbins’ relationship is that it is often framed by the heterosexual constructs of marriage and reproduction. Tasker discusses this issue noting that by explaining lesbianism within a heterosexual context the (heterosexual) audience is assured that lesbians are normal (by heterosexual standards) (Tasker). Such a practice adheres to conventional social norms while ignoring the differing reality of lesbian’s lives. After Torres’ father finally accepts her lesbianism his first question to her addresses the issue of marriage and children. She assures him that she will put on a â€Å"big white dress and dance down the aisle† if Arizona wants to spend the rest of her life with her. Another example takes place in season six episode three, when Torres talks about being married and having a house, kids and a pet dog with Robbins. This description perpetuates heterocentric beliefs that heterosexual activities and institutions are better than homosexual ones simply because it gives no thought to the possibility that things could be different within homosexual relationships. Furthermore, this effort to depict lesbian couples as ‘normal’ by tying them to conventional social norms suggests that homosexual practices are not normal and as such fails to challenge heterocentrism. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is another show with some problematic representations. In over 11 seasons, it has aired a total of five gay-centred storylines and one lesbian specific episode. This discrepancy seems to reflect the idea touched on in Out of Focus that â€Å"coverage of ‘homosexuality’ actually refers to gay men† (Kath Davies 91). A recent episode entitled PC features Kathy Griffin as Babs Duffy, a rude, abrasive, man-hating lesbian activist. First of all, the stereotyping evident in Griffin’s character is troublesome because it feeds into the negative view of lesbians. Visibility is important, but the cost of portraying lesbians in such a light is possibly greater than or as great as not showing them at all. Furthermore, this particular episode is strewn with negative or inaccurate images of lesbians. The episode begins with the discovery of a woman who has been left for dead in an abandoned building. She has been raped and beaten and later dies in the hospital. It is not too long before the viewer finds out from Babs Duffy that the victim was a lesbian. Duffy makes a dramatic entrance into the detectives’ office ordering for the capture of the murderer whom she alleges is targeting lesbians. The investigation commences with a visit to the victim, now known as Alyssa’s, girlfriend. As the episode progresses, you notice something striking – all the main lesbian characters are conventionally attractive, feminine women. More than that though, any lesbian character who is questioned and thus comes into the focus of the camera, is also feminine and pretty. The few butch lesbians in the episode are in the background and barely noticeable. The absence of the butch lesbian is telling. Ciasullo notes that â€Å"without the signifier of the butch, the femme’s lesbianism disappears † (Ciasullo 599). Thus, by eliminating the butch lesbian from the forefront, Law and Order: SVU effectively downplays the lesbianism of the episode. There is, however, one exception – the victim’s girlfriend Sharon, but even here there are issues with her representation as a butch lesbian. The fact that the show chose to make her ‘butch’ is interesting because they also make her a working class, aggressive, even violent, woman. This in effect vilifies the butch lesbian. Sharon even becomes the main suspect at one point because of her temper, and while it is important to shed light on the issue of domestic violence in lesbian relationships the choice to make Sharon, who is butch, into the abuser is not by accident. Ann Ciasullo talks about how presenting butch lesbians in this negative way makes butches into the â€Å"’oppressor,’ the ‘bad’ lesbian† (Ciasullo 600). Further still, her status as a bouncer (and thus as a member of the working class) adds to her mainstream undesirability (Ciasullo). Moreover, even though Sharon is presented as a butch or as Law and Order puts it an â€Å"aggressive,† she is simultaneously portrayed as somewhat feminine. In the first scene that we are introduced to Sharon, her long hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail and she wraps herself up in her long feminine sweater. She is not wearing any noticeable makeup but she is conventionally pretty. After this initial introduction she is likely not yet labelled as a butch by the viewer. It is not until later when she appears in a plaid shirt and leather jacket that it becomes evident that she is butch. It seems butch images are permitted as long as they’re not too butch and as long as the butch character is not framed in a positive way that could be make her desirable. Perhaps the best example of how lesbians are desexualized in Law and Order is in a scene between Babs and Olivia Benson, the female nvestigator. In the initial taping of this scene Babs kisses Olivia, but the kiss doesn’t make it past the cutting room floor. Even worse, the editing is atrocious. It cuts awkwardly from Babs leaning in to Olivia proclaiming that she is straight and something is noticeably missing. The kiss may not be necessary to the plot, but to sacrifice quality in order to remove it demonstrates how fearful t he media are of lesbian sexuality. Further evidence lies in the fact that a kiss between Babs and Elliot Stabler (the male investigator) that happens at the end of the episode remains untouched. However, this revelation, that Babs isn’t actually a lesbian, has a lot of problems on its own. The discovering that Bab’s has a boyfriend, plays on the â€Å"I know she’s a lesbian but † scenario so often found in mainstream media. This idea presents the viewer with the possibility that the lesbian can always become straight or as Ciasullo puts it â€Å"’unbecome’ lesbian† (Ciasullo 592). This places the heterosexual audience in a more comfortable position where they can entertain the idea that the attractive lesbians in the show may actually be straight. This issue comes up once again when the suspected murderer/rapist is in interrogation. Olivia pretends she is a lesbian in order to get a confession out of him: Olivia: â€Å"You know how to correct us you’ve got everything you need to make me a real woman right between your legs –† Suspect: â€Å"and you’d love it just like those other two [victims] did – every moment of it† While this scene may be laid out this way specifically to show the demented thinking of the rapist/murderer, the notion that a lesbian can be â€Å"corrected† or made straight as well the idea that rape victims enjoy being raped are never addressed and corrected. The audience is never informed about how inaccurate these views are. With all this said, the homosexual viewer tends to be somewhat accepting of the images in Grey’s and Law and Order, because as Clare Whatling puts it â€Å"we’re [the lesbian population] so starved, we go see anything because something is better than nothing† (86). Thus, because of the lack of representation, lesbians are more willing to accept inaccurate portrayals. This is troublesome because such images can potentially be detrimental to lesbian’s self perceptions and they’re all the more vulnerable because of the relative disparity of lesbianism in mainstream culture. In conclusion, lesbianism in mainstream television is poorly and inaccurately represented. While shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Law and Order: SVU, have taken steps towards representing lesbians in mainstream media, we have to be careful to assess how big these steps really are. There are several issues with the representations of lesbians in these shows, some of which are addressed in this paper, others which have been left untouched. Thus, there is still a long way to go and many hurdles to surmount before lesbians can be done justice in mainstream media.

The Origins and History of Punk Fashion

The Origins and History of Punk Fashion The time and birthplace of Punk movement is debatable. Either the New York scene of the late sixties or the British Punks of 1975-76 can be given the honour. Conventionally, it is thought the New Yorkers invented the musical style while the Londoners popularized the attitude and the appearance. For our purpose, we will just watch over the British punk because it was just in the late seventies that the movement gained some importance and formalization. Punk in Britain was a movement essentially made of deprived working-class white youths. There is a strong connection between the punk phenomenon and the economic and social inequalities in Great Britain. The aim of this work is to show where the punk came from and how the movement developed its own style, quite different from any other else, up to making it a proper fashion recognized worldwide. In the fist chapter, it will be introduced the concept of subculture. The punk was in fact one of the many white youth subculture sparkled after the Second World War. It will be explained why youth subcultures emerged and they will be delineated the main features of some of them. A deep analysis of Punk movement origins will be carried out in the second chapter. Here it will be possible to understand the social reasons which led to the creation of punk and the many different sources of style which contributed to the formation of a punk aesthetic. The main feature of the punk aesthetic, then, will be exposed and commented in the third chapter. This chapter focus on the use of shocking and glowering clothes and accessories as a way of rebellion against the mainstream and the society. In the fourth chapter, it will be discussed the role of media in the spread and acceptance of the punk subculture. As we will see in this chapter, little by little media changed attitude toward punk. There was a shift from fear to integration of punks which can be explained through the analysis of two forms of incorporation, the commodity form and the ideological form. Yet in this chapter, it will be presented on of the main pillar of the punk ideology, the Do It Yourself (DIY) philosophy, which influenced everything in the punk subculture from the music to the fashion. In the fifth chapter, then, it will be drawn the story of what can be considered the real birthplace of the punk fashion, the 430 Kings Road, where Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren started their careers. It will be delineated the evolution of the different shops that followed each other at this address and, what is more important, the evolution of the styles proposed by these shops which became the point of reference for the most important punk fashion addicted. In the sixth and last chapter, finally, it will be pointed out how the commodity form of incorporation struck the punk made it fashion available and accepted by the vast public. The 1977 couture collection of Zandra inspired to punks may be identified as the final blow for a pure punk style and the beginning of its exploitation as a fashion trend. From that time on many fashion designers inspired to a punk aesthetic for their collections. Recently the whole fashion system seems to have rediscovered the punk: From Jean-Paul Gaultier to Moschino up to low-cost retailers as Zara or HM. Chapter 1 Youth subcultures:  The source of style The term subculture came up for the first time around the second half of the 1940s in anthropological and sociological writing. As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between a majority, which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a subculture which actively sought a minority style (hot jazz at the time) and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values. Thus the audience [] manipulates the product (and hence the producer), no less than the other way round (Riesman, 1950). From that time on, many different studies were carried out and various interpretations on the meaning and the function of the subcultures were given by estimated personalities as John Clarke, Phil Cohen, Walter Miller, Matza and Sykes, Peter Willmott and Stuart Hall.   In particular, Dick Hebdige gave one of the biggest contributions to the study of subcultures in his 1979 book Subculture the Meaning of style which encompasses all theories from the above mentionated authors and uses them to analyze the youth subcultures. From hipsters to teddy boys, from skinheads to mods, from glitter rockers to punks, the youth cultural styles consecution is here reinterpreted, reposing on Gramscis notion of hegemony, as symbolic forms of resistance; as spectacular symptoms of a wider more generally submerged dissent which characterized the whole post-war period (Hebdige, 1979) The origins of youth subcultures are, thus, to be found after the Second World War when the traditional patterns of everyday life were completely upturned. The emergence of the mass media, modifications in the structure of the family and in the organization of school and work, shifts in the relative burdens of work and leisure, all contributed in fragmenting and polarizing the working-class community. In this contest, also the role and the relative importance of the working-class youth experienced a deep change: their purchasing power enormously increased (during the period 1945-50 it was estimated that the average real wage of teenagers increased at twice the adults rate) and, consequently, it was created a new youth market in order to take up the resulting surplus. From then on, the youth started to express and impose its own identity against the parental one. According to Cohen youth subcultures can be defined as a compromise solution between two contradictionary needs: The need to create and express autonomy and difference from parents [] and the need to maintain the parental identifications (Cohen, 1972). That is to say, the latent function of subculture was to express and resolve, albeit magically, the contradictions which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture (Cohen, 1972) As Hebdige pointed out, skinheads, for instance, undoubtedly reasserted those values associated with the traditional working-class community, but they did so in the face of the widespread renunciation of those values in the parent culture at a time when such an affirmation of the classic concerns of working- class life was considered inappropriate(Hebdige, 1979). But it is also the case of mods: in fact they were negotiating changes and contradictions which were simultaneously affecting the parent culture but they were doing so in terms of their own relatively autonomous problematic by inventing an elsewhere (the week-end, the West End) which was defined against the familiar locales of the home, the pub, the working-mans club, the neighbourhood (Hebdige, 1979). Nevertheless, we must be careful in stressing the importance of integration and coherence between youth and parent culture because one of the most relevant feature in the definition of a subculture is its dissonance and discontinuity with the most largely accepted culture. This is particularly evident if we take in consideration the punk subculture. As Hebdige writes in fact we should be hard pressed to find in the punk subculture, for instance, any symbolic attempts to retrieve some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in the parent culture (Cohen, 1972) beyond the simple fact of cohesion itself: the expression of a highly structured, visible, tightly bounded group identity. Rather, the punks seemed to be parodying the alienation and emptiness which have caused sociologists so much concern, realizing in a deliberate and wilful fashion the direst predictions of the most scathing social critics, and celebrating in a mock-heroic terms the death of the community and collapse of traditional forms of meaning. Even if each subculture strives to be different and unique among other ones, they all share a common feature: they are all cultures of conspicuous consumption. This term indicates the practice of abnormally spending on goods and services with the main objective of flaunting the belonging to a social status, a particular group or, as in this case, to a specific subculture. It is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals its secret identity and communicates its forbidden meanings. It is basically the way in which commodities are used in subculture which marks the subculture off from the more orthodox cultural formations. (Hebdige, 1979). The style can be defined as the self-image that a person creates representing his or her personality. Style, however, is not built at an individual level but it is strongly dictated by the subculture rules. Everyone identifying in a specific subculture is unconsciously constrained in the adoption, use, dissemination, and the rejection of a certain style of clothing or even acting. That because of the so-called social pressure: the behaviour of a single person is so much linked to the influence exerted by the social groups that the individual identity muddles up with the collective identity. Accordingly, the identity of the individual is recognized just as his or her membership to the reference group is recognized and accepted by all other members. In this contest, the apparel assumes a key role becoming the most evident sign of affiliation and, thus, one of the principal mean of social avowal. Considering the clothing in the sense of a common communication code, it becomes important to identify the symbolic value of different clothes. Actually, they always carry a message about the style of a group, and to a more precise analysis, they can tell us everything we need to know about norms and values of a specific group and even about its formation processes. Thus, the apparel adopted by a subculture should not be seen as a transient fashion but as a visual image of what are the values and norms characterizing that specific subculture and distinguishing it from parent culture and from the other youth subculture too, and inasmuch symbolic representation, it needs to be carefully analyzed to be properly interpreted. Chapter 2 The Punk: a Mix of heterogeneous youth styles I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.  (Travis Baker) This quotation from one of the most famed punk-rock drummer of the recent years well summarizes what was the punk movements background. Punks origins are blended and even conflicting, coming from a wide range of different musical and fashion styles. Influenced by David Bowie and glitter rock, combined with the main features of Southend rb rhythms, inspired by American proto-punk, twisted with northern soul and with reggae, the punk can be described as a patchwork made of distorted reflections coming from almost every previous post-war youth culture stuck together with safety pins. (Jon Savage, 2007) It is like punk unearthing and renewing entire wardrobes belonging to different ages with the aim of proposing them in revitalized cut-up form. Glam rock contributed narcissism, nihilism and gender confusion. American punk offered a minimalist aesthetic (e.g. the Ramones Pinhead or Crimes I stupid), the cult of the street and a penchant for self-laceration. Northern Soul (a genuinely secret subculture of working-class youngsters dedicated to acrobatic dancing and fast American soul of the 60s, which centres on clubs like Wigan Casino) brought its subterranean tradition of fast, jerky rhythms, solo dance styles and amphetamines; reggae its exotic and dangerous aura or forbidden identity, its conscience, its dread and its cool. Native rhythm n blues reinforced the brashness and the speed of Northern Soul, took back to the basics and contributed a highly developed iconoclasm, a thoroughly British person and an extremely selective appropriation of the rock n roll heritage. (Hebdige, 1979) However, the link between these so heterogeneous styles is to be found in the social contest in which the punk movement emerged. We are dealing with the late 1970s in Britain, with its massive unemployment, with its continuous warlike violence episodes (as ,for instance, the tragic one happened during the 76 Notting Hill Carnival to which the punk group The Clash dedicated the song White riot), with its changing moral standards and its rediscovery of poverty. It was exactly in this period that the race relations became fundamental. On the one hand, there was the urban black youths, living and working in Britain but dreaming and finding an imaginary refuge in an elsewhere (Africa, the West Indies, etc.) through the reggae and the Rastafarianism. On the other hand, there was the white working-class youth, placed at the same social level as the black ones but stuck in their present time, having no foreseeable future and no places or means to escape the reality. In fact, the model proposed by the glam rock made of literary influences (from Rimbaud, Burroughs, Lautrà ©amont and Huysmans) and underground cinema, focused on the concepts of polymorphism, perverse sexuality and obsessive individualism resulted too remote from the majority of working-class youth. They were imprisoned in a vicious circle. They felt as aliens, rejected not only by the rest of the world but also by the any existent music genre. They had no reference models, no hopes for the future and neither perspectives of improvement. Therefore, they started to act out alienation, to mime its imagined condition, to manufacture a whole series of subjective correlatives for the official archetypes of the crisis of modern life: the unemployment figures, the Depression, the Westway, Television, etc. (Hebdige, 1979) The awareness of this crisis led to the conversion of what was an inner malaise into tangible icons (the safety pins, the ripped clothes, the spikes, the hungry look, the combat boots, etc.) reflecting in an enhanced way the perceived condition of exile and alienation, which is, nevertheless, voluntarily assumed. Punks, thus, moved back to earlier, more vigorous forms of rock (i.e. the 50s and the mid-60s when the black influences had been strongest) and forward to contemporary reggae(dub, Bob Marley) in order to find a music which reflected more adequately their sense of frustration and oppression. (Hebdige, 1979). They saw in Rastafarian history of exile a point of contact and it was exactly for this reason it was the only accepted subculture alternative to punk. Richard Hell, a punk musician, interviewed in the popular music magazine New Musical Express declared, punks are niggers (NME, 29 October 1977). An inevitably feisty claim but it is indicative of what was the real situation at that time. As Hebdige writes, the punk can be seen in part as white translation of black ethnicity. (Hebdige, 1979) In addition, this unstudied identification with black British and the West Indian tradition was a way to oppose actively to teddy boys, their hated rivals. In fact, punks used to modify and wear elements from the teddy boys style and it was perceived as an outrage by the teddy boy revivalists because they felt as punks stealing and fooling their way of clothing and, in a sense, their ideals. Punk style was perhaps interpreted by the teddy boys as an affront to the traditional working-class values of forthrightness, plain speech and sexual Puritanism which they had endorsed and revived (Hebdige, 1979). Concrete evidences of this tension between the two subcultures could be found every Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1977 along Kings Road where punctually a throng of punks and teds met to fight. Therefore, Reggae, notwithstanding its apparent distance from punk music, started to be present in a number of repertoires of punk bands as The Clash, The Slits, The Jam, and many others. In the majority of punk clubs, they used to play regularly heavy reggae music between live acts and, moreover, the song Punky Reggae Party by Bob Marley The Wailers, is the evident and overwhelming proof of this contamination. Chapter 3 Punks rebellion through style Rebellion is the heart of the punk subculture. Rebellion against society, rebellion against social inequalities, rebellion, in last instance, against conformism. Everything the punks did, everything they wore, dance to, fight for, everything can be consider as punk has the only aim of convey a message of nonconformity. Conformity can be defined as a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people. (Aronson, 1972) Therefore, punks rebellion was essentially against the prevailing modes of thought; what common people took for granted that is to say the necessity to have a good and certain job, the blame on homosexuality, the mistrust in other race, it was simply not accepted as the only and the best code of conduct. However, punks were young, poor, and completely helpless in effectively struggling for changing the reality. Therefore, the only weapon they found to react was to transform themselves in directly offensive and threatening beings. Punks, like previous post-war youth subculture such as teddy boys, the mods, the rockers, the skinheads, the beats, the zoot suiters, and the hippies created, a coherent and elaborate system of body adornment that expressed their estrangement from mainstream society and that horrified the general public. Having little access to dominant means of discourse, punks displayed their disaffiliation and their subcultural identity through such adornment, which was for them an accessible and direct channel of communication. By manipulating the standard codes of adornment in socially objectionable ways punks challenged the accepted categories of everyday dress and disrupted the codes and conventions of daily life (Wojick,1995) Early punks, probably unconsciously, used most of the rebellion techniques typical of the early avant-gardists: unusual fashions, the blurring of boundaries between art and every day life, juxtapositions of seemingly disparate objects and behaviours, intentional provocation of the audience, use of unstrained performers and drastic reorganization (or disorganization) of accepted performance styles and procedure (OHara,1999) In this contest, it is not surprisingly that the main features of punk fashion were so extremely impressive and shocking. Objects borrowed form the most sordid of contexts found a place in the punks ensembles: lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests encased in plastic bin-liners. Safety-pins were taken put of their domestic utility context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip. Cheap trashy fabrics (PVC, plastic lurex, etc.) in vulgar designs (e.g. mock leopard skin) and nasty colours, long discarded by the quality end of the fashion industry as obsolete kitsch, were salvaged by the punks and turned into garments (fly boy drainpipes, common miniskirts) which offered self-conscious commentaries on the notions of modernity and taste.(Hebdige, 1979) Even the conventional ideas of beauty and attractiveness were refused. Hair was dyed with bright colours and straightened up in spikes and Mohawk. Body piercing degenerated in self-mutilation: studs and pins prinked eyebrows, cheeks, nose and lips. Make-up was used by both boys and girls in a massive and impressive way: cosmetics became as paint to be used in creating alien masks to hide behind. As Hebdige argued, beneath the clownish make-up there lurked the unaccepted and disfigured face of capitalism. Claiming to be anarchists and nihilists, punks felt free to offend as many people as they could. They wore terrorist/guerrilla outfits, directly offensive T-shirt covered in swear words or fake blood, along with desecrated religious object and sexually deviant accessories. The perverse and the abnormal were valued intrinsically. In particular, the illicit iconography of sexual fetishism was used to predictable effect. Rapist masks and rubber wear, leather bodices and fishnet stocking, implausibly pointed stiletto heeled shoes, the whole paraphernalia of bondage the belts, straps and chains were exhumed from the boudoir, closet and pornographic film and placed on the street were they retained their forbidden connotations. Some young punks even donned the dirty raincoat the most prosaic symbol of sexual kinkiness- and hence expressed their deviance in suitably proletarian terms. (Hebdige, 1979) For the first wave punks, each adornment used had a precise meaning: The safety pins and bin liners, for instance, symbolized a material and spiritual poverty in an exaggerated form, which could be really experienced or just acted out. In other words, the safety pins, etc. enacted that transition from real to symbolic scarcity which Paul Piccone (1969) has described as the movement from empty stomachs to empty spirits and therefore an empty life notwithstanding [the] chrome and the plastic [â‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦] of the lifestyle of bourgeois society. (Hebdige, 1979) One of the most controversial symbol used by punks were surely the swastika. This symbol was made available to the punks through Bowie and Lou Reeds Berlin phase. It evoked a decadent and evil Germany, an idea of no future strictly linked to the punks mood. Therefore, it had nothing to do with the Nazisms ideology in the punks vision. Quite the opposite, punks firmly supported the anti-fascism and anti-racism movement. In the punk wear, the swastika lost its classic meaning and it was worn just because it was guaranteed to shock. Conventionally, the swastika has always signified enemy and hate, and to be hated is exactly what punks wanted. Chapter 4 Role of media and DIY As it was showed previously, punk was surely a spectacular subculture and it would have been very difficult for media not to pay attention to it. Although many others groups had paved the way for punk through 1975, it was not until the advent of the Sex Pistols that punk began to take shape as a noticeable style for the vast public. The  New Musical Express  gave the  Sex Pistols  their first music press coverage in the 21 February 1976 for their performance at the Marquee. From then on punk rock began to attract critical attention of the specialized press, and criticism from all the rest of the world. Moral panic began emerging clamant after the accident happened at the punk festival at 100 Club in Soho in the September of the same year, when a girl was partially blinded by flying beer glass. Punks were angry, wore absurd and offensive clothes and openly claimed they wanted to fight the society and to be heated. It is not surprising that in few months all the British press was focused on this new subculture frightening the middle class. Punk was described as a big social problem and the deviant and anti-social act (as vandalism, swearing, fighting etc.) did nothing but worsen the situation. Their style was used as counter-evidence of the danger they represented: They infringed the sartorial codes in the same way they disrupted the civil and social codes; they dress in an inhuman way because they are beasts acting as animals without moral. Therefore, punks were demonized in the press and depicted as folk devils. They were a threat to adjure before it led to a degeneracy of all British youth: concerts were cancelled, the Sex Pistols song God save the Queen was banned by British radios, and moral barricades were raised by editors, politicians and other right-thinking people. However, nothing of the above could stop the punk movements diffusion. For the first time in the history, there was an attempt by a working-class youth subculture to provide an alternative critical space within the subculture itself to counteract the hostile ore at least ideologically inflected coverage which punk was receiving in the media. (Hebdige, 1979) An alternative punk press was created: the fanzines. Punk fanzines were non-professional and nonofficial journals edited by an individual or a small group consisting of reviews, editorials and interviews with the most important exponents of the punk scene. These publications were produced on a small scale as cheaply as possible and distributed through a small number of sympathetic retail outlets. The language in which the various manifestos were framed was determinedly working class (i.e. it was liberally peppered with swear words) and typing errors and grammatical mistakes, misspellings and jumbled pagination were left uncorrected in the final proof. Those corrections and crossings out that were made before publication were left to be deciphered by the reader. The overwhelming impression was one of urgency and immediacy, of a paper produced in indecent haste, of memos from the front line. (Hebdige, 1979) The fanzines are one of the most notable expressions of the punks Do It Yourself (DIY) concept. The  DIY ethic, in general terms,  refers to the ethic of being self-reliant by completing tasks oneself as opposed to having others who are more experienced or able complete them for you. The DIY ethic is tied to  punk ideology  and  anti consumerism, as a rejection of the need to purchase items or use existing systems or processes. Sniffin Glue, the first fanzine and the one which achieved the highest circulation, contained perhaps the single most inspired item of propaganda produced by the subculture the definitive statement of punks do- it -your self philosophy- a diagram showing three finger positions on the neck of a guitar over the caption: Heres one chord, heres two more, now form your band. (Hebdige, 1979) Nevertheless, the Do it yourself philosophy was not confined just in the press world. Emerging punk bands began to record their music, produce albums and merchandise, distribute their works and often performed  basement shows  in  residential  homes rather than at traditional  venue, in this way they could to avoid  corporate sponsorship and to secure freedom in performance. To be honest, these emergent bands had no many other choices because most of venues tended to evade more  experimental music, and so houses were often the only places at which they were allowed to play. Obviously, also punk fashion followed the DIY ideology: The clothes suited the lifestyle of those with limited cash due to unemployment and the general low-income school leavers. Punks cut up old clothes from charity and thrift shops, destroyed the fabric and refashioned outfits creating a very innovative way of clothing never existed before. This stylistic innovation attracted the medias attention provoking two different responses: In the fashion pages, the newness and the creativity of the punk fashion began to be not only accepted but also celebrated, while there was a big part of the British press still stigmatizing the punk as ridiculous and offensive. Starting from an initial acceptance by the fashion magazines, little by little all media began a sort of process of recuperation and incorporation of the punk: obviously, young punks still represented a deviant way of living but the medias attitude, and so of the whole society as well, slowly shifted from a demonizing approach to an exorcising approach. This was made, as Hebdige explains, throughout two different forms: The ideological form and the commodity form A Ideological form Through this form, media tried to neutralize the differences between punks and common people. Young punks family assumed a new role. The punks tended to be resituated by the press in the family, perhaps because members of the subculture deliberately obscured their origins, refused the family and willingly played the part of folk devil, presenting themselves as pure objects, as villainous clowns. [â‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦]. For whatever reason, the inevitable glut of articles gleefully denouncing the latest punk outrage was counter-balanced by an equal number of items devoted to the small detail of punk family life. (Hebdige, 1979) During the summer of 1977, several articles were published on punk babies, punk-ted weddings and on a lot of other common daily situations involving punks and with titles like Punks have mothers too: They tell us a few home truths (Woman, 15 April 1978) or Punks and Mothers (Woman s Own, 15 October 1977) All these articles served to minimize the Otherness so stridently proclaimed in punk style, and defined the subculture in precisely those terms which it sought most vehemently to resist and deny (Hebdige, 1979) B Commodity form This second form of incorporation is the most interesting for the purposes of this research. It is trough this form that subcultural signs (clothes, music etc.) are driven to the conversion into mass-produced objects. Therefore, it is here the key to understand how the punk way of clothing, born from the rebellion against the whole society and characterised from the beginning by an anti-fashion attitude, could be transformed and largely exploited as a proper fashion trend. But first to get to this, it will be necessary to draw the story of what could be consider the cradle of punk fashion The 430, Kings Road. Chapter 5 430, Kings Road Everything started in the October 1971 when Malcolm McLaren and his art-school friend Patrick Casey opened, here in the heart of the Chelsea district, a small stand in the back room of a shop called Paradise Garage. They sold at time original rock n roll vinyl records, specialized music magazines, vintage items from the 1950s and some garment. The young McLaren was convinced that music and fashion were two inseparable things and so, when in 1971 he obtained the proprietary rights on the store, he renamed it Let It Rock and transformed it in a clothing store stocked up with second-hand and new teddy boy clothes designed by his girlfriend Vivienne Westwood. The shop wavy iron facade was painted black with the stores name written in pink letters, while the interior followed the typical stylish period details, such as the so-called Odeon wallpapers. Westwoods designs sold in the shop were outrageous and outlandish, inspired by bikers, fetishists and prostitutes. Brothel creeper shoes, drape coats, and skin-tight trousers were designed by Vivienne Westwood (but also by McLaren itself) and then made up by an East End tailor and by a local seamstress.   One of the most representative example of the kind of garments sold in this first-phase Let It Rock is the Bones T-shirt: Using chicken bones acquired from a local takeaway, Westwood boiled and drilled the bones and attached them with chains and studs to spell keywords such as Rock and Perv. The idea originated in the skull and crossbones of the bikers, but it gave the garment a primitive, talismanic power. [1] Nothing similar ever appeared in the entire fashion world scene: the store with its creation attract the attention of the international press, from the Rolling Stone to certain Japanese magazines. It was a real success but McLaren was not completely satisfied with the style of the shop: their main customers were teddy boys and he had huge problems with them. For these reason the next year, he travelled to New York for a boutique fair where he met the emergent American rock band the New York Dolls. It was here he started to take his first steps in the rock music system. In fact he took over their management, he dressed them in red leather clothes supplied by his London store and promoted them using Soviet iconography. The Dolls broke up soon after, but served their purpose as a dry run for the management style he would soon deploy to spectacula