Circus Show in Las Vegas Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Circus Show in Las Vegas - Essay Example Before attending this circus show, I had a very blurred concept of circus shows. I used to think that circus shows are solely animal based. Some people have trained their pets in a particular fashion so the pets are able to perform certain tricks in front of the masses. A monkey dancing on a song or three lions standing upon one another were the particular images that used to flash in mind the very moment I would listen about a circus show. The idea of merely seeing some animals perform never attracted me enough to draw me towards a circus show until my friend, Tom almost dragged me to the show with him this April. Only as I appeared on the show last Saturday did I realize that circus was actually much more than what I knew about it. The whole scene was spellbinding. I can only try to narrate the scene in words, yet the whole feeling was too heavenly and magical to be captured into words. We arrived at the show at 3 pm. It was a big show with too many components. The show was organiz ed in the open, to lend the show the traditional touch. There were loudspeakers everywhere advertising different kinds of acts. We roamed about the place and saw different shows. I particularly liked the act of a motorcyclist who was making the bike go round and round along the inner walls of a deep well, which was called the well of sorrows. To add to the adventure, there were about a dozen snakes in the base of the well. The host told us that they were some of the most venomous and gigantic snakes to be found on the face of Earth. From the look of them, I could tell that the host was not lying. I was looking at the snakes from a distance of about 20 meters from the top, and they still seemed too gigantic to be anywhere less than 2 meters each. The 20 meters deep well was divided into 5 levels, each of which was 4 meters in depth. The motorcyclist was given the task to ride the bike to the lowest level. The lower he went, the more he earned. The scene of watching the motorcyclist w iggle through the cobras on the lowest level was one of the most breath-taking scenes of my life. After watching the well of sorrows, we headed over to the gymnastics section. This was the only section of the whole circus show that was organized in a hall. The gymnastics were performed by obese ladies. One lady that I was particularly astonished to watch do gymnastics was in her forties and from her look, it seemed as if she was about 140 kgs in weight. In normal life, I would hardly expect such an obese woman to walk, and to my uttermost astonishment, the lady was walking over a carbon wire tied between two stories of the circular hall in a diagonal fashion. As I saw the woman walk up the wire to the second level, I expected her to fall any moment, but she was too skilled and experienced to let imbalance. That was the most scaring, dreadful and yet, funniest moment of my life. After the gymnastics, Tom and I moved over to the ice cream parlor. We had some delicious vanilla scoops t opped with bittersweet chocolate sauce. That seemed like a nice full stop to the experience of watching the circus show.

What are the basic arguments of Marcuses one-dimensional man thesis To Essay

What are the basic arguments of Marcuses one-dimensional man thesis To what extent are they useful in analyzing contemporary capitalism - Essay Example wentieth century: â€Å"the calling attention to new forms of domination, repression and social control in advanced industrial societies† (Kellner, 1984: 5). Modern man, he contends, has become intellectually and spiritually complacent through his psychological dependence on the accoutrements of consumerism and the consumer society itself (repressive desublimation)—â€Å"key notions and images of literature and their fate [through the process of technological rationality [disposes of] oppositional and transcending elements in the "higher culture" (Marcuse, 1964, chapter 3: para. 1) Marcuse, equally critical of the Soviet system, offers a wide-range of criticism both of contemporary capitalism and the Soviet model of communism as it documents the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both societies. "...totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests’ (Marcuse, 1964, chapter 1: para. 5). â€Å"Our [western] society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living† which is not happiness, nor freedom, nor consistent with any social or political reality that, while the system appears reasonable is hardly so and in fact, profoundly irrational. However, it is western capitalism to which Marcuse directs his strongest and most pointed disapproval. â€Å"Herbert Marcus has displayed a prophetic vision that challenges the public to either comprehend the forces that shape their lives or limit their discourse and remain captured in a lesser dimension† (The Search for Freedom, 2001: para. 3). With the spread of capitalism through globalisation of economies, the work, ideas and arguments put forth in The One Dimensional Man are equally and perhaps more relevant, obvious and