University of Washington Personal Statement Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

University of Washington - Personal Statement Example I did enjoy UCLA at first, but after a while I realized that I was not progressing as I had hoped for. The architectural program at UCLA is limited somewhat due to the fact that the university focuses on other areas of study. In order to grow and expand, I need to study at an institution where the focus will be on improving the knowledge of the students and equipping them with the tools required to succeed. 2. The University of Washington will assist me by providing me with a strong foundation from which to expand my knowledge in the area of architecture. I have always been an artistic person, and I have held a love of architecture from since I was very young. The University of Washington will provide me with a learning environment that is conducive to my well-being and academic pursuits. Creativity is an important part of architecture, and I feel that this institution will not stifle my ambition and instead assist me to achieve all of my professional goals that I have set out for myself. Additionally, I hope that the University of Washington will help me to develop on a personal level as well. Most education institutions are focused on the academic abilities of students, but the reality is that the personal well-being of students should be just as important. This is the reason why I am looking for something a little bit more than just a solid education. It is my hope that the Universi ty of Washington will be a place where I can flourish and fulfill the potential that I have had in the field of architecture since I was a young child. 3. As I have mentioned previously, my first experience of architecture was in Indonesia when I was younger. Although I had an intense passion for architecture, I could not progress within this field while still at an Indonesian school. I was still very young when my parents made the bold move to send me to an international school. The benefits to this

Spectator and Cinema Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Spectator and Cinema - Essay Example In the mid-'70s, the concept began to play a major role in the theoretical discussions in Britain and North America, with the result that psychoanalytical studies of the viewing subject have proliferated. In my reading of Wings of Desire, I borrow from several theoreticians of suture, including some who have been at odds with each other concerning the scope and consequence of this concept. Although my reading of Wings of Desire certainly owes much to the French scholars, claims I make concerning Wenders' film run counter to the original polemical thrust of their work. For them, suture denotes the operation by which cinema encloses the subject in ideology. Their analysis bears primarily on dominant Hollywood cinema, and they restrict the scope of suture to the ideological effacement of the cinematic code. They are reductive as well with respect to the semiotic system of suturing, positing at times the shot/reverseshot system or point-of-view cutting as the fundamental cinematic articulation of suture. Other French film theoreticians who complement a general semiotics of cinema with Lacanian notions of the subject and signification, such as Christian Metz and Jean-Louis Baudry, have avoided such a rigid application of suture to the cinematic apparatus and, nevertheless, have arrived at the even more pessimistic conclusion that cinema itself functions as a support and in strument of ideology. (Metz 1974, 39-47) Anglo-American film scholars have expanded on these psychoanalytical theories of cinema without sharing their negative assessment of the basic cinematic apparatus. (MacCabe 1977, 48-76) However, such challenges to the original French position on cinema and ideology have pertained for the most part only to films that resist closure and foreground lack and alienation. Thomas Elsaesser's 1980 article on Fassbinder is an important example of such criticism in the area of German cinema. Focusing on Fassbinder, but also claiming relevance for New German Cinema in general (mentioning by name Herzog, Wenders, Syberberg, and Kluge), Elsaesser responds to the more radical conclusions drawn by Baudry and Metz. He rejects their implication that "the cinema is indeed an invention without a future' because it systematically ties the spectator to a regressive state, in an endless circuit of substitution and fetishization." (Elsaesser 1986, 537) Nevertheless, suture as well as narrative closure of any kind has remained ideologically suspect. Wings of Desire provides, I think, an excellent opportunity to re-examine this bias that, in the wake of Oudart and his successors, persists against identification and narrative (closure). In the discussion of suture, the emphasis has been on processes of identification that position the viewing