Jerry and The New World Disorder

                Jerry Maguire is a wealthy and successful sports agent. His daily life and career is merely a routine full of small talk and making his employers happy.  In several ways, he functions as a machine in a assembly line. A small fraction in the company that is  all about producing and increasing revue for the capitalist.  production line. Jerry merely exist and does what he is told.

                Everything was appearing great in his career until he notices how selfish he had become. Jerry has a breakdown and write a statement to his company. In this letter Jerry stresses the importance of caring more for each individual client . The best way to achieve client happiness is to take on less clients and cater to their individual needs.  Jerry idea is opposed to the Fordism and Taylorism concept. These concept  consist of  an assembly line system that try to  produce maximum production. In this case the agents take on as many clients as possible to increase their profit.

                After the submission of the statement, all the employees applaud Jerry bold statement. However, the bosses see Jerry as a threat to their system and Jerry is let off. Jerry leave  with an accountant Dorothy Boyd to start his own company. However, when Jerry left he lost all his clients but one . Dorothy stays by his side and tries to support Jerry as long as she can. Dorothy and her son grew on Jerry and he fell in love with them. However, Jerry was having a difficult time building his client base and Dorothy had her son to consider. Dorothy considered taking a job in another state, but Jerry asked her to marry him. Their relationship became unsteady when Jerry realized that he married her because he felt he had to.

                In the end Jerry’s only client has an impact movement in his career and they cheer with relief. It is later that Jerry realizes he doesn’t have anyone to celebrate his success with. According to this film and several other Hollywood films is the idea that people can’t be happy until they are successful, wealthy, and in love. Only than could a person truly be happy. Or perhaps like the character Rod Tidwell referred to as Quan love. Which consist of loyalty, ,respect ,and money makes up happiness. All these combined can make a couple complete.

The New World Disorder addresses the concept of how nations wide have and continue to change in culturally. Today’s society is largely about technology and consumer culture.

The economy began to grow towards large consumption audiences.









Fordism- is the making a large scale production an incorporating into a large scale productions to produce mass consumption. However, the Fordism concept led to crisis of overproduction and thus Post-Fordism. This called for the company to evaluate how they constructed their labor systems.  Labor was narrowed down to the multi-skilled employees.  It is because of post-Fordism that much of the work was handled through various part time jobs. Company than began to hire low paid temporary workers. In many case they hired woman or people of color for a lower price. To demonstrate the concept I choose to show a clip with a factory ensemble line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTqZ3beldXY







Post Fordism is labor and work concepts but it also is about the relationship between consumers and accumulation.  The main process of the theory is to study how much consumers spend.





The patterns of consumptions continue to regenerate: consumption levels rise and are shortly followed fragmenting the working class. Today’s population is dominant by western societal influences. In a western society, people are constantly shifting importance in consumption needs and preferences. However, in a western society consumptions are no longer concerned of the value of the product, but rather what the product symbolizes. In essence of it all value it found through the views of others. For instance, teens throughout several generations have valued certain things that no longer hold ay value. Value is determined by significant social affiliation

Consumption fads continue to rise which eventually leads to culture consumption. According to the reading, it lessens the chance for uniqueness and creativity if everyone has what everyone else has.



Modern culture is continues to change due to cultural values and economical changes.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, was a play original written by Tennessee Williams. William’s work was brought up unique story concepts for its era. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a drama filled play. The setting took place on a Mississippi plantation home. The story consists of the characters Big Daddy who is dying of cancer, Gooper the son of big daddy and his wife Mae. They are both quite the shallow characters who appear to be greedy and would like to get a share in the planation’ estate. Brick is an alcoholic who is grieving for a lost friend Skipper, who confessed his love for Brick. Finally, there the head strong character named Maggie, who has a shaky marriage with Brick.

The purpose of my group’s presentation,
 is to intrigue our fellow classmates and get them to interact with each other. And what better way to get their interest on the subject than to act out the dramatic scenes of the play. Plays are meant to be acted out and not just read.

Next, for each scene we will present questions to the class. We will award those that participate and answer the questions we have prepared. The questions will include material from the following excerpts Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Dukore’s The Cat Has Nine Lives.

I learned several things while working in this group. For instance, in the first meeting I discovered we each had different interpretations from the text. In many ways, I believe that’s what made this play brilliant. Williams never quite established what may become of the characters or if Brick did indeed have a relation with skipper. I think that what’s make the play unique because people could make up their own thoughts concerning the ending resolution.

Also, I learned that an open communication is very important when coming to group objects. We had a difficult time deciding on what to do for the presentation and finding a way to meet. We tried holding a meeting via Skype, Voodoo, E-mails, text, and phone calsl but we still had a difficult time coming together at once. However, in the end we worked together.


We decided to address three general concepts and themes such as Class, Sexuality and Gender. My participation in the group was to rewrite and condense the scene that addressed gender theme. At first, I found it difficult to condense the play’s text, but in the end I was successful. After I condensed one of the three scenes the group was covering, I come up with questions that I would present to the class. For my scene, I choose two characters Maggie
and Mae to show the relationship of women. In Simone de Beaviour, she refers to women as the “Second Sex”. The women in the play are fighting for attention and affection. The women demonstrate Simone de Beauvoir’s theory that women don’t unite with one another to make a difference in how they are displayed by society. In her theory she explains how women are seen as defenseless and dependent on their man.

In the excerpt of Differance, Jacques Derrida argues that culture is determined through a massive culture. Meaning culture draws context by relating ideas to others.  Relations of ideas help build and construct the foundations within systems.  Naturally our system draws our identity by categorizing and observing one another. He further explains how one simple word could have several meanings and therefore words are full of contradictions. He states the only way to define a word is to pull together several words to draw meaning.  Difference can be found by finding the middle ground in which the differences meet.  In other words, identity can’t be created based off one separate thoughts or characteristics. We find our identity by finding the difference in situations. Further explained in Derrida argument is differance is nothing more than a pulling force of opposition.  In a way differance is a contradictory because elements of difference must have some common ground. Surely if all elements never had some type of resemblance of its structure, it would make it impossible to identify meaning.  According to Ferdinand de Saussure, structure is much needed to have the ability to unify things in relation. So in a sense, we learn and build of past events and common understandings off one another.

Similar to Derrida’s view on elements needing a common understanding, Saussure states that language depends upon a community’s understanding.  In Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, he explains that there is a big difference between language and speaking.  Language is the social part of a given society as for speech is more personal to each individual. Language is issued to put order to things that we perceive. Language helps build upon previous ideas. Language provides order and meaning. Language generates semiology that represents the relationship in a community.  In order to have a Language, the structure must have some general agreement to draw meaning.

Semiology is language’s combination of sign, concepts, and sounds.  Language itself has no preexisting idea.  Language simply didn’t exist before communicating. Language helped further developed communication. However, language may have further developed communication between beings but language still has its’ limitations. For instance, thoughts are limited by choice of words.  Language may set limitations when being translated. The very thought process itself can’t occur without a language. Sounds itself don’t carry meaning.

Saussure continues to discuss the signified and signifier. Meaning language consist of symbols and sign that continue to create ways to communicate.  For instance, whenever we see certain sign we automatically hear the sounds of the word without even speaking of sign. Saussus explains how language consist of two elements the signifier and the signified. The signified is the general concept or image within a given language. However, the signifier is the defined word from a given language.  For instance, imagine you see the Pepsi iconic symbol. People from within that given community could associate that symbol with the name Pepsi but also a refreshing dark soda.  It that iconic image was displayed in 300 years ago it will hold no meaning at all. In all language there is the process in which a language develops in a linear nature. Meaning over time a language adjusts and moves along in a strategic pattern. In a linear Society, a language continues to adjust and adapts through generation to generation.

Similar to language continuing to adapt and continue from one generation to the next, the idealistic view of women as the second sex continues on. In Simone de Beauvoir excerpt, she explains how women are deprived of their humanity and equality amongst men. In her writing she disccused how femininity is displayed with negative correlations. Female are seen amongst societal men as incompetent, weak, and fragile. However, men attributes and attitudes are displayed in a positive way. For instance, man is seen as strong when showing emotions. However, if women were upset it would be that the women are acting too emotional.  Beauvoir further explains how women are constantly being seen as sexual beings to arouse and please men.

I decided to embed a clip to further help explain a Saussure and Beauvoir theory.

Saussure discusses the signified and signifier. Meaning language consist of symbols and sign. For instance, whenever we see certain sign we automatically hear the sound of the word without even speaking the word. Pepsi is iconic symbol that represents the brand and soda itself. In the commercial Pepsi makes a point to display the symbol. On the other hand the commercial supports Beauvoir’s theory. In Beauvoir’s theory she would argue this commercial is depriving women of the equality to the men species.  Britney spears the spokesperson of the ad is sexually exploited and is seen more of a sexual object rather than a human being.