title: Fred Hampton

text: A 27-minute documentary, "Death of a Black Panther: The Fred Hampton Story", was used as evidence in the civil suit. The 2002 documentary "The Weather Underground" shows in detail how that group was deeply influenced by Hampton and his death—as well as showing that Hampton kept his distance from them for being what he called "adventuristic, masochistic and Custeristic".


title: Fred Hampton

text: Much of the first half of "Eyes on the Prize" episode 12, "A Nation of Law?", chronicles Hampton's leadership and extrajudicial killing. The events of his rise to prominence, Hoover's targeting of him, and Hampton's subsequent death are also recounted with footage in the 2015 documentary "".


title: Fred Hampton

text: "The Murder of Fred Hampton" is a documentary shot from within the movement, released in 1971. It has no narration, relying solely on footage shot from within the Black Panther organization and portraying Hampton and his colleagues on their own terms.


title: Fred Hampton

text: In the 1999 TV miniseries "The 60s", Hampton appears serving free breakfast with the BPP. David Alan Grier plays Hampton.


title: Fred Hampton

text: "The Trial of the Chicago 7" (2020) features Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Hampton, in which he advises Bobby Seale as he was denied counsel, with the Chicago Seven.


title: Fred Hampton

text: "Judas and the Black Messiah" is a 2021 film about O'Neal's betrayal of Hampton. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and was directed by Shaka King. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on February 1, 2021. For his performance, Kaluuya won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Aditya Chopra (; born 21 May 1971) is an Indian filmmaker, studio executive, producer and film distributor who mainly works in Indian cinema. Currently serving as the Chairman and Managing Director of Yash Raj Films, founded by his father Yash Chopra, he has produced several successful films under this banner and has established himself as one of the leading producers of Indian cinema. He is also known for writing and directing "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" (1995), "Mohabbatein" (2000) and "Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi" (2008).


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Chopra, the elder son of the late filmmaker Yash Chopra and Pamela Chopra, was born on 21 May 1971. He completed his formal education and acquired his Indian Certificate of Secondary Education from Bombay Scottish School. He graduated from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics along with Anil Thadani, Karan Johar (who is his first cousin) and Abhishek Kapoor.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Chopra started his film-making career at the age of 18 as an assistant director, working with his father on films such as "Chandni" (1989), "Lamhe" (1991) and "Darr" (1993). He also wrote his first screenplays for his father's "Parampara" (1992) and his mother's independently produced film "Aaina" (1993), which was the only film not directed by his father that he served as an assistant director on. Chopra, after gaining a respectable amount of experience, started independently at the age of 23 with the all-time blockbuster "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge", with Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, for which he was the director and writer. The film was scripted by Chopra and produced by his father Yash Chopra, under the YRF banner. Chopra started work on the script of the film in 1990, at the age of 19, and gradually spent time making about five drafts of the film's original script. Chopra even managed to convince his brother Uday Chopra and cousin Karan Johar, both aspiring filmmakers, to enter the film industry as assistant directors with the film. Chopra once said that the presence of his relatives during the making of the film worked as a huge emotional support. "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" eventually went on to become one of the biggest hits of all time and won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Chopra eventually went on to write the dialogues and the story of his father's 1997 blockbuster "Dil To Pagal Hai", (which won the National Award), also made under YRF. His next film as a director was "Mohabbatein" with Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan which gave the yesteryear star a new life in his film career, and also launched his brother Uday Chopra into the film industry. The film was also written and co-produced by Chopra and fared very well at the box office. The next film under the banner was "Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai", in June 2002 which also starred his brother Uday alongside Tulip Joshi, Bipasha Basu and Jimmy Sheirgill. The film did moderately well at the box office. The studio's final release that year was "Saathiya" in December 2002 which starred Vivek Oberoi opposite Rani Mukerji.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In 2004, Chopra produced "Hum Tum", "Dhoom" and "Veer Zaara" (for which he was also the screenwriter) under the YRF banner. All three films went on to become critical and commercial blockbusters, earning more than (unadjusted for inflation) in the worldwide market. The films became the seventh, fourth and highest-grossing Indian films of 2004. The company won most of the Indian film awards in the year, with "Veer Zaara" also winning the National Award. This was considered a major breakthrough for this film producing company and cemented its position as the leader of the Indian Entertainment for the following decades, to date.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Chopra then produced and wrote several other highly commercial and critically acclaimed films over the years, namely "Bunty Aur Babli", "Salaam Namaste", "Fanaa", "Dhoom 2" and "Chak De India" (which also won the National Award). Chopra also made his third film as a director in 2008 with "Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi" starring Shahrukh Khan and launching newcomer Anushka Sharma. The film became the highest-grossing film for Shahrukh Khan and YRF at that time, grossing in the worldwide market. These films established them as one of the most powerful film production companies in Indian cinema, giving Aditya Chopra an estimated net worth of (trade and stock market estimate) and making Chopra one of the most influential people in the country.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: YRF launched a number of budding screenwriters and directors under their banner throughout these years. Directors and screenwriters such as Karan Johar (his "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" was co-produced and released by Yash Raj Film Distributors), Kunal Kohli, Kabir Khan, Sanjay Gadhvi, Jaideep Sahni, Siddharth Anand, Shimit Amin, Habib Faisal, Shaad Ali, Maneesh Sharma and Vijay Acharya debuted under YRF and have gone on to become independent entities in films. The company also produced films for filmmakers such as Anil Mehta and Pradeep Sarkar under their banner. The company was eventually ranked at Number 1 (among the most successful film production companies in India) in a survey conducted by Filmfare and at Number 27 (among the most successful film production companies in the world) in a survey by "The Hollywood Reporter", both under the vice-chairmanship of Chopra.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In September 2015, YRF announced Chopra's directorial comeback, titled "Befikre", scheduled for a December 2016 release. In October 2015, it was announced that Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor would be cast in the lead roles. In December 2015, YRF announced that the music of the film will be produced by Vishal–Shekhar and Jaideep Sahni, both of whom would return to collaborate with YRF after roughly 9 years. This would mark Chopra's directorial comeback after roughly 8 years (his "Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi" released in 2008). A theatrical trailer of the film was released at the Eiffel Tower and across social media platforms in the month of October. The film was budgeted at (including P&A) and released across 2900 screens worldwide on 9 December 2016. It opened to widespread negative reviews across platforms and faced heavy losses to its business because of the currency demonetisation implied by the Government of India a few days prior to its release. The film managed to gross after a two-week theatrical run at the global box office failing to manage break-even business for YRF.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Upon realising the lack of a proper film shooting studio during their years of film-making, YRF went on build their dream film production studio in the year 2005, located in Mumbai city. The first film to be shot in YRF Studios was the company's 2006 critical and commercial blockbuster "Fanaa". Some of the notable films of outside banners that were shot in the studio over the years are; "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (2006), "Partner" (2007), "Taare Zameen Par" (2007), "Dostana" (2008), "Wanted" (2009), "3 Idiots" (2009), "My Name Is Khan" (2010), "Dabangg" (2010), "Bodyguard" (2011), "Ra.One" (2011), "Agneepath" (2012), "Chennai Express" (2013), "Jai Ho" (2014) and "P.K." (2014). The studio was created and designed by Chopra and his then wife, Payal Khanna and is equipped with high technology film shooting equipment and materials. The studio, sprawling over and towering up to six floors, is used to shoot films for the company and is also rented for other filming and television shoots such as "10 Ka Dum" and "Kaun Banega Crorepati" for Sony and "Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain", "Koffee With Karan" and "Satyamev Jayate" for STAR.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Apart from film production, Chopra's YRF also distributed (theatrical, home entertainment and satellite) and canvassed a wide variety of Independent films that came out of the Parallel Cinema industry of India, such as "Godmother" (1999), "Zubeidaa" (2001), "Maqbool" (2004), "" (2004), "Black" (2005), "My Brother Nikhil" (2005), "" (2005) and "Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara" (2005), that helped them leverage with a powerful film production house such as his, and thereby reach a wider audience on their release. YRF Distributors also released several big-budgeted films such as "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" (1998), "Biwi No.1" (1999), "Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai" (2000), "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham" (2001), "Koi Mil Gaya" (2003), "Kal Ho Naa Ho" (2003), "Krrish" (2006) and "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (2006). In 2013, the company's distribution leg reportedly sold the satellite rights of its highly anticipated venture "Dhoom 3" for . to Sony Entertainment Television.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: After constantly delivering musical successes such as "Darr", "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" and "Dil To Pagal Hai" throughout the years of its existence, the company decided to leverage on their growing clout in the music industry. YRF established their independent feature music distribution leg under the name YRF Music in 2004. The leg was developed for the purpose of digital as well as physical distribution of all the film soundtracks released under the banner. The first soundtrack to be distributed under YRF Music was the company's critical and commercial musical blockbuster "Veer Zaara". The leg established careers of many budding music composers throughout the years, who leveraged themselves by scoring music for YRF projects such as Jatin–Lalit ("Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge"), Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy ("Bunty Aur Babli"), Pritam ("Dhoom"), Vishal–Shekhar ("Salaam Namaste"), Salim–Sulaiman ("Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi"), Amit Trivedi ("Ishaqzaade"), Ram Sampath ("Luv Ka The End"), Sajid–Wajid ("Daawat-e-Ishq"), Sohail Sen ("Mere Brother Ki Dulhan"), Raghu Dixit ("Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge"), Sachin–Jigar ("Shuddh Desi Romance") and Amartya Rahut ("Aurangzeb").


title: Aditya Chopra

text: The Walt Disney Company entered Indian Entertainment in 2007 through a three-film co-production agreement ("Ta Ra Rum Pum", "Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic" and "Roadside Romeo") with YRF. Disney's move was seen as a bid to increase its global clout and finally enter the increasingly lucrative Indian Cinema arena. The company offered a 49% acquisition of YRF at (unadjusted for inflation) in 2009, which took the valuation of the Indian entertainment company to , at the time. YRF however declined the acquisition offer made by the American conglomerate.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In 2011, a 99% share acquisition offer by Disney was accepted by UTV at (unadjusted for inflation). The two companies together established Disney UTV, that functioned as the Indian subsidiary of the American company. In December 2016, Disney announced that is restructuring its Indian operations and UTV will no longer produce movies and will focus only on distribution of its Hollywood films.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: The company saw an all-time low, with several of their high budgeted films not doing well at the box office, despite favourable critical reviews and the company thereby suffering losses amounting to millions from 2007 to 2010. The films broke YRF's perfect success ratio and were oddly released one after another. Some of the most unsuccessful films produced under the banner were "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom", "Laaga Chunari Mein Daag", "Tashan", "Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic", "Roadside Romeo", and "Pyaar Impossible". Chopra then took over as the Vice Chairman of Yash Raj Films in 2010, soon after the release of the film "Badmaash Company" under the same banner.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In 2011, the company took the critical decision of banking on the successes of "3 Idiots", "Ra.One" and "Bodyguard" and went into production of three individual mainstream films with Aamir Khan for "Dhoom 3" (for which Chopra wrote the story), Shahrukh Khan for "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" (for which Chopra wrote the story, screenplay and dialogue) and with Salman Khan for "Ek Tha Tiger" (for which Chopra wrote the story) the first installment in the YRF Spy Universe, a feat that has never been achieved by any film production company to date. The move was seen as a landmark deal by YRF as it engaged three of the most successful box office actors of Indian Cinema in independent projects at the time. Moreover, the three films turned out to be the most expensive productions by YRF; "Ek Tha Tiger" was produced at , "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" was produced at and "Dhoom 3" was produced at .


title: Aditya Chopra

text: All three of these films shattered box office records of India and went on to become some of the highest-grossing films of their time. "Ek Tha Tiger", which released on the 66th Independence Day of India, earned approximately and thereby became the eleventh highest-grossing film of Indian Cinema."Jab Tak Hai Jaan" opened worldwide on the Diwali day of 2012 and went on to earn and became the fifteenth highest-grossing film in India. "Dhoom 3" released in (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Arabic) on the Christmas week of 2013 and grossed approximately , in the worldwide market and went on to become the twelfth highest-grossing film of Indian cinema, .


title: Aditya Chopra

text: After the demise of his father Yash Chopra in October 2012, Aditya Chopra was elevated to the position of chairman and Chief Executive of the company's studio wing. The company went for a soft-launch on 3 January 2013.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: The company received angel investment by institutional fund-raisers such as LIC of India, RNT Associates, PremjiInvest, Catamaran Ventures, Maruti Udyog and Unilazer Ventures. YRF was made open to Indian enterprises only and no FDI was accepted. Venture capitalists also showed interest with Adi Godrej, Y. C. Deveshwar, Kumar Birla, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Anand Mahindra, Chanda Kochhar, Sunil Mittal, Shikha Sharma and Uday Kotak investing undisclosed sums. YRF came out with more films, under the chairmanship of Chopra and the new management.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Apart from producing big-budgeted films with established actors, YRF also announced several films featuring relative newcomers in the fourth quarter of Fiscal year 2012; "Aurangzeb" starring Prithviraj Sukumaran, Sashaa Agha and Arjun Kapoor, "Gunday" starring Ranveer Singh, "Bewakoofiyan" starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Sonam Kapoor, "Daawat-e-Ishq" with Aditya Roy Kapoor, "Mardaani" with Rani Mukerji and "Kill Dil" starring Ali Zafar and Govinda. The films released all through 2013 and 2014 were seen as a strategic move by the company to infuse newer talent into Indian cinema in the form of actors, screenwriters, directors and technicians. In a bid to break away from the traditional star system of Indian cinema, the company ventured into producing low-budgeted independent films with new talent (actors, creatives and technicians) from 2008. Apart from working with upcoming actors, the company independently launched several new faces as leading actors in several of their big-budgeted films through their home banner and through Y-Films, including:


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Sensing a keen following of Indian cinema in Japan during the Festival de Cannes, YRF Studios decided to re-release "Ek Tha Tiger" on 8 March 2013 and "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" on 20 April 2013 in an association with The Nikkatsu Corporation. The deal was further extended to the release of "Dhoom 3" on 25 December 2013 during the MAMI Film Festival.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In a bid to strengthen their foothold in the United States and the European market, the company established its international film producing leg; YRF Entertainment, which was solely focused on production and financing of international film content. The first film to independently release under the banner was the 2012 romantic comedy "The Longest Week" which starred Olivia Wilde, Jason Bateman and Billy Crudup. The film did moderately well in the worldwide box office and managed to break-even.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: The next film to be released under YRF Entertainment is "The Grace of Monaco" starring Nicole Kidman and Tim Roth. The film is co-produced by Arash Amel. Primary filming of the project is complete and the film is slated for a March 2014 release. The company also announced its maiden Anglo-Indian film project that would be co-produced by Mira Nair under the Mirabai Films banner and directed by Shimit Amin. In 2013, the company also announced its next venture, "Seducing Ingrid Bergman" based on the life of Ingrid Bergman, written by Chris Greenhalgh and Arash Amel.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: YRF forayed into regional Indian film production in 2013, with "Aaha Kalyanam", a remake of their 2010 critical and commercial blockbuster "Band Baaja Baaraat" starring Nani and debutant Vaani Kapoor. The Tamil-Telugu bilingual project would be directed by Gokul Krishna and produced by Chopra. YRF plans to launch both the lead actress and director with this film. The untitled film completed the first schedule of its principal photography in Chennai in May 2013, with the next two schedules to be held in Hyderabad and Mysore in July 2013. Moreover, the studio also released Tamil and Telugu versions of its "Dhoom 3" for the South Indian market. The company plans to deliver remakes from its existing catalog as well as new and original regional content (in Tamil and Telugu), but also content that is set to break into other regional film markets (Malayalam and Tulu) of the south.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Throughout the years of its existence, YRF inked various strategic business agreements with independent film and media entities present in the country.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: He is also the current Chairman of India's multi-national film, media, and entertainment conglomerate Yash Raj Films (YRF), becoming the second person to hold that position in the company's history after Sanjeev Kohli. Chopra has produced several commercially viable projects including off-beat content not necessarily fitting into the realm of "masala films". Chopra is the first to move towards the film studio model through independent projects helmed by talent under his banner. Major post-production work of the company is completed at YRF Studios (co-founded by his ex-wife Payal Khanna), where Chopra serves as Chief Executive. In December 2009, Chopra fought a $3.7 billion hostile takeover bid by Disney, post its acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel. YRF continued as a domestic entity aided by the Tata Sons, as Disney acquired UTV at $500 million. This was followed by the exits of Dick Cook from Disney and Sanjeev Kohli from YRF. In January 2019, YRF reached a $9.1 billion valuation by SEBI, thereby making it the largest film production company in the history of Indian Cinema; Disney exited all Indian film operations and was liquidated the same year.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Apart from emerging as an equitable brand, his company earned the status of a movie mogul through distribution networks spread across the globe. Having denied him admission into the NSD due to his severe stammering as a young applicant, the Film Division of India eventually honored him with the National Award for his achievements in 1995, 2005, 2007 and 2015. The Government of India appealed both Chopra and Mani Ratnam to focus on content created locally under its Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives. In June 2018, he was awarded membership into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by the Producers Guild of America. In May 2020, Chopra refused licensing deals with Amazon, Netflix, and with Apple TV+ opting for traditional film exhibition. YRF finalised plans to launch its own OTT service with Tata ELXSI the same year.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Photographers of the Indian media caught a glimpse of the extremely reclusive Chopra on 27 December 2008. Chopra's "Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi" and Aamir Khan's "Ghajini" were the two big Indian releases of the year 2008 and were pitted against each other by the Press; Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi was to release on Diwali and "Ghajini" was to release on Christmas, with a gap of a few weeks between them. Chopra was present at a private screening of "Ghajini" that was held by Khan, for members of the film industry. Chopra was seen leaving through the back entrance of the theatre premise around 2 AM, just before the end credits of the film. On spotting multiple journalists outside the venue, he reportedly panicked and desperately sprinted towards his car to avoid being photographed. Chopra pulled down the sun visor of his car and hid inside it as he drove away. He even dropped his phone and damaged it, in the process. Images of a scared and petrified Chopra covering his face with his arms became front-page news of a leading Indian tabloid. The article called Chopra "a very powerful man, behaving like a trapped animal", even though it carried a statement by "one of his close friends" who called him "a simple, introverted guy". The event however fuelled further reports of Chopra having an alleged social anxiety disorder and/or APD.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In 2012, Ajay Devgan, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures and Eros International together moved the Competition Commission of India against Yash Raj Films and Aditya Chopra, accusing the company of using monopolistic business practices and rampantly abusing their dominant position and clout in the Entertainment Industry of India by entering into a tie-in arrangement with 1,500 single screen film exhibitors (out of a total of 2,100) of India, that obliged them to showcase the company's "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" (and not "Son of Sardar") on the Diwali week of 2012 and continue its theatrical run for two weeks after the worldwide release. The trio eventually moved the Competition Appellate Tribunal on 30 October 2012 against YRF but were turned down by the bench heading the Tribunal.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Both films opened on 13 November 2012; "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" released on 3500 screens and "Son of Sardar" released on 2000 screens, in the worldwide market. However, in November 2013, the CCI dismissed the case filing as they found YRF to not be in contravention of the Competition Act of India; YRF won the case.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: "Raees" was a film produced by Excel Entertainment and Red Chillies Entertainment helmed by Rahul Dholakia. Principal photography of the film was completed in April 2015 and a few months were allotted to its post-production work. A teaser/trailer of the film was released across social media platforms and attached to "Bajrangi Bhaijaan" on 17 July 2015 announcing it as a 5 July 2016 release; packaged and presented as an Eid project. However, sensing an opportunity in the same period, YRF went ahead to green-light its own "Sultan", slated for release on the same day, in January 2016. Principal photography with Salman Khan and Anushka Sharma was completed in 3 months followed by post-production work being completed in May. A teaser/trailer and other marketing material featuring both Khan and Sharma were released simultaneously starting in April across platforms and networks. The film was ready for a 5 July release and as a result, around 4230 theatre screens available in India would have been divided among the two films.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Realising a loss in business to both films, Ritesh Sidhwani and Shahrukh Khan, the producers of "Raees" approached Chopra to work out a settlement to ensure both projects are exhibited comfortably across centres. However, Chopra disagreed to shift his release date stating the poor performance of Khan's prior releases ("Happy New Year", "Dilwale" and "Fan") in the global box office. Moreover, Chopra ensured that YRF Distributors (his film distribution leg) exhibit "Sultan" to more than 3100 screens (out of the total 4230), apparently abusing his dominant position and clout in the Entertainment Industry of India, an allegation that he has battled several times in the past.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: "Sultan" eventually released on 6 July 2016, as planned by YRF, across 4310 Indian screens and 1130 screens internationally, to gross in the worldwide market and "Raees" was postponed to 26 January 2017, scheduled to release alongside "Kaabil" on the same day.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In November 2012, YRF green-lit their first Indian-American war drama co-production titled "Paani" with DreamWorks Pictures. The film was to be helmed by Shekhar Kapur and Sushant Singh Rajput was signed for the lead role in December of the same year. Principal photography was to start in June 2013, and it was planned as a December 2015 release by both Chopra and Kapur. A. R. Rahman was roped in to score the music of the film and pre-production work started in January 2013 with the entire cast and crew at YRF Studios.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: In February 2013, Sanjay Leela Bhansali offered the lead role in his Shakespearean romantic-tragedy "Ram-Leela", which was scheduled to be shot throughout the year 2013. Chopra, however, advised Rajput to turn down the role to focus solely on "Paani" and led Bhansali to sign Ranveer Singh (through YRF Talent) instead. In November 2013, Chopra shelved "Paani" stating the poor financial performance of Rajput's "Shuddh Desi Romance" and affordability issues faced by YRF during pre-production work. "Ram-Leela" meanwhile opened to overwhelming critical and box office success in the same period with both Bhansali and Singh being awarded extensively for their work.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: Rajput was later signed for another independent YRF projects; "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy" scheduled to release in April 2015.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: He was married to Payal Khanna, until their divorce in 2009. The couple had no children. On 21 April 2014, he married actress Rani Mukerji in a private wedding ceremony in Italy. In December 2015, Rani gave birth to their daughter Adira Chopra.


title: Aditya Chopra

text: He has remained extremely media-shy and a passive individual, battling constant reports of an alleged dysthymic disorder throughout his three-decade career, resulting in very few public photos of him being in existence.


title: Alex Garland

text: Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English writer and filmmaker. He rose to prominence as a novelist in the late 1990s with his novel "The Beach", which led some critics to call Garland a key voice of Generation X. He subsequently received praise for the screenplays of the films "28 Days Later" (2002), "Sunshine" (2007), both directed by Danny Boyle, "Never Let Me Go" (2010), and "Dredd" (2012). He co-wrote the video game "" (2010) and was a story supervisor on "" (2013).


title: Alex Garland

text: In 2014, Garland made his directorial debut with "Ex Machina", a science fiction-thriller that explores the emergence of artificial general intelligence. The film earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and won three British Independent Film awards for Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best British Independent Film. His second film, "Annihilation" (2018), based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, was also a critical success. In 2020, he wrote and directed the miniseries "Devs" for FX on Hulu. "Men", his latest film, produced in collaboration with A24, was released in May 2022 and received generally favorable reviews.


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland was born in London, England, the son of psychologist Caroline ("née" Medawar) and political cartoonist Nicholas Garland. He has a younger brother and two older paternal half-siblings. His maternal grandparents are Nobel Prize–winning British biologist Peter Medawar and writer Jean Medawar.


title: Alex Garland

text: He was educated at University College School and later attended and graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in History of Art.


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland's first novel, "The Beach", was published in 1996. Based upon Garland's travels across Europe and Thailand, it tells the story of a young English backpacker who discovers an unspoiled seashore occupied by a community of like-minded backpackers. The novel is noted for its references to drug culture, sequences of hallucinations, and unique depictions of excess and utopia. "The Beach" was initially met with positive reviews, and with a spreading word of mouth response, the novel grew in popularity. Garland would later speak of his discomfort with the fame "The Beach" brought him. "I never felt comfortable with it (the novel)." "The Beach" has been translated into 25 different languages and sold close to 700,000 copies by the start of 1999. It was developed into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2003, the novel was Ranked 103 in BBC's The Big Read poll.


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland's "The Tesseract" (1998) is a non-linear narrative with several interwoven characters, set in Manila, Philippines. The novel is characterized by a post-modernist narrative style and structure. It explores several themes such as love and violence through each character's circumstance and context of surroundings as well as seemingly inconsequential actions and the repercussions of those actions on other characters. "The Tesseract" did not enjoy the critical or commercial success of "The Beach", but it too has a film adaptation.


title: Alex Garland

text: Throughout his career and work, Garland has expressed his love of travel (particularly backpacking) and his love of Manila, much of which influenced his work.


title: Alex Garland

text: In 2002, Garland wrote the screenplay for Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later", starring Cillian Murphy. He has said that the script was influenced by 1970s zombie films and British science fiction like "The Day of the Triffids". Video games such as the "Resident Evil" series also served as an influence for "28 Days Later", with Garland crediting the first game for revitalizing the zombie genre. Inspiration for the "Rage" virus came from real-world infections such as Ebola and filoviruses. He won a Best Screenplay honor at the 2004 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards for his script of the film.


title: Alex Garland

text: In 2005, Garland wrote a screenplay for a film adaptation of "Halo". D. B. Weiss and Josh Olson rewrote this during 2006 for a 2008 release, although the film was later canceled. In 2007, he wrote the screenplay for the film "Sunshine", which was his second screenplay to be directed by Danny Boyle and to star Cillian Murphy. Garland served as an executive producer on "28 Weeks Later", the sequel of "28 Days Later". He wrote the screenplay for the 2010 film "Never Let Me Go", based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. He also wrote the script for "Dredd", an adaptation of the "Judge Dredd" comic book series from "2000 AD". In 2018, Karl Urban, who played the eponymous role in the film, stated that it was Garland who deserved credit for also directing "Dredd".


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland made his directorial debut with "Ex Machina", a 2014 feature film based on his own story and screenplay. Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac. the film won a Jury Prize at the 2015 Gerardmer Film Festival and earned Garland a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland's second film, "Annihilation" (2018), was based on Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 science fiction novel of the same name. Garland has described it as "an adaptation [that] was a memory of the book," rather than book-referenced screenwriting, to capture the "dream like nature" and tone of his reading experience. Production began in 2016, and the film was released in February 2018.


title: Alex Garland

text: In January 2021, Garland was hired to direct his third film, "Men", which stars Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear. The film follows a young woman who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside after the death of her ex-husband. The following year, it was announced that Garland was reteaming with A24 for his fourth feature, "Civil War", an action epic starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and previous collaborators Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cailee Spaeny.


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland wrote, served as executive producer, and directed the eight-episode miniseries "Devs", about the "mysterious ongoings at a tech company", for FX; the series was greenlit in August 2018, and premiered 5 March 2020 on FX on Hulu. It stars "Ex Machina" and "Annihilation" actress Sonoya Mizuno, alongside Nick Offerman, Jin Ha, Zach Grenier, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny, and Alison Pill. Spaeny, who did not audition for the role as Garland had wanted her specifically for it, stated that "Devs" was short for "Development", and that the series would explore the idea of the multiverse.


title: Alex Garland

text: Garland and Tameem Antoniades co-wrote the video game "" for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. They won a 2011 award from the Writer's Guild of Great Britain. Garland also served as a story supervisor on the game "" in 2013.


title: Journey to the West

text: Journey to the West () is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the greatest Classic Chinese Novels, and has been described as arguably the most popular literary work in East Asia. Arthur Waley's abridged translation, "Monkey", is known in English-speaking countries.


title: Journey to the West

text: The novel is an extended account of the legendary pilgrimage of the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who traveled to the "Western Regions" (Central Asia and India) to obtain Buddhist sacred texts (sūtras) and returned after many trials and much suffering. The monk is referred to as Tang Sanzang in the novel. The novel retains the broad outline of Xuanzang's own account, "Great Tang Records on the Western Regions", but adds elements from folk tales and the author's invention: Gautama Buddha gives this task to the monk and provides him with three protectors who agree to help him as an atonement for their sins. These disciples are Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing, together with a dragon prince who acts as Tang Sanzang's steed, a white horse. The group of pilgrims journeys towards enlightenment by the power and virtue of cooperation.


title: Journey to the West

text: "Journey to the West" has strong roots in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, Confucianism, Taoist, and Buddhist theology, and the pantheon of Taoist immortals and Buddhist bodhisattvas are still reflective of some Chinese religious attitudes today. Enduringly popular, the novel is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory.


title: Journey to the West

text: The earliest known full-length version of "Journey to the West" was published anonymously in 1592, preceded by two briefer versions. The question of authorship is further complicated by the fact that a good deal of the novel's material had been published in the form of folk tales. Anthony C. Yu, writing in 2012, warned that "this vexing dispute over the novel's authorship, similar to that on the priority of its textual versions, see-sawed back and forth for nearly a century without resolution."


title: Journey to the West

text: Hu Shih, literary scholar and former Ambassador to the United States, wrote that the novel was thought to have been written and published anonymously by Wu Cheng'en. He reasoned that the people of Wu's hometown attributed it early on to Wu, and kept records to that effect as early as 1625; thus, claimed Ambassador Hu, "Journey to the West" was one of the earliest Chinese novels for which the authorship is officially documented.


title: Journey to the West

text: Recent scholarship casts doubts on this attribution. Brown University Chinese literature scholar David Lattimore states: "The Ambassador's confidence was quite unjustified. What the gazetteer says is that Wu wrote something called "The Journey to the West." It mentions nothing about a novel. The work in question could have been any version of our story, or something else entirely." Translator W. J. F. Jenner points out that although Wu had knowledge of Chinese bureaucracy and politics, the novel itself does not include any political details that "a fairly well-read commoner could not have known."


title: Journey to the West

text: Regardless of the origins and authorship, "Journey to the West" has become the authoritative version of these folk stories, and Wu's name has become a household name accompanying the book.


title: Journey to the West

text: The novel "Journey to the West" was based on historical events. Xuanzang (602–664) was a monk at Jingtu Temple in late-Sui dynasty and early-Tang dynasty Chang'an. Motivated by seeking better translations of Buddhist scripture at the time, Xuanzang left Chang'an in 629, in defiance of Emperor Taizong of Tang's ban on travel. Helped by sympathetic Buddhists, he traveled via Gansu and Qinghai to Kumul (Hami), thence following the Tian Shan mountains to Turpan. He then crossed regions that are today Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, into Gandhara, in what is today northern Pakistan, in 630. Xuanzang traveled throughout India for the next thirteen years, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, studying at the ancient university at Nalanda, and debating the rivals of Buddhism.


title: Journey to the West

text: Xuanzang left India in 643 and arrived back in Chang'an in 646. Although he had defied the imperial travel ban when he left, Xuanzang received a warm welcome from Emperor Taizong upon his return. The emperor provided money and support for Xuanzang's projects. He joined Da Ci'en Monastery (Monastery of Great Maternal Grace), where he led the building of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to store the scriptures and icons he had brought back from India. He recorded his journey in the book "Great Tang Records on the Western Regions". With the support of the emperor, he established an institute at Yuhua Gong (Palace of the Luster of Jade) monastery dedicated to translating the scriptures he had brought back. His translation and commentary work established him as the founder of the Dharma character school of Buddhism. Xuanzang died on 7 March 664. The Xingjiao Monastery was established in 669 to house his ashes.


title: Journey to the West

text: Popular and story-teller versions of Xuanzang's journey dating as far back as the Southern Song dynasty include a monkey character as a protagonist.


title: Journey to the West

text: The novel has 100 chapters that can be divided into four unequal parts. The first part, which includes chapters 1–7, is a self-contained introduction to the main story. It deals entirely with the earlier exploits of Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a stone nourished by the Five Elements, who learns the art of the Tao, 72 polymorphic transformations, combat, and secrets of immortality, and whose guile and force earns him the name "Qitian Dasheng" (), or "Great Sage Equal to Heaven." His powers grow to match the forces of all of the Eastern (Taoist) deities, and the prologue culminates in Sun's rebellion against Heaven, during a time when he garnered a post in the celestial bureaucracy. Hubris proves his downfall when the Buddha manages to trap him under a mountain, sealing it with a talisman for five hundred years.


title: Journey to the West

text: The second part (chapters 8–12) introduces Tang Sanzang through his early biography and the background to his great journey. Dismayed that "the land of the South (i.e. Tang China) knows only greed, hedonism, promiscuity, and sins," the Buddha instructs the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin) to search China for someone to take the Buddhist sutras of "transcendence and persuasion for good will" back. Part of this section also relates to how Tang Sanzang becomes a monk (as well as revealing his past life as a disciple of the Buddha named "Golden Cicada" ()) and comes about being sent on this pilgrimage by Emperor Taizong, who previously escaped death with the help of an official in the Underworld.


title: Journey to the West

text: The third and longest section of the work is chapters 13–99, an episodic adventure story in which Tang Sanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Leiyin Temple on Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way. The section is set in the sparsely populated lands along the Silk Road between China and India. The geography described in the book is, however, almost entirely fantasy; once Tang Sanzang departs Chang'an, the Tang capital, and crosses the frontier (somewhere in Gansu province), he finds himself in a wilderness of deep gorges and tall mountains, inhabited by demons and animal spirits who regard him as a potential meal (since his flesh was believed to give immortality to whoever ate it), with the occasional hidden monastery or royal city-state amidst the harsh setting.


title: Journey to the West

text: Episodes consist of 1–4 chapters and usually involve Tang Sanzang being captured and having his life threatened while his disciples try to find an ingenious (and often violent) way of liberating him. Although some of Tang Sanzang's predicaments are political and involve ordinary human beings, they more frequently consist of run-ins with various demons, many of whom turn out to be earthly manifestations of heavenly beings (whose sins will be negated by eating the flesh of Tang Sanzang) or animal-spirits with enough Taoist spiritual merit to assume semi-human forms.


title: Journey to the West

text: Chapters 13–22 do not follow this structure precisely, as they introduce Tang Sanzang's disciples, who, inspired or goaded by Guanyin, meet and agree to serve him along the way in order to atone for their sins in their past lives.


title: Journey to the West

text: Chapter 22, where Sha Wujing is introduced, also provides a geographical boundary, as the river that the travelers cross brings them into a new "continent." Chapters 23–86 take place in the wilderness, and consist of 24 episodes of varying length, each characterized by a different magical monster or evil magician. There are impassibly wide rivers, flaming mountains, a kingdom with an all-female population, a lair of seductive spider spirits, and many other scenarios. Throughout the journey, the four disciples have to fend off attacks on their master and teacher Tang Sanzang from various monsters and calamities.


title: Journey to the West

text: It is strongly suggested that most of these calamities are engineered by fate and/or the Buddha, as, while the monsters who attack are vast in power and many in number, no real harm ever comes to the four travelers. Some of the monsters turn out to be escaped celestial beasts belonging to bodhisattvas or Taoist sages and deities. Towards the end of the book, there is a scene where the Buddha commands the fulfillment of the last disaster, because Tang Sanzang is one short of the 81 tribulations required before attaining Buddhahood.


title: Journey to the West

text: In chapter 87, Tang Sanzang finally reaches the borderlands of India, and chapters 87–99 present magical adventures in a somewhat more mundane setting. At length, after a pilgrimage said to have taken fourteen years (the text actually only provides evidence for nine of those years, but presumably there was room to add additional episodes) they arrive at the half-real, half-legendary destination of Vulture Peak, where, in a scene simultaneously mystical and comic, Tang Sanzang receives the scriptures from the living Buddha.


title: Journey to the West

text: Chapter 100, the final chapter, quickly describes the return journey to the Tang Empire, and the aftermath in which each traveller receives a reward in the form of posts in the bureaucracy of the heavens. Sun Wukong and Tang Sanzang achieve Buddhahood, Sha Wujing becomes an arhat, White Dragon Horse is made a nāga and Zhu Bajie, whose good deeds have always been tempered by his greed, is promoted to an altar cleanser (i.e. eater of excess offerings at altars).


title: Journey to the West

text: Sun Wukong () (pinyin: sūnwùkōng) is the name given to this character by his teacher, Subhuti, the latter part of which means "Awakened to Emptiness" (in the Waley translation, "Aware-of-Vacuity"); he is often called the "Monkey King". He is born on Flower Fruit Mountain from a stone egg that forms from an ancient rock created by the coupling of Heaven and Earth. He first distinguishes himself by bravely entering the Water Curtain Cave on the mountain; for this feat, his monkey tribe gives him the title of "Handsome Monkey King (美猴王)." After seeing a fellow monkey die because of old age, he decides to travel around the world to seek the Tao, and find a way to be able to live forever. He eventually found the "Grand Master of Bodhi (菩提祖師)," who taught him the 72 heavenly methods of transformation and a "sumersault cloud" which allows him to travel 108,000 li almost instantaneously. After angering several gods and coming to the attention of the Jade Emperor, he is given a minor position in heaven as the Keeper of Horses (弼馬溫) so they can keep an eye on him. When Sun realizes that he was given the lowest position in heaven and is not considered a full-fledged god, he becomes very angry. Upon returning to his mountain, he puts up a flag and declares himself the "Great Sage Equal to Heaven (齊天大聖)." The Jade Emperor dispatches celestial soldiers to arrest Sun Wukong, but none succeed. The Jade Emperor has no choice but to appoint him to be the guardian of the heavenly peach garden. The different varieties of peach trees in the garden bear fruit every 3,000, 6,000, and 9,000 years, and eating their flesh will bestow immortality and other gifts, so Sun Wukong eats nearly all of the ripe peaches. Later, after fairies who come to collect peaches for Xi Wangmu's heavenly peach banquet inform Sun Wukong he is not invited and make fun of him, he once again begins to cause trouble in Heaven, stealing heavenly wine from the peach banquet and eating Laozi's pills of immortality. He defeats an army of 100,000 celestial troops, led by the Four Heavenly Kings, Erlang Shen, and Nezha. Eventually, the Jade Emperor appeals to the Buddha, who seals Wukong under a mountain called Five Elements Mountain after the latter loses a bet regarding whether he can leap out of the Buddha's hand in a single somersault. Sun Wukong is kept under the mountain for 500 years and cannot escape because of a seal that was placed on the mountain. He is later set free when Tang Sanzang comes upon him during his pilgrimage and accepts him as a disciple.


title: Journey to the West

text: His primary weapon is his staff, the "Ruyi Jingu Bang," which he can shrink down to the size of a needle and keep in his ear, as well as expand it to gigantic proportions. The rod, which weighs 17,550 pounds, was originally a pillar supporting the undersea palace of the Dragon King of the East Sea, but he was able to pull it out of its support and can swing it with ease. The Dragon King had told Sun Wukong he could have the staff if he could lift it, but was angry when the monkey was actually able to pull it out and accused him of being a thief. Sun Wukong was insulted, so he demanded a suit of armor and refused to leave until he received one. The Dragon King of the East and the other dragon kings, fearful of Sun wreaking havoc in their domain, gave him a suit of golden armor. These gifts, combined with his devouring of the peaches of immortality, erasing his name from the Book of the Dead, drinking heavenly wine from the Peach Festival, eating Laozi's pills of immortality, and being tempered in Laozi's Eight-Trigram Furnace (after which he gained a steel-hard body and fiery golden eyes that could see far into the distance and through any disguise), makes Sun Wukong the strongest member of the pilgrimage by far. Besides these abilities, he can also pluck hairs from his body and blow on them to convert them into whatever he wishes (usually clones of himself to gain a numerical advantage in battle). Furthermore, he is a master of the 72 methods of transformation (), and can transform into anything that exists (animate and inanimate). Notably, however, Sun cannot fight as well underwater, and often the pilgrimage must rely on Pigsy and Sandy for marine combat. The monkey, nimble and quick-witted, uses these skills to defeat all but the most powerful of demons on the journey.


title: Journey to the West

text: Sun's behavior is checked by a band placed around his head by Guanyin, which cannot be removed by Sun Wukong himself until the journey's end. Tang Sanzang can tighten this band by chanting the "Ring Tightening Mantra" (taught to him by Guanyin) whenever he needs to chastise him. The spell is referred to by Tang Sanzang's disciples as the "Headache Sutra". Tang Sanzang speaks this mantra quickly in repetition when Sun disobeys him.


title: Journey to the West

text: Sun Wukong's childlike playfulness and often goofy impulsiveness is in contrast to his cunning mind. This, coupled with his great power, makes him a trickster hero. His antics present a lighter side in the long and dangerous trip into the unknown.


title: Journey to the West

text: After completion of the journey, Sun is granted the title of Victorious Fighting Buddha () and ascends to Buddhahood.


title: Journey to the West

text: The monk Tang Sanzang (, meaning "Tripitaka Master of Tang," with "Tang" referring to the Tang dynasty and "Sanzang" referring to the Tripiṭaka, the main categories of texts in the Buddhist canon which is also used as an honorific for some Buddhist monks) is a Buddhist monk who had renounced his family to become a monk from childhood. He is just called "Tripitaka" in many English versions of the story. He set off for Tianzhu Kingdom (, an appellation for India in ancient China) to retrieve original Buddhist scriptures for China. Although he is helpless in defending himself, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin) helps by finding him powerful disciples who aid and protect him on his journey. In return, the disciples will receive enlightenment and forgiveness for their sins once the journey is done. Along the way, they help the local inhabitants by defeating various monsters and demons who try to obtain immortality by consuming Tang Sanzang's flesh.


title: Journey to the West

text: Zhu Bajie (, literally "Pig of the Eight Prohibitions") is also known as Zhu Wuneng ("Pig Awakened to Power"), and given the name "Monk Pig", "Piggy", "Pigsy", or just simply "Pig" in English.


title: Journey to the West

text: Once an immortal who was the Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy commanding 100,000 naval soldiers of the Milky Way, he drank too much during a celebration of the gods and attempted to harass the moon goddess Chang'e, resulting in his banishment to the mortal world. He was supposed to be reborn as a human but ended up in the womb of a sow due to an error on the Reincarnation Wheel, which turned him into a half-man, half-pig humanoid-pig monster. Zhu Bajie was very greedy, and could not survive without eating ravenously. Staying within the "Yunzhan Dong" ("cloud-pathway cave"), he was commissioned by Guanyin to accompany Tang Sanzang to India and given the new name Zhu Wuneng.


title: Journey to the West

text: However, Zhu Bajie's lust for women led him to the Gao Family Village, where he posed as a handsome young man and helped defeat a group of robbers who tried to abduct a maiden. Eventually, the family agreed to let Zhu Bajie marry the maiden. But during the day of the wedding, he drank too much alcohol and accidentally returned to his original form. Being extremely shocked, the villagers ran away, but Zhu Bajie wanted to keep his bride, so he told the bride's father that if after one month the family still did not agree to let him keep the bride, he would take her by force. He also locked the bride up in a separate building. At this point, Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong arrived at the Gao Family Village and helped defeat him. Renamed Zhu Bajie by Tang Sanzang, he consequently joined the pilgrimage to the West.


title: Journey to the West

text: His weapon of choice is the "jiuchidingpa" ("nine-tooth iron rake"). He is also capable of 36 transformations and can travel on clouds, but not as fast as Sun Wukong. However, Zhu is noted for his fighting skills in the water, which he used to combat Sha Wujing, who later joined them on the journey. He is the second strongest member of the team.


title: Journey to the West

text: His lust for women, extreme laziness, and greediness, made his spirituality the lowest in the group, and he remained on Earth and was granted the title "Cleaner of the Altars," with the duty of cleaning every altar at every Buddhist temple for eternity by eating excess offerings.


title: Journey to the West

text: Sha Wujing (, "Sand Awakened to Purity"), given the name "Friar Sand", "Sand Monk", "Sandman", "Sand Fairy", "Sand Orc", "Sand Ogre", "Sand Troll", "Sand Oni", "Sand Demon", "Sand Monster", "Sand Hulk", "Sand", or "Sandy" in English, was once a celestial Curtain Lifting General, who stood in attendance by the imperial chariot in the Hall of Miraculous Mist. He was exiled to the mortal world and made to look like a sandman, orc, ogre, troll, oni, demon, monster, or hulk because he accidentally smashed a crystal goblet belonging to the Queen Mother of the West during a Peach Banquet. The now-hideous immortal took up residence in the Flowing Sands River, terrorizing surrounding villages and travelers trying to cross the river. However, he was subdued by Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie when Tang Sanzang's party came across him. They consequently took him in, as part of the pilgrimage to the West.


title: Journey to the West

text: Sha Wujing's weapon is a magic wooden staff wrapped in pearly threads. He also knows 18 transformation methods and is highly effective in water combat. He is known to be the most obedient, logical, and polite of the three disciples, and always takes care of his master, seldom engaging in the bickering of his fellow disciples. He has no major faults nor any extraordinary characteristics. Due to this, he is sometimes seen as a minor character. He does however serve as the peacekeeper of the group, mediating between Wukong, Bajie, and even Tang Sanzang and others. He is also the person whom Tang Sanzang consults when faced with difficult decisions.


title: Journey to the West

text: He eventually becomes an arhat at the end of the journey, giving him a higher level of exaltation than Zhu Bajie, who is relegated to cleaning altars, but lower spiritually than Sun Wukong and Tang Sanzang, who are granted Buddhahood.


title: Journey to the West

text: The brief satirical novel "Xiyoubu" (, "A Supplement to the Journey to the West," ) follows Sun Wukong as he is trapped in a magical dream world created by the Qing Fish Demon, the embodiment of desire (, qing). Sun travels back and forth through time, during which he serves as the adjunct King of Hell and judges the soul of the recently dead traitor Qin Hui during the Song dynasty, takes on the appearance of a beautiful concubine and causes the downfall of the Qin dynasty, and even faces Pāramitā, one of his five sons born to the rakshasa Princess Iron Fan, on the battlefield during the Tang dynasty. The events of "Xiyoubu" take place between the end of chapter 61 and the beginning of chapter 62 of "Journey to the West". The author, Dong Yue (), wrote the book because he wanted to create an opponent—in this case desire—that Sun could not defeat with his great strength and martial skill.


title: Journey to the West

text: Saiyūki (西遊記) also known by its English title "Monkey" and commonly referred to by its title song, "Monkey Magic," is a Japanese television series starring Masaaki Sakai, produced by Nippon TV and International Television Films in association with NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and broadcast from 1978 to 1980 on Nippon TV. It was translated into English by the BBC.


title: Journey to the West

text: In the 1980s, China Central Television (CCTV) produced and aired a TV adaptation of " Journey to the West" under the same name as the original work. A second season was produced in the late 1990s covering portions of the original work that the first season skipped over.


title: Journey to the West

text: In 1997, Brooklyn-based jazz composer Fred Ho premiered his jazz opera "Journey To The East", at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which he developed into what he described as a "serial fantasy action-adventure music/theater epic,” "Journey Beyond the West: The New Adventures of Monkey" based upon Wu Cheng’en's 16th-century novel. Ho's pop-culture infused take on the story of the Monkey King has been performed to great acclaim.


title: Journey to the West

text: It also made its way to the Mass Electronic Entertainment Media (Reimagined Video game adaptation) in 2009, titled "", which was released in October 2010 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. It was developed by Ninja Theory and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The main protagonist 'Monkey' is voice acted by Andy Serkis.


title: Journey to the West

text: On 20 April 2017, Australia's ABC, TVNZ, and Netflix announced production was underway in New Zealand on a new live-action television series, "The New Legends of Monkey", to premiere globally in 2018. The series, which is based on "Journey to the West", is made up of 10 half-hour episodes. While there has been enthusiasm for the new series, it has also attracted some criticism for "whitewashing," since none of the core cast are of Chinese descent, with two of the leads having Tongan ancestry while only one, Chai Hansen, is of half-Asian (his father is Thai) descent.


title: Journey to the West

text: More recently in 2017, Viki and Netflix hosted a South Korean show called "A Korean Odyssey"; a modern comedy retelling that begins with the release of Sun Wukong/Son O-Gong and the reincarnation of Tang Sanzang/Samjang.


title: Journey to the West

text: On May 16th 2020, The Lego Group released the theme, Lego Monkie Kid, to which Journey of the West was credited as the main inspiration, featuring many characters from the original work. 4 days later on May 20th, an animated television series pilot was released to coincide with the theme, and was later picked up for production and released serially starting in September of 2020.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is a 2018 self-help book by the Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. It provides life advice through essays in abstract ethical principles, psychology, mythology, religion, and personal anecdotes. The book topped bestseller lists in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and has sold over five million copies worldwide. Peterson went on a world tour to promote the book, receiving much attention following an interview with "Channel 4 News". The book is written in a more accessible style than his previous academic book, "" (1999). A sequel, "Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life", was published in March 2021.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Peterson's interest in writing the book grew out of a personal hobby of answering questions posted on "Quora"; one such question being "What are the most valuable things everyone should know?", to which his answer comprised 42 rules. The early vision and promotion of the book aimed to include all rules, with the title "42". Peterson stated that it "isn't only written for other people. It's a warning to me."


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: The book is divided into chapters with each title representing one of the following twelve specific rules for life as explained through an essay.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: The book's central idea is that "suffering is built into the structure of being" and although it can be unbearable, people have a choice either to withdraw, which is a "suicidal gesture", or to face and transcend it. Living in a world of chaos and order, everyone has "darkness" that can "turn them into the monsters they're capable of being" to satisfy their dark impulses in the right situations. Scientific experiments like the Invisible Gorilla Test show that perception is adjusted to aims, and it is better to seek meaning rather than happiness. Peterson notes:


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: The book advances the idea that people are born with an instinct for ethics and meaning, and should take responsibility to search for meaning above their own interests (Rule 7, "Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient"). Such thinking is reflected both in contemporary stories such as "Pinocchio", "The Lion King", and "Harry Potter", and in ancient stories from the Bible. To "Stand up straight with your shoulders back" (Rule 1) is to "accept the terrible responsibility of life," to make self-sacrifice, because the individual must rise above victimization and "conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike." The comparison to neurological structures and behavior of lobsters is used as a natural example to the formation of social hierarchies.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: The other parts of the work explore and criticize the state of young men; the upbringing that ignores sex differences between boys and girls (criticism of over-protection and "tabula rasa" model in social sciences); male–female interpersonal relationships; school shootings; religion and moral nihilism; relativism; and lack of respect for the values that built Western society.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In the last chapter, Peterson outlines the ways in which one can cope with the most tragic events, events that are often out of one's control. In it, he describes his own personal struggle upon discovering that his daughter, Mikhaila, had a rare bone disease. The chapter is a meditation on how to maintain a watchful eye on, and cherish, life's small redeemable qualities (i.e., to "pet a cat when you encounter one"). It also outlines a practical way to deal with hardship: to shorten one's temporal scope of responsibility (e.g., focusing on the next minute rather than the next three months).


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: To promote the book, Peterson went on a world tour, initially from January 14, 2018, to February 17, 2018, including events in England, Canada, and the United States. The sold-out venues included 1,000-seat conference hall Emmanuel Centre in London, and 2,000-seat Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The February 11 event at Citadel Theatre in Edmonton was cancelled by the theatre's board of directors and management, for which they later apologized, and instead was held at a sold-out Hyatt Place. The second part included three sold-out events in March in Australia, continuing at Beacon Theatre in New York, and the third part held between early May and June initially numbering ten events in the US and Canada and one in the UK. Until June, the tour visited 45 cities in North America, Europe and Australia, reaching an audience of over 100,000 people. According to Peterson, nearly 200,000 people attended the live events until late July.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: As part of the tour, Peterson had an interview on "Channel 4 News" that went viral, receiving considerable attention and over 36 million views on YouTube. He also appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC's "HARDtalk"; LBC's Maajid Nawaz radio show; "Fox & Friends" and "Tucker Carlson Tonight"; ABC's "7.30"; Sky News Australia's "Outsiders"; HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"; and "The Dr. Oz Show", among others.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Penguin Allen Lane published the book on January 16, 2018, in the UK. Random House Canada published it on January 23 in Canada. , the book was slated to be translated into 45 languages.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: The "12 Rules for Life" audiobook was number one on Audible in Canada, and number three in the US. In Canada, since its debut, it topped "The Globe and Mail" and the "Toronto Star" nonfiction bestsellers lists. According to CBC Books, it was the 4th-bestselling Canadian book of the year. According to the "Toronto Star", it was the "biggest Canadian book success story of the year", topping original nonfiction and Canadian nonfiction categories, with only Canadian poet writer Rupi Kaur having similar sales. According to "Publishers Weekly", Kobo Inc. reported that it was the 2nd-bestselling audiobook of 2018 in Canada, whereas per BookNet Canada and BNC SalesData the print book was 3rd and Peterson was the bestselling Canadian author of the year.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In the UK the book enjoyed five weeks at the top of "The Sunday Times" bestsellers list for general hardcover (February 18 – March 25, again on April 15), selling over 120,000 copies by September 16. According to "The Sunday Times", the hardback edition was the year's 4th-biggest seller in the "general hardbacks" category with 153,160 copies sold by end of the year. According to "The Guardian", the Nielsen BookScan reported sales of 147,899 copies made it only the 32nd bestselling book of the year.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: According to "The Guardian", the Nielsen BookScan reported sales of over 10,000 copies until March 12 in Australia. According to "The Irish Times", in Ireland it was the 23rd-bestselling book of the year with 14,408 copies.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In the US, the book became the number-one nonfiction book and e-book on "The Wall Street Journal"s Best-Selling Books list. It also topped "The Washington Post" and Reuters's US bestsellers list, reached number two on "USA Today"s overall list, and topped the hardcover nonfiction and top 10 overall category for "Publishers Weekly", selling over 559,000 copies by September 24, 2018. In the category it replaced Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury". At the end of the year the hardcover version was the 11th-bestselling book, with 692,238 copies. Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in late March that the book had already sold over 700,000 copies in the US. The book did not chart on "The New York Times", "Los Angeles Times" and "IndieBound" bestsellers list. According to "Toronto Star" books editor Deborah Dundas, the "New York Times" stated it was not counted because it was published by a Canadian company. According to Random House Canada, the book was handled properly for the US market.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Peterson announced the book had sold over 2 million copies (August 6, 2018), then 3 million copies (January 13, 2019), and later that work had begun on a sequel (January 2019). The book reached 5 million sales by November 2020.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In March 2019, Whitcoulls, one of New Zealand's leading book retailers, temporarily removed the book from their stores and online catalogue, apparently in reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings. The withdrawal of the book was prompted by social media photos of Peterson posing with a fan wearing a T-shirt saying "I'm a proud Islamophobe." Peterson and his supporters strongly criticized Whitcoulls's decision because Whitcoulls continued to sell Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and Henry Malone's "Islam Unmasked". The book was reinstated six days after it was removed.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Melanie Reid, in her review of "12 Rules for Life" for "The Times", says the book is "aimed at teenagers, millennials and young parents." Summarising it, she states: "If you peel back the verbiage, the cerebral preening, you are left with a hardline self-help manual of self-reliance, good behaviour, self-betterment and individualism that probably reflects [Peterson's] childhood in rural Canada in the 1960s." Bryan Appleyard, also writing for "The Times", describes the book as "a less dense and more practical version of "Maps of Meaning"." He says it is "a baggy, aggressive, in-your-face, get-real book that, ultimately, is an attempt to lead us back to what Peterson sees as the true, the beautiful and the good – i.e., God."


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Hari Kunzru of "The Guardian" said the book collates advice from Peterson's clinical practice with personal anecdotes, accounts of his academic work as a psychologist and "a lot of intellectual history of the 'great books' variety", but the essays on the rules are explained in an overcomplicated style. Kunzru called Peterson sincere, but found the book irritating because he considers Peterson to have failed to follow his own rules. In an interview with Peterson for "The Guardian", Tim Lott called the book atypical of the self-help genre.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In a joint review with Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" for "The Scotsman", Bill Jamieson praised the essays as "richly illustrated and packed with excellent advice on how we can restore meaning and a sense of progression to our everyday lives", describing both books as "verbal waterboarding for supporters of big government". "The New York Times" David Brooks wrote, "The Peterson way is a harsh way, but it is an idealistic way – and for millions of young men, it turns out to be the perfect antidote to the cocktail of coddling and accusation in which they are raised".


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Joe Humphreys of "The Irish Times" argued people shouldn't be stopped "from reading what is a veritable powerhouse of a book: wise, provocative, humorous and also maddeningly contradictory (as all deep and truthful studies of human nature must be)". Glenn Ellmers in "Claremont Review of Books" wrote that Peterson "does not shrink from telling readers that life means pain and suffering. His deft exposition, however, makes clear that duty is often liberating and responsibility can be a gift".


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Dorothy Cummings McLean, writing for the online magazine "The Catholic World Report", called the book "the most thought-provoking self-help book I have read in years", with its rules reminding her of those by Bernard Lonergan, and content "serving as a bridge between Christians and non-Christians interested in the truths of human life and in resisting the lies of ideological totalitarianism". In a review for the same magazine, Bishop Robert Barron praised the archetypal reading of the story about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden with Jesus representing "gardener" and the psychological exploration of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and "The Gulag Archipelago" but did not support its "gnosticizing tendency to read Biblical religion purely psychologically and philosophically and not at all historically" or the idea that "God ... [is] simply a principle or an abstraction". It is "valuable for the beleaguered young men in our society, who need a mentor to tell them to stand up straight and act like heroes", Barron wrote. Adam A. J. DeVille took a very different view, calling "12 Rules for Life" "unbearably banal, superficial, and insidious" and saying "the real danger in this book is its apologia for social Darwinism and bourgeois individualism covered over with a theological patina" and that "in a just world, this book would never have been published".


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Ron Dart, in a review for "The Ormsby Review", considered the book "an attempt to articulate a more meaningful order for freedom as an antidote to the erratic ... chaos of our age", but although "necessary" with exemplary advice for men and women it is "hardly a sufficient text for the tougher questions that beset us on our all too human journey and should be read as such." In a review for the "Financial Times", Julian Baggini wrote, "In headline form, most of his rules are simply timeless good sense... The problem is that when Peterson fleshes them out, they carry more flab than meat".


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In "The Spectator", Peter Hitchens wrote that he did not like the book's "conversational and accessible" style and amount of "recapitulation", but believed it had "moving moments", "good advice" with a message "aimed at people who have grown up in the post-Christian West" with special appeal to young men. Park MacDougald of "New York" shared a similar view, writing that on paper Peterson lacks the "coherence, emotional depth" of his lectures but "still, he produces nuggets of real insight."


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: Pankaj Mishra's review in "The New York Review of Books" called "12 Rules" a repackaged collection of pieties and late 19th-century Jungian mysticism that has been discredited by modern psychology. Mishra compared the book, and Peterson's ideas, to historical authors who influenced Peterson, but whose serious moral failings, including racism and fascism, Peterson fails to address. He criticized Peterson's book for failing to recognize how traditionalism and myth can be used in support of demagoguery and anti-democratic ideas, and asserts that Peterson's work is a symptom of the problems it attempts to cure. Peterson responded to the review on Twitter, taking umbrage at Mishra's description of Peterson's friendship with First Nations artist Charles Joseph as "the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage"; Peterson wrote in response, "If you were in my room at the moment, I'd slap you happily."


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In a review for "Psychology Today", philosopher Paul Thagard called the book flimsy and said Peterson's views fail to stand up to philosophical scrutiny. According to Thagard, "If you go for Christian mythology, narrow-minded individualism, obscure metaphysics, and existentialist angst, then Jordan Peterson is the philosopher for you. But if you prefer evidence and reason, look elsewhere." Psychologist John Grohol, writing for "PsychCentral", said the book's basic advice was sound, self-evident, and harmless, but he could not recommend it because Peterson justified his advice with rambling tangential anecdotes and religious dogma instead of scientific data.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In the "Los Angeles Review of Books", Guy Stevenson wrote that Peterson's work is widely ignored by serious academics, in part because of his inflated claims targeting a conspiracy of "postmodern neo-Marxists", but that his level of celebrity had not been seen for a public intellectual since Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. According to Stevenson, Peterson's practical advice and Jungian mysticism reflect a new counterculture movement similar to that of the 1960s. He called "12 Rules" aggressive and overeager to blame problems on "bogeymen", and recommended as an alternative the work of John Gray, who has addressed some of the same issues.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: David French of "National Review" called the book a "beacon of light" for the current time, with a simple but profound purpose "to help a person look in the mirror and respect the person he or she sees." Some critics, such as "National Review" Heather Wilhelm and "Toronto Star" James Grainger, were critical of initial negative reviews that they believed had misinterpreted Peterson.


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In September 2018, Peterson threatened to sue Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne for defamation after she called his work misogynistic in an interview with "Vox". Manne called Peterson's threat an attempt to chill free speech. "Vox" considered the threat baseless and ignored it. In a critique often shared by prominent intellectual Noam Chomsky, Nathan Robinson of "Current Affairs" called Peterson a "charlatan" who gives "the most elementary fatherly life-advice" while adding "convolutions to disguise the simplicity of his mind."


title: 12 Rules for Life

text: In an article published in 2020 in the "International Journal of Jungian Studies", "Carl Jung, John Layard and Jordan Peterson: Assessing Theories of Human Social Evolution and Their Implications for Analytical Psychology", Gary Clark offers a sustained critique of Peterson's thought as outlined in "12 Rules for Life". The article asserts that Peterson fails to take account of research in paleoanthropology, evolutionary anthropology and ethnographic studies of egalitarian societies. Such societies, which are believed to represent the ancient forager adaptation of "H. sapiens", are matrilineal and lack social hierarchy. The author argues that a major sociocultural transformation occurred from this ancient adaptive complex with the onset of agriculture giving rise to modern patrilineal and hierarchical cultures. This view contrasts with Peterson's, which postulates modern social and economic structures are an outgrowth of the hierarchical impulses of our premammalian, mammalian and primate ancestors. This led the author to conclude that Peterson seems to have "projected his own cultural biases back into the deep past".


title: Government

text: In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy.


title: Government

text: While all types of organizations have governance, the term "government" is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations.


title: Government

text: The major types of political systems in the modern era are democracies, monarchies, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and mixed governments are common. The main aspect of any philosophy of government is how political power is obtained, with the two main forms being electoral contest and hereditary succession.


title: Government

text: A government is the system to govern a state or community. The "Columbia Encyclopedia" defines government as "a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society". While all types of organizations have governance, the word "government" is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments on Earth, as well as their subsidiary organizations, such as state and provincial governments as well as local governments.


title: Government

text: The word "government" derives from the Greek verb [] meaning "to steer" with a gubernaculum (rudder), the metaphorical sense being attested in the literature of classical antiquity, including Plato's Ship of State. In British English, "government" sometimes refers to what's also known as a "ministry" or an "administration", i.e., the policies and government officials of a particular executive or governing coalition. Finally, "government" is also sometimes used in English as a synonym for rule or governance.


title: Government

text: The moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: Sumer, ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley civilization, and the Yellow River civilization.


title: Government

text: The development of agriculture and water control projects were a catalyst for the development of governments. On occasion a chief of a tribe was elected by various rituals or tests of strength to govern his tribe, sometimes with a group of elder tribesmen as a council. The human ability to precisely communicate abstract, learned information allowed humans to become ever more effective at agriculture, and that allowed for ever increasing population densities. David Christian explains how this resulted in states with laws and governments.


title: Government

text: Starting at the end of the 17th century, the prevalence of republican forms of government grew. The English Civil War and Glorious Revolution in England, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution contributed to the growth of representative forms of government. The Soviet Union was the first large country to have a Communist government. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberal democracy has become an even more prevalent form of government.


title: Government

text: In the nineteenth and twentieth century, there was a significant increase in the size and scale of government at the national level. This included the regulation of corporations and the development of the welfare state.


title: Government

text: In political science, it has long been a goal to create a typology or taxonomy of polities, as typologies of political systems are not obvious. It is especially important in the political science fields of comparative politics and international relations. Like all categories discerned within forms of government, the boundaries of government classifications are either fluid or ill-defined.


title: Government

text: Superficially, all governments have an official or ideal form. The United States is a constitutional republic, while the former Soviet Union was a socialist republic. However self-identification is not objective, and as Kopstein and Lichbach argue, defining regimes can be tricky. For example, Voltaire argued that "the Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire".


title: Government

text: Identifying a form of government is also difficult because many political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by parties naming themselves after those movements; all with competing political-ideologies. Experience with those movements in power, and the strong ties they may have to particular forms of government, can cause them to be considered as forms of government in themselves.


title: Government

text: Other complications include general non-consensus or deliberate "distortion or bias" of reasonable technical definitions to political ideologies and associated forms of governing, due to the nature of politics in the modern era. For example: The meaning of "conservatism" in the United States has little in common with the way the word's definition is used elsewhere. As Ribuffo notes, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or neoliberalism"; a "conservative" in Finland would be labeled a "socialist" in the United States. Since the 1950s conservatism in the United States has been chiefly associated with the Republican Party. However, during the era of segregation many Southern Democrats were conservatives, and they played a key role in the conservative coalition that controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963.


title: Government

text: Opinions vary by individuals concerning the types and properties of governments that exist. "Shades of gray" are commonplace in any government and its corresponding classification. Even the most liberal democracies limit rival political activity to one extent or another while the most tyrannical dictatorships must organize a broad base of support thereby creating difficulties for "pigeonholing" governments into narrow categories. Examples include the claims of the United States as being a plutocracy rather than a democracy since some American voters believe elections are being manipulated by wealthy Super PACs.


title: Government

text: Plato in his book "The Republic" divided governments into five basic types (four being existing forms and one being Plato's ideal form, which exists "only in speech"):


title: Government

text: These five regimes progressively degenerate starting with aristocracy at the top and tyranny at the bottom.


title: Government

text: In his "Politics", Aristotle elaborates on Plato's five regimes discussing them in relation to the government of one, of the few, and of the many. From this follows the classification of forms of government according to which people have the authority to rule: either one person (an autocracy, such as monarchy), a select group of people (an aristocracy), or the people as a whole (a democracy, such as a republic).


title: Government

text: According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there a three main types of political systems today: democracies,


title: Government

text: totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with hybrid regimes. Another modern classification system includes monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Scholars generally refer to a dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism.


title: Government

text: An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection). Absolute monarchy is a historically prevalent form of autocracy, wherein a monarch governs as a singular sovereign with no limitation on royal prerogative. Most absolute monarchies are hereditary, however some, notably the Holy See, are elected by an electoral college (such as the college of cardinals, or prince-electors). Other forms of autocracy include tyranny, despotism, and dictatorship.


title: Government

text: Aristocracy is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, elite ruling class, such as a hereditary nobility or privileged caste. This class exercises minority rule, often as a landed timocracy, wealthy plutocracy, or oligarchy.


title: Government

text: Many monarchies were aristocracies, although in modern constitutional monarchies the monarch may have little effective power. The term "aristocracy" could also refer to the non-peasant, non-servant, and non-city classes in the feudal system.


title: Government

text: Democracy is a system of government where citizens exercise power by voting and deliberation. In a direct democracy, the citizenry as a whole directly forms a participatory governing body and vote directly on each issue. In indirect democracy, the citizenry governs indirectly through the selection of representatives or delegates from among themselves, typically by election or, less commonly, by sortition. These select citizens then meet to form a governing body, such as a legislature or jury.


title: Government

text: Some governments combine both direct and indirect democratic governance, wherein the citizenry selects representatives to administer day-to-day governance, while also reserving the right govern directly through popular initiatives, referendums (plebiscites), and the right of recall. In a constitutional democracy the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits majority rule, usually through the provision by all of certain universal rights, e.g. freedom of speech, or freedom of association.


title: Government

text: A republic is a form of government in which the country is considered a "public matter" (), not the private concern or property of the rulers, and where offices of states are subsequently directly or indirectly elected or appointed rather than inherited. The people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people.


title: Government

text: A common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch. Montesquieu included both democracies, where all the people have a share in rule, and aristocracies or oligarchies, where only some of the people rule, as republican forms of government.


title: Government

text: Other terms used to describe different republics include democratic republic, parliamentary republic, semi-presidential republic, presidential republic, federal republic, people's republic, and Islamic republic.


title: Government

text: Federalism is a political concept in which a "group" of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units, variously called states, provinces or otherwise. Federalism is a system based upon democratic principles and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments, creating what is often called a federation. Proponents are often called federalists.


title: Government

text: Governments are typically organised into distinct institutions constituting branches of government each with particular powers, functions, duties, and responsibilities. The distribution of powers between these institutions differs between governments, as do the functions and number of branches. An independent, parallel distribution of powers between branches of government is the separation of powers. A shared, intersecting, or overlapping distribution of powers is the fusion of powers.


title: Government

text: Governments are often organised into three branches with separate powers: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary; this is sometimes called the model. However, in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, branches of government often intersect, having shared membership and overlapping functions. Many governments have fewer or additional branches, such as an independent electoral commission or auditory branch.


title: Government

text: Presently, most governments are administered by members of an explicitly constituted political party which coordinates the activities of associated government officials and candidates for office. In a multiparty system of government, multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government offices, typically by competing in elections, although the effective number of parties may be limited.


title: Government

text: A majority government is a government by one or more governing parties together holding an absolute majority of seats in the parliament, in contrast to a minority government in which they have only a plurality of seats and often depend on a confidence and supply arrangement with other parties. A coalition government is one in which multiple parties cooperate to form a government as part of a coalition agreement. In a single-party government a single party forms a government without the support of a coalition, as is typically the case with majority governments, but even a minority government may consist of just one party unable to find a willing coalition partner at the moment.


title: Government

text: A party which continuously maintains a single-party government within a (nominally) multiparty system constitutes a dominant-party system. In a (nondemocratic) one party system a single ruling party has the (more or less) exclusive right to form the government, and the formation of other parties may be obstructed or illegal. In some cases, a government may have a non-partisan system, as is the case with absolute monarchy or non-partisan democracy.


title: Government

text: Democracy is the most popular form of government with more than half of the nations in the world being democracies-97 of 167 nations as of 2021. However the world is becoming more authoritarian with a quarter of the world's population under democratically backsliding governments.


title: Almost Famous

text: Almost Famous is a 2000 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe, and starring Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Kate Hudson, and Patrick Fugit. It tells the story of a teenage journalist writing for "Rolling Stone" magazine in the early 1970s, his touring with the fictitious rock band Stillwater, and his efforts to get his first cover story published. The film is semi-autobiographical, as Crowe himself was a teenage writer for "Rolling Stone".


title: Almost Famous

text: The film was a box office bomb, grossing $47.4 million against a $60 million budget. Despite this, it received widespread acclaim from critics and received four Academy Award nominations, including a win for Best Original Screenplay. It was also awarded the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. Roger Ebert hailed it the best film of the year as well as the ninth-best film of the 2000s. It also won two Golden Globe Awards, for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (Hudson). It has since become a cult classic and in a 2016 international poll conducted by BBC, "Almost Famous" was ranked the 79th greatest film since 2000. In a Hollywood Reporter 2014 list voted on by "studio chiefs, Oscar winners and TV royalty", "Almost Famous" was ranked the 71st greatest film of all time. A stage musical adaptation of the film opened on Broadway in November 2022.


title: Almost Famous

text: In San Diego 1969, child prodigy William Miller struggles to fit in. His life is further complicated after learning that his widowed college-professor mother Elaine has falsely led him to believe he is twelve years old. William is actually eleven, having started the first grade at five years old, and skipping fifth grade. Strong-willed Elaine's strict ban on rock music and her fear of pop culture have a negative effect on her children, finally driving William's 18-year-old sister Anita to move to San Francisco and become a flight attendant.


title: Almost Famous

text: In 1973, William, now fifteen, influenced by Anita's secret cache of rock albums, aspires to be a rock journalist, writing freelance articles for underground papers in San Diego. Rock journalist Lester Bangs, impressed with William's writing, gives him a $35 assignment to review a Black Sabbath concert. William is barred from backstage until the opening band Stillwater arrives and William flatters his way in. Lead guitarist Russell Hammond takes a liking to him and his new acquaintance, veteran groupie Penny Lane, who has taken him under her wing. Despite behaving as stereotypical groupies, Penny Lane insists she and her friends are "band aids", a term she invented to describe female fans that are there more for the music than for the rock stars themselves.


title: Almost Famous

text: "Rolling Stone" editor Ben Fong-Torres hires William to write an article about Stillwater, based on his skills, and sends him on the road with the band. William interviews the other band members, but Russell repeatedly puts him off. Tensions between Russell and lead singer Jeff Bebe soon become evident and not helped at all by the band's first t-shirt, a full band shot that pictures Russell in full view while the rest of the band is in the shadows. William is jokingly called "the enemy" by the band as he is a journalist, but he gradually begins to lose his objectivity as he becomes integrated into their inner circle.


title: Almost Famous

text: The record label hires Dennis, a professional manager, to handle problems with venues and promoters. Penny has to leave before the band reaches New York, where Russell's girlfriend Leslie will join them. Penny and her three protégée band aids are gambled away to another band in a poker game; Penny acts nonchalantly but is devastated. Meanwhile, Dennis charters a small plane so the band can play more gigs.


title: Almost Famous

text: Penny shows up uninvited at the New York restaurant where they are celebrating the news that they are to be featured on the cover of "Rolling Stone". Penny is asked to leave after her attempts to get Russell's attention are noticed. William chases her to her hotel, where he saves her from overdosing on quaaludes.


title: Almost Famous

text: Flying to a gig the following day, the plane encounters severe weather. Fearing the plane will crash, everyone confesses their secrets, while Jeff and Russell's long-simmering conflicts erupt. William confesses his love for Penny after Jeff insults her. The plane lands safely in Tupelo, leaving everyone to ponder the changed atmosphere.


title: Almost Famous

text: William arrives at the "Rolling Stone" office in San Francisco but has difficulty finishing the article. Seeking help, he calls Lester Bangs who says William got caught up in being part of the band. He says his perceived friendships with them are not real and advises him to "be honest...and unmerciful." "Rolling Stone"s editors rave over William's completed article, but when the magazine's fact checker calls the band, Russell lies to protect Stillwater's image, claiming most of it is false. "Rolling Stone" kills the article, crushing William. Anita encounters a dejected William in the airport and offers to take him anywhere; he chooses for them to go to their home in San Diego, where their mother Elaine is glad to see them both.