title: Albumin

text: Albumin is a family of globular proteins, the most common of which are the serum albumins. All the proteins of the albumin family are water-soluble, moderately soluble in concentrated salt solutions, and experience heat denaturation. Albumins are commonly found in blood plasma and differ from other blood proteins in that they are not glycosylated. Substances containing albumins are called "albuminoids".


title: Albumin

text: A number of blood transport proteins are evolutionarily related in the albumin family, including serum albumin, alpha-fetoprotein, vitamin D-binding protein and afamin. This family is only found in vertebrates.


title: Albumin

text: "Albumins" in a less strict sense can mean other proteins that coagulate under certain conditions. See for lactalbumin, ovalbumin and plant "2S albumin".


title: Albumin

text: Albumins in general are transport proteins that bind to various ligands and carry them around. Human types include:


title: Albumin

text: Albumins found in animals can be divided into six subfamilies by phylogeny. The Vitamin-D binding proteins occupy families 1–3. The other albumins are mixed among each other in families 4–6. ECM1 is in family 6.


title: Albumin

text: In addition to their medical use, serum albumins are valued in biotechnology. Bovine serum albumin is usually used, although versions from humans and genetically-modified rice are also used to reduce animal cruelty.


title: Albumin

text: A few other proteins are also sometimes called albumins. They are not in the same family as vertebrate albumins:


title: Albumin

text: The 3D structure of human serum albumin has been determined by X-ray crystallography to a resolution of


title: Albumin

text: Albumin comprises three homologous domains that assemble to form a heart-shaped protein. Each domain is a product of two subdomains that possess common structural motifs. The principal regions of ligand binding to human serum albumin are located in hydrophobic cavities in subdomains IIA and IIIA, which exhibit similar chemistry. Structurally, the serum albumins are similar, each domain containing five or six internal disulfide bonds.


title: Albumin

text: Worldwide, certain traditional Chinese medicines contain wild bear bile, banned under CITES legislation. Dip sticks, similar to common pregnancy tests, have been developed to detect the presence of bear albumin in traditional medicine products, indicating that bear bile had been used in their creation.


title: Modernity

text: Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reason" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century "Enlightenment". Some commentators consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with World War II in 1945, or the 1980s or 1990s; the following era is called postmodernity. The term "contemporary history" is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era. (Thus "modern" may be used as a name of a particular era in the past, as opposed to meaning "the current era".)


title: Modernity

text: Depending on the field, "modernity" may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 16th to 18th centuries are usually described as early modern, while the long 19th century corresponds to "modern history" proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics.


title: Modernity

text: As an analytical concept and normative idea, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation, liberalization, modernization and post-industrial life.


title: Modernity

text: By the late 19th and 20th centuries, modernist art, politics, science and culture has come to dominate not only Western Europe and North America, but almost every populated area on the globe, including movements thought of as opposed to the West and globalization. The modern era is closely associated with the development of individualism, capitalism, urbanization and a belief in the possibilities of technological and political progress. Wars and other perceived problems of this era, many of which come from the effects of rapid change, and the connected loss of strength of traditional religious and ethical norms, have led to many reactions against modern development. Optimism and belief in constant progress has been most recently criticized by postmodernism while the dominance of Western Europe and Anglo-America over other continents has been criticized by postcolonial theory.


title: Modernity

text: In the context of art history, "modernity" ("modernité") has a more limited sense, "modern art" covering the period of  1860–1970. Use of the term in this sense is attributed to Charles Baudelaire, who in his 1864 essay "The Painter of Modern Life", designated the "fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis", and the responsibility art has to capture that experience. In this sense, the term refers to "a particular relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future, and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present".


title: Modernity

text: The Late Latin adjective "modernus", a derivation from the adverb "modo" "presently, just now", is attested from the 5th century, at first in the context of distinguishing the Christian era from the pagan era.


title: Modernity

text: In the 6th century, Cassiodorus appears to have been the first writer to use "modernus" "modern" regularly to refer to his own age.


title: Modernity

text: The terms "antiquus" and "modernus" were used in a chronological sense in the Carolingian era. For example, a "magister modernus" referred to a contemporary scholar, as opposed to old authorities such as Benedict of Nursia. In early medieval usage, "modernus" referred to authorities younger than pagan antiquity and the early church fathers, but not necessarily to the present day, and could include authors several centuries old, from about the time of Bede, i.e. referring to the time after the foundation of the Order of Saint Benedict and/or the fall of the Western Roman Empire.


title: Modernity

text: The Latin adjective was adopted in Middle French, as "moderne", by the 15th century, and hence, in the early Tudor period, into Early Modern English.


title: Modernity

text: The early modern word meant "now existing", or "pertaining to the present times", not necessarily with a positive connotation.


title: Modernity

text: The word entered wide usage in the context of the late 17th-century quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns within the Académie française, debating the question of "Is Modern culture superior to Classical (Græco–Roman) culture?"


title: Modernity

text: In the context of this debate, the "ancients" ("anciens") and "moderns" ("modernes") were proponents of opposing views, the former believing that contemporary writers could do no better than imitate the genius of classical antiquity, while the latter,


title: Modernity

text: first with Charles Perrault (1687), proposed that more than a mere "Renaissance" of ancient achievements, the "Age of Reason" had gone beyond what had been possible in the classical period.


title: Modernity

text: The term modernity, first coined in the 1620s, in this context assumed the implication of a historical epoch following the Renaissance, in which the achievements of antiquity were surpassed.


title: Modernity

text: Modernity has been associated with cultural and intellectual movements of 1436–1789 and extending to the 1970s or later.


title: Modernity

text: According to Marshall Berman, modernity is periodized into three conventional phases dubbed "Early," "Classical," and "Late" by Peter Osborne:


title: Modernity

text: In the second phase, Berman draws upon the growth of modern technologies such as the newspaper, telegraph and other forms of mass media. There was a great shift into modernization in the name of industrial capitalism. Finally in the third phase, modernist arts and individual creativity marked the beginning of a new modernist age as it combats oppressive politics, economics as well as other social forces including mass media.


title: Modernity

text: Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the mid- or late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely Postmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990s–present). Other theorists, however, regard the period from the late 20th century to the present as merely another phase of modernity; Zygmunt Bauman calls this phase "liquid" modernity, Giddens labels it "high" modernity (see High modernism).


title: Modernity

text: Politically, modernity's earliest phase starts with Niccolò Machiavelli's works which openly rejected the medieval and Aristotelian style of analyzing politics by comparison with ideas about how things should be, in favour of realistic analysis of how things really are. He also proposed that an aim of politics is to control one's own chance or fortune, and that relying upon providence actually leads to evil. Machiavelli argued, for example, that violent divisions within political communities are unavoidable, but can also be a source of strength which lawmakers and leaders should account for and even encourage in some ways.


title: Modernity

text: Machiavelli's recommendations were sometimes influential upon kings and princes, but eventually came to be seen as favoring free republics over monarchies. Machiavelli in turn influenced Francis Bacon, Marchamont Needham, James Harrington, John Milton, David Hume., and many others


title: Modernity

text: Important modern political doctrines which stem from the new Machiavellian realism include Mandeville's influential proposal that ""Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits"" (the last sentence of his "Fable of the Bees"), and also the doctrine of a constitutional "separation of powers" in government, first clearly proposed by Montesquieu. Both these principles are enshrined within the constitutions of most modern democracies. It has been observed that while Machiavelli's realism saw a value to war and political violence, his lasting influence has been "tamed" so that useful conflict was deliberately converted as much as possible to formalized political struggles and the economic "conflict" encouraged between free, private enterprises.


title: Modernity

text: Starting with Thomas Hobbes, attempts were made to use the methods of the new modern physical sciences, as proposed by Bacon and Descartes, applied to humanity and politics. Notable attempts to improve upon the methodological approach of Hobbes include those of John Locke, Spinoza, Giambattista Vico, and Rousseau. David Hume made what he considered to be the first proper attempt at trying to apply Bacon's scientific method to political subjects, rejecting some aspects of the approach of Hobbes.


title: Modernity

text: Modernist republicanism openly influenced the foundation of republics during the Dutch Revolt (1568–1609), English Civil War (1642–1651), American Revolution (1775–1783), the French Revolution (1789–1799), and the Haitian revolution (1791–1804).


title: Modernity

text: A second phase of modernist political thinking begins with Rousseau, who questioned the natural rationality and sociality of humanity and proposed that human nature was much more malleable than had been previously thought. By this logic, what makes a good political system or a good man is completely dependent upon the chance path a whole people has taken over history. This thought influenced the political (and aesthetic) thinking of Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke and others and led to a critical review of modernist politics. On the conservative side, Burke argued that this understanding encouraged caution and avoidance of radical change. However more ambitious movements also developed from this insight into human culture, initially Romanticism and Historicism, and eventually both the Communism of Karl Marx, and the modern forms of nationalism inspired by the French Revolution, including, in one extreme, the German Nazi movement.


title: Modernity

text: On the other hand, the notion of modernity has been contested also due to its Euro-centric underpinnings. This is further aggravated by the re-emergence of non-Western powers. Yet, the contestations about modernity are also linked with Western notions of democracy, social discipline, and development.


title: Modernity

text: In sociology, a discipline that arose in direct response to the social problems of "modernity", the term most generally refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses consequent to the Age of Enlightenment. In the most basic terms, British sociologist Anthony Giddens describes modernity as


title: Modernity

text: Other writers have criticized such definitions as just being a listing of factors. They argue that modernity, contingently understood as marked by an ontological formation in dominance, needs to be defined much more fundamentally in terms of different ways of being.


title: Modernity

text: This means that modernity overlays earlier formations of traditional and customary life without necessarily replacing them. In a 2006 review essay, historian Michael Saler extended and substantiated this premise, noting that scholarship had revealed historical perspectives on "modernity" that encompassed both enchantment and disenchantment. Late Victorians, for instance, "discussed science in terms of magical influences and vital correspondences, and when vitalism began to be superseded by more mechanistic explanations in the 1830s, magic still remained part of the discourse—now called 'natural magic,' to be sure, but no less 'marvelous' for being the result of determinate and predictable natural processes." Mass culture, despite its "superficialities, irrationalities, prejudices, and problems," became "a vital source of contingent and rational enchantments as well." Occultism could contribute to the conclusions reached by "modern" psychologists and advanced a "satisfaction" found in this mass culture. In addition, Saler observed that "different accounts of modernity may stress diverse combinations or accentuate some factors more than others...Modernity is defined less by binaries arranged in an implicit hierarchy, or by the dialectical transformation of one term into its opposite, than by unresolved contradictions and oppositions, or antinomies: modernity is Janus-faced."


title: Modernity

text: In 2020, Jason Crawford critiqued this recent historiography on enchantment and "modernity." The historical evidence of "enchantments" for these studies, particularly in mass and print cultures, "might offer some solace to the citizens of a disenchanted world, but they don’t really change the condition of that world." These "enchantments" offered a "troubled kind of unreality" increasingly separate from "modernity." Per Osterrgard and James Fitchett advanced a thesis that mass culture, while generating sources for "enchantment," more commonly produced "simulations" of "enchantments" and "disenchantments" for consumers.


title: Modernity

text: The era of modernity is characterised socially by industrialisation and the division of labour and philosophically by "the loss of certainty, and the realization that certainty can never be established, once and for all". With new social and philosophical conditions arose fundamental new challenges. Various 19th-century intellectuals, from Auguste Comte to Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud, attempted to offer scientific and/or political ideologies in the wake of secularisation. Modernity may be described as the "age of ideology."


title: Modernity

text: Critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Zygmunt Bauman propose that modernity or industrialization represents a departure from the central tenets of the Enlightenment and towards nefarious processes of alienation, such as commodity fetishism and the Holocaust. Contemporary sociological critical theory presents the concept of "rationalization" in even more negative terms than those Weber originally defined. Processes of rationalization—as progress for the sake of progress—may in many cases have what critical theory says is a negative and dehumanising effect on modern society.


title: Modernity

text: Consequent to debate about economic globalization, the comparative analysis of civilizations, and the post-colonial perspective of "alternative modernities," Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of "multiple modernities". Modernity as a "plural condition" is the central concept of this sociologic approach and perspective, which broadens the definition of "modernity" from exclusively denoting Western European culture to a culturally relativistic definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies".


title: Modernity

text: Modernity, or the Modern Age, is typically defined as a post-traditional, and post-medieval historical period, 66–67). Central to modernity is emancipation from religion, specifically the hegemony of Christianity (mainly Roman Catholicism), and the consequent secularization. According to writers like Fackenheim and Husserl, modern thought repudiates the Judeo-Christian belief in the Biblical God as a mere relic of superstitious ages. It all started with Descartes' revolutionary methodic doubt, which transformed the concept of truth in the concept of certainty, whose only guarantor is no longer God or the Church, but Man's subjective judgement.


title: Modernity

text: Theologians have adapted in different ways to the challenge of modernity. Liberal theology, over perhaps the past 200 years or so, has tried, in various iterations, to accommodate, or at least tolerate, modern doubt in expounding Christian revelation, while Traditionalist Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and fundamentalist Protestant thinkers and clerics have tried to fight back, denouncing skepticism of every kind. Modernity aimed towards "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality", but as of 2021, Hindu fundamentalism in India and Islamic fundamentalism particularly in the Middle East remain problematic, meaning that intra-society value conflicts are by no means an intrinsically Christian phenomenon.


title: Modernity

text: In the 16th and 17th centuries, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and others developed a new approach to physics and astronomy which changed the way people came to think about many things. Copernicus presented new models of the Solar System which no longer placed humanity's home, Earth, in the centre. Kepler used mathematics to discuss physics and described regularities of nature this way. Galileo actually made his famous proof of uniform acceleration in freefall using mathematics.


title: Modernity

text: Francis Bacon, especially in his "Novum Organum", argued for a new methodological approach. It was an experimental based approach to science, which sought no knowledge of formal or final causes. Yet, he was no materialist. He also talked of the two books of God, God's Word (Scripture) and God's work (nature). But he also added a theme that science should seek to control nature for the sake of humanity, and not seek to understand it just for the sake of understanding. In both these things he was influenced by Machiavelli's earlier criticism of medieval Scholasticism, and his proposal that leaders should aim to control their own fortune.


title: Modernity

text: Influenced both by Galileo's new physics and Bacon, René Descartes argued soon afterward that mathematics and geometry provided a model of how scientific knowledge could be built up in small steps. He also argued openly that human beings themselves could be understood as complex machines.


title: Modernity

text: Isaac Newton, influenced by Descartes, but also, like Bacon, a proponent of experimentation, provided the archetypal example of how both Cartesian mathematics, geometry and theoretical deduction on the one hand, and Baconian experimental observation and induction on the other hand, together could lead to great advances in the practical understanding of regularities in nature.


title: Modernity

text: One common conception of modernity is the condition of Western history since the mid-15th century, or roughly the European development of movable type and the printing press. In this context the "modern" society is said to develop over many periods, and to be influenced by important events that represent breaks in the continuity.


title: Modernity

text: After modernist political thinking had already become widely known in France, Rousseau's re-examination of human nature led to a new criticism of the value of reasoning itself which in turn led to a new understanding of less rationalistic human activities, especially the arts. The initial influence was upon the movements known as German Idealism and Romanticism in the 18th and 19th century. Modern art therefore belongs only to the later phases of modernity.


title: Modernity

text: For this reason art history keeps the term "modernity" distinct from the terms Modern Age and Modernism – as a discrete "term applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity of innovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought". And modernity in art "is more than merely the state of being modern, or the opposition between old and new".


title: Modernity

text: In the essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1864), Charles Baudelaire gives a literary definition: "By modernity I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent".


title: Modernity

text: Advancing technological innovation, affecting artistic technique and the means of manufacture, changed rapidly the possibilities of art and its status in a rapidly changing society. Photography challenged the place of the painter and painting. Architecture was transformed by the availability of steel for structures.


title: Modernity

text: From conservative Protestant theologian Thomas C. Oden's perspective, "modernity" is marked by "four fundamental values":


title: Modernity

text: Modernity rejects anything "old" and makes "novelty ... a criterion for truth." This results in a great "phobic response to anything antiquarian." In contrast, "classical Christian consciousness" resisted "novelty".


title: Modernity

text: Within Roman Catholicism, Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius X claim that Modernism (in a particular definition of the Catholic Church) is a danger to the Christian faith. Pope Pius IX compiled a Syllabus of Errors published on December 8, 1864, to describe his objections to Modernism. Pope Pius X further elaborated on the characteristics and consequences of Modernism, from his perspective, in an encyclical entitled "Pascendi dominici gregis" (Feeding the Lord's Flock) on September 8, 1907. Pascendi Dominici Gregis states that the principles of Modernism, taken to a logical conclusion, lead to atheism. The Roman Catholic Church was serious enough about the threat of Modernism that it required all Roman Catholic clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors and seminary professors to swear an Oath Against Modernism from 1910 until this directive was rescinded in 1967, in keeping with the directives of the Second Vatican Council.


title: Modernity

text: Of the available conceptual definitions in sociology, modernity is "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence'," visual culture, and personal visibility. Generally, the large-scale social integration constituting modernity, involves the:


title: Can (band)

text: Can (stylised as CAN) was a German experimental rock band formed in Cologne in 1968 by Holger Czukay (bass, tape editing), Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Michael Karoli (guitar), and Jaki Liebezeit (drums). The group used several vocalists, most prominently the American Malcolm Mooney (1968–70) and the Japanese Damo Suzuki (1970–73). They have been widely hailed as pioneers of the German krautrock scene.


title: Can (band)

text: Coming from backgrounds in the avant-garde and jazz, Can blended elements of psychedelic rock, funk, and musique concrète on influential albums such as "Tago Mago" (1971), "Ege Bamyasi" (1972) and "Future Days" (1973). Can also had commercial success with singles such as "Spoon" (1971) and "I Want More" (1976) reaching national singles charts. Their work has influenced rock, post-punk, ambient, and electronic acts.


title: Can (band)

text: The roots of Can can be traced back to Irmin Schmidt and a trip that he made to New York City in 1966. While Schmidt initially spent his time with avant-garde musicians such as Steve Reich, La Monte Young and Terry Riley, he was also eventually exposed to the world of Andy Warhol and Hotel Chelsea. In his own words, the trip "corrupted" him, sparking a fascination with the possibilities of rock music. Upon his return to Cologne later that year, an inspired Schmidt formed a group with American avant-garde composer and flautist David C. Johnson and music teacher Holger Czukay with the intention of exploring his newly broadened horizons.


title: Can (band)

text: Up to that point, the inclinations of all three musicians had been exclusively avant-garde classical. In fact, both Schmidt and Czukay had directly studied under the influential composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Schmidt chose to play organ and piano, while Czukay played bass and was able to record their music with a basic two-track tape machine. The group was soon fleshed out by guitarist Michael Karoli, a 19-year-old pupil of Czukay, and drummer Jaki Liebezeit, who had grown disenchanted with his work in free jazz groups. As the group developed a more rock-oriented sound, a disappointed Johnson left the group at the end of 1968.


title: Can (band)

text: The band used the names "Inner Space" and "the Can" before finally settling on Can, stylised in all caps. Mooney suggested the name due to its positive meanings in various languages. For example, in Turkish, a language much heard in Germany, "can" may mean, depending on the context, "life, soul, heart, spirit, beloved and vitality". Liebezeit later suggested the backformation acronym "Communism, Anarchism, Nihilism", after an English magazine claimed this was the intended meaning.


title: Can (band)

text: Around September 1968, the band enlisted the creative, highly rhythmic, but unstable and often confrontational American vocalist Malcolm Mooney, a New York-based sculptor, with whom it recorded the material for an album, "Prepared to Meet Thy Pnoom". As "Inner Space", and with both Johnson and Mooney present, the band appeared briefly in the 1969 film "" backing singer Margarete Juvan. Unable to find a recording company willing to release the album, the group continued its studio work until it had material for what became its first release, "Monster Movie" (1969). This album contained new versions of two songs previously recorded for "Prepared to Meet Thy Pnoom", "Father Cannot Yell" and "Outside My Door". Other material recorded around the same time was released in 1981 as "Delay 1968". Mooney's ranting vocals emphasized the music's sheer strangeness and hypnotic quality, which was influenced particularly by garage rock, psychedelic rock and funk. Repetition was stressed on bass and drums, particularly on the track "Yoo Doo Right", which had been edited down from a six-hour improvisation to take up a mere single side of vinyl. Liebezeit's tight but multifarious drumming was crucial in carrying the music.


title: Can (band)

text: Mooney made his last recordings with Can in December 1969 before returning to America around the end of the year on a psychiatrist's advice, having been told that getting away from Can's chaotic music would be good for his mental health. The liner notes of the CD reissue of "Monster Movie" say that he suffered a nervous breakdown ("caught in a Can groove"), shouting "upstairs, downstairs" repeatedly. He was replaced in May 1970 by the more understated Kenji "Damo" Suzuki, a young Japanese traveler Czukay and Liebezeit found busking outside a Munich café. Though he knew only a handful of guitar chords and improvised most of his lyrics (as opposed to committing them to paper), he was asked to perform with the band that night. The band's first record with Suzuki was "Soundtracks" (1970), a compilation of music made for films that also contained two earlier tracks recorded with Mooney. Suzuki's lyrics were usually in English and sometimes in Japanese (for example, in "Oh Yeah" and "Doko E").


title: Can (band)

text: The next few years saw Can release its most acclaimed works. While its earlier recordings tended to be at least loosely based on traditional song structures, on its mid-career albums the band reverted to an extremely fluid improvisational style. The double album "Tago Mago" (1971) is often seen as groundbreaking, influential and deeply unconventional, based on intensely rhythmic jazz-inspired drumming, improvised guitar and keyboard soloing (frequently intertwining), tape edits as composition, and Suzuki's idiosyncratic vocalisms. Czukay said it "was an attempt in achieving a mystery musical world from light to darkness and return."


title: Can (band)

text: In 1971 the band composed the music for the three-part German-language television crime miniseries "Das Messer" ("The Knife"), directed by Rolf von Sydow. The track "Spoon" was used as the theme song and, released as a single, reached number 6 in the German singles chart.


title: Can (band)

text: "Tago Mago" was followed in 1972 by "Ege Bamyasi", a more accessible but still avant-garde record which featured "Spoon" and the catchy "Vitamin C". Czukay said, "We could achieve an excellent dry and ambient sound... ["Ege Bamyasi"] reflects the group being in a lighter mood."


title: Can (band)

text: It was followed by "Future Days" in 1973, an early example of ambient music that also includes the pop song "Moonshake". Czukay said, "'Bel Air' [the 20-minute track that takes up all of side two on the original "Future Days" LP] showed Can in a state of being an electric symphony group performing a peaceful though sometimes dramatic landscape painting."


title: Can (band)

text: Suzuki left soon after the recording of "Future Days" to marry his German girlfriend, and become a Jehovah's Witness. Vocals were taken over by Karoli and Schmidt, but after Suzuki's departure, fewer of Can's tracks featured vocals, as the band experimented with the ambient music it had begun with "Future Days".


title: Can (band)

text: "Soon Over Babaluma" from 1974 continued in the ambient style of "Future Days", but with some of the abrasive edge of "Tago Mago" and "Ege Bamyasi". In 1975, Can signed with Virgin Records in the UK and EMI/Harvest in Germany, appearing the same year on BBC's "Old Grey Whistle Test" in a memorable performance of "Vernal Equinox" in which Schmidt played one keyboard section with a series of rapid karate chops. Shortly after the appearance Schmidt suffered a broken leg which led to cancellation of the band's UK tour.


title: Can (band)

text: The later albums "Landed" (1975) and "Flow Motion" (1976) saw Can moving toward a somewhat more conventional style as its recording technology improved. The disco single "I Want More" from "Flow Motion" became its only hit record outside Germany. Co-written by live sound mixer Peter Gilmour, it reached No 26 in the UK charts in October 1976, which prompted an appearance on "Top of the Pops", where Czukay performed with a double bass. In 1977 Can was joined by former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, both of whom provided vocals, appearing on the albums "Saw Delight" (1977), "Out of Reach" (1978) and "Can" (1979).


title: Can (band)

text: During this period Czukay was pushed to the fringes of the group's activity due to disagreements about the band's creative direction and his failure as a bass guitarist to keep up with the growth of the other musicians. Bass guitar was something Czukay had "taken up almost by default" and he readily admitted his limitations on the instrument. After Gee joined Can, Czukay made sounds using shortwave radios, Morse code keys, tape recorders and other sundry objects. He left Can in late 1977 and did not appear on the albums "Out of Reach" or "Can", although he was involved with production work for the latter album. The band seemed to be in a hiatus shortly afterwards, but reunions have taken place on several occasions since.


title: Can (band)

text: Since the split, all the former members have been involved in musical projects, often as session musicians for other artists. In 1986 they briefly reformed, with original vocalist Mooney, to record "Rite Time" (released in 1989). There was a further reunion in 1991 by Karoli, Liebezeit, Mooney and Schmidt to record a track for the Wim Wenders film "Until the End of the World" and in August 1999 by Karoli, Liebezeit and Schmidt with Jono Podmore to record a cover of "The Third Man Theme" for Grönland Records' compilation album "Pop 2000". In 1999 the four core members of Can, Karoli, Liebezeit, Schmidt and Czukay, performed live at the same show, although playing separately with their current solo projects (Sofortkontakt, Club Off Chaos, Kumo and U-She respectively). Can have since been the subject of numerous compilations, live albums and samples. In 2004, the band began a series of Super Audio CD remasters of its back catalog, which were finished in 2006.


title: Can (band)

text: Michael Karoli died of cancer on 17 November 2001; Jaki Liebezeit died of pneumonia on 22 January 2017, and Czukay died of natural causes on 5 September 2017, thus leaving Irmin Schmidt as the sole surviving consistent member of the group.


title: Can (band)

text: Holger Czukay recorded several ambient albums and collaborated with David Sylvian among others. Jaki Liebezeit played extensively with bassists Jah Wobble and Bill Laswell, with a drum ensemble called Drums off Chaos and in 2005 with Datenverarbeiter on the online album "Givt". Michael Karoli recorded a reggae album with Polly Eltes before his death, and Irmin Schmidt has begun working with drummer Martin Atkins, producing a remix for the industrial band The Damage Manual and a cover of "Banging the Door" for a Public Image Ltd tribute album, both released on Atkins' label, Invisible Records. Karoli formed Sofortkontakt! for the Can reunion shows in 1999 with Mark Spybey, who had previously been associated with Dead Voices on Air, Zoviet France, Reformed Faction and Download. The band also featured Alexander Schoenert, Felix Guttierez of Jelly Planet, Thomas Hopf and Mandjao Fati. Karoli also performed on numerous occasions with Damo Suzuki's Network. Damo Suzuki returned to music in 1983 and since then he has been playing live improvisational shows around the world with local musicians and members of touring bands at various points, sometimes issuing live albums. Malcolm Mooney recorded an album as singer for the band Tenth Planet in 1998. Rosko Gee has been the bassist in the live band on Harald Schmidt's TV show in Germany since 1995. Rebop Kwaku Baah died in 1983 following a brain hemorrhage.


title: Can (band)

text: Can released a compilation album "Limited Edition" in 1974, and expanded it to a double album "Unlimited Edition" in 1976 from their unreleased studio recordings. "Delay 1968", released in 1981, was a compilation of unreleased 1968–1969 recordings. "Cannibalism 2", a compilation album of album and single material, also included one unreleased song, "Melting Away", from the 1960s.


title: Can (band)

text: In 1995 "The Peel Sessions" was released, a compilation of Can recordings at the BBC. In 1999 "Can Box" was released, with a Can video documentary, a concert recording from 1972 and a double live CD compiled by Michael Karoli and later released separately as "Can Live Music (Live 1971–1977)". Unreleased live music of Can have been also released on the 40th Anniversary Edition of "Tago Mago" in 2011 and 17 LP collection box "Can" in 2014.


title: Can (band)

text: "The Lost Tapes", released in 2012, was overseen by Irmin Schmidt and Daniel Miller, compiled by Schmidt and Jono Podmore, and edited by Podmore.


title: Can (band)

text: Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt were both pupils of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Can inherited a strong grounding in his musical theory; the latter was trained as a classical pianist, while Michael Karoli was a pupil of Holger Czukay and brought the influence of gypsy music through his esoteric studies. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit had strong jazz leanings. The band's sound was originally intended to be based on the sound of ethnic music, so when the band decided to pick up the garage rock sound, original member David Johnson left. This world music trend was later exemplified on albums such as "Ege Bamyasi" (the name meaning "Aegean okra" in Turkish), "Future Days" and "Saw Delight", and by incorporating new band members with different nationalities. A series of tracks on Can albums, known as "Ethnological Forgery Series", abbreviated to "E.F.S", demonstrated the band's ability to successfully recreate ethnic-sounding music. They constructed their music largely through collective spontaneous composition, sampling themselves in the studio and editing down the results; bassist and chief engineer Czukay referred to Can's live and studio performances as "instant compositions".


title: Can (band)

text: The band's early rock influences include The Beatles and The Velvet Underground as well as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Frank Zappa. The band have admitted that the beginning of Can's "Father Cannot Yell" was inspired by the Velvet Underground's "European Son". Malcolm Mooney's voice has been compared to that of James Brown (an acknowledged hero of the band members) and their early style, rooted in psychedelic music, drew comparisons with Pink Floyd. Czukay's extensive editing has occasionally been compared to the late-'60s music of trumpeter Miles Davis (such as "In a Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew"): Can and Davis both would record long groove-intensive improvisations, then edit the best bits together for their albums. Czukay and Teo Macero (Davis's producer and editor) both had roots in the "musique concrète" of the 1940s and '50s. Irmin Schmidt stated in a discussion with Michael Karoli in 1996 concerning the various citations of influences upon their music: "You know, it's funny that in spite of all the supposed influences on us that have been written about, the one overriding influence has never been mentioned: Michael von Biel."


title: Can (band)

text: Damo Suzuki was a very different singer from Mooney, with a multilingual (he claimed to sing in "the language of the Stone Age") and often inscrutable vocal style. With Suzuki, the band made their most critically and commercially successful albums. The rhythm section's work on "Tago Mago" has been especially praised: one critic writes that much of the album is based on "long improvisations built around hypnotic rhythm patterns"; another writes that "Halleluhwah" finds them "pounding out a monster trance/funk beat".


title: Can (band)

text: The Lumerians and Happy Mondays have cited Can as an influence. Critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Can's pan-global avant-funk anticipated many of the moves made by sampladelic dance genres like trip hop, ethnotechno and ambient jungle." Brian Eno made a short film in tribute to Can, while John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared at the Echo Awards ceremony, at which Can were awarded the most prestigious music award in Germany, to pay tribute to guitarist Michael Karoli. Radiohead covered Can's song "The Thief" frequently in the early 2000s, and cited them as an influence on their 2000 album "Kid A". Mark E. Smith of the Fall paid tribute to Suzuki with the track "I Am Damo Suzuki" on the 1985 album "This Nation's Saving Grace". The Jesus and Mary Chain covered "Mushroom" live in the mid-1980s. Mark Hollis of Talk Talk had mentioned Can several times as an influence for their later albums, "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock".


title: Can (band)

text: At least five notable bands have named themselves in tribute to Can: the Mooney Suzuki for Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki; the indie rock band Spoon after the hit "Spoon"; the electronic band Egebamyasi, formed by Scottish musician Mr Egg in 1984, after Can's album "Ege Bamyasi"; Hunters & Collectors after a song on the "Landed" album; and Moonshake, named for a track on "Future Days", and formed by ex-Wolfhounds frontman David Callahan. The Scottish writer Alan Warner has written two novels in tribute to two different Can members ("Morvern Callar" to Holger Czukay and "The Man Who Walks" to Michael Karoli respectively). The "Sacrilege" remix album features remixes of Can tracks by artists who were influenced by Can, including Sonic Youth and U.N.K.L.E. Their ethnomusicological tendencies pre-date the craze for world music in the 1980s. While not nearly as influential on electronic music as Kraftwerk, they were important early pioneers of ambient music, along with Tangerine Dream and the aforementioned band. Many groups working in the post-rock genre can look to Can as an influence as part of the larger krautrock scene, as can New Prog bands such as The Mars Volta. "Rolling Stone" called the group a "pioneering space rock band". Kanye West has sampled "Sing Swan Song" on his song "Drunk & Hot Girls" from his 2007 album "Graduation". The UK band Loop was deeply influenced by Can for their repetitive polyrhythmic style, covering Can's "Mother Sky" on their "Fade Out" album. The Yugoslav progressive/psychedelic rock band Igra Staklenih Perli, heavily influenced by Can, on their self-titled debut album released the song "Pečurka" ("Mushroom") as a tribute to Can.


title: Can (band)

text: The band is name-checked as a formative influence in LCD Soundsystem's debut single "Losing My Edge". Oasis' 2008 single "The Shock of the Lightning" was inspired by Can and Neu!.


title: Can (band)

text: Much of Can's music was based on free improvisation and then edited for the studio albums. For example, when preparing a soundtrack, only Irmin Schmidt would view the film and then give the rest of the band a general description of the scenes they would be scoring. This assisted in the improvised soundtrack being successful both inside and outside the film's context.


title: Can (band)

text: Can's live shows often melded spontaneous improvisation of this kind with songs appearing on their albums. The track "Colchester Finale", appearing on the "Can Live" album, incorporates portions of "Halleluhwah" into a composition lasting over half an hour. Early concerts found Mooney and Suzuki often able to shock audiences. The actor David Niven was asked by Czukay what he had thought of a concert, Niven replied: "It was great, but I didn't know it was music." After the departure of Suzuki, the music grew in intensity without a vocal centre. The band maintained their ability to collectively improvise with or without central themes for hours at a time (their longest performance, in Berlin, lasted over six hours), resulting in a large archive of performances.


title: Can (band)

text: Can made attempts to find a new vocalist after the departure of Damo Suzuki, although no one quite fit the position. In 1975, folk singer Tim Hardin took the lead vocal spot and played guitar with Can for one song, at two gigs, performing his own "The Lady Came From Baltimore". Malaysian vocalist Thaiga Raj Raja Ratnam played six dates with the band between January and March 1976. Another temporary vocalist, Englishman Michael Cousins, toured with Can from March (France) to April (Germany) 1976.


title: Spear

text: A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, iron, steel, or bronze. The most common design for hunting or combat spears since ancient times has incorporated a metal spearhead shaped like a triangle, lozenge, or leaf. The heads of fishing spears usually feature barbs or serrated edges.


title: Spear

text: The word "spear" comes from the Old English "spere", from the Proto-Germanic "speri", from a Proto-Indo-European root "*sper-" "spear, pole".


title: Spear

text: Spears can be divided into two broad categories: those designed for thrusting as a melee weapon and those designed for throwing as a ranged weapon (usually referred to as javelins or darts).


title: Spear

text: The spear has been used throughout human history both as a hunting and fishing tool and as a weapon. Along with the club, knife, and axe, it is one of the earliest and most important tools developed by early humans. As a weapon, it may be wielded with either one or two hands. It was used in virtually every conflict up until the modern era, where even then it continues on in the form of the fixed bayonet on a long gun, and is probably the most commonly used weapon in history.


title: Spear

text: Spear manufacture and use is not confined to humans. It is also practiced by the western chimpanzee. Chimpanzees near Kédougou, Senegal have been observed to create spears by breaking straight limbs off trees, stripping them of their bark and side branches, and sharpening one end with their teeth. They then used the weapons to hunt galagos sleeping in hollows.


title: Spear

text: Archaeological evidence found in present-day Germany documents that wooden spears have been used for hunting since at least 400,000 years ago, and a 2012 study from the site of Kathu Pan in South Africa suggests that hominids, possibly "Homo heidelbergensis", may have developed the technology of hafted stone-tipped spears in Africa about 500,000 years ago. Wood does not preserve well, however, and Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, has suggested that the discovery of spear use by chimpanzees means that early humans may have used wooden spears before this.


title: Spear

text: Neanderthals were constructing stone spear heads from as early as 300,000 BP, and by 250,000 years ago, wooden spears were made with fire-hardened points.


title: Spear

text: From circa 200,000 BCE onwards, Middle Paleolithic humans began to make complex stone blades with flaked edges which were used as spear heads. These stone heads could be fixed to the spear shaft by gum or resin or by bindings made of animal sinew, leather strips or vegetable matter. During this period, a clear difference remained between spears designed to be thrown and those designed to be used in hand-to-hand combat. By the Magdalenian period (c. 15,000–9500 BCE), spear-throwers similar to the later atlatl were in use.


title: Spear

text: The spear is the main weapon of the warriors of Homer's "Iliad". The use of both a single thrusting spear and two throwing spears are mentioned. It has been suggested that two styles of combat are being described; an early style, with thrusting spears, dating to the Mycenaean period in which the Iliad is set, and, anachronistically, a later style, with throwing spears, from Homer's own Archaic period.


title: Spear

text: In the 7th century BCE, the Greeks evolved a new close-order infantry formation, the phalanx. The key to this formation was the hoplite, who was equipped with a large, circular, bronze-faced shield (aspis) and a spear with an iron head and bronze butt-spike (doru). The hoplite phalanx dominated warfare among the Greek City States from the 7th into the 4th century BCE.


title: Spear

text: The 4th century saw major changes. One was the greater use of peltasts, light infantry armed with spear and javelins. The other was the development of the sarissa, a two-handed pike in length, by the Macedonians under Phillip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. The pike phalanx, supported by peltasts and cavalry, became the dominant mode of warfare among the Greeks from the late 4th century onward until Greek military systems were supplanted by the Roman legions.


title: Spear

text: In the pre-Marian Roman armies, the first two lines of battle, the "hastati" and "principes", often fought with a sword called a "gladius" and "pila", heavy javelins that were specifically designed to be thrown at an enemy to pierce and foul a target's shield. Originally the "principes" were armed with a short spear called a "hasta", but these gradually fell out of use, eventually being replaced by the gladius. The third line, the "triarii", continued to use the "hasta".


title: Spear

text: From the late 2nd century BCE, all legionaries were equipped with the "pilum". The "pilum" continued to be the standard legionary spear until the end of the 2nd century CE. "Auxilia", however, were equipped with a simple hasta and, perhaps, javelins or darts. During the 3rd century CE, although the "pilum" continued to be used, legionaries usually were equipped with other forms of throwing and thrusting spear, similar to "auxilia" of the previous century. By the 4th century, the "pilum" had effectively disappeared from common use.


title: Spear

text: In the late period of the Roman Empire, the spear became more often used because of its anti-cavalry capacities as the barbarian invasions were often conducted by people with a developed culture of cavalry in warfare.


title: Spear

text: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the spear and shield continued to be used by nearly all Western European cultures. Since a medieval spear required only a small amount of steel along the sharpened edges (most of the spear-tip was wrought iron), it was an economical weapon. Quick to manufacture, and needing less smithing skill than a sword, it remained the main weapon of the common soldier. The Vikings, for instance, although often portrayed with axe or sword in hand, were armed mostly with spears, as were their Anglo-Saxon, Irish, or continental contemporaries.


title: Spear

text: Broadly speaking, spears were either designed to be used in melee, or to be thrown. Within this simple classification, there was a remarkable range of types. For example, M. J. Swanton identified thirty different spearhead categories and sub-categories in early Saxon England. Most medieval spearheads were generally leaf-shaped. Notable types of early medieval spears include the "angon", a throwing spear with a long head similar to the Roman "pilum", used by the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, and the winged (or lugged) spear, which had two prominent wings at the base of the spearhead, either to prevent the spear penetrating too far into an enemy or to aid in spear fencing. Originally a Frankish weapon, the winged spear also was popular with the Vikings. It would become the ancestor of later medieval polearms, such as the partisan and spetum.


title: Spear

text: The thrusting spear also has the advantage of reach, being considerably longer than other weapon types. Exact spear lengths are hard to deduce as few spear shafts survive archaeologically but would seem to have been the norm. Some nations were noted for their long spears, including the Scots and the Flemish. Spears usually were used in tightly ordered formations, such as the shield wall or the schiltron. To resist cavalry, spear shafts could be planted against the ground. William Wallace drew up his schiltrons in a circle at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 to deter charging cavalry; this was a widespread tactic sometimes known as the "crown" formation. Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray used a circular schiltron on the first day of the Battle of Bannockburn. However, the rectangular schiltron was much more common and was used by King Robert the Bruce on the second day of the Battle of Bannockburn and in the Battle of Old Byland when he defeated English armies.


title: Spear

text: Throwing spears became rarer as the Middle Ages drew on, but survived in the hands of specialists such as the Catalan Almogavars. They were commonly used in Ireland until the end of the 16th century.


title: Spear

text: Spears began to lose fashion among the infantry during the 14th century, being replaced by pole weapons that combined the thrusting properties of the spear with the cutting properties of the axe, such as the halberd. Where spears were retained they grew in length, eventually evolving into pikes, which would be a dominant infantry weapon in the 16th and 17th centuries.


title: Spear

text: Cavalry spears were originally the same as infantry spears and were often used with two hands or held with one hand overhead. In the 12th century, after the adoption of stirrups and a high-cantled saddle, the spear became a decidedly more powerful weapon. A mounted knight would secure the lance by holding it with one hand and tucking it under the armpit (the "couched lance" technique) This allowed all the momentum of the horse and knight to be focused on the weapon's tip, whilst still retaining accuracy and control. This use of the spear spurred the development of the lance as a distinct weapon that was perfected in the medieval sport of jousting.


title: Spear

text: In the 14th century, tactical developments meant that knights and men-at-arms often fought on foot. This led to the practice of shortening the lance to about .) to make it more manageable. As dismounting became commonplace, specialist pole weapons such as the pollaxe were adopted by knights and this practice ceased.


title: Spear

text: The development of both the long, two-handed pike and gunpowder firearms in Renaissance Europe saw an ever-increasing focus on integrated infantry tactics. Those infantry not armed with these weapons carried variations on the polearm, including the halberd and the bill. At the start of the Renaissance, cavalry remained predominantly lance-armed; gendarmes with the heavy knightly lance and lighter cavalry with a variety of lighter lances. By the 1540s, however, pistol-armed cavalry called reiters were beginning to make their mark. Cavalry armed with pistols and other lighter firearms, along with a sword, had virtually replaced lance armed cavalry in Western Europe by the beginning of the 17th century.


title: Spear

text: Ultimately, the spear proper was rendered obsolete on the battlefield. Its last flowering was the half-pike or spontoon, a shortened version of the pike carried by officers of various ranks. While originally a weapon, this came to be seen more as a badge of office, or "leading staff" by which troops were directed. The half-pike, sometimes known as a boarding pike, was also used as a weapon on board ships until the late 19th century.


title: Spear

text: Muslim warriors used a spear that was called an "az-zaġāyah". Berbers pronounced it "zaġāya", but the English term, derived from the Old French via Berber, is "assegai". It is a pole weapon used for throwing or hurling, usually a light spear or javelin made of hard wood and pointed with a forged iron tip. The "az-zaġāyah" played an important role during the Islamic conquest as well as during later periods, well into the 20th century. A longer pole "az-zaġāyah" was being used as a hunting weapon from horseback. The "az-zaġāyah" was widely used. It existed in various forms in areas stretching from Southern Africa to the Indian subcontinent, although these places already had their own variants of the spear. This javelin was the weapon of choice during the "Fulani jihad" as well as during the Mahdist War in Sudan. It is still being used by certain wandering Sufi ascetics "(Derwishes)".


title: Spear

text: In the Chinese martial arts, the Chinese spear (Qiang 槍) is popularly known as the "king of weapons". The spear is listed in the group of the four major weapons (along with the gun (staff), dao (a single-edged blade similar to a sabre), and the jian (sword)).


title: Spear

text: Spears were used first as hunting weapons amongst the ancient Chinese. They became popular as infantry weapons during the Warring States and Qin era, when spearmen were used as especially highly disciplined soldiers in organized group attacks. When used in formation fighting, spearmen would line up their large rectangular or circular shields in a shieldwall manner. The Qin also employed long spears (more akin to a pike) in formations similar to Swiss pikemen in order to ward off cavalry. The Han Empire would use similar tactics as its Qin predecessors. Halberds, polearms, and dagger axes were also common weapons during this time.


title: Spear

text: Spears were also common weaponry for Warring States, Qin, and Han era cavalry units. During these eras, the spear would develop into a longer lance-like weapon used for cavalry charges.


title: Spear

text: There are many words in Chinese that would be classified as a spear in English. The "Mao" is the predecessor of the "Qiang". The first bronze "Mao" appeared in the Shang dynasty. This weapon was less prominent on the battlefield than the "ge" (dagger-axe). In some archaeological examples two tiny holes or ears can be found in the blade of the spearhead near the socket, these holes were presumably used to attach tassels, much like modern day wushu spears.


title: Spear

text: In the early Shang, the "Mao" appeared to have a relatively short shaft as well as a relatively narrow shaft as opposed to "Mao" in the later Shang and Western Zhou period. Some "Mao" from this era are heavily decorated as is evidenced by a Warring States period "Mao" from the Ba Shu area.


title: Spear

text: In the Han dynasty the "Mao" and the "Ji" (戟 "Ji" can be loosely defined as a halberd) rose to prominence in the military. Interesting to note is that the amount of iron Mao-heads found exceeds the number of bronze heads. By the end of the Han dynasty (Eastern Han) the process of replacement of the iron "Mao" had been completed and the bronze "Mao" had been rendered completely obsolete. After the Han dynasty toward the Sui and Tang dynasties the "Mao" used by cavalry were fitted with much longer shafts, as is mentioned above. During this era, the use of the "Shuo" (矟) was widespread among the footmen. The "Shuo" can be likened to a pike or simply a long spear.


title: Spear

text: After the Tang dynasty, the popularity of the "Mao" declined and was replaced by the "Qiang" (枪). The Tang dynasty divided the "Qiang" in four categories: "一曰漆枪， 二曰木枪， 三曰白杆枪， 四曰扑头枪。” Roughly translated the four categories are: Qi (a kind of wood) Spears, Wooden Spears, Bai Gan (A kind of wood) Spears and Pu Tou Qiang. The Qiang that were produced in the Song and Ming dynasties consisted of four major parts: Spearhead, Shaft, End Spike and Tassel. The types of Qiang that exist are many. Among the types there are cavalry Qiang that were the length of one "zhang" (eleven feet and nine inches or 3.58 m), Litte-Flower Spears (Xiao Hua Qiang 小花枪) that are the length of one person and their arm extended above his head, double hooked spears, single hooked spears, ringed spears and many more.


title: Spear

text: There is some confusion as to how to distinguish the "Qiang" from the "Mao", as they are obviously very similar. Some people say that a "Mao" is longer than a "Qiang", others say that the main difference is between the stiffness of the shaft, where the "Qiang" would be flexible and the "Mao" would be stiff. Scholars seem to lean toward the latter explanation more than the former. Because of the difference in the construction of the "Mao" and the "Qiang", the usage is also different, though there is no definitive answer as to what exactly the differences are between the "Mao" and the "Qiang".


title: Spear

text: Spears are known as Bhala in Indian languages. Spears in the Indian society were used both in missile and non-missile form, both by cavalry and foot-soldiers. Mounted spear-fighting was practiced using with a ten-foot, ball-tipped wooden lance called a "bothati", the end of which was covered in dye so that hits may be confirmed. Spears were constructed from a variety of materials such as the "sang" made completely of steel, and the "ballam" which had a bamboo shaft.


title: Spear

text: The Arab presence in Sindh and the Mameluks of Delhi introduced the Middle Eastern javelin into India.


title: Spear

text: The Rajputs wielded a type of spear for infantrymen which had a club integrated into the spearhead, and a pointed butt end. Other spears had forked blades, several spear-points, and numerous other innovations. One particular spear unique to India was the "vita" or corded lance.


title: Spear

text: Used by the Maratha army, it had a rope connecting the spear with the user's wrist, allowing the weapon to be thrown and pulled back. The "Vel" is a type of spear or lance, originated in Southern India, primarily used by Tamils.


title: Spear

text: Sikh Nihangs sometimes carry a spear even today. Spears were used in conflicts and training by armed paramilitary units such as the razakars of Nizams of Hyderabad State as late as the second half of the 20th century.


title: Spear

text: The hoko spear was used in ancient Japan sometime between the Yayoi period and the Heian period, but it became unpopular as early samurai often acted as horseback archers. Medieval Japan employed spears again for infantrymen to use, but it was not until the 11th century in that samurai began to prefer spears over bows. Several polearms were used in the Japanese theatres; the naginata was a glaive-like weapon with a long, curved blade popularly among the samurai and the Buddhist warrior-monks, often used against cavalry; the yari was a longer polearm, with a straight-bladed spearhead, which became the weapon of choice of both the samurai and the ashigaru (footmen) during the Warring States Era; the horseback samurai used shorter yari for his single-armed combat; on the other hand, ashigaru infantries used long yari (similar with European pike) for their massed combat formation.


title: Spear

text: Filipino spears (sibat) were used as both a weapon and a tool throughout the Philippines. It is also called a "bangkaw" (after the Bankaw Revolt.), "sumbling" or "palupad" in the islands of Visayas and Mindanao. Sibat are typically made from rattan, either with a sharpened tip or a head made from metal. These heads may either be single-edged, double-edged or barbed. Styles vary according to function and origin. For example, a sibat designed for fishing may not be the same as those used for hunting.


title: Spear

text: The spear was used as the primary weapon in expeditions and battles against neighbouring island kingdoms and it became famous during the 1521 Battle of Mactan, where the chieftain Lapu Lapu of Cebu fought against Spanish forces led by Ferdinand Magellan who was subsequently killed.


title: Spear

text: The various types of the assegai (a light spear or javelin made of wood and pointed with iron or fire-hardened tip) were used throughout Africa and it was the most common weapon used before the introduction of firearms. The Zulu, Xhosa and other Nguni tribes of South Africa were renowned for their use of the assegai.


title: Spear

text: Shaka of the Zulu invented a shorter stabbing spear with a two-foot (0.61m) shaft and a larger, broader blade one foot (0.3m) long. This weapon is otherwise known as the "iklwa" or "ixwa", after the sound that was heard as it was withdrawn from the victim's wound. The traditional spear was not abandoned, but was used to range attack enemy formations before closing in for close quarters battle with the iklwa. This tactical combination originated during Shaka's military reforms. This weapon was typically used with one hand while the off hand held a cowhide shield for protection.


title: Spear

text: As advanced metallurgy was largely unknown in pre-Columbian America outside of Western Mexico and South America, most weapons in Meso-America were made of wood or obsidian. This did not mean that they were less lethal, as obsidian may be sharpened to become many times sharper than steel. Meso-American spears varied greatly in shape and size. While the Aztecs preferred the sword-like macuahuitl for fighting, the advantage of a far-reaching thrusting weapon was recognised, and a large portion of the army would carry the tepoztopilli into battle. The tepoztopilli was a polearm, and to judge from depictions in various Aztec codices, it was roughly the height of a man, with a broad wooden head about twice the length of the users' palm or shorter, edged with razor-sharp obsidian blades which were deeply set in grooves carved into the head, and cemented in place with bitumen or plant resin as an adhesive. The tepoztopilli was able both to thrust and slash effectively.


title: Spear

text: Throwing spears also were used extensively in Meso-American warfare, usually with the help of an atlatl. Throwing spears were typically shorter and more stream-lined than the tepoztopilli, and some had obsidian edges for greater penetration.


title: Spear

text: Typically, most spears made by Native Americans were created with materials surrounded by their communities. Usually, the shaft of the spear was made with a wooden stick while the head of the spear was fashioned from arrowheads, pieces of metal such as copper, or a bone that had been sharpened. Spears were a preferred weapon by many since it was inexpensive to create, could more easily be taught to others, and could be made quickly and in large quantities.


title: Spear

text: Native Americans used the buffalo pound method to kill buffalo, which required a hunter to dress as a buffalo and lure one into a ravine where other hunters were hiding. Once the buffalo appeared, the other hunters would kill him with spears. A variation of this technique, called the buffalo jump, was when a runner would lead the animals towards a cliff. As the buffalo got close to the cliff, other members of the tribe would jump out from behind rocks or trees and scare the buffalo over the cliff. Other hunters would be waiting at the bottom of the cliff to spear the animal to death.


title: Spear

text: One of the earliest forms of killing prey for humans, hunting game with a spear and spear fishing continues to this day as both a means of catching food and as a cultural activity. Some of the most common prey for early humans were mega fauna such as mammoths which were hunted with various kinds of spear. One theory for the Quaternary extinction event was that most of these animals were hunted to extinction by humans with spears. Even after the invention of other hunting weapons such as the bow the spear continued to be used, either as a projectile weapon or used in the hand as was common in boar hunting.


title: Spear

text: Spear hunting fell out of favour in most of Europe in the 18th century, but continued in Germany, enjoying a revival in the 1930s. Spear hunting is still practiced in the United States. Animals taken are primarily wild boar and deer, although trophy animals such as cats and big game as large as a Cape Buffalo are hunted with spears. Alligators are hunted in Florida with a type of harpoon.


title: Spear

text: One of the gymnastic exercises performed by the ancient Greeks was the throwing of a spear, referred to as ἀκυντισμός.


title: Spear

text: The Celts would symbolically destroy a dead warrior's spear either to prevent its use by another or as a sacrificial offering.


title: Spear

text: In classical Greek mythology Zeus' bolts of lightning may be interpreted as a symbolic spear. Some would carry that interpretation to the spear that frequently is associated with Athena, interpreting her spear as a symbolic connection to some of Zeus' power beyond the Aegis once he rose to replacing other deities in the pantheon. Athena was depicted with a spear prior to that change in myths, however. Chiron's wedding-gift to Peleus when he married the nymph Thetis in classical Greek mythology, was an ashen spear as the nature of ashwood with its straight grain made it an ideal choice of wood for a spear.


title: Spear

text: The Romans and their early enemies would force prisoners to walk underneath a 'yoke of spears', which humiliated them. The yoke would consist of three spears, two upright with a third tied between them at a height which made the prisoners stoop. It has been suggested that the arrangement has a magical origin, a way to trap evil spirits. The word "subjugate" has its origins in this practice (from Latin "sub" = under, "jugum" = yoke).


title: Spear

text: In Norse mythology, the god Odin's spear (named Gungnir) was made by the sons of Ivaldi. It had the special property that it never missed its mark. During the War with the Vanir, Odin symbolically threw Gungnir into the Vanir host. This practice of symbolically casting a spear into the enemy ranks at the start of a fight was sometimes used in historic clashes, to seek Odin's support in the coming battle. In Wagner's opera "Siegfried", the haft of Gungnir is said to be from the "World-Tree" Yggdrasil.


title: Spear

text: Other spears of religious significance are the Holy Lance and the Lúin of Celtchar, believed by some to have vast mystical powers.


title: Spear

text: Sir James George Frazer in "The Golden Bough" noted the phallic nature of the spear and suggested that in the Arthurian legends the spear or lance functioned as a symbol of male fertility, paired with the Grail (as a symbol of female fertility).


title: Spear

text: The Hindu god of war Murugan is worshipped by Tamils in the form of the spear called "Vel", which is his primary weapon.


title: Spear

text: The term "spear" is also used (in a somewhat archaic manner) to describe the male line of a family, as opposed to the distaff or female line.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: The Uninvited is a 2009 American psychological horror film directed by the Guard Brothers and starring Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks, Arielle Kebbel, and David Strathairn. It is a remake of the 2003 South Korean horror film "A Tale of Two Sisters", which is in turn one of several film adaptations of the Korean folk tale Janghwa Hongryeon jeon. The film received mixed reviews.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Following a suicide attempt after her terminally ill mother died in a house fire, Anna Ivers is discharged from a psychiatric institution after ten months; she has no memory of the actual fire, though recurring nightmares from that night frequently plague her. Back at home, Anna reunites with her older sister Alex and comes to learn their father Steven has a new girlfriend, Rachel Summers, who had been their mother's live-in nurse.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Anna and Alex become convinced that Anna's nightmares are messages from their mother, telling them that Rachel murdered her so that she could be with Steven. The girls remain angry at Steven for moving their mother into the boathouse when she got sick, her only way of calling for help being a bell that Rachel tied to her wrist. Anna meets up with her old boyfriend Matt, who tells her he saw what happened the night her mother died, but Rachel intervenes before he can explain further.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Anna goes with Rachel into town, so Alex can look through Rachel’s possessions, and Anna can talk to Matt again. The two secretly plan to meet that night but Matt fails to show up. Anna has a ghastly hallucination of him and, the next morning, his dead body is pulled out of the water, his back broken. The police state he fell from his boat and drowned.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: After the sisters are unable to find a record of Rachel with the State Nursing Association, they conclude she is actually Mildred Kemp, a nanny who killed the children she was taking care of after she became obsessed with their widowed father. While Steven is away on business, the girls try to gather evidence against Rachel to show the police, but Rachel catches them and sedates Alex. Anna escapes and goes to the local police station, but they do not believe her and eventually call Rachel to take her home.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Rachel sedates Anna and puts her to bed; Anna sees Alex in the doorway with a knife before passing out. When she wakes up, she finds that Alex has killed Rachel and thrown her body in a dumpster in their backyard. When Steven arrives home, Anna explains that Rachel tried to murder them and Alex saved them. Confused and panicked, Steven asks what Anna is talking about: Alex had died in the fire along with their mother. Anna looks down to find that the bloody knife is in her hand. She then finally remembers what happened on the night of the fire: after catching Steven and Rachel having sex, she became enraged, filled a watering can from a gasoline tank in the boathouse, and carried it toward the house, intending to burn it down. However, she didn't fully close the faucet and it spilt a trail of gasoline that ignited when a lantern fell. Her mother was killed in the resulting explosion, as was Alex.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Flashbacks reveal that Anna had been hallucinating Alex since she left the institution, which is why no one else had ever responded to Alex's dialogues. She also remembers killing Matt, who showed up at their planned meeting by letting him fall off a cliff and break his back because he revealed he saw what Anna had done. She finally remembers killing Rachel, who wasn't actually a murderer but a kind woman trying to make the family work; she had sedated Anna to try and keep her safe.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: The next morning as Anna is arrested for murder, the police question Steven, who reveals that Rachel changed her last name three years ago to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend. When Anna returns to the mental institution, she is welcomed back by the patient who lives in the room across from hers, whose nameplate reveals she is the real Mildred Kemp.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: In 2002, producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald produced the hit horror film "The Ring", a remake of the Japanese film "Ring". They subsequently produced the film's successful sequel "The Ring Two" in 2005. Since first starting this new cycle of Asian horror film adaptations, Parkes and MacDonald searched for a project they felt was as ingeniously conceived and executed as "The Ring", and finally found it when producer Roy Lee brought the Korean film "A Tale of Two Sisters" to their attention.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: When "A Tale of Two Sisters" played in US theatres, directors Tom and Charlie Guard had acquired the English language remake rights. The Guard Brothers had previously directed commercials and short films, and wanted to expand into feature films.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: In June 2006, DreamWorks announced that a deal had been set up for the US version of "A Tale of Two Sisters". The new film was a presentation of DreamWorks and Cold Spring Pictures ("Disturbia"), and was produced by Parkes, MacDonald and Lee. The screenplay was written by Craig Rosenberg ("After the Sunset", "Lost"), Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard ("The Great Raid").


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: In early 2008, the film, whose working title had been "A Tale of Two Sisters", was renamed to "The Uninvited".


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Although the film is set in Maine, it was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. Most of the film was shot at one location, a waterfront property on British Columbia's Bowen Island, a short ferry ride west from mainland Vancouver.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: It is reported that a two-storey boathouse in the film was built on the property overlooking the water just for several scenes. The cold water is rough and unappealing; it is a greenish-grey that crashes constantly and does not invite swimming.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Emily Browning was hired to portray the lead Anna Ivers. She had originally auditioned for the role of Alex. The film is rated PG-13, and is visually less gory and bloody than the original film. Elizabeth Banks plays the role of the stepmother, Rachel. Banks based her character Rachel on Rebecca De Mornay in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". "It was very important to me that every line reading I gave could be interpreted two ways," says Banks of her role, "so that when you go back through the movie you can see that." David Strathairn plays the concerned father of the two girls. Arielle Kebbel plays Anna's older sister, Alex Ivers.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: The original score for the film was composed by Christopher Young, who recorded it with a 78-piece orchestra and 20-person choir. His score features a glass harmonica, and the Yale Women's Slavic Chorus.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Sara Niemietz is the vocalist for the soundtrack and film score, after having previously working with Christopher Young in the same capacity on "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" (2005). Now an adult, she is an independent artist and cast-member of Postmodern Jukebox.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: It got $10,512,000 for its opening weekend, set on the third place, opened in 2,344 theaters with an average $4,485 per theatre.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: The film spent nine weeks in US cinemas, and finished with a total gross of $28,596,818. It did fairly moderately for a horror film in the US markets.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: The film was released on March 26, 2009, in Australia, and it opened at the fifth position, averaging $3,998 at 121 sites, for a gross of A$483,714. The second week it dipped 29%.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 32% based on reviews from 129 critics, with an average rating of 4.55/10. The site's critics consensus reads, ""The Uninvited" is moody and reasonably involving, but suffers from predictable plot twists." On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on 24 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average" reception. In Yahoo! Movies Critical Response, the average professional critical rating was a C according to 11 reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote: "Weak even by the standard of uninspired recent Asian-horror remakes, The Uninvited is more likely to induce snickers and yawns than shudders and yelps." Kim Newman of Empire magazine gave it 2 out of 5 and called it a "slick remake... with a new set of twists" but let down by a finale featuring "revelations you've seen far too often" and an underused role for Banks. Bloody Disgusting gave the film 3 out of 5 and noted Banks and Kebbel's fine performances but also criticised the ending, "which can be figured out within the first 20 minutes" and noting it as "perfectly acceptable as a major-studio horror film for the 13 – 17 crowd and is unlikely to insult or ruffle the feathers of any genre fan that wants to give it a go."


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4, with particular praise for Browning: "She makes an ideal heroine for a horror movie: innocent, troubled, haunted by nightmares, persecuted by a wicked stepmother, convinced her real mother was deliberately burned to death. She makes you fear for her, and that's half the battle." Ebert also had positive notes for the cinematography, the casting of Strathairn. He expressed surprise at the PG-13 rating, and cited this film as evidence that MPAA rates films based on the absence of sex, nudity, or foul language, rather than the imagery it does contain that might actually be inappropriate for younger viewers.


title: The Uninvited (2009 film)

text: Claudia Puig of USA Today gave it a positive review and wrote: "Don't be too quick to turn down "The Uninvited". A stylish horror thriller in the vein of ""The Ring"," it's well-acted, frightening and handsomely produced."


title: Male gaze

text: In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: (i) that of the man behind the camera, (ii) that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and (iii) that of the spectator gazing at the image.


title: Male gaze

text: The gaze was a concept developed in 20th-century French philosophy. The term "male gaze" was first used by the English art critic John Berger in "Ways of Seeing", a series of films for the BBC aired in January 1972, and later a book, as part of his analysis of the treatment of women as objects in advertising and nudes in European painting. It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema and coined the phrase.


title: Male gaze

text: The psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan are foundational in Mulvey's development of a male gaze theory, as they provide a lens through which Mulvey was able to interpret the "primordial wish for pleasurable looking" satisfied through the cinematic experience. As a way of seeing women and the world, psychoanalytic theorizations of the male gaze involve Freudian and Lacanian concepts such as scopophilia or the pleasure of looking. The terms "scopophilia" and "scoptophilia" identify both the aesthetic joy and the sexual pleasures derived from looking at someone or something.


title: Male gaze

text: The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre introduced the concept of "le regard", the gaze, in "Being and Nothingness" (1943), wherein the act of gazing at another human being creates a subjective power difference, which is felt by the gazer and by the gazed because the person being gazed at is perceived as an object, not as a human being. The cinematic concept of the male gaze is presented, explained, and developed in the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975), in which Laura Mulvey proposes that sexual inequality — the asymmetry of social and political power between men and women — is a controlling social force in the cinematic representations of women and men. The male gaze (the aesthetic pleasure of the male viewer) is a social construct derived from the ideologies and discourses of patriarchy. In the fields of media studies and feminist film theory, the "male gaze" is conceptually related to the behaviors of voyeurism (looking as sexual pleasure), scopophilia (pleasure from looking), and narcissism (pleasure from contemplating one's self).


title: Male gaze

text: Another critical part of Mulvey's theory is built upon a Freudian psychoanalytic concept of male castration anxiety. Because the woman lacks phallus, her presence evokes unpleasantness in the male unconsciousness. To mitigate this unpleasantness, Mulvey theorizes that women are transformed into passive recipients of male objectification in media representations. The mere presence of a female body on screen, "her lack of penis, [implies] a threat of castration and hence unpleasure," which is subverted through the over-sexualization of her femininity. For Mulvey, there are two ways in which women, as the passive recipients of the male gaze, can be sexualized to avert castration fear: voyeurism-sadism and fetishization. In Mulvey's analysis, voyeurism-sadism references that “pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt (immediately associated with castration), asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness,” which is noted by Mulvey to align more with a narrative cinematic structure than does scopophilia fetishization. Fetishistic scopophilia reduces the threat of castration fear associated with the female presence by fragmenting and hypersexualizing parts of the female body.


title: Male gaze

text: In a narrative film, the visual perspective of the male gaze is the sight line of the camera as the spectator's perspective — that of a heterosexual man whose sight lingers upon the features of a woman's body. In narrative cinema, the male gaze usually displays the female character (woman, girl, child) on two levels of eroticism: (i) as an erotic object of desire for the characters in the filmed story; and (ii) as an erotic object of desire for the male viewer (spectator) of the filmed story. Such visualizations establish the roles of the dominant male and dominated female, by representing the female as a passive object for the male gaze of the active viewer. The social pairing of the passive object (woman) and the active viewer (man) is a functional basis of patriarchy, i.e., gender roles that are culturally reinforced in and by the aesthetics (textual, visual, symbolic) of the mainstream, commercial cinema; the movies of which feature the male gaze as more important than the female gaze, an aesthetic choice based upon the inequality of socio-political power between men and women.


title: Male gaze

text: As an ideological basis of patriarchy, socio-political inequality is realized as a value system by which male-created institutions (e.g. the movie business, advertising, fashion) unilaterally determine what is "natural and normal" in society. In time, the people of a community believe that the artificial values of patriarchy, as a social system, are the "natural and normal" order of things in society because men look at women and women are looked at by men. The Western hierarchy of "inferior women" and "superior men" derives from misrepresenting men and women as sexual opponents, rather than as sexual equals.


title: Male gaze

text: In the television series and book "Ways of Seeing" (1972), where the term was first used, the art critic John Berger addressed the sexual objectification of women in the arts and advertising by emphasizing that men "look" and women are "looked at" as the subjects of images. For art-as-spectacle, men act, and women are acted-upon according to the social conditions of spectatorship, which are determined by the artistic and aesthetic conventions of objectification, which artists have not transcended.


title: Male gaze

text: In the genre of the Renaissance nude, the woman who is the subject of the image often is aware of being looked at, either by others in the painting or by the spectator who is gazing at the painting in which she is the subject. Berger analyzes two of Tintoretto's paintings of Susanna and the Elders, a story of a woman falsely accused of adultery after two men discover one another spying on her while she bathes. In the first, she "looks back at us looking at her." In the second, she is looking at herself in a mirror and thus joining the elders and us as a spectator of herself. Susanna's lack of distress and even nonchalance at being observed naked in both paintings and others by male artists have been contrasted to the apparent pain shown in the depiction of the same scene by Artemisia Gentileschi, a female artist, whose Susanna shows she is clearly in distress at being watched by the two men.


title: Male gaze

text: In the production of art, the conventions of artistic representation connect the objectification of a woman, by the male gaze, to the Lacanian theory of social alienation. The psychological splitting that occurs from seeing oneself as one is and seeing one's self as an idealized representation. In Italian Renaissance painting, especially in the nude-woman genre, that perceptual split arises from being both the viewer and the viewed and from seeing one's self through other people's gaze.


title: Male gaze

text: Research by Calogero has shown that the male gaze can affect women's self-esteem and self-objectification, leading to increased body shame and a worsened mental state. For most women, it is not a physical interaction with a man which causes such internalized feelings of self-objectification and negative mental states but is simply anticipating being the subject of the male gaze. It is not only a worsened mental state and self-objectification, which is a potential effect of the male gaze, but also feelings of anxiety about physiques and body shape.


title: Male gaze

text: According to Snow's research, male gaze has gradually evolved into a patriarchal theory, despite being an abstract idea, the masculine gaze has actual psychological impacts. Women experience real impacts from being asked to perform for others all the time. In comparison to individuals who anticipated a female look or no gaze at all, the mere anticipation of a male gaze increased self-objectification in young women and resulted in greater body shame and social physique anxiety. Because the male gaze is prevalent, women have been implicitly taught how to behave in its presence. Never slouch or curse, wear nice clothes in case you run into someone, and present yourself the way people want. Women are held to these standards, and if they somehow fail to meet them, they are at blame.


title: Male gaze

text: Two forms of the male gaze are based on the Freudian concept of "scopophilia". This "pleasure that is linked to sexual attraction (voyeurism in the extreme) and [the] scopophilic pleasure that is linked to narcissistic identification (the introjection of ideal egos)," shows how women have been forced to view the cinema from the perspectives (sexual, aesthetic, cultural) of the "male gaze". In such cinematic representations, the male gaze denies the female's agency and human identity, thus dehumanizing a woman, transforming her from person to object, to be considered only for her beauty, physique, and sex appeal, as defined in the male sexual fantasy of narrative cinema.


title: Male gaze

text: Two types of spectatorship occur while viewing a film, wherein the viewer either unconsciously or consciously engages in the typical, ascribed societal roles of men and women. Concerning phallocentrism, a film can be viewed from the perspectives of "three different looks": (i) the first look is that of the camera, which records the events of the film; (ii) the second look describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as they view the film proper; and (iii) the third look is that of the characters who interact with one another throughout the filmed story. The perspective common to the three types of looks is the idea that "looking" generally is perceived as the active role of the male while being looked at generally is perceived as the passive role of the female. Therefore, based upon that patriarchal construction, the cinema presents and represents women as objects of desire, wherein women characters have an "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact"; therefore, the actress is never meant to represent a strong female character whose actions directly affect the outcome of the plot or propel the events of the filmed story, but, instead, she is in the film to visually support the actor, portraying the male protagonist, by "bearing the burden of sexual objectification," a condition psychologically unbearable for the male actor.


title: Male gaze

text: A woman being the passive object of the male gaze is the link to scopophilia, to the aesthetic pleasure derived from looking at someone as an object of beauty. As an expression of sexuality, scopophilia refers to the pleasure (sensual and sexual) derived from looking at sexual fetishes and photographs, pornography and naked bodies, etc. There are two categories of pleasurable viewing: (i) voyeurism, wherein the viewer's pleasure is in looking at another person from a distance, and he or she projects fantasies, usually sexual, onto the gazed upon person; and (ii) narcissism, wherein the viewer's pleasure is in self-recognition when viewing the image of another person. These concepts of voyeurism and narcissism translate to psychoanalytic concepts of object libido and ego libido, respectively. Mulvey theorizes that in order for women to enjoy cinema, they must learn to identify with the male protagonist and assume his perspective, the male gaze. In the genre of action films, the dramaturg Wendy Arons said that the hyper-sexualization of female characters symbolically diminishes the threat of emasculation posed by violent women, hence: "The focus on the [woman's] body — as a body in an ostentatious display of breasts, legs, and buttocks — does mitigate the threat that women pose to 'the very fabric of . . . society', by reassuring the [male] viewer of his male privilege, as the possessor of the objectifying [male] gaze."


title: Male gaze

text: The female gaze is conceptually similar to the male gaze; that is, when women take up the male gaze, they view other people, and themselves, from the perspective of a man. The male gaze is a manifestation of unequal social power, between the gazing man and the gazed-upon woman; and also is a conscious or subconscious social effort to develop gender inequality in service to a patriarchal sexual order. From either perspective, a woman who welcomes the sexual objectification of the male gaze might be perceived as conforming to social norms established for the benefit of men, thereby reinforcing the objectifying power of the male gaze upon women; or, she might be perceived as an exhibitionist woman taking social advantage of the sexual objectification inherent to the male gaze, in order to manipulate the sexist norms of the patriarchy to her personal benefit.


title: Male gaze

text: It is not simply the fact that women are eroticized and objectified because this is a phenomenon that seems to be a component of both male and female eroticism in western culture. Kaplan argues that it is the fact that “men do not simply look; their gaze carries with it the power of action and of possession which is lacking in the female gaze. Women receive and return a gaze, but cannot act upon it” and “the sexualization and objectification of women is not simply for the purposes of eroticism; from a psychoanalytic point of view, it is designed to annihilate the threat that women pose”. Kaplan emphasizes that while the gazes are similar, the female gaze is not able to possess the same power as that of the male gaze. The male gaze will always undermine the women’s position and demean her very presence into a position of subjectivity and submission.


title: Male gaze

text: The theory is not without criticism as feminist academic Camille Paglia has rejected the concept of the cinematic male gaze: From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early '70s,


title: Male gaze

text: Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal about my opposition to the simplistic theory of "the male gaze" that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and that she herself has moved somewhat away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. The idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into "meat" -- I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who knew nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory -- the "victim" model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture.


title: Male gaze

text: Bracha Ettinger criticized the male gaze with the "matrixial gaze", which is inoperative when the male gaze is opposite to the female gaze, wherein both perspectives constitute each other from a lack, which is the Lacanian definition of "The Gaze". The matrixial gaze does not concern a subject and its object existing or lacking, but concerns "trans-subjectivity" and shareability, and is based upon the feminine-matrixial-difference, which escapes the phallic opposition of masculine–feminine, and is produced by co-emergence. Parting from Lacan's latter work, Ettinger's perspective is about the structure of the Lacanian subject, itself, which is deconstructed, and thus produces a perspective of feminine dimension with a hybrid, floating matrixial gaze.


title: Male gaze

text: E. Anne Kaplan's theorizing also suggests that the male gaze constructs a falsely hypersexualized feminine in order to dismiss the sensual feminine which all people are connected to through their innate relationship to a maternal figure. Kaplan states that "the domination of women by the male gaze is part of men's strategy to contain the threat that the mother embodies, and to control the positive and negative impulses that memory traces of being mothered have left in the male unconsciousness," though she also theorizes that the mutual gaze which neither seeks subordination or domination of the looker or the looked-at originates in the mother-child relationship. She also discusses hows “our culture is deeply committed to myths of demarcated sex differences, called 'masculine' and 'feminine, which in turn revolve first on a complex gaze apparatus and second on dominance-submission patterns. This positioning of the two sex genders in representation clearly privileges the male (through the mechanisms of voyeurism and fetishism, which are male operations, and because his desire carries power/action where woman’s usually does not)”. This is why the matrixial gaze functions the way it does, because feminine and masculine expressions are constantly in juxtaposition.