B4, Unit10 The idocy of urban life

THE IDIOCY OF URBAN LIFE,THE IDIOCY OF URBAN LIFE,Unit 10,Unit 10,Unit10,Watch the movie clip and answer the following questions.,What is Dougs compliant?,Pre-reading Activities -,Audiovisual supplement 1,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Doug feels guilty for his family because he is too overworked and overscheduled to find time for his wife and kids, let alone for himself. He is becoming resentful about the heavy burden.,Dr. Leeds offers a solution: Doug obviously needs to be cloned.,2. What is Dr. Leeds solution to Dougs problem?,Pre-reading Activities -,Audiovisual supplement 2,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Doug:,Then I get resentful because I feel like I should have, you know maybe a little time for myself.,Its like work is first, my family is a close second and Im a distant third, bringing up the rear. You know?,Is that crazy?,Dr. Leeds:,I dont know. Im not a psychiatrist. Anyway, you dont need one. If the problems on your mind are real, that requires real solutions.,Doug:,Well, then . What do you do?,Dr. Leeds:,I told you. I make miracles. I create time. I make clones. Doug, sit down. Im a geneticist. Fifteen years ago I started cloning viruses. And then, ten years ago, I cloned an earthworm.,Doug:,God bless you, sir.,Video Script1,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Dr. Leeds:,And then . a chimp. And last year . Last year .,Man #1:,Hi there.,Dr. Leeds:,Just in time.,Man #1:,Hello.,Dr. Leeds:,This is Doug Kinney. He is doing our new offices.,Man #1:,Oh, sure, I know Doug. You know, he and I went over the plans one day.,Dr. Leeds:,Oh?,Man #1:,You were sailing.,Doug:,Wait, wait, wait ,Dr. Leeds:,You understand what Im suggesting?,Doug:,Yeah, sure. Whats not to understand? You xerox people.,Video Script1,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Video Script1,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Dr. Leeds:,In a way.,Man #1:,Sort of.,Dr. Leeds:,The procedure takes about two hours. It takes more or less two hours. And in the end, you have everything you need. What is it that, you know, I need?,Doug:,Time!,Dr. Leeds:,All you need. For everything.,Doug:,Say, Im interested, you know. What would a . you know, nothing fancy, just a basic, you know, just a basic . you know clone-job cost?,The author,Henry Fairlie,Cultural information,1,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Henry Fairlie,(1924,1990) was a British,expatriate journalist and social critic. He,spent 36 years as a prominent freelance writer,on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing in,The Spectator,The New Republic, The,Washington Post,The New Yorker, and many other papers and magazines. He was also the author of five books, most notably,The Kennedy Promise, an early revisionist critique of the U.S. presidency of John F. Kennedy.,In 2009,Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations, was published as an anthology of his work. He wrote in a manner that was often “tongue-in-cheek” (intended to be humorous and not meant seriously) to point to some of the amusing things about city life.,2.Thoreaus,Walden,Cultural information,2,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Modern people have long been tired and bored by the idiocy of city life. So they seek other possible ways of living away from city life. Thoreaus,Walden,is an influential work of this type, in which the author isolates himself from society to gain a more objective understanding,of it. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreaus other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. Through the following quote, we may see his stance better.,Cultural information,2,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”,Structural analysis,This text falls in the generic category of argumentation. Most argumentation consists of three parts: the thesis of the author, the evidence to support the thesis, and the summary or conclusion of the argument.,This text follows this pattern too.,Part I,(Paragraphs 1 2):,The author presents the thesis of his argument: aggressively individualistic and atomized urban life today goes against both the purpose of the city and human nature, and thus is foolish.,Rhetorical features,Structural analysis,Part II,(Paragraphs 3 9):,The author provides evidence for the idiocy of urban life, such as people living outside the city boundaries, maintaining the pointless frenzy of their work hours in their hours off, and isolating themselves from nature.,Structural analysis,Rhetorical features,Structural analysis,Part III,(Paragraph 10):,The author reiterates his point.,Rhetorical Features 1,In any argumentation, the author has a thesis of his own. So does the author of this text. We can see from the title and the text proper that he takes a negative attitude towards urban life by using a lot of,attitudinal words and expressions,.,Rhetorical features,Structural analysis,The,Idiocy,of Urban Life,Urban life is,aggressively individualistic and atomized.,Cities are,not social,places.,lunacy,of modern city life,create,simulations,of it (rural life),a,pretence,to bosky woodlands,City dwellers take their,filth,with them .,The following italicized words and expressions are used to express the authors attitude towards city life:,Rhetorical Features 1,Practice:,Can you find more such expressions?,Rhetorical features,Structural analysis,. they maintain the,pointless frenzy,of their work hours in their hours off.,work at their play,with the same joylessness,These windows are a,scandal .,. the urban worker,has no knowledge of the seasons.,fetid,central heating,no true sense of the rhythms of the seasons,The city dweller,reels from unreality to unreality.,. city dwellers,dont know it (a Douglas fir) once had roots.,Detailed reading1,Detailed reading,THE IDIOCY OF URBAN LIFE,Henry Fairlie,1,Between about 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. the life of the city is,civil,. Occasionally the lone footsteps of someone walking to or from work echo along the sidewalk. All work that has to be done at those hours is useful,in bakeries, for example. Even the newspaper presses stop turning forests into lies. Now and then a car comes out of the silence and,cruises,easily through the blinking traffic lights. The natural inhabitants of the city come out from damp basements and cellars. With their pink ears and paws, sleek, well-groomed, their whiskers combed, rats are true city dwellers.,Urban life, during the hours when they reign, is urbane.,Detailed reading2,Detailed reading,2,These rats are social creatures, as you can tell if you look out on the city street during an,insomniac,night. But after 6 a.m., the two-legged, daytime creatures of the city begin to stir; and it is they, not the rats, who bring the,rat race,. You might think that human beings congregate in large cities because they are gregarious. The opposite is true. Urban life today is aggressively individualistic and atomized. Cities are not social places.,Detailed reading3,3 The lunacy of modern city life lies first in the fact that most city dwellers try to live outside the city boundaries. So the two-legged creatures have created suburbs, exurbs, and finally rururbs (rubs to some).,Disdaining,rural life, they try to create,simulations,of it. No effort is spared to let city dwellers imagine they are living anywhere but in a city: patches of grass in the more modest suburbs, broader spreads in the richer ones further out;,prim,new trees planted along the streets; at the foot of the larger backyards, a pretense to bosky woodlands.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading4,4 The professional people buy second homes in the country as soon as they can afford them, and as early as possible on Friday head out of the city they have created. The New York intellectuals and artists quaintly say they are “going to the country” for the weekend or the summer, but in fact they have created a little Manhattan-by-the-Sea around the Hamptons, spreading over the Long Island potato fields whose earlier solitude was presumably the reason why they first went there.,City dwellers take the city with them to the country, for they will not live without its pamperings.,The main streets of Americas small towns,Detailed reading,Detailed reading4,which used to have,hardware and dry goods stores, are now strips of boutiques. Old-fashioned barbers become unisex hairdressing salons. The brown rats stay in the cities because of the filth the humans leave during the day. The rats clean it up at night. Soon the countryside will be just as nourishing to them, as the city dwellers take their filth with them.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading5,5 Work still gives meaning to rural life, the family, and churches. But in the city today work and home, family and church, are separated. What the office workers do for a living is not part of their home life. At the same time they maintain the pointless,frenzy,of their work hours in their hours off. They rush from the office to jog, to the gym or the YMCA pool, to work at their play with the same joylessness.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading6,6 Even though the offices of todays businesses in the city are themselves moving out to the suburbs, this does not necessarily bring the workers back closer to their workplace. It merely means that to the rush-hour traffic into the city there is now added a rush-hour traffic out to the suburbs in the morning, and back around and across the city in the evening. As the farmer walks down to his farm in the morning, the city dweller is dressing for the first idiocy of his day, which he not only accepts but even seeks,the journey to work.,Detailed reading,7 In the modern office building in the city there are windows that dont open. This is perhaps the most symbolic lunacy of all. Outdoors is something you can look at through glass but not to touch or hear.,These windows are a,scandal,because they endanger the lives of office workers in case of fire.,But no less grievous, even on the fairest spring or fall day the workers cannot put their heads outside. Thus it is not surprising that the urban worker has no knowledge of the seasons. He is aware simply that in some months there is air conditioning, and in others through the same vents come fetid central heating. Even outside at home in their suburbs the city dwellers may know that sometimes its hot, and sometimes its cold, but,no true sense of the rhythms of the seasons is to be had from a lawn in the backyard and a few spindly trees struggling to survive.,Detailed reading7,Detailed reading,8 The city dweller,reels,from unreality to unreality through each day, always trying to recover the rural life that has been surrendered for the city lights. No city dweller, even in the suburbs, knows the wonder of a pitch-dark country lane at night. Nor does he naturally get any exercise from his,work.,9 Every European points out that Americans are the most round-shouldered people in the world. Few of them carry themselves with an upright stance, although a correct stance is the first precondition of letting your lungs breathe naturally and deeply. Electric typewriters cut down the amount of physical exertion needed to hit the keys; the buttons of a word processor need even less effort, as you can tell from the posture of those who use them. They rush out,to jog or otherwise Fonda-ize their leisure to try to repair the damage done during the day.,Detailed reading8-9,Detailed reading,Detailed reading10,10 Everything in urban life is an effort either to simulate rural life or to compensate for its loss by artificial means. It is from this day-to-day existence of unreality, pretence, and idiocy that the city people,slumping,along their streets even when,scurrying, never looking up at their buildings, far less the sky, have the,insolence,to disdain and mock the useful and rewarding life of the country people who support them. Now go out and carry home a Douglas fir, call it a Christmas tree, and enjoy 12 days of contact with nature. Of course city dwellers dont know it once had roots.,Detailed reading,What is the purpose of mentioning rats as true city,dwellers? (Paragraph 1),Detailed reading1 -,Quesion,The author mentions rats at the beginning of the article for the purpose of contrasting rats with human beings. In a sense, both rats and human beings are city dwellers, but there are differences between them in terms of life in the city. As natural inhabitants of the city, rats are social creatures and lead a stable urban life. By contrast, most human dwellers do not enjoy urban life but try to live outside the city boundaries; and they live an individualistic and atomized rather than gregarious life. Therefore, relatively speaking, rats are true city dwellers.,Detailed reading,What idiocy is there in the city dwellers trying to live outside the city boundaries? (Paragraph 3),Detailed reading2-,Quesion,The idiocy of the practice lies in the pretence of the city dwellers. For one thing, they disdain rural life on the one hand, and on the other hand they try to simulate it by creating large or small patches of greenery around their suburb, exurb or rururb residences. For another, while they intend to live a rural life by going to the country, they have in fact spoiled the natural features of the rural areas and created urban surroundings where they have settled down. As a result their purpose fails in the end.,Detailed reading,Why does the author call the city dwellers journey to work “the first idiocy of his day”? (Paragraph 6),Detailed reading3-,Quesion,The authors saying so reflects his attitude towards office work in the city. Unlike farming which is part of rural home life, joyless work in the city is separated, both physically and emotionally, from home life and consequently causes unnecessary frenzy. The workers going to and returning from work wastes a lot of time and thus is pointless, yet the worker “not only accepts but seeks” it. Hence the idiocy of “the journey to work”.,Detailed reading,How do you understand the sentence “The city dweller reels from unreality to unreality through each day”? (Paragraph 8),Detailed reading8-,Quesion,The quoted statement describes in what environment the city dweller lives and works. With the windows that never open, the modern office, artificially cooled in summer and heated in winter, alienates the worker from the true natural world. The home surroundings are no better. They provide the dweller with no true sense of the seasons either. In general, the city dweller is removed from nature and submerged in a man-made environment every day.,Detailed reading,What accounts for the fact that “Americans are the most round-shouldered people in the world”? (Paragraph 9),Detailed reading9-,Quesion,This phenomenon is caused by the demerits of office work. Compared with physical labor in rural life, office work in the city needs very little physical exertion, but it requires long-time sitting with the same posture every day. Even the after-work exercises cannot compensate for the damage done to the physical constitution of the worker during work hours. This accounts for the round-shoulderedness of Americans.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading1,Activity,Group discussion:,What are the major differences between city life and country life? Where do you prefer to live, in the city or in the country? Why?,Detailed reading,civil:,a.,Detailed reading1,civil 1,e.g.,His manner was civil, though not particularly friendly.,Hed been careful to be civil to everyone.,Detailed reading,(1) polite and formal,(2) applying to ordinary citizens,e.g.,civil rights: basic rights that all people in a society should have,civil aviation: aviation relating to ordinary people rather than military forces,(3) of or occurring within the state or between or among,citizens of the state,e.g.,civil war: war between groups in a country,civil servant/service,Detailed reading1,civil 2,Detailed reading,Derivation:,civilize,v,. raise from a barbaric to a civilized state,e.g.,Schools will help to civilize the wild tribes there.,cruise:,v.,&,n.,Detailed reading1,cruise,Detailed reading,e.g.,The plane is cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet.,(1) (of a vehicle or its driver) travel smoothly at a,moderate speed,(2) sail or drive for pleasure,e.g.,They will be going cruising the Greek islands next week.,Detailed reading1-,insomniac,insomniac,e.g.,Insomniacs do not sleep because they worry about it, and they worry about it because they do not sleep.,Detailed reading,n.,sb. who cannot sleep,a.,experiencing or accompanied by sleeplessness,e.g.,insomniac old people,insomniac nights: sleepless night,The word “insomniac” here is used as a transferred epithet to modify something inanimate.,e.g.,Even so, the risk of discovery was beginning to cause Pettit,sleepless nights,.,He threw,a reassuring arm,round my shoulder.,Detailed reading1-,rat race1,rat race:,fierce competition,Detailed reading,e.g.,I really want to get out of the rat race.,我真的想要远离这种你争我夺的生活。,They longed to escape from the rat race and move to the countryside.,他们渴望能够摆脱无情的竞争搬到乡下去。,The rat race is a term often used to describe excessive work. In general terms, if one works too much, one is in the rat race. It implies that many people see work as an endless pursuit with little reward or purpose.,Detailed reading1,rat race2,More phrases of “rat”:,e.g.,I couldnt believe that they have been living in the rat trap for months.,Detailed reading,rat trap:,(,slang,) incredibly run-down and dangerous rental housing where the residents lives are in danger (or at least very depressed) and rats often inhabit the walls,e.g.,I will never trust such a rat fink.,rat fink:,sb. who betrays the trust of compatriots by giving vital information to their enemies,Detailed reading1,rat race3,Detailed reading,e.g.,Your hair looks like rats nest!,rats nest:,a big mess, usually applied to hair which has not been groomed or taken care of,rat hole:,description of a place of residence declaring it to resemble the digs of a rat, complete with piles of belongings which threaten to topple over and smother the occupant,e.g.,Do you want me to fight him for nothing in a rat hole?,Detailed reading3-,disdain,disdain:,v.,think oneself superior to; reject,Detailed reading,e.g.,The older musicians disdain the new, rock-influenced music.,Our new neighbors seem to be disdaining to speak to us.,Detailed reading3-,simulation,simulation:,n.,imitation of the conditions of (a situation etc.); resemblance,Detailed reading,e.g.,simulation test,模拟考试,I was quite deceived by her simulation of sorrow.,Derivation:,simulate,v.,imitate, give the appearance of,e.g.,In cheap furniture, plastic is often used to simulate wood.,Anne simulated pleasure at seeing Simon, but really she wished he hadnt come.,Detailed reading3-,prim,prim:,a.,e.g.,a prim garden,Detailed reading,(1),neat,e.g.,She is much too prim and proper to go into a pub.,(2),very formal and correct in b