A New Kind of Donation Culture from the United States - The Ice Bucket Challenge

Are you interested in donation? Recently, the Ice Bucket Challenge has hit the world. Due to this donation, the perspective on donation a little bit changed. Before the IBC, donation only meant something serious but after it led to the idea that donation can be fun. What do you think of this donation culture? Read this article, and let us know what you think!

A New Kind of Donation Culture from the United States

- The Ice Bucket Challenge

Hyun Jin Lee

Graduated from KyungPook National University

Dept. of French Language and Literature

A few months ago, the Ice Bucket Challenge, also called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, was the trend of the summer. It is an activity involving pouring a bucket of ice water on someone’s head to promote awareness of the disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ALS) – also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease - and to encourage individual donations. The process of the challenge is simple. When someone is nominated by other participants who have done the challenge, the nominated can choose to make videos pouring water on themselves and then nominating others or simply donate money to related organization without dumping ice-water.

As American celebrities including Bill Gates and other famous figures in different fields took part in the challenge, it went viral through media and spread throughout the world. Likewise, in Korea, it was easy to see the videos of celebrities, politicians and even friends doing the challenge. But, why did the Ice Bucket Challenge become a huge trend?

It is because the Ice Bucket Challenge was striking enough to attract public’s attention and had power of influence to encourage individual participation. It is funny and amusing to see the videos of celebrities and friends getting wet with a bucket of ice water. Accordingly, it was easy to attract people to promote the existence of the activity and its purpose. When people think about donation, they usually think of it in the typical sense, simply giving money to charity. Thanks to this challenge, the common belief changed into a new idea that donation activities can be very active and lively. It leads to the increase of individual interest in donation.

However, some people are blaming the challenge for not being aware of saving water and pointing out that those who want to promote themselves are misusing the challenge. Despite these shortcomings, it is true that public’s current enormous attention and participation could not be made without the Ice Bucket Challenge. To conclude, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is meaningful in itself that it spread out the donation spirit all over the world and increases the public’s interests and practices of individual donation.

Hollywood’s movie history: from silent films to talkies⓵

Wow! DSKUSSS is back with new article on the blog! We finished our arrangement with new members and brought an article on Hollywood :) Thank you for waiting for our new blog and let us know your opinions through comments.

Hollywood’s movie history: from silent films to talkies⓵

-from the movie ‘Singing in the Rain(1952)’

                                                                            Lee, Jungwon

                                                                                       Pusan National University

                                                                                            Dept. of Global Studies

We love watching movies, especially those from Hollywood. Every year, Hollywood brings us pleasure by making movies of various topics like science fiction, romance, horror, etc. However, Hollywood was not successful from the very start. It has gained fame and success through many trials and errors, and now, it is regarded as one of the biggest and grandest movie making industries in the world.

In the early 1900s, film makers began moving to Los Angeles to start their business. They moved there because they wanted to get away from the strict rules imposed by Thomas Edison’s motion picture patent company in New Jersey. Also, the nice weather of Hollywood was an ideal place to make various films.

In the movie ‘Singing in the Rain’, we can see a minute depiction of Hollywood‘s turbulence in the late 1920s. This era was called ‘the silent film era’, due to the lack of recording technology. In the film, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont were the best leading actor and actress of that time. However, the audience couldn’t hear their voices but only look at their lines as subtitles after each scene. In addition, the orchestra was below the stage and played instruments for the film’s background music. There were people who were critical about silent films, saying, “Movies are entertaining enough for the masses but the personalities on the screen just don’t impress me. I mean they don’t talk or act; they just make a lot of dumb show.”^[1] Still, the majority of the audience always took this “dumb show” for granted whenever they watched films in theaters. But one day, a revolution took place.

The head of Don’s studio, R. F. Simpson, showed a short demonstration of a ‘vitaphone’ to introduce ‘talking pictures.’ People were astonished to see that the voices were actually coming right out of the actors and actress’ mouths. People instantly assumed that there must be someone talking behind the movie screen. This was a huge turning point for everyone working in film industries. So, following suit, Monumental Pictures started to make a new film ‘Dueling Cavalier’ with actually talking actors and actresses, but it became a disaster.

This story will be continued in the next webzine of mine. I will talk about what were the disasters when people attempted to make talking pictures, and how those disasters were fixed and developed. 

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^[1] Kathy Seldon, from ‘Singing in the Rain’