Sofia's contribution!!! Thanks. Good job!

Read the following text taken from the book “For And Against” (L. G. Alexander)
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful young woman and a handsome young man. They were very poor, but as they were deeply in love, they wanted to get married. The young people’s parents shook their heads. “You can’t get married yet”, they said. “Wait till you get a good job with good prospects”. So the young people waited until they found good jobs with good prospects and they were able to get married. They were still poor, of course. They didn’t have a house to live in or any furniture, but that didn’t matter. The young man had a good job with prospects, so large organizations lent him the money he needed to buy a house, some furniture, all the latest electrical appliances and a car. The couple lived happily ever after paying off debts for the rest of their lives. And so ends another modern romantic fable.
We live in a materialistic society and are trained from our earliest years to be acquisitive. Our possessions, “mine” and “yours” are clearly labelled from early chilhood. When we grow old enough to earn a living, it does not surprise us to discover that success is measured in terms of the money you earn. We spend the whole of our lives keeping up with our neighbours, the Joneses. If we buy a new television set, Jones is bound to buy a bigger and better one. If we buy a new car, we can be sure that Jones will go one better and get two new cars: one for his wife and one for himself. The most amusing thing about this game is that the Joneses and all the neighbours who are struggling frantically to keep up with them are spending borrowed money kindly provided, at a suitable rate of interest, of course, by friendly banks, insurance companies, etc.
It is not only in affluent societies that people are obsessed with the idea of making more money. Consumer goods are desirable everywhere and modern industry deliberately sets out to creat new markets. Gone are the days when industrial goods were made to last forever. The wheels of industry must be kept turning. “Built-in obsolescence” provides the means: goods are made to be discarded. Cars get tinier and tinier. You no sooner acquire this year´s model than you are thinking about its replacement.
This materialistic outlook has seriously influenced education. Fewer and fewer young people these days acquire knowledge only for its own sake. Every course of study must lead somewhere: i.e. to a bigger wage packet. The demand for skilled personnel far exeeds the supply and big companies compete with each other to recruit students before they have completed their studies. Tempting salaries and “fringe benefits” are offered to them. Recruiting tactics of this kind have led to the “brain drain”, the process by which highly skilled people offer their services to the highest bidder. The wealthier nations deprive their poorer neighbours of their most able citizens. While Mammon is worshipped as never before, the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.

1. Think of a suitable title for the text you have just read.
2. Infer the meaning of the underlying words.
3. Watch the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAcz2tKaSM`
What is Madonna saying in this song?
Do you think she is being ironic here? Why?
4. Make a brief coment on both the text and the video saying if you agree or disagree on their ideas.

Art: Diego Rivera. What a great painter!! By Meli Lasorella.

Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads (1934)
By 1930, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera has gained international favour for his passionate murals. Inspired by an intense devotion to his cultural heritage, Rivera creates boldly hued masterpieces of public art that adorn the municipal buildings of Mexico City. His outgoing personality puts him at the centre of a circle of left-wing painters and poets, and his talent attracts wealthy patrons, including Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. In 1932, she convinces her husband, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to commission a Rivera mural for the lobby of the soon-to-be-completed Rockefeller Centre in New York City. Rivera proposes a 63-foot-long portrait of workers facing symbolic crossroads. Once finished, the Centre’s building managers order Rivera to remove the offending image. As he refuses to do it, the mural is first covered and then demolished. Rivera never works in the United States again.
Now, look at the mural and try to guess why the company’s directors as well as Rockefeller himself were so hungry and decided to destroy it.



To give you some help, try to find these faces in the mural, some of them appear, others not.


Leon Trotsky


Charles Darwin


Pancho Villa - Mexican revolutionary leader


Abraham Lincoln


Vladimir Lenin


Frida Khalo

After making out which faces appeared, surely you are able to tell the reason why this work of art was destroyed, aren’t you? Please, write a brief response to the painting expressing if you like it or not and whether the image means something to you. What would you have done if you had been in Rivera’s place? Would you have been loyal to your ideals or to the people who entrusted you a mural? Don’t hate me; use the energy to express it in only a hundred and fifty words.