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THE IDIOCY OF URBAN LIFETHE IDIOCY OF URBAN LIFEUnit 10Unit 10Unit10第1页Watch the movie clip and answer the following questions.1.What is Dougs compliant?Pre-reading Activities-Audiovisual supplement 1Audiovisual supplementCultural informationDoug 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?第2页Pre-reading Activities-Audiovisual supplement 2Audiovisual supplementCultural information第3页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 Script1Audiovisual supplementCultural information第4页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 Script1Audiovisual supplementCultural information第5页Video Script1Audiovisual supplementCultural informationDr.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?第6页1.The author Henry Fairlie Cultural information 1Audiovisual supplementCultural information Henry Fairlie(19241990)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,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.第7页2.Thoreaus WaldenCultural information 2Audiovisual supplementCultural 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 understandingof 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.第8页Cultural information 2Audiovisual supplementCultural 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.”第9页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 featuresStructural analysisPart 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.第10页Structural analysisRhetorical featuresStructural analysisPart III(Paragraph 10):The author reiterates his point.第11页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 featuresStructural 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:第12页Rhetorical Features 1Practice:Can you find more such expressions?Rhetorical featuresStructural analysis.they maintain the pointless frenzy of their work hours in their hours off.work at their play with the same joylessnessThese windows are a scandal.the urban worker has no knowledge of the seasons.fetid central heatingno true sense of the rhythms of the seasonsThe city dweller reels from unreality to unreality.city dwellers dont know it(a Douglas fir)once had roots.第13页Detailed reading1Detailed readingTHE IDIOCY OF URBAN LIFEHenry Fairlie1 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 usefulin 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.第14页Detailed reading2Detailed reading2 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.第15页Detailed reading33 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第16页Detailed reading44 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第17页Detailed reading4which 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第18页Detailed reading55 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第19页Detailed reading66 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第20页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 reading7Detailed reading第21页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 outto jog or otherwise Fonda-ize their leisure to try to repair the damage done during the day.Detailed reading8-9Detailed reading第22页Detailed reading1010 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第23页What is the purpose of mentioning rats as true city dwellers?(Paragraph 1)Detailed reading1-QuesionThe 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第24页What idiocy is there in the city dwellers trying to live outside the city boundaries?(Paragraph 3)Detailed reading2-QuesionThe 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第25页Why does the author call the city dwellers journey to work“the first idiocy of his day”?(Paragraph 6)Detailed reading3-QuesionThe 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第26页How do you understand the sentence“The city dweller reels from unreality to unreality through each day”?(Paragraph 8)Detailed reading8-QuesionThe 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 subm
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