A study of female aggression as represented in Patty Jenkins' fiction film Monster

The film Monster (USA, 2003) is based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute who was one of the few documented female serial killers in the United States. The scriptwriter and director of the film, Patty Jenkins, surprisingly centered the film on a love story, instead of assuming the role of judge or advocate towards the actions of Wuornos. After a flash back sequence that recreates the childhood of Lee (Charlize Theron), the film opens as Lee meets Selby (Christina Ricci), a young and immature lesbian in a bar. Lee responds very rudely and defensively to the clumsy flirtation of Selby, as she does not think of herself as gay and her life as a prostitute has made her very hostile towards society. However, Lee opens up to Selby, as she perceives her as her last chance to find Love. Patty Jenkins cinematically evokes Lee’s hopelessness and despair before meeting Selby in order to emphasize the importance of this same-sex relationship. For Lee, Selby is the innocent child that she has to protect and save, a symbol of the child she once was herself. Inspired, she goes out to work on the highway to earn money for their first date, and a client beats her unconscious, ties her up, rapes her with a tyre iron and pours petrol over her. Fearing for her life, Lee shoots him, and then takes his car and wallet. As her relationship with Selby develops, she enters into the role of provider and protector. After her brutal encounter, she is scared of the streets and makes an attempt to go straight. However, 3 in her attempt to look for a proper job she encounters social rejection and brutalization. Pressurized by her new girlfriend to provide money, Lee goes back to prostitution. However, her last traumatic experience with the rapist john makes her believe that all her clients might turn out to be abusive, which provokes in her a desire for revenge and killing. Unable to stop, she robs her victims to provide for her girlfriend and believes that she can identify which clients deserve to die. After the killing of an innocent man, she is turned over to the police by Selby. Monster is not about sensationalism, but rather portrays the intimate tragic story of a human being who became a serial killer, due to a combination of bad social and personal pathologies. The Meaning of the Form: The aim of this thesis is to explore the representation of women and aggression in Patty Jenkins’ film Monster. I will argue that, while the female characters in Monster do not escape the conventional portrayal of women within the dominant Hollywood cinema, their portrayal does nonetheless create a ‘non-normative’ representation. By exploiting the classical narrative and a particular model of representation of women, Jenkins creates a cinematic text which attacks the patriarchal principles grounding the model. Therefore, the main argument of this thesis will be that Jenkins uses the Hollywood system of narration and representation of women in order to subvert and criticize it. Ultimately she is using the film as means to critique the patriarchal violence within American society itself. In order to substantiate my argument, I will first look at the conventional representation of women in fiction-film genre1, and will then investigate how the performance of aggression is constructed within the film. The film represents aggression as a social phenomenon that develops into a pathological behavior. By establishing the history of the general phenomenon of female aggression, I will examine its specific representation in my film case study Monster. Although the film introduces different female characters that each have their particular expression of aggression and representation, the primary focus of analysis will be Lee, the main character of the film

Personal Work Space and Content Analysis Functionality in a Cultural Heritage Digital Library

The paper presents a different vision for personalization of the user’s stay in a cultural heritage digital library that models services for personalized content marking, commenting and analyzing that doesn’t require strict user profile, but aims at adjusting the user’s individual needs. The solution is borrowed from real work and studying of traditional written content sources (incl. books, manuals), where the user mainly performs activities such as underlining the important parts of the content, writing notes and inferences, selecting and marking zones of their interest in pictures, etc. In the paper a special attention is paid to the ability to execute learning analysis allowing different ways for the user to experience the digital library content with more creative settings

Series in Mittag-Leffler Functions: Inequalities and Convergent Theorems

MSC 2010: 30A10, 30B10, 30B30, 30B50, 30D15, 33E12In studying the behaviour of series, defined by means of the Mittag-Leffler functions, on the boundary of its domain of convergence in the complex plane, we prove Cauchy-Hadamard, Abel, Tauber and Littlewood type theorems. Asymptotic formulae are also provided for the Mittag-Leffler functions in the case of \large" values of indices that are used in the proofs of the convergence theorems for the considered series

TERMINATION OF THE CONTRACT FOR LIFETIME SUPPORT DUE TO CHANGED CIRCUMSTANCES

This paper addresses the topic of terminating a lifetime support contract due to changed circumstances. The focus is on the analysis of the legal factors that are relevant for deciding to terminate the contract in this context. Special attention is paid to the application of the rebus sic stantibus principle, which allows the termination of the contract due to exceptional changes in circumstances that cannot be foreseen at the time of the conclusion of the contract. The preliminary analysis includes a review of the legal bases and relevant legal provisions to identify the parameters to be considered when determining the relevant changes. Understanding these factors aims to improve legal decision-making and legal practice in cases involving the termination of lifetime support contracts due to changed circumstances

A Semantic-Oriented Architecture of a Functional Module for Personalized and Adaptive Access to the Knowledge in a Multimedia Digital Library

This article presents the principal results of the doctoral thesis “Semantic-oriented Architecture and Models for Personalized and Adaptive Access to the Knowledge in Multimedia Digital Library” by Desislava Ivanova Paneva-Marinova (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics), successfully defended before the Specialised Academic Council for Informatics and Mathematical Modelling on 27 October, 2008.This paper presents dissertation work on semantic-oriented architectures and models for personalized and adaptive access to the knowledge in a multimedia digital library. The work was presented on October 27, 2008 before the Specialized Academic Council in Informatics and Mathematical Modelling at the Higher Attestation Commission. As a result of the work there appeared a functional module providing customized user access to the library content flow. The module used an IEEE PAPI and IMS LIP-oriented ontological user model. The main services provide customized user access, browsing, searching, and grouping of digitised objects and collections, user profile management, tracking the user’s behaviour, etc. The services require and trace out data about the preliminary level of the users’ knowledge in the domain covered by the digital library, their object observation style, cognitive goals and interests, preferences about the objects/collections presentation and grouping, physical limitations, used knowledge delivery channels (Web, mobile phone), etc. Then they transform the available digitised objects into a new personalized form, and finally deliver them to the user. The module uses special usage scenarios/instructions defining a wide range of service actions dependent on the user’s background, events, informal learning situations, knowledge delivery channels, etc.This work was partially supported by Project BG051PO001/07/3.3-02/7 as a part of the grant scheme “Support for the Development of PhD Students, Post-doctoral Students, Postgraduate Students and Young Scientists” under the Operation programme “Human Resources Development” of the European Social Fund and the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science

Theorems on the Convergence of Series in Generalized Lommel-Wright Functions

Mathematics Subject Classification: 30B10, 30B30; 33C10, 33C20The classical Cauchy-Hadamard, Abel and Tauber theorems provide useful information on the convergence of the power series in complex plane. In this paper we prove analogous theorems for series in the generalized Lommel-Wright functions with 4 indices. Results for interesting special cases of series involving Bessel, Bessel-Maitland, Lommel and Struve functions, are derived.We provide also a new asymptotic formula for the generalized Lommel-Wright functions in the case of large values of the index ν that are used in the proofs of the Cauchy-Hadamard, Abel and Tauber type theorems for the considered series.* This work is partially supported by National Science Research Fund - Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, under Grant MM 1305/2003

Inequalities and Asymptotic Formulae for the Three Parametric Mittag-Leffler Functions

MSC 2010: 33E12, 30A10, 30D15, 30E15We consider some families of 3-index generalizations of the classical Mittag-Le²er functions and study the behaviour of these functions in domains of the complex plane. First, some inequalities in the complex plane and on its compact subsets are obtained. We also prove an asymptotic formula for the case of "large" values of the indices of these functions. Similar results have also been obtained by the author for the classical Bessel functions and their Wright's generalizations with 2, 3 and 4 parameters, as well as for the classical and multi-index Mittag-Le²er functions

IN E-GOVERNMENT WE TRUST? CORRELATING FACTORS OF E-GOVERNMENT USE IN THE WESTERN BALKAN AND EU COUNTRIES

The e-Government form of governing is thought to enable transparency, efficiency and develop user-centered public services delivery. Usage of e-Government services is seen as one of the prerequisites for full participation in society. However, the success of e-Government is contingent on a combination of factors that determine people’s willingness to use e-Government services. Previous research finds trust in government to be one of the key predictors of e-Government use. In this study we test the relationship of trust in government and e-Government usage, also including factors of digital inclusion. We focus on European Union countries and the less studied Western Balkan (WB) countries in the attempt to give an overview of the whole European region. For this purpose, we employ comparable secondary data from reliable datasets following standardized methodology for the EU and the WB countries. We performed a correlation and regression analysis to first test the trust in government and e-Government usage relationship and control the effects by adding two factors of digital inclusion and GDP per capita. The findings problematize and develop the relationship of trust in government, digital inclusion, and e-Government usage