French Resistance

The French Resistance (French: La Résistance française) is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during the Second World War. Résistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis in rural areas), who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The men and women of the Résistance came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés; academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics (including priests) and also citizens from the ranks of liberals, anarchists and communists.

The French Resistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, and the lesser-known invasion of Provence on 15 August, by providing military intelligence on the German defences known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders of battle. The Résistance also planned, coordinated, and executed acts of sabotage on the electrical power grid, transport facilities, and telecommunications networks. It was also politically and morally important to France, both during the German occupation and for decades afterward, because it provided the country with an inspiring example of the patriotic fulfillment of a national imperative, countering an existential threat to French nationhood. The actions of the Résistance stood in marked contrast to the collaboration of the French regime based at Vichy, the French people who joined the pro-Nazi milice and the French men who joined the Waffen SS.

South Park

South Park is an American adult animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. The show revolves around four boys—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick—and their bizarre adventures in and around the titular Colorado town. Much like The Simpsons, South Park uses a very large ensemble cast of recurring characters. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become infamous for its crude language and dark, surreal humor that satirizes a wide range of topics.

Parker and Stone developed the show from two animated shorts they created in 1992 and 1995. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, which ultimately led to its production as a series. South Park debuted in August 1997 with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied but it remains one of Comedy Central's highest rated shows, and is slated to air through at least 2019. The pilot episode was produced using cutout animation. All subsequent episodes are created with software that emulates the cutout technique. Parker and Stone perform most of the voice acting. Since 2000, each episode is typically written and produced during the week preceding its broadcast, with Parker serving as the primary writer and director. There have been a total of 267 episodes over the course of the show's 19 seasons.

Resistance

Resistance may refer to:

Physics

Blame Canada

"Blame Canada" is a song from the 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, written by Trey Parker & Marc Shaiman. In the song, the parents of the fictional South Park, led by Sheila Broflovski (Mary Kay Bergman), decided to blame Canada for the trouble their children have been getting into since watching the Canadian-made movie Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire and imitating what they saw and heard in the movie. The parents refuse to accept that, by not preventing their children from watching Terrance and Phillip in the first place, they are, themselves, to blame for their children's misbehavior. "Blame Canada" satirizes scapegoating and parents that do not control "their children's consumption of popular culture".

Reception

The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (1999). This created controversy because all nominated songs are traditionally performed during the Oscar broadcast, but the song contained the word fuck, which the FCC prohibits using in prime time broadcasts. At the 72nd Academy Awards, comedian Robin Williams performed the song with a chorus that gasped when the word was to be sung (Williams turned around at the crucial moment and did not actually sing it). He included digs at Margaret Trudeau and Bryan Adams, partially taken from lyrics of Sheila Broflovski's reprise of the song in "La Resistance". He referenced Celine Dion as well. Mary Kay Bergman, the voice actress who sang the female parts in the song, committed suicide months before the performance, forcing the organizers to search for a replacement for her and Trey Parker, who did the male voices. Williams introduced the song by speaking with duct tape over his mouth so that his speech resembled that of Kenny McCormick, then tearing it off and finally saying Stan Marsh's trademark line, "Oh my god! They killed Kenny!"

Babymetal

Babymetal (stylized as BABYMETAL) is a Japanese metal idol band. Their line-up consists of Suzuka Nakamoto as "Su-metal", Yui Mizuno as "Yuimetal", and Moa Kikuchi as "Moametal". The concept of the group is a fusion of the metal and idol genres. The three teenage girls and their band are managed by the Amuse talent agency. They released their debut album of the same name in February 2014.

History

Beginnings

The group was initially formed in 2010 as a subunit of the female idol group Sakura Gakuin, aiming to realize a "fusion of metal and idol [music]". Kobametal (Babymetal's producer) says that he had been envisioning the creation of such a group since 2009. None of the three members knew what metal music was before the inception of the band.

Babymetal's first live appearance was on November 28, 2010, at Sakura Gakuin's first solo concert. Their first song, "Doki Doki Morning", was originally released in April 2011 on the Sakura Gakuin album Sakura Gakuin 2010nendo: Message. The band shot a music video for the song and in October 2011 released it as a DVD single intended for limited (live-venues-only) distribution. Having been uploaded to YouTube that same month, by the end of 2012 the video totaled over 1 million views. Also, in July 2011 at a Sakura Gakuin concert Babymetal premiered a second song, "Ijime, Dame, Zettai" ("No More Bullying"), but it would only be released as a single much later, in 2013.