Paper Assignment
Instructions Quick overview:
• compare/contrast at least two sources, at least one of which must be a film
• 5-7 pages, double-spaced
Goals of this assignment:
• identify and explain similarities and differences between two sources in order to support a claim about one or both of them
• practice using the language of film analysis
• develop an argument supported by logical and demonstrable reasons and concrete evidence
• demonstrate an understanding of audience needs (your audience is me and your classmates)
• engage critically with Shakespeare
Detailed instructions:
Choose one of the four plays we've read this semester, either the play itself or a cinematic interpretation of the play that we watched. Compare and contrast this text/film to another film. The second film may be one that we watched in class, but does not have to be. You may choose to compare/contrast e.g. two versions of Hamlet, or Olivier's Hamlet to Brook's Lear, or Kozintsev's Lear to the original play. If you want to use a play not read in class, or compare a source from class to a non-Shakespeare film, talk to me first. As with paper 1, you should be conscious of what theory or theories you are using to make your interpretation, whether or not you discuss it/them explicitly.
In your paper, you may focus on how the films use cinematic and narrative techniques to emphasize themes, develop characters and their relationships, and/or re-envision Shakespeare's text. You might examine cinematic techniques in terms of editing, comparing how the films' cuts draw parallels between particular characters, or in terms of setting, examining how the films use public and private space. You should address, however briefly, why these two sources should be put in dialogue with each other.
General guidelines:
• be aware of what theory or theories you're using. It will serve as the frame of reference for the questions you ask, the evidence you privilege, and the grounds for the comparison you're making. Often your professors will tell you what approach they want you to take; in this case, I'm leaving it up to you.
• have a thesis expressing a relationship between your two sources. It should be more specific than something like, 'While Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story initially seem very different, they actually have a lot of similarities.' That's a fine - and useful -starting point, but the thesis should be a claim about the significance of one or more of those similarities or differences. For example, a thesis like 'Whereas the use of nature in Brook's Lear emphasizes the nihilism of the original play, Kurosawa's Ran uses nature to suggest the possibility of redemption' does explicitly compare the two texts, but it draws a specific and concrete distinction. On the other hand, a thesis like 'While West Side Story focuses more on societal and systemic problems than a doomed individual love affair, both the movie and the original play comment on the redemptive nature of love' acknowledges key differences between the two texts but highlights an important similarity.
• have an organizational scheme. There are several ways to organize a compare/contrast paper, but two of the most common are text-by-text or point-by-point. A text-by-text essay would provide a discussion of one text and then the other, and bring them together in the conclusion. A point-by-point essay, on the other hand, would discuss the texts together in terms of specific points of contact or disjunction. This is often, though by no means always, a more sophisticated approach.
• use clear signposting to keep your reader oriented. All argumentative papers require you to link each point in the argument back to the thesis. Without such links, your reader will be unable to easily see how new sections logically and systematically advance your argument. In a compare-and contrast, you also need to make links between the sources you're comparing in the body of your essay if you want your paper to hold together. To make these links, use transitional expressions of comparison and contrast (similarly, moreover, likewise, on the contrary, conversely, on the other hand...) and contrastive vocabulary.
Keep in mind:
• you should have a bibliography, even if it is only two items long. Use MLA formatting.
• this should be a critical analysis, not a subjective evaluation - i.e., you should make an argument about the sources, not about whether or not they're good, or which one is better
• feel free to use screenshots or images to illustrate your point - make sure you caption them with brief descriptions, and refer to them in the body of the text in some consistent way (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2...).
• when writing about literature and film, use the present tense: Hamlet is losing his mind in the present, Lear is banishing Cordelia in the present, Juliet is deceiving her parents in the present. If you use secondary sources, these should be discussed in the present or simple perfect: As Helene Foley has shown..., Brantley Bryant demonstrates convincingly... (NB this convention does not hold for fields like social and hard sciences, which discuss scholarship and many sources in the past tense.).