Essay questions:
1) Drawing on a range of sources, explore the extent to which the Paramount decrees can be seen to have signalled the end of ‘classical' Hollywood. Your answer should consider both industrial factors and film style.
2) ‘Hollywood shies away from direct engagement in politics. But politics nonetheless finds its way into films in coded ways. This encoding means that the films often resist attempts to pin down their political position with any precision'. Evaluate the applicability of this quotation by close reference to several films of the period.
3) ‘The cold, dead hand of self-censorship code meant that sexuality could never be confronted directly.' Discuss with reference to EITHER Hollywood film OR non- Hollywood Film OR both.
4) ‘The Science Fiction films of the 1950s are particularly multiple and ambivalent in their production of meaning, perhaps due to the fundamental...ambivalence of American society toward so many issues in that decade.' (M. Keith Booker, Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War, p.120.) Explain, and assess the validity of this statement by a close examination of TWO or THREE SF films of the 1950s.
5) ‘A phenomenon whose peculiarity was first noted in the mid-1950s, the teenpic can be marked with some precision along Hollywood's historical time line. The date of a phenomenon's occurrence is a good index of the reasons for its appearance. The teenpic, then, begins around 1955, a product of the decline of classical Hollywood cinema and the rise of the privileged American teenager.' (Thomas Doherty, Teenagers and Teenpics, page 12.) Locating the teenpic in the film industrial and social context described here, account for the ways in which its emergence introduces a new kind of film and appeals to the teenager as a new type of audience.
6) How did Doris Day's roles in the ‘sex comedies' of the 1960s highlight tensions around her persona as a female subject or object of the comedy?
7) How effectively did the Hollywood film industry adjust to societal changes and new forms of competition in the 1950s and early 1960s? Your answer should consider TWO or THREE key areas of change during this period.
Essay guidance:
Length 2000 Words; deadline MONDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2012 FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS ON SUBMITTING THE ESSAY TO FOLLOW
The period which should form the main focus of your essay is from 1949 until as late as the mid 60s depending on which question you choose, but no later. (You may also need to refer back earlier depending on the question.) The bulk of your examples should be from the relevant period. Where detailed textual analysis is carried out you should not rely on films viewed in screenings as your main examples, though of course some discussion of them, for instance to highlight similarities to or differences from your own examples, might well be appropriate.