Moral Issues in Film Paper
For this assignment, you will select a film that deals with a moral concern. You will briefly summarize this film (250 words). Then, you will analyze how the film treats this moral issue. Use the text to support your analysis (about 500 words). The paper will be due at the end of Module 5 and should employ an APA title page, in-text citations and a References page.
Though, what's really important (!) for this paper we wish to write and turn in next week is that we focus our main efforts of composition not merely on the film, but rather, on ethical theories and ideas and concepts we have learned about and studied in our readings to date in our course book (Rosenstand) and that we explain ethical theories and key ideas found in the book as we apply that stuff to the ethical analysis of the movie. In other words, our main job here is NOT to merely share in ethical "opinions" that we may have concerning the film of our choice that we have watched, but rather, that we demonstrate and show in our paper next week that we delved deeply into and understood important book materials (ethical theories) and moral concepts such as to make them come alive in our analysis of the movie...that's the assignment! In short, what needs to take front and center in this paper is neither the movie nor our ethical opinions on the movie, but rather, our course materials as presented in our required readings to date in our course book (Rosenstand)...and how those materials can be identified in and related to the movie while explaining and applying them to your reader.
Below is a diverse selection of films that would be appropriate for this activity. You may select from this list or propose another film.
- Sophie's Choice
- Gattaca
- Wall Street
- The People vs. Larry Flynt
- A Time to Kill
- A Clockwork Orange
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Dead Man Walking
- American History X
- The Accused
- Saving Private Ryan
- Philadelphia