SU English Department - Outstanding Students' Essays in Cinema Studies
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The following essays were composed in courses currently taught at Salisbury University. Dr. Elsie Walker created this database because she was inspired by her students' work. Over the coming years, Walker and her colleagues, Drs. Dave Johnson and Ryan Conrath, will add more to this collection. These essays reflect a range of levels and ambitions, but they are united in representing some of the most finely detailed work produced by our film students at Salisbury University. For more information on the Film Concentration program at SU, please visit http://www.salisbury.edu/english/film/
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Item A Weekend With Gremlins(2022-12) Marquess, Owen; Conrath, Ryan; English; Film StudiesThis essay is a comparative analysis of the films Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard and Gremlins 2: The New Batch by Joe Dante. The analysis goes over how each director uses materiality and the fourth wall break to convey the political ideology of the film.Item Mirror (1975): Dreamscape Interpretations(2021-04) Giggey, Margaret; Conrath, Ryan; English; FilmAdaptation in film is traditionally thought of as taking a written work and translating it into the moving elements of the cinema; however, a reciprocal phenomenon can also occur—adaptation of film into another artform. “Mirror (1975): Dreamscape Interpretations” and the accompanying poems “Mirror Me” and “Dreamscape,” demonstrate two examples of adapting a film into poetry using Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975) and the inspiration of dream-like scenes in cinema.Item Persepolis: Held Within the Grip of Both Now and Then(2021-03) Marshall, Bailey; Conrath, Ryan; English; FilmAn analysis of Marjane Satrapi's film PERSEPOLIS written for the Cinema of Exile course at Salisbury University.Item An Ongoing Battle: Emily Dickinson and Adaptation(2020-12-16) Murray, Siobhan; Conrath, Ryan; EnglishIn A Quiet Passion, Terrence Davies grapples with Emily Dickinson’s poetry and offers an explanation for her life of isolation. Through the themes in Dickinson’s poetry and her obsession with “the looming man”, the author reveals her desire to share a connection with her readers. However, she is fearful that her work will be widely accessible to the public. While A Quiet Passion attempts to address the author's reluctant relationship with her readers, the film demonstrates that adaptations can never fully honor the wishes of their source material.Item Soundwalk Assignment(2019-02-15) Pace, Christian; EnglishThis paper is the record of the student's "soundwalk". The purpose of a soundwalk is to develop skills of listening to and hearing sounds of all life at a heightened level. This feeds into being able to hear everything in all cinema (and indeed, all sonic information) with a new alertness and imagination.Item Communication is the Weapon, Living is the Result(2019) Marshall, Bailey; EnglishThis paper was developed from a "mystery screening", where the student had a couple of days to develop the essay after experiencing the film for the first time. The purpose of a mystery screening is to test the skills of listening to and hearing sounds of all cinema at a heightened level.Item Bodies and Binaries in "Black Swan"(2016) Jones, Hannah; Walker, Elsie; EnglishThe horror film, like other genres, has its characteristic conventions—a strong female protagonist, a sort of “monster,” gory spectacles, emphasis on sound, and the prominence of sex or sexuality, to name a few. However, genres are also constantly evolving and taking on new subject matter, and this is evident in the 2010 film Black Swan. Black Swan tells the story of Nina, a professional ballerina who has just landed the role of the Swan Queen in her dance company’s version of Swan Lake. Nina perfectly embodies the purity of the White Swan, but she struggles to portray the seductive nature of the Black Swan. The film unfolds Nina’s transformation from the white swan to the black swan while also highlighting the extreme binaries symbolized by the role: vulnerability versus strength and virgin versus whore. Black Swan manipulates, and at times refutes, the conventions of the horror genre in order to critique these binaries within a social context. Thus, through its focus on the vulnerable-strong binary of the female body as well as the virgin-whore binary of female sexuality, Black Swan establishes itself as a feminist horror. In the following analysis, I will concentrate mostly on Nina’s final two dances to show how the film encourages a feminist reading.Item "An Inconvenient Truth:" A Documentary Film Where the Ethos, Logos, and Pathos All Depend on One Man(2015) Booker, Dacey; Johnson, Dave; EnglishAn Inconvenient Truth, 2006’s Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, is arguably one of the most popular films of its kind in the last decade. Among the highest grossing documentaries of all time, the movie centers on former Vice President Al Gore traveling around America and giving a slideshow on climate change, with arguments surrounding its causes, how it’s not a myth (as some politicians would claim it is), and what can be done to try to stop it before it’s too late. Subtitled A Global Warning, the documentary’s main and most obvious goal is to arouse its audience with enough alarming information in order to get them to take action as soon as the end credits roll. But while many documentaries of this sort would center themselves around talking heads in order to make their points, An Inconvenient Truth has no outside interviews, instead placing almost everything on the shoulders of Gore. “Just like the orator or public speaker who uses his entire body to give voice to a particular perspective,” Bill Nichols writes in his textbook Introduction to Documentary, “documentaries speak with all the means at their disposal.” (67) In the case of this film, however, the speaker is the documentary, mostly consisting of Gore giving an extended speech that he claims he’s given hundreds of time. In this sense, the movie bases the use of the so-called “Rhetorical Triangle” entirely on its central figure, using ethos, pathos and logos in order to make Gore into a figure that we as an audience can trust on the film’s subject matter.Item The role of editing in the success of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws"Reynolds, KevinEditing presents a great opportunity for filmmakers to construct their films in a variety of ways. According to David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, the decisions made during the editing period help to “build the film’s overall form.” In the case of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster, _Jaws_, the editing serves as an integral part of its success. The precision of the cuts created by Spielberg and Editor Verna Fields have been studied and imitated many times over, but what cannot be replicated is the manner in which the editing guides the film’s narrative. Upon examining the iconic opening sequence of a lone skinny dipper being attack by a great white shark, it becomes apparent how the editing shapes every facet of the film. From its relationship with the music and actor performances to the suggested themes, the editing is the success of _Jaws_.Item “If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it”: "Brokeback Mountain" and the western genreSwinney, JakeThere are many common associations that come with the western genre: cowboy hats, boots, spurs, horses, and a rugged hero, just to name a few. Classic westerns, like John Ford’s _Stagecoach_, have programmed us to have certain expectations for the genre. While associations and expectations may vary from viewer to viewer, one is surely not to expect a tale of two cowboys falling in love with one another. Ang Lee’s _Brokeback Mountain_ takes full advantage of our preexisting expectations of the western as it uses them against us in his queering of the genre. The film contradicts its genre, and even self-consciously contradicts itself, through its portrayal of the mythology of the western frontier and its depiction of the cowboy as an icon.Item The aural identity of George in Tom Ford’s "A Single Man"Reeb, CelesteTom Ford’s directorial debut, _A Single Man_ (2009), was widely acclaimed at film festivals across the globe. The film earned him several nominations, including Best Original Score at the Golden Globes, and The Golden Lion at the 66th Venice Film festival where he would also win the Queer Lion. Surprisingly, the critical attention and success of the film has not translated into an outpouring of scholarly attention. Most of the academic articles focusing upon the film, thus far, are in the field of adaptation studies. Articles, like “Tom Ford and His Kind” by Lee Wallace, focus heavily on the film’s relation to Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel, _A Single Man_, which the film is based upon. Outside of adaptation studies, the other common topic written about is the director himself. His status as a fashion-world, homosexual icon has overshadowed the perception of his film. It appears easier to discuss the director’s own status than to delve into the complex inner workings of the film. The portrayal of George (Colin Firth), a homosexual professor in the late 1960’s, is done with careful consideration of the character’s interior life. The film beautifully communicates the inner pain George suffers after the death of his partner, Jim. George is unable to outwardly speak about his loss and must mourn in isolation. The isolation and disconnect from the world around him is largely communicated though the film’s sound track which is composed by Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi. The sound track becomes an extension of George’s interiority and speaks for him in a way he does not, and cannot, verbally speak for himself.