LGBT Representation in Dallas Buyers Club - THESIS AND OUTLINE ATTACHED

Description:
Film Reception Assignment:
Film and Social Change
This class centers on the idea that there is a relationship between cinema and social
change. The assignment asks you to research and analyze the reception of a single film to
assess the film’s broader social impact. What does the reception of the film suggest about
the film’s larger influence on American culture, its social meaning, and, more specifically,
its effect on the social situations it addresses?
Important background questions to contribute to your understanding of the film’s
reception:
• Who are the filmmakers? What was their intent in making the film?
• Who are the reviewers of the film, if you can identify them?
• What aspects/scenes of the movie do the reviewers point to?
• Where do reviewers differ?
• Was there a public reaction to the film beyond the reviews (i.e. protest
or social activism)? If so, what was it?
Your paper should make a coherent argument about the film’s reception. As such, it needs
a thesis statement (which lays out your argument), body paragraphs (which direct your
reader to evidence supporting that thesis) and a conclusion (which briefly reviews what you
have shown and points outward to bigger questions for future exploration). For more on
how to write a thesis statement, please consult:
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/thesis-statements/
For more on how to write an expository (i.e. argument-driven) essay, please consult:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/02/ or visit the writing center.
While you may want to research broadly to uncover varying reactions to the film, one or
two reviews, well analyzed for what they suggest about public reception, are enough. The
goal is not for you to find the most controversial film but to explore how film relates to its
social context. Finding that there was less public reception than you might have expected is
a finding itself and worthy of discussion. What I will be looking for is the strength and
logic of your analysis of the reactions or reviews you find and your ability to connect these
reviews/reactions film to your own reading of the film text, which should be informed by
the film analysis techniques you are learning in lecture and section. The paper should also
be well written, proofread carefully according to the rules of grammar and the attached
style sheet, and be creative in its approach. These elements will be the basis of my
evaluation.

A number of databases will be useful to you in your research. I recommend the following:
-Proquest Historical Newspapers
-Ethnic Newswatch
-UNZ.org (http://www.unz.org/Pub/Articles/)

Your finished paper should be 5-8 pages in length and will submit your paper via Turn-itin.
Film Options:
You may use any of the films on the syllabus as the basis for your paper (though if we have
already discussed part of the reception, you will want to say something new).
In addition you may use the following films:
Imitation of Life (1934/1959)
Victim (1961)
Shock Corridor (1963)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song (1969)
Medium Cool (1969)
Boys in the Band (1970)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Word is Out (1977)
Norma Rea (1979)
9 to 5 (1980)
Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Paris is Burning (1990)
Daughter of the Dust (1991)
American Me (1992)
Philadelphia (1993)
Mi Familia (1995)
Dead Man Walking (1995)
Boyz n the Hood (1996)
Wag the Dog (1998)
Smoke Signals (1998)
Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Fog of War (2003)
North Country (2005)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Children of Men (2006)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
When the Levees Broke (2006)
Milk (2008)
Collapse (2009)
Sin Nombre (2009)
The House I Live In (2012)
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Dope (2015)
Spotlight (2015)
If you have a movie you would like to propose, please submit a paragraph describing the
film and why you think it worthy of exploration to your T.A. for review.

Style guide/Checklist:
• Your finished assignment should be 5-8 pages in length, type-written, carefully proofread,
well-thought through. It should have an introduction with a thesis statement and at least
three internal body paragraphs with evidence supporting this thesis and a conclusion.
• You should use brief quotations and concepts from the readings. Long quotations for a
paper of this length are unwieldy and distract from your own argument.
• Your paper must include close analysis of at least one scene and one shot (a continuous
stretch of film uninterrupted by editing).
• Show your knowledge of the established norms of film and television studies writing by using
the following formats for film titles and character names.
o The name of the film you are discussing should be underlined or italicized at every
use (i.e. The Birds or The Birds)
o After a film’s first mention, the year (or years in the case of a television show) should
be placed in parentheses after the title. For example, at first mention, write “This
essay will do a close analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963)” or “This essay
will examine generational conflict, ethnicity, and masculinity in Welcome Back, Kotter
(1975-1979)” or “This essay will examine post-human theology in The Leftovers
(2014- )” and from that point forward in your paper, you would refer to each as The
Birds or Welcome Back, Kotter, or The Leftovers without the production dates.
o If you mention the names of any film or television characters in your paper, the
name of the actor playing the character should appear in parentheses after the name
of the character at first mention. For example, “In Samuel Fuller’s White Dog
(1983), the white dog himself is a figure of the uncanny, though Fuller’s bizarre
editing and shot structure convert the viewer’s vision itself an uncanny version of
the Classical Hollywood spectator position, as when images of the dog seem to
proliferate throughout the diegetic world right before Keys (Paul Winfield) finds the
dog who has just killed an unnamed black man in a church (59:32; 59:43).”

• VERY IMPORTANT: Your paper should use time codes to designate any shot and frame to
which you are referring. You should be referring to specific shots and scenes in the film. For
each different shot or scene reference, you should place, in parentheses, after the first
sentence of discussion, the time (minutes/seconds) within the film that it appears. For
example, to reference a scene 58 minutes and 28 seconds into the film might read as follows:
“Cahiers Du Cinema discusses Fuller’s films as having been ‘made with his feet,’ a reference to
his emblematic use of shots of feet in his films (Moullett, 151). In White Dog, we see the
power of the foot shot Cahiers describes during the scene where the dog attacks an unnamed
Black man on the street (58:28-58:44). Cross-cutting images of feet of the dog and of the
man, Fuller builds our suspense about the man’s racial identity and whether the dog will
attack.”

• Your paper should use the Chicago Manual of Style as a guide for citations. All readings
mentioned or indirectly referred to should be cited properly. You may use in-text citations
and a bibliography, footnotes, or endnotes.

• The best papers will offer a clear, innovative argument that is creative and that showcases
your understanding of the concepts you are discussing, your understanding of the issues at
stake in the film and the public reaction to them, and your ability to perform close analysis
of a text.