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Contemporary American Cinema: Mid-term Paper
Each student is required to submit a 2,000 response to ONE of the following questions:
1. As the work of King, Schatz, and Wyatt shows us, the early part of the contemporary
period tends to be underwritten by a rhetorical distinction. Where the Hollywood Renaissance
of circa 1967-76 is associated with thematic sophistication and formal innovation, supposed
juvenilization and commerciality are said to characterize the Blockbuster Era that followed it.
With this point in mind, how did the makers of the short film that was used to promote Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (1976) to American audiences aim to complicate or blur these
distinctions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA6B1_0CEDc
2. As both Lowry’s and Wasser’s essays indicate, Hollywood and the independent
“exploitation sector” of the pre-video era are often set apart from one another in terms of the
types of the film they produced, the content of those films, and the motives underwriting their
assembly. How, and for what reasons, then do the makers of Visions, a short film broadcast
on American television to promote Columbia Pictures’ “women-in-danger” movie Eyes of
Laura Mars (1978), aim to uphold these distinctions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AID3rsgNvzE
3. The industrial and aesthetic model that both Wyatt and Schatz dubbed “High Concept”
came to emblematize the Blockbuster era of the late 1970s and 1980s to the extent that it was
often evoked by smaller independent companies wishing to pass off their films as Hollywood
product. Accordingly, how does the independent company New Line Cinema invoke High
Concept in the “Behind the Shells” featurette, which was screened on US television, to
suggest that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) is a
quintessential High Concept film?
Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bHUL9tPxzM
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=bp_SjF8J_oY
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Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsYkompHMUc&feature=related
NB: it is by no means imperative that you view the feature length motion pictures being
advertised in the featurette you chose to analyze.
Presentation
The paper is to be typed in size 12 Times New Roman (or a similar, easily readable font). It is
to be double-spaced or 1.5 spaced, with 2.5 cm margins at either side of the page. Each page
is to be numbered. US or UK spellings are accepted. Titles of films, TV series, books etc. are
to be italicized with the year of original US release included in parentheses after the first
citation only (e.g. Jaws (1975); thereafter Jaws). All quotations are to be placed in double
inverted commas (e.g. Smith describes the period as a “golden age for Stephen Spielberg”).
Imbedded quotations are to appear in single inverted commas (e.g. Smith goes on to suggest
“Spielberg knew the ‘good times’ were over by 1991”). For quotations of 40 words or longer,
omit commas, single space, and indent at either side by 2cm (additional to the 2.5 cm
margins) on a separate line.
Footnotes
References should be in Oxford Style. Please use an automated numbering system.
Book:
John Caughie, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
Edited book:
Jonathan Bignell, Stephen Lacy and Madeleine Macmurraugh-Kavanagh (eds), British
Television Drama: Past, Present and Future (New York, NY, and Houndmills: Palgrave,
2000).
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Article in own book:
Dai Vaughan, ‘Rooting for Magoo: a tentative politics of the zoom lens’, in On
Documentary: Twelve Essays (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 144.
Article in someone else’s book:
Bruno Latour, ‘The Prince for machines as well as for machinations’, in Brian Elliot (ed.),
Technology and Social Process (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988), p. 33.
Article in journal:
Madeleine Macmurraugh-Kavanagh, ‘The BBC and the birth of “The Wednesday Play”,
1964-70: institutional containment versus “agitational contemporaneity”’, Historical Journal
of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 17, no. 3 (1997), pp. 67-84.
Translation:
Michel Ciment, John Boorman, trans. Gilbert Adair (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), p. 45.
Follow-on references:
Ciment, John Boorman, p. 47.
Macmurraugh-Kavanagh, ‘The BBC and the birth of “The Wednesday Play”’, p. 59.
Latour, ‘The Prince for machines’.
Bignell et al. (eds), British Television Drama.
Or, if referring to directly previous footnote, use ‘Ibid., p. 59.’ Just ‘Ibid.’ if page reference is
the same.
Internet references:
Address in angle brackets; access date in square brackets.
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The Deanna Durbin Page,
<http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5228/ddpage.html> [accessed 7 April
2001].
See Anthony H. Cordesman, ‘Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Al Quds Force, and other
intelligence and paramilitary forces’ (rough working draft), 16 August 2007, Centre for
Strategic and International Studies,
<www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/070816_cordesman_report.pdf> [accessed 24 September
2008], p. 10.
Details
Value: 50% of Final Grade
Deadline: Midnight CET Sunday 27 October 2013
(Please send as PDF or Word file to richard_nowell@hotmail.com)
Penalties for Late Submission of Work
On the day following the due date – 5 marks out of 100 deducted
On the 2nd
day following the due to date – 10 marks out of 100 deducted
On the 3rd
day following the due date – 15 marks out of 100 deducted
On the 4th day following the due date – 20 marks out of 100 deducted
After the 4th
day following the due date – all marks deducted
Grading/Evaluation: Grades from 1-4 will be awarded based on the following criteria:
Argumentation/Understand
ing
Sources/Evidence Communication
1
70<
Insightful, vigorous, and
demonstrating considerable
depth of understanding and a
significant amount of original
thought; addressing question
directly through a wholly
coherent synthesis of ideas;
demonstrating a degree of
mastery over subject;
A wide range of sources
consulted; sources
employed with
significant
discrimination and
sound judgment;
thorough assessment of
evidence; use of a broad
range of examples.
Near-Faultless
typography and
layout; near-flawless
turns of phrase and
expression;
sophisticated and
precise vocabulary;
clear structure;
exemplary citation
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demonstrating a deep and
thorough understanding of
key concepts.
and bibliography.
2
55–69.9
Perceptive and insightful;
some evidence of original
thought; for the most part
addressing question directly;
mainly coherent synthesis of
ideas; thorough and
somewhat critical
understanding of key
concepts.
A fairly wide range of
sources consulted; solid
assessment of evidence;
sophisticated use of a
fairly broad range of
examples.
Very Solid
typography and
layout; few errors in
grammar; mainly
sophisticated turns of
phrase and
expression; mostly
clear structure;
strong citation and
bibliography.
3
40–54.9
Solid understanding
addressed, for the most part,
to the question; good
synthesis of ideas; reasonably
solid understanding of key
concepts; evidence of gaps in
knowledge and some minor
misunderstandings of key
concepts.
Several sources
consulted; evidence of
some assessment of
evidence; use of mostly
workable examples.
Good typography
and layout;
comprehensible and
largely error-free
grammar, turns of
phrase, and
expression;
reasonable clearly
structured; some
attempt to provide
citation and
bibliography.
4 (Fail)
<40
Barely if it all addressed to
question; no real synthesis of
ideas; mainly descriptive
rather than analytical; weak
and patchy understanding of
key concepts; significant gaps
in knowledge and
misunderstanding of key
concepts.
Restricted range of
sources consulted;
superficial
understanding of
evidence; limited range
of examples, many of
which are
inappropriate.
Poor typography and
layout; numerous
errors of grammar;
limited vocabulary;
ambiguous or
inaccurate turns of
phrase; weak or
missing citations and
bibliography.