Assignment 1 Academic Writing Favors Complexity. Often, Rather Than Attempting To Reduce A Topic To
Assignment 1 Academic writing favors complexity
Often, rather than attempting to reduce a topic to a simple idea, academic writing tries to complicate it, to see multiple perspectives, potential contradictions, to move beyond the obvious
We can see this in the excerpt we read from bell hooks’s book Reel to Real
She describes the act of viewing movies as involving a series of tensions
While movies may seem real, she writes, giving audiences what is real is precisely what movies do not do (1)
We go to movies to be entertained, but hooks notes that we also learn stuff from movies, and Often what we learn is life-transforming in some way (2)
She argues that films themselves contain what she calls multiple standpoints, and they may mix revolutionary and conservative standpoints in ways that make it hard for audiences to critically -read’ the overall filmic narrative (3)
Nonetheless, hooks insists, we viewers of film are usually seduced, at [least] for a time, by the images we see on the screen
They have power over us
(4)
That is, despiteor perhaps because ofthe complexity of film, it is important to to understand and -read’
what the film tries to do to us (4) precisely because it can have such power over the way we think and feel
Write an es
say in which you test out hooks’s ideas by analyzing a specific film through her lens
Think about a film you have watched that, as hooks describes, has power over you, that seems to have affected you in some wayeven if you are not sure what exactly the film might have taught you
Can you see signs of the multiple standpoints that hooks identifies? What might the film be trying to say, and to whom? As a way of setting up your analysis and explaining the significance of your pa
per, you will want to quote from and/or summarize elements of hooks’s es
say
Then you will want to test out your ideas by looking closely at specific elements of the filmparticular scenes, dialogue, images, plot developments, and so on
Finally, you should try to explain, as best you can, what this particular film tries to do to us and how you reached that conclusion
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