SP302, History of Film, is a worthwhile class to take. Occurring on Tuesday nights from 7:00 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., Professor Hancock teaches the class so that it coincides with dollar movie night at the campus theater. Normally, a long class would be boring because of the Nod Factor. However, Professor Hancock keeps everyone awake and entertains the students, being very energetic. Her lecture on Citizen Kane was a particularly good example. Unfortunately, the film began before she finished her lecture. Rushing across the stage just as the film was beginning, an electrical cord tripped her up, causing her to lose her balance and fall. She regained her composure in time to remind us that Orson Welles also wrote and performed the famous broadcast…
Vincent M. Southerland and Jody Kent Lavy write about their take on sentencing children to life in prison without parole and why it's wrong. Throughout the article the authors have you thinking about how cruel and harsh of a sentence life in prison is for children. A good argument the two authors make is that “young people are more susceptible to peer pressure than adults, and less capable of thinking through the consequences of their actions and assessing risks”. Through this statement the authors point out the physiologically a child doesn't have fair judgment. When adults are sentenced to life in prison their brains have already matured and should fully understand the difference between right and wrong, but children are still in the process…
Bibliography: * Blakesly, David (2007) The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film. Illinois: SIU Press…
The articles I read cover the effects of race and economic areas on marriage rates and marriage decline. In the first article, Ecological Areas and Marriage Rates, author James Bossard discusses how the economic prosperity of areas in a city has an influence on marriage rates. In his 1928 study, Bossard conducted research on 20,000 married men throughout different parts of Philadelphia, which was the US’s 3rd largest city at the time. Data was collected from the Philadelphia Marriage License Bureau and nearby bureaus. The rates were calculated by the amount of men who were married during the study per 1,000 men who were single, widowed, or divorced in the area. An important factor taken into account was age difference. Findings showed that…
This is a class in which we survey the history of Western art to chronicle the development of our mass media society. We will examine art monuments generally studied in art history classes (that is, paintings, sculptures, etc.), as well as photography, film, and video. The purpose of this class is to help you develop what is often called "visual literacy." This means the ability to "read" the images that surround you in our information society.…
There is a clear parallel that can be established between America and film. Film was, for turn of…
In Tony Water’s “The Sacred and Profane in American History Curriculum,” Waters describes how history text-books leave out the less beautiful truth about history and the individuals who form it, to only portray the self sacrificial heres who made it. Waters continues to describe the effects this has a students, and how the peoples love for our country has been birthed from the lack of honesty in the textbooks. He shows this by describing that people only see the good in America and as a result, set up huge patriotic monuments to enrich it’s greatness.…
American cinema was changing during this time as well and reflecting the mood of the world. Among the genres undergoing transition during this time, ?the Western was perhaps the greatest barometer?the genre long seen as most uniquely American, most assuredly linked to the national character and mythology, seemed to be evolving into a new, rougher beast? (McClain, 2010, p. 52). This was no more evident than in the Sergio Leone…
Rosenstone, Robert A. “The Historical Film; Looking At The Past in a Post Literate age”.…
Fiction films are often stigmatised by historians, as they distort the truth, causing problems when trying to use them as a source. Their wildly varying content matter, inaccuracies, and bias make them hard to use. Film does not simply suggest a worldview; it states, and we experience, its existence as truth, which is the fundamental power and danger it poses to the observer. One cannot deny, however, film’s phenomenal impact in the twentieth century, drastically changing the way we see the world and how we absorb information. In this way, film is best considered as one stage in the ongoing history of communications. As a historical medium, therefore, fiction film can be very valuable, as despite fictitious content, it still has the potential…
I found that people in the 1940’s commonly choose what to view films based on what they already believed. The power of film-makers portrayed influence that knowledgeable people depend…
Over the course of history it was taught through textbooks and actual footage of what occurred, but now in this time period movies have been made to recreate the footage in modern times. Debates over the years has been is history actually being portrayed accurately and if it gives accurate knowledge of the event. Producers of television series and movies of this generation have become the most powerful historians. Movies expose the viewer to possibly see what history was truly resembling, or it can even give a singularity of knowledge. Hollywood created many motion pictures about previous events, but added in things that was not a part in the true event. During 1989 in the New York Times, it was discussed if movies can accurately grasp the understanding of history. Richard Bernstein researched Mississippi Burning stating it showed violence with realistic detail, but it transformed one of the key events of the recent American experience of the civil workers. During The Final Days it was a highly imaginative reconstruction of the end of Richard Nixon’s final presidency, yet the television series showed accurate knowledge on the tense issue of history (Bernstein). The fictional fable of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas created a motion picture of a representation of the time period of the Holocaust. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas accurately represents the Holocaust and what occurred to all the Jewish Orthodox, yet inaccurately represents history with the impossible actions with the overall plot.…
5. The thesis of the essay is, “Life is better in the big city, and it all comes down to one general reason: more choice”.…
The film I reviewed for this assignment was Primary Colors; the film is very closely related to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The film stars John Travolta who plays a charismatic southern governor by the name of Jack Stanton. Jack is trying to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. Henry Burton, an idealist is impressed by Jack’s warmth and likeability with the people so he joins Jack’s team as a political adviser. This is an example of material covered in lecture; Jack Stanton’s party was very influential so they recruited Burton.…
In light of the fact that most students spend a considerable amount of time exposing themselves to various media such as television, movies and now streaming Internet video, the authors believe that a strong case can be made for helping students ascertain the business dimensions, applicability and relevance of the films. The film evaluation form (appendix A) provides a start for determining these dimensions. The form was constructed based on suggestions from the American Film Institute. According to the American Film Institute’s web site: (www.afi.edu/teachers/resources/), questions to consider include:…