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Essay 1
due Monday, November 16, 12:10 pm |
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| This essay asks you to choose a critical statement and examine it in an essay of 5-7 pages. You are required to include discussion of at least three Hitchcock films that we have seen, but do not use Psycho as an example. The best essays will develop a critical thesis of your own that engages with the critic's statement, then discuss the thesis by analyzing specific elements of the chosen films. Weak essays will simply summarize storylines or class notes. Your approach may agree with the critical statement, disagree with it, or discuss both sides. Critical statements. These are all from The Hitchcock Reader, though not from the essays covered on Exam 2. I have not identified the authors in order to encourage you to start your thinking afresh. Choose one and discuss it in relation to at least three Hitchcock films (other than Psycho) that we have seen this semester: A. The desire to control, the terror of losing control: such phrases describe not only Hitchcock's conscious relationship to technique and to his audiences but also the thematic center of his films. B. His work typically equates “normality” with a bourgeois life in whose values the creative side of him totally disbelieves but to which it can provide no alternative. C. The relationship between law and justice is wickedly dysfunctional, and as his career progresses the vision gets darker. D. Even the happy endings refuse the confidence of a secure order. Almost all Hitchcock's films end on an uncertain image. |
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| Details: Length: 5-7 pages, typed double spaced with normal font size and margins. Due: no later than the beginning of class on Monday, November 16, 2009. Late papers will be penalized 1 letter grade, 2 letter grades if more than a week late. Papers may be printed and submitted in class, or may be emailed to johnsong@cua.edu. The same deadlines apply. Excuses: I do not accept any excuses based on broken printers, lost emails or missent, misdelivered papers, or the like. Excused lateness requires documented evidence for absence. Use of outside sources is not required or encouraged. However, if you draw material from any outside source, printed or otherwise (and including other students' work), you must acknowledge it using the standard conventions of documentation. (The films themselves, including plot summaries and quotations of dialogue, do not require documentation, even if you derive this information from a secondary source such as the handouts from Sloan's Filmography.) Failure to document sources is academic dishonesty and will result in your receiving a failing grade for the course. See the syllabus |
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| Criteria for grading: - a good essay - clear critical thesis - originality of thought: you are expected to do more than summarize storylines or class notes. - ability to analyze specific examples in support of the thesis - effective argumentation - clear writing - execution with a minimum of errors in grammar, syntax, spelling, proofreading, etc. - submitted on time and in accordance with instructions |
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