Assignments: Batch One: Assignment 3

Compare Victim (Dearden 1961) and Philadelphia (Demme 1993) in terms of how they seek to influence audiences.

Guidance

For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the guidelines for writing essays and reports.

What Key Features Do I Look For?

Familiarity with relevant texts
Evidence - the stronger the better
Argument - coherent and balanced
Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories
Understanding of relevant concepts
Reflexivity - reflections on methodology
Examples - insightfully analysed
Style - readability and effective presentation

Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text (not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher. Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your text and number your pages.

Guidance for this assignment: Film-makers seek to 'position' audiences, especially in relation to a 'preferred reading' in films with an 'agenda'. This, of course, is no guarantee that audiences will accept such positioning and adopt such a preferred reading. Nevertheless, try to identify some examples of how the film-makers here seek to 'manipulate' their audiences (in particular, in the case of films with an agenda, to influence audience attitudes). Produce and discuss evidence of the film-makers' agendas in each of these films (some of this will be found in the Powerpoints for the relevant lectures).

Outline and illustrate the strategies used to influence how we are meant to feel and think. Explore where and how particular characters

become mouthpieces for the filmmakers;

are set up as those with whom the audience is expected to identify;

are set up for the audience's disapproval.

The concept of 'identification' is not universally accepted by film theorists (see Barker 1989) but it is frequently invoked by both film-makers and audiences, and to that extent it can be granted a phenomenal reality for the present purposes. Note where film-makers and audience members refer explicitly to identification with particular characters, and consider how this relates to the (explicit or inferred) intentions of the film-makers in the films chosen.

Also, consider the use of camerawork and editing to manipulate audience responses. Adopt a comparative approach and anchor your argument in concrete details. This is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is essential. Use these to illustrate particular points. Contrasting one with another can also be productive. Incorporate illustrations electronically into your text (e.g. by scanning or downloading from the Internet) rather than literally cutting and pasting. For guidance on capturing stills, click here.

Some suggested reading

Barker, Martin (1989) Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics. Manchester: Manchester University Press [included here for its critique of the concept of identification]
Bourne, Stephen (1996) Brief Encounters: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema 1930-1971. London: Cassell
Cohen, Jonathan (2001) ‘Defining Identification: A Theoretical Look at the Identification of Audiences with Media Characters’, Mass Communication and Society 4(3): 245-64
Dyer, Richard (1993) The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. London: Routledge
Easthope, Anthony (1986) What a Man's Gotta Do: The Masculine Myth in Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman
Grundmann, Roy & Peter Sacks (1993) 'Philadelphia', Cineaste 20(3): 51-4 [very useful for this assignment]
Horton, Donald and R. Richard Wohl (1956) 'Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance', Psychiatry 19: 215-29
Lang, Robert (2002) Masculine Interests: Homoerotics in Hollywood Film. New York: Columbia University Press
Maccoby, Eleanor E. & William Cody Wilson (1957) ‘Identification and Observational Learning from Films’, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 55: 76-87
Mackinnon, Kenneth (2003) Representing Men: Maleness and Masculinity in the Media. London: Arnold
Mulvey, Laura (1981) ‘Afterthoughts on "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Inspired by Duel in the Sun', Framework 6(15/17): 12-15
Mulvey, Laura (1975) 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen 16(3): 6-18
Spicer, Andrew (2003) Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema. London: Tauris

Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!

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