Assignments: Batch Two: Assignment 17

Using the data provided, investigate, illustrate and discuss the key points of divergence in viewers' reactions to Brokeback Mountain (Lee 2005).

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: For your data, use only the datafile provided. The dataset consists of 1485 initial reviews of the film by members of the general public. These are in database format on the Bent Screens section of the MCS Restricted directory (for students on this module only). The formats provided are as follows:

Download in the usual way by right-clicking on the file you want and 'Save target as...' (in some browsers, 'Save link as...') to the drive on which you wish to store it. The Word document is the only one providing column headings so you will need to consult this first. Public workstations have access to Excel but a Works version has been provided also in case you have access to that. See also the Internet Movie Database but limit your raw data to the dataset provided. Although your data is provided, note that you should still consult academic sources and relate these to your findings.

Naturally you will not be expected to comment on the opinions of all of these viewers. What is required, rather, is that you should comment on general tendencies and patterns that you see in the corpus of material overall. You can then 'home in' on examples which will help you make your points. Therefore, in order to have a grasp of the general trends, you will still need to have read as many of the opinions as possible. You could focus in on opinions regarding specific aspects or points within the film. Short quotes from viewers' reviews may help to illustrate attitudes, but do not include long quotes, since this will take too much of your word count: we can always check the database itself for such details. In general, you should try to describe not the views of individuals but tendencies characterising particular groups. Sonia Livingstone refers to 'cynics' and 'romantic', for instance (though not as two clearcut groups) - can you discern any similar kinds of groupings? Look especially for points where interpretations diverge substantially: what are these key points of divergence? Was there any disagreement about what actually happened (e.g. was Jack's death a bizarre accident or a homophobic murder?). Rather than loosely referring to 'some', 'most' or 'the majority' of viewers, wherever possible divide divergent responses into groups and refer to actual numbers and percentages of the sample. Where this reveals clear patterns, use pie-charts or bar-charts to make such patterns clearer to the reader. If dealing with the whole dataset is too much to cope with, take a genuinely representative sub-sample from it (e.g. maybe you could delete all the even-numbered entries to reduce the sample by half).

In exploring differences between viewer interpretations you may find the following links useful:

Note also that this is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations may be useful. 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

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


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