Overview
For this final assignment, focusing on our final module on Childhood and Cinema, I am going to get you to write me a research essay of approximately 2000 words (about 8 pages or so) on one of the topics provided below. These topics are all based on the films we are watching in this final phase of the course, which takes up questions of cinematic depictions of childhood and adolescence. For this paper, you can write on Petite Maman, Spirit of the Beehive, Moonrise Kingdom, The Virgin Suicides, Shoplifters, or I Like Movies. As you will see, the possible topics I have provided below are elastic and general. You will need to narrow these down into a specific argument and a specific thesis as you develop your paper. This is a research essay, so I want you to refer to at least 5 secondary sources, integrating them into your argument in a way that supports and substantiates your thesis. For a few of the films we have discussed, there is a range of scholarly secondary sources out there. Search the library and its databases for academic articles – whether on the specific films, on their directors, or on the coming-of-age genre or films about childhood and adolescence – that will be of help to you in crafting your argument. But I also recognize – based in part on having started to mark your previous essay – that there is excellent non-scholarly writing out there on film that will be of help in the writing of your essay, whether you select an older film or whether you write on something that is relatively recent and has not yet been the subject of many academic articles. Once again I am going to put together a hit list of fave sources for you and post it to Nexus, but generally for solid critical writing on film, I highly recommend the following, first-rate online sources Sight and Sound (the official magazine of the British Film Insitute):
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound
Film Comment (the official magazine of NYC’s Film at Lincoln Centre):
Current and The Daily (the feeds of boutique DVD and blu-ray label Criterion):
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts
https://www.criterion.com/current/category/20-the-...
MUBI Notebook (online magazine of the MUBI streaming service):
Senses of Cinema (Australia-based online magazine from the Melbourne
Cinematheque):
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https://www.sensesofcinema.com/
Cinema Scope (Toronto-based cinephile magazine. They publish some of their material
online)
Cineaste (Long-running U.S.-based film magazine. They publish some of their material
online)
Letterboxd Journal (the film diary app increasingly has a good article and interview
section)
https://letterboxd.com/journal/
This list is by no means exhaustive, and I also highly recommend learning to work with film
reviews. There are great critics out there who write intelligently about cinema:
Mark Kermode, Guy Lodge, Peter Bradshaw, Simran Hans, and Wendy Ide at the
Guardian/Observer in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/film
Richard Brody at the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/tag/movies
Manohla Dargis, Glenn Kenny, and Nicholas Rapold at the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/reviews/movies
Melissa Anderson at 4 Columns: https://4columns.org/archive/anderson-melissa
And say what you will about Rotten Tomatoes, it does serve as a helpful aggregator of critical
opinion, especially if you restrict it to “Top Critics” as I have done here in their recent round-up
of reviews of Universal Language, which is coming back to Winnipeg at the Dave Barber
Cinematheque in March:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/universal_languag...
Individual pages for films on MUBI will also sometime feature a round-up of reviews from legit
sources. Once again, as an example, here’s the MUBI page for Universal Language:
https://mubi.com/en/ca/films/universal-language
I guess my point overall is that there is a way to write in a responsible scholarly way about
cinema that draws on both academic sources and on critical reviews and journalism. The key
thing, as I stressed with the last assignment and which I will do again here, is the framing. If you
write,
In his Observer review of the film, Mark Kermode writes, “….” *or*
In her piece on the film in the MUBI Notebook, Beatrice Loayza argues, “…”
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that gives me exactly the information I need to contextualize the quotation.
Not sure whether something you are looking at online is by a legitimate critic or an online hack?
Get in touch! I am always ready to help you out to identify the warning signs of internet cranks
and illegitimate sources! One final note: Mark Cousins’ essay film A Story of Children and Film
(2013) counts as a source if you quote or paraphrase something from it, citing it as you would
other sources!
OK, onto the questions: For any of these questions you may choose to do a deep dive on a
single film, or to develop some kind of comparison between two or more. Cards on the
table, I prefer the former approach, but if you have your heart set on a wider comparison
or survey, pitch it to me by the final day or class for approval.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Beyond Realism. There is a long history in cinema of representing childhood,
especially the struggles of childhood, drawing on the conventions of realism. But so
many of the films we are watching depart from this and draw on surrealism, the
uncanny, self-reflexive stylizations, or a sense of magic to do their work. Write an essay
that considers the ways in which these films capture the weirdness or wonder of
childhood or adolescence only through a conscious departure from realism.
Boyhood and/or Girlhood. I’ve pitched this last module as an investigation into
childhood onscreen, but are there ways in which this category is defined by a divide?
How do these films capture the continuities/disjunctions between boyhood and
girlhood? Or is the distinction/division not so neat and tidy? Write an essay that
investigates cinema’s capacity to capture a gendered childhood and adolescence.
A World of their Own. Films about childhood and adolescence are often fueled by
generational conflict, fights with parents or authority figures, but they are also
sometimes driven by a desire to capture the experience of childhood and adolescence
as a world unto itself, with its own experience of time and place, of interpersonal
relations, and of the wider world. Write an essay that examines film’s ability to capture,
or recreate, the world of childhood or adolescence.
Into Adulthood. A staple turn in films about adolescence is in depicting a coming-of-
age. There is always something both exciting and elegiac about this: even as new
possibilities open up, other elements of the childhood or adolescent experience must
be left behind. Write an essay that thinks through the way in which these films capture
that moment of change and transition and all the emotions that come with it.
Develop your own damn question. Think that everything I have proposed here is hot
garbage? Well, come up with your own topic and pitch it to me for approval by the very
last day of class.