Option E. Social (Science Issues and Film)

1. Read the content of the notebook on reserve: Social (Science Issues and Film) Although this is a fairly hefty list of readings, it will offer you the greatest range of films to choose from.

2. Choose one film for each of eleven of the articles (of the fourteen you will have read). Then, one film at a time, notify me via e-mail when and where you saw the film, AND include a paragraph in which you discuss the film you saw with regard to the respective article that you read. It is usually helpful to quote from the text at least twice and to explain how you are using that quotation.

3. By the end of class write a film review in which you add material to one of the articles you read. For example you could continue the discussion of Buddy Films by adding your own commentary on a film other than those of the article. (If it is helpful to complete the five pages you can do this for more than one article.) (Also, if your paper is less than five pages, you may respond to the -Expressive Outcomes- assignment from the last paragraph of the description of Option A.

Approved films: (you may add to this list IF you clear it with me prior to seeing a film)

1. Conservative or Liberal - Any John Sayles film including:

  • City of Hope
  • Eight Men Out
  • Matewan
  • Lone Star
Any Spike Lee film (especially Do The Right Thing), any Robert Townsend film (especially Hollywood Shuffle or The Five Heartbeats), and any Oliver Stone film.

2. Family Systems:

  • Gilbert Grape
  • Parenthood
  • A River Runs Through It
  • Breaking Away
  • Strictly Ballroom
  • Man in the Moon

3. Feminist Perspectives on Film:
  • What's Love Got to Do With It
  • A League of Their Own
  • Desperately Seeking Susan
  • Thelma and Louise
  • Joy Luck Club
  • Passion Fish
  • Waiting to Exhale
  • Orlando

4. The Business of Sex:
  • Night Shift
  • Dr. Detroit
  • Risky Business
  • Trading Places

5. Sex in the Movies:
  • Pretty Woman (be advised that this is a very troublesome movie)

6. The Problem of History: If you do a film for these two articles, you can receive double credit by picking any film reviewed in the text, Past Imperfect, which is also on reserve, and also reading that book's review.

7. Why We Need Heroes:

  • Play It Again Sam
  • Top Gun
  • Malcolm X
  • Rocky
This is the one category where you may choose any film that makes sense in terms of your writing about the issue of heroism.

8. The Problem of Violence:

  • Bonnie and Clyde
  • Straw Dogs
  • The Wild Bunch

9. The Significance of Humor:
  • A Fish Called Wanda
  • Punchline

10. The Significance of Buddy Films:
  • Twins
  • Rain Man
  • The Defiant Ones
  • Midnight Run
  • Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
  • The Odd Couple
  • Lethal Weapon
  • 48 Hours
  • In the Heat of the Night
  • Midnight Cowboy
  • Stakeout
  • Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid

11. What's Sanity?:
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • King of Hearts
  • Mosquito Coast
  • Benny and Joon
  • Twelve O'Clock High
  • Deer Hunter
  • Taxi Driver
  • Dr. Strangelove
  • Three Days of the Condor
  • All the President's Men
  • The China Syndrome
  • Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
  • Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington
  • Dream Team
  • Edward Scissor Hands

12. Minorities in Film:
  • El Norte
  • Pow Wow Highway
  • The Joy Luck Club
  • To Sleep with Anger
  • Hollywood Shuffle
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Waiting to Exhale
  • Come See the Paradise
  • Boyz'NtheHood

13. (I will not assign you a -pulp- movie, but this is a very important article and you are welcome, as you were in #7 above to choose any additional film you see this term to write about.)

14. (This is simply a record of my own research that tends to confirm the idea that we tend to believe what we see on the screen unless we have reason to know otherwise--no particular film fits this article.)

* You may double up in any two areas above and see two films for that article.