ENGB75 Essay Topics
Working Thesis for Two Essays
Directions
• Working thesis for each of the two essays, written in three parts:
• Essay 1: informative working title (this should include the film title + topic’s key words)
o What: My essay will . . .
o How so: It will do this by . . .
o So, what: I think this might prove to be significant because . . .
• Essay 2: informative working title (this should include the film title + topic’s key words)
o What: My essay will. . .
o How so: It will do this by . . .
o So, what: I think this might prove to be significant because . . .
Actual Essay
Directions
• Combine TWO 800-900-word essays to form one 1600-1800-word essay (MLA-formatted) by responding, (first) to the first prompt and/or, (second), EITHER to the second or to the third prompt (your choice). Combine these two short essays to form a single logical argument articulated in a structurally coherent essay of 1600-1800 words in MLA-format
o With your full name on the top left corner, followed by the other required information.
o Submit this essay on turnitin.com BEFORE 4pm on April 20, which is the date and time of the scheduled final exam.
o This long essay will be worth 40% of your mark for ENGB75.
• There should be strong evidence from the.
First Prompt
• In his dissertation, Mapping Men: Toward a Theory of Material Masculinity, David Wallace argues that “[c]alling a rural man a cowboy automatically invests him with a cultural weight that distances him from his materiality—naturalizing (and, thereby, normalizing) a static type of masculinity and all of the social and environmental injustices that come part-in-parcel with it (118). Wallace here condenses a complex reinforcing loop, which consists of at least seven causal variables:
1. by “calling a rural man a cowboy” the generic caller tacitly makes the abstraction (“cowboy”) seem like a real thing, while, at the same time, calling upon the “rural man” to, as Judith Butler puts it, “induce the body to become a cultural sign” (522);
2. thus, called upon to “perform, produce, and sustain the cultural fiction” of cowboy (ibid), the “rural man” subordinates his felt, physiological experience (what Wallace refers to as “materiality”) and prioritizes his scripted, cultural performance;
3. thus, committed to “materializ[ing] [him]self in obedience to an historically delimited possibility” (ibid), the “rural man” grows increasingly entranced by this fiction;
4. thus entranced, he engages in a life-long project of performing the role of “cowboy,” which, according to Butler, “[further] compels [his] belief in its necessity and naturalness” (520);
5. thus reinforced, this belief mobilizes a collective performance of the cultural fictions that “come part-in-parcel” with the “cowboy,” including “hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, and human relationships with(in) nature” (Wallace, 119);
6. thus expanded, this cumulative collective performance “naturaliz[es] (and, thereby, normaliz[es]) a static type of masculinity (Wallace 118);
7. thus normalized, this rigid and intolerant type of masculinity actualizes and reproduces in reality “the hegemony inherent in the (predominantly) white, masculine, heterosexual male domination of non-human nature” and the appropriation and domination of “a non-existent frontier” (ibid.).
• After very briefly summarizing the vicious cycle that Wallace elaborates (and that I have condensed in the preceding list), analyze the ways in which Stagecoach might be said to participate in this vicious cycle by “naturalizing (and thereby normalizing) a static type of masculinity” (ibid.), and so potentially reproducing in reality “the hegemony inherent in the (predominantly) white, masculine, heterosexual male domination of non-human nature” (ibid), as well as the “hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, and human relationships with(in) nature” that shore up this rigid, static model of masculinity (ibid. 119). Analyze specific diegetic elements (such as settings, costumes, character types, narrative events, dialogue, ambient noise, and so forth), non-diegetic elements (such as score, shot composition, lighting, and credits), and extra-diegetic elements (such as shot types, camera angles, lens work, camera movement, editing, and so forth), that work together to naturalize this “static type of masculinity” as embodied by the cowboy. What does your analysis suggest about the socio-politically regressive power of traditional western conventions?
Second Prompt
• Taking the above conventions as a point of departure (and addressing the same diegetic, non-diegetic, and extra-diegetic elements in the same order), analyze specific shots and scenes in which Dakota 38 echoes these traditional Western conventions involving the cowboy, while, at the same time “contradict[ing] the Western‘s retrograde reliance on hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, and human relationships with(in) nature” (ibid. 119). What does your analysis suggest about the potential socio-political power of such resistant generic reformulations?
Third Prompt
• Taking the above conventions as a point of departure (and addressing the same diegetic, non-diegetic, and extra-diegetic elements in the same order), analyze specific shots and scenes in which High Noon simultaneously seems to engage some of these traditional Western conventions involving the cowboy, and, at the same time challenges and “contradicts the Western‘s retrograde reliance on hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, and human relationships with(in) nature” (ibid. 119). What does your analysis suggest about the potential socio-political impact of this type of fissure film (which is a film that seems to adhere to dominant conventions, while surreptitiously subverting these conventions)?
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminism” Theatre Journal. vol. 40, no. 4, Dec.,1988 (pp. 519-531).
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
Wallace, David. Mapping Men: Toward a Theory of Material Masculinity. PhD
Dissertation. University of Texas, July 22, 2013. (https://uta-ir.tdl.org/uta-ir/bitstream/handle/10106/11832/Wallace_uta_2502D_12280.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)