Here are the details for the next assignment. This essay is a movie review. You will choose any movie you would like to analyze and then approach the viewing of the film critically. You may not review from memory. So if you have already seen the movie, you have to see it again. You must have direct quotes and specific references to features of the film.
The review will be between 2-3 pages, typed, double-spaced.
At that length, there is not time to describe much. So, if you choose to write about the Hunger Games, for instance, you do not have time to get into wars, and peoples, and foods, and fights, and loves won and lost. You must get through the initial description of the movie quickly, as in, within the first paragraph.
If you are not describing, what are you doing? Good question, right? You are critiquing some theme that you find compelling in the film. Do you think that Star Wars is actually a commentary on people of faith and on good and evil? Good, dig into that. Do you think that the Muppets movie is social commentary on the mistreatment of farm animals? Find evidence and get after it.
Find evidence to back up some assertion you have about the film. Argue! Have a perspective! And then, find evidence to support your assertions. You may use outside sources and other reviewers, but most of the thoughts should be your own. In citing the film, just use your common sense. If you use a quote, put it in quotes and put the film's title in parenthesis, like this: "Luke, I am your father." (Star Wars)
The most crucial element here is to have a point of view. A simple description is a failing paper.
HOW TO TURN THIS PAPER IN...
On October 20th, we are meeting together here at CSUB. You will bring a copy of your completed rough draft printed out to revise that day. You will not be able to print here, so have it printed out the night before. Also, we will be doing our peer revision on that day. The only way you can get credit for peer revision is by bringing a completed rough draft of the movie review. I'll paste the Peer Revision info below.
Then, after you et back your peer review, you will revise the essay and upload the final draft to Turnitin on the 22nd.
Also, here are two pretty good sites with help for writing a film review:
HERE ARE TWO RESOURCES FOR YOU TO USE WHEN THINKING ABOUT HOW TO REVIEW A FILM:
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/7-tips-for-writing-a-film-review/
http://journalism.about.com/od/writing/a/reviews.htm
PEER REVISION: (10%) You will receive one rough draft written by your peers. You will make substantive comments on this rough draft for the purpose of helping your classmate to improve the overall written quality of the essay. We will complete this part of the course on the day we meet for the in class essay. You will bring a rough draft of your essay to be reviewed. Before writing the in class essay, we will complete a guided revision of each other’s essays.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
WEEK FIVE BLOG
I am hereby outlawing the Republican and Democrat parties...gone forever. Well, let's get rid of the Constitution too (that one hurts). The whole system of politics is wiped away. Here is the good news. You get to design a new political party or system or Constitution or way of thinking about political culture. What will you do?
WEEK FIVE READING
Can Romney and Obama tell the truth -- and win?
One day -- let us hope it comes soon -- voters will demand that their political leaders present them with a more realistic sense of the possibilities and choices they face. But for now, voters demand perfect odds and simple solutions, and politicians oblige.
President Obama confessed as much in a recent Vanity Fair profile, when he revealed he knows that each one of the decisions he makes as president could turn out wrong. "Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable," he said. "Any given decision you make you'll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn't going to work." But the American public, the president suggested, cannot handle those odds. After you have made your decision, you need to feign total certainty about it.
Despite knowing this, Obama did not project that supreme confidence and simplified arguments in Wednesday's debate. Romney did. That was not the president's only problem, but it was one of the reasons he didn't fare well.
The frustration showed after the debate, when Obama accused Romney of blatant lying in a debate that, like both campaigns, has been rife with distortions. Both candidates twisted the facts. Romney did it to better effect. It's a tragedy for American democracy that the tactic works.
Four years ago, Obama betrayed no doubts that he would succeed in achieving highly ambitious promises. It's harder to speak in dreamy, inspirational platitudes when you've been president for four years, when the prose of real life has not caught up with the poetry of the campaign.
The American political system demands charisma, leadership and boundless optimism, even if they are artificial and hollow.
Some voters tell pollsters that a "strong leader" is one of the most important traits they look for in a candidate. And pollsters track the perception obsessively. But the prevailing idea of what a strong leader is has become manufactured and artificial.
Candidates have to sound self-assured and authoritative, in a version of leadership that resembles more the utterances of Donald Trump in "The Apprentice" than the wisdom of the great politician-philosophers who founded the country.
Real charisma allows leaders to change their mind. But that's different from reshaping your supposed ideology to win different audiences.
Intellectual and political honesty are not Etch-a-Sketch tricks. Romney's penchant for telling one audience one thing and then taking it back when it doesn't suit another audience -- as he just did with his infamous "47%" comments by saying he was "completely wrong" -- does not count as mettle.
In the debate, Obama slipped in his efforts to don that leadership mantle. He even acknowledged that some of the choices are a matter of odds, that the country is a laboratory and we can only hope the experiments will turn out well.
On the economy, he said, "Look, we've tried this; we've tried both approaches," comparing the Bush approach with the Clinton years. Obama took a step toward honesty with the public in suggesting that we can make only an educated guess as to what strategy is likely to work. "In some ways," he said, "we've got some data on which approach is more likely to create jobs and opportunity for Americans."
Evidence, "data." That's not a modern American politician's way of framing a decision. Americans like it when their leaders (and their pundits) are completely sure of what they propose, totally convinced it will work.
Some people believe this is the inevitable way of politics. But it doesn't have to be.
In other countries facing great problems such as high unemployment and shrinking economies, these days, "difficult choices" and uncertain outcomes are the centerpiece of political discussions. Voters are treated as intelligent, responsible adults who have to decide what is the most promising of unpalatable options.
Friday's unemployment figures seemed to support Obama's belief in his economic approach. But they don't erase the uncertainty ahead. In the end, we have competing philosophies for facing a world where countless unexpected challenges are sure to emerge.
It's true. An appearance of self-assurance creates a reassuring aura of competence and charisma. It makes people feel better. People are drawn to those who seem most sure of their ideas. But being more certain does not make you more right.
True charisma and leadership require acknowledging the uncertainties, recognizing the gaps in our knowledge. In the view of presidential scholar Michael Beschloss, they require the courage to tell difficult truths, to make unpopular decisions, to work with people who have different beliefs.
Following the current definition, Romney proclaims with absolute conviction, as he did during Wednesday night's debate, that "the private market and individual responsibility always works best." And he promises to bring 12 million new jobs while guaranteeing without a hint of doubt that if he is not elected, life will get worse, prices will go up, incomes will come down, and American will become weaker.
Four years ago, Obama made promises that today sound just, well, sad.
After his 2008 win in the Iowa caucuses, he told his exhilarated supporters that he would put an end to years of partisan bitterness and pettiness in Washington. He would be the president who would bring "Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done."
As a candidate, Obama could draw a dreamy vision. He would bring red and blue states back together, close down the prison at Guantanamo, fight climate change and genocide. His election, he said, would "mark the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." He even vowed to "reboot America's image in the Muslim world."
Instead, he tackled much greater problems than he had expected even when he exaggerated his competence. The economy, the world, they all proved more complex than the black and white choices of the election. Unemployment is still high. He has made little headway on the environment. Republicans and Democrats remain at each other's throats, and people in Muslims countries are still not fond of America or its president.
In the first debate, candidates again avoided talking about the need to make difficult choices. The talk was of tax cuts, not tax ("revenue" is the euphemism) increases. There are other areas where the choices are difficult and unappealing in foreign and domestic policy.
Voters may feel placidly satisfied when the candidates avoid mentioning the dangers ahead or the hard truths. But beneath the wishful thinking, Americans know that the world is complicated, the economy is challenging, the choices difficult.
A candidate who tells voters he is 100% certain that the choices are clear and his plans will work out is lying, deluded or foolish.
WEEK FIVE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
What is the key line in this essay? Why is it so important for grasping the overall point?
Also, how do you feel about this issue? Are truth and honesty relevant to you as you consider political candidates?
Also, how do you feel about this issue? Are truth and honesty relevant to you as you consider political candidates?
Saturday, September 29, 2012
WEEK FOUR BLOG ENTRY
WEEK FOUR READING
Jackie Robinson
-- crossing the line
The man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier never forgot the indignities of his first trip to spring training.
The man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier never forgot the indignities of his first trip to spring training.
By Chris Lamb
February 27, 2012
On Feb. 28,
1946, Jackie
Robinson and his wife, Rachel, boarded an
American
Airlines flight in Los Angeles bound for
Daytona Beach, Fla., for spring
training. There he would try to prove
that he was good enough to join the Montreal Royals, the top minor league team in the Brooklyn Dodgers' organization, and integrate professional baseball.
It would be more than a year before Robinson played his first game with Brooklyn, on April 15, 1947, breaking Major League Baseball's color line and forever changing baseball and society.
The story of the integration of baseball was perhaps the most important story involving racial equality in the years immediately following World War II. "Back in the days when integration wasn't fashionable," the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. said of Robinson, "he underwent the trauma and humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of freedom."
Never before — or since — had so much been riding on an athlete in surroundings so hostile as the Deep South in 1946, where racial discrimination was legal and brutally enforced, and where blacks who challenged it were jailed, beaten or lynched.
Robinson grew up in Pasadena and attended Pasadena Junior College before he transferred to UCLA. The former four-sport athlete at UCLA was keenly aware of the risks involved with challenging Jim Crow on its own soil. He also knew he was putting his wife's life in jeopardy by taking her on the trip to Florida. The couple had been married less than three weeks.
Unlike Rachel, who had never been in the South, Jackie had searing memories of what had happened to him a year and a half earlier at Ft. Hood, Texas. In July 1944, Robinson, then a lieutenant in the Army, was ordered to the back of a city bus, and refused. He didn't back down and when the bus returned to the military base, he was arrested and subsequently court-martialed for insubordination. Robinson was exonerated and then discharged from the Army in late 1944.
If Robinson had not been court-martialed, he probably would have remained with his battalion and been shipped to Europe, and Dodgers President Branch Rickey would have signed someone else. Instead, Robinson was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues when Rickey was searching for the right player to integrate baseball. Rickey secretly signed Robinson to a contract in August 1945, after receiving the ballplayer's assurances that he would have "guts enough not to fight back" against racial epithets, spikings by cleats and worse, that no matter what came Robinson's way, he would restrain himself.
Two months later, the Montreal Royals announced it had signed Robinson. When black America learned about the signing, the things denied for so long suddenly seemed possible. Ludlow Werner, editor of the New York Age, a black weekly, wrote that Robinson "would be haunted by the expectations of his race.... White America will judge the Negro race by everything he does. And Lord help him with his fellow Negroes if he should fail them."
The racial climate in the United States at that time — especially in the South — was tense, unpredictable and violent. In return for fighting for their country in World War II, black veterans wanted racial equality when they returned home. Instead, many were killed to teach them their place.
A few days before the Robinsons left Los Angeles, racial tensions erupted in Columbia, Tenn. A black woman and her son, who had recently been discharged from the Navy, complained to a white merchant about a radio he was supposed to have repaired. The merchant slapped the woman. Her son then shoved the merchant through the store's plate-glass window. The next morning, hundreds of law enforcement officers and white townspeople converged on the town's black section, destroying homes, businesses and churches, and beating up and arresting black citizens. More than 100 blacks were jailed and two were shot to death while in custody.
The Robinsons flew through the night that February and landed in New Orleans. After a layover they were scheduled to fly to Pensacola, Fla., before going on to Daytona Beach. When the Robinsons lined up to board the plane for Pensacola, they were told they had been bumped. When they tried to get something to eat at a segregated restaurant in the airport, they were prohibited from entering.
Twelve hours after they had landed in New Orleans, the Robinsons boarded a flight to Pensacola. When they landed to refuel, a flight attendant asked them to exit the plane. Once the Robinsons were on the tarmac, they were told that bad weather was expected so the plane needed to add more fuel. To counter the weight of the additional fuel, three passengers — the Robinsons and a Mexican woman — had to be removed. As Robinson listened to the explanation, he saw white passengers board the plane. Robinson felt a growing sense of rage, but remembering Rickey's words, he choked back the anger.
Instead of waiting for the next plane, the Robinson took a Greyhound bus across the state to Daytona Beach. They relaxed in reclining seats at the front of the bus. When white passengers boarded the bus at the next stop, the driver pointed a finger at the Robinsons and ordered them to the back of the bus. He called Jackie "boy." Robinson, knowing that an incident of any kind might jeopardize what was called "baseball's great experiment," did as he was told.
Nearly 36 hours after the Robinsons left Los Angeles, the couple — hungry, tired and angry — arrived at the Daytona Beach bus station. They were met by Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe, journalists with the influential black weekly the Pittsburgh Courier.
"Well, I finally made it," Robinson snapped, "but I never want another trip like this one."
Robinson stayed up into the early hours of the morning bitterly recounting what he and his wife had been through, seething over what the Greyhound bus driver had called him. "He was very annoyed and hurt," Rowe later remembered. "He had been called a 'boy.' This man had become a 'boy.'"
Robinson told Smith and Rowe he did not think he could get a fair tryout in Florida and said he wanted to quit and return to the Negro Leagues. Smith and Rowe talked with him, explaining — as Rickey had — that it was important for him to suffer certain indignities so other blacks could follow him. "We tried to tell him what the whole thing meant, that it was something he had to do," Rowe said.
Chris Lamb, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, is the author of the forthcoming book, "Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball." Email: lambc@cofc.edu
It would be more than a year before Robinson played his first game with Brooklyn, on April 15, 1947, breaking Major League Baseball's color line and forever changing baseball and society.
The story of the integration of baseball was perhaps the most important story involving racial equality in the years immediately following World War II. "Back in the days when integration wasn't fashionable," the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. said of Robinson, "he underwent the trauma and humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of freedom."
Never before — or since — had so much been riding on an athlete in surroundings so hostile as the Deep South in 1946, where racial discrimination was legal and brutally enforced, and where blacks who challenged it were jailed, beaten or lynched.
Robinson grew up in Pasadena and attended Pasadena Junior College before he transferred to UCLA. The former four-sport athlete at UCLA was keenly aware of the risks involved with challenging Jim Crow on its own soil. He also knew he was putting his wife's life in jeopardy by taking her on the trip to Florida. The couple had been married less than three weeks.
Unlike Rachel, who had never been in the South, Jackie had searing memories of what had happened to him a year and a half earlier at Ft. Hood, Texas. In July 1944, Robinson, then a lieutenant in the Army, was ordered to the back of a city bus, and refused. He didn't back down and when the bus returned to the military base, he was arrested and subsequently court-martialed for insubordination. Robinson was exonerated and then discharged from the Army in late 1944.
If Robinson had not been court-martialed, he probably would have remained with his battalion and been shipped to Europe, and Dodgers President Branch Rickey would have signed someone else. Instead, Robinson was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues when Rickey was searching for the right player to integrate baseball. Rickey secretly signed Robinson to a contract in August 1945, after receiving the ballplayer's assurances that he would have "guts enough not to fight back" against racial epithets, spikings by cleats and worse, that no matter what came Robinson's way, he would restrain himself.
Two months later, the Montreal Royals announced it had signed Robinson. When black America learned about the signing, the things denied for so long suddenly seemed possible. Ludlow Werner, editor of the New York Age, a black weekly, wrote that Robinson "would be haunted by the expectations of his race.... White America will judge the Negro race by everything he does. And Lord help him with his fellow Negroes if he should fail them."
The racial climate in the United States at that time — especially in the South — was tense, unpredictable and violent. In return for fighting for their country in World War II, black veterans wanted racial equality when they returned home. Instead, many were killed to teach them their place.
A few days before the Robinsons left Los Angeles, racial tensions erupted in Columbia, Tenn. A black woman and her son, who had recently been discharged from the Navy, complained to a white merchant about a radio he was supposed to have repaired. The merchant slapped the woman. Her son then shoved the merchant through the store's plate-glass window. The next morning, hundreds of law enforcement officers and white townspeople converged on the town's black section, destroying homes, businesses and churches, and beating up and arresting black citizens. More than 100 blacks were jailed and two were shot to death while in custody.
The Robinsons flew through the night that February and landed in New Orleans. After a layover they were scheduled to fly to Pensacola, Fla., before going on to Daytona Beach. When the Robinsons lined up to board the plane for Pensacola, they were told they had been bumped. When they tried to get something to eat at a segregated restaurant in the airport, they were prohibited from entering.
Twelve hours after they had landed in New Orleans, the Robinsons boarded a flight to Pensacola. When they landed to refuel, a flight attendant asked them to exit the plane. Once the Robinsons were on the tarmac, they were told that bad weather was expected so the plane needed to add more fuel. To counter the weight of the additional fuel, three passengers — the Robinsons and a Mexican woman — had to be removed. As Robinson listened to the explanation, he saw white passengers board the plane. Robinson felt a growing sense of rage, but remembering Rickey's words, he choked back the anger.
Instead of waiting for the next plane, the Robinson took a Greyhound bus across the state to Daytona Beach. They relaxed in reclining seats at the front of the bus. When white passengers boarded the bus at the next stop, the driver pointed a finger at the Robinsons and ordered them to the back of the bus. He called Jackie "boy." Robinson, knowing that an incident of any kind might jeopardize what was called "baseball's great experiment," did as he was told.
Nearly 36 hours after the Robinsons left Los Angeles, the couple — hungry, tired and angry — arrived at the Daytona Beach bus station. They were met by Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe, journalists with the influential black weekly the Pittsburgh Courier.
"Well, I finally made it," Robinson snapped, "but I never want another trip like this one."
Robinson stayed up into the early hours of the morning bitterly recounting what he and his wife had been through, seething over what the Greyhound bus driver had called him. "He was very annoyed and hurt," Rowe later remembered. "He had been called a 'boy.' This man had become a 'boy.'"
Robinson told Smith and Rowe he did not think he could get a fair tryout in Florida and said he wanted to quit and return to the Negro Leagues. Smith and Rowe talked with him, explaining — as Rickey had — that it was important for him to suffer certain indignities so other blacks could follow him. "We tried to tell him what the whole thing meant, that it was something he had to do," Rowe said.
Chris Lamb, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, is the author of the forthcoming book, "Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball." Email: lambc@cofc.edu
WEEK FOUR WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
Is
there someone today who seems similar to Robinson? What is the importance of
Robinson's story?
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