My major strength as a writer is my ability to talk in depth about things, but my major weakness as a writer also happens to be talking in depth about things. For example, in my paper, I spent a lot of time elaborating on why film in general is mythic. While it is certainly not a bad thing to be able to elaborate on this idea, speaking too much about core concepts that could be taken as given often leads to arguments being artificially lengthier than they ought to be. I really need to accept that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with writing concisely. Another one of my strengths (but again one of my weaknesses) is my ability to form connections with work I am doing in my other classes. For example, in one of my papers on the cult of Chairman Mao that I am writing, I have written on the connection between veneration of him and similar religious rhetoric used in Iron age Judah (Old Testament biblical literature). While it is certainly good when writing a paper on religious ideology in Maoism to include connections to other religions, the danger is that the argument will cease discussing the cult of Mao and instead focus solely on the comparisons between the Cult of Mao and ancient Israelite religion. So, on this I constantly have to watch myself. In my current paper, the way I address these is by constantly referring back to my thesis to ensure my work is entirely grounded in my argument, allowing for only minor deviations when analysis demands a wider discussion. As for making progress as a writer, I feel I have become far better at writing since college, and exponentially better since this quarter. There are certainly still some bad habits I have, as discussed previously, but overall, I feel I am able to get a corpus of data, delve into it both on a structural level that examines the big picture as well as on a microscopic level, analyzing every word for the nuances it conveys. In this way, I feel I have begun and am continuing to move from simply making an argument and reporting facts to synthesizing new information from my papers.

To Mr. Mundt,

Using psychoanalysis to market Interstellar is a good financial decision because people nowadays are very invested into psychological thrillers, plus after the whole House Un-American Activities Committee fiasco back in the day it probably is best to shy away from Marxism as our selling point. You wouldn’t want to find yourself getting deported to the former Soviet Union, after all. Anyway, psychological thrillers are all the current rage. Take for example the film Get Out. While technically a horror movie, the film actually is not horror in the typical sense but rather an examination of the psychological and social implications of racism and how it can play out even in a supposedly safe environment. Interstellar has major psychological themes running through it, such as the highly stressful environment of space and the wearing effects of loneliness. Take Dr. Mann for example. He is labeled throughout the film as “the best of humanity,” and continues to act in a manner that has the veneer of logic behind it, yet in voyaging out to space he admits he was so arrogant as to assume in the face of incredibly low odds that his planet would be one to support life, and when he discovers this is not the case begins to transmit it as the right one anyway out of his fear that he will be abandoned. In this, human emotions take center stage and make profound claims about how even the best of humanity can be reduced to monsters if put in trying situations, the very point that Dr. Mann makes to Cooper as he tries to kill him, saying “you were never tested as I was.” This has mythic implications due the common denominator as myth verbalizing the wildest thoughts of individuals and these scenes tacking the way the human mind operates under immense pressure. Beyond this, several other scenes also make this approach worthwhile, such as the discussions of love and where it finds its source. Given that this is clearly a discussion of the psychology of humanity, psychoanalysis is the perfect approach to take as it examines the story through the lens of human thought in the same way that the film tries to teach its audience about human thought. Overall, given the recent push for psychological thrillers and the centrality of psychology in the film, it is the perfect choice to take the psychoanalytical approach.

One major thing I want to make sure I have control of is unity. I don’t mean to say my paper is not unified, but I do want to make sure all of my points flow together smoothly due to the wider range of topics discussed. I still feel everything I said was pertinent to the discussion of Interstellar, but just making sure the level of interconnection among points while maintaining the distinctiveness of my arguments is a goal for me.

Additionally, I want to make sure my pacing is correct, and that I am spending time on what I need to talk about most while spending less on parts that don’t need as much elaboration. Again, I am not necessarily saying that my paper is particularly troubled with this, but from the point of view of an outside reader this could always be the case and thus something I would want to watch out for. As far as this goes, I also want to make sure I elaborated enough on parts of the argument that are most pertinent to the thesis. Since this is a film paper about myth, I tried to find a balance between arguing for the existence of myth within the film and what it was trying to say while still holding my thesis as the ultimate point of argument, but I want to see how this holds up to someone else.

I want to try and rework my conclusion as it was a little short due to me running out of space. A lot of what it said was a little insubstantial in my opinion due to the space constraint and so I would like to see firstly how it should be restructured if it needs to be and secondly what earlier parts of my paper I should cut out in order to make the final paragraph fit.

Dear Great-Aunt Helga,

I hope Orlando is treating you well this time of year. I guess the seasons really don’t affect much over there, but still, you never quite know when a hurricane might just roll through. I’m writing to you because you had asked me about the paper I am writing for my Myth in Hollywood seminar for my Myth Cluster, and so I thought I’d say a little about it as well as some problems I’ve been facing and some their possible fixes. You remember hearing about Interstellar, that “another space movie,” as you called it when it played during commercials, right? Now, I know you have never been very keen on Sci-Fi, but my paper is looking at how Interstellar is really a sort of myth, kind of like how one of your favorite movies, O Brother Where Art Thou, alleges itself to be based on the Odyssey. In particular, I have been looking into how the movie is saying something about us as a country in contrast to what is says about us as people. Its been a real challenge for me to make sure I structure it right, as I have a lot I want to say and am not sure I know exactly where I want what to be said. Additionally, I am handling a lot of different pieces of info that I have gathered, and so I am looking more carefully at how to examine what’s happening in the movie in terms of exactly what the messages are and how they are portrayed with what is happening behind the scenes. Since this is a myth and a film class, a lot of what I want to say is also reliant on how visual things like pictures or movies differ from books and other writing and also how religion and story get tied into all of that, so the level of interconnection is looking a bit like those gnarled and twisted banyan trees you used to take me to see near the everglades back when I used to visit every summer. So anyway, I am working to make sure everything has its own place while still flowing smoothly like one of those crocodiles you always mention that go down the stream. Anyway, just thought I’d write to you about how my time has been in this class. If my teacher Griffin ever gets famous from writing film stories, I’ll make sure to get you his autograph.

Hope to see you soon,

Ari

Perhaps one thing the Terminator was lacking in was some form of hope. While this is in no way a requisite for a film to be good, and actually could be seen as making the film independent of Hollywood tropes such as happy endings, for many viewers a question undoubtably arises as to why one would watch a film that depicts humans dooming themselves. Though it is true that the film does offer hope in the form of the message that John relays to Sarah Connor through Kyle Reese, the message itself is rather insignificant, it simply being that the future is not set in stone and thus things can change. Even so, it is problematic to view this as a hopeful message as the film asks the audience to question the veracity of the claim, as John is the son of Kyle who was sent back in time to save Sarah, implying it was fate for Kyle to go back and things could not have happened any other way; the future was already written. In this sense, the film portrays humans as slaves to forces outside their control and offers little solid for the audience to grasp on to.

Additionally, the film was also particularly binary. While this again isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for someone looking for more depth, the Terminator is incredibly lacking on anything outside of “good guys” and “bad guys.” Kyle Reese is the protector, Sarah Connor the protected, the Terminator the embodiment of evil, and the police are essentially nothing more than obstacles meant to slow the plot down and establish the next fight scene. In this way, none of the characters manage to move beyond their essentially monolithic roles. Unlike a film such as Ex Machina, the machines in the Terminator are never given any form of compelling reasoning for their motives and thus fall flat as any sort of complex characters. Moreover, while Kyle Reese’s motives are more than to save the life of John Connor given his romantic feelings towards Sarah Connor, it cannot be said his motives are any more than to protect Sarah out of his love for her, and thus he also becomes a monolith.

Paper type: expository

Movie: Interstellar

Introduction to film: Interstellar is a film that is set after blight has destroyed most of the world’s crops, creating a global Dust Bowl. Cooper, a Nasa test pilot turned farmer, discovers the remnants of Nasa and is tasked with helping in a mission to travel through a wormhole to find a new home for humanity. While in space, themes of love and humanity are continually discussed, as well as loyalty to the mission and humanity over loyalty to individuals.

Topic of discussion: Mythology as it relates to this film and its production history

Thesis: Interstellar creates a tension between the concept of a nationalist myth and archetypal myth, exploring them both in order to make a greater claim about the scientific future of America as well as mankind.

Argument: Interstellar is a film that strikes upon motifs of both the nationalist and archetypal tradition, using the tension between the two to examine American ideals as well as universal human emotions. In the beginning of the film, a heavy emphasis is put on the American experience with elements such as Cooper being both a farmer and pilot, a second Dust Bowl, and Nasa’s mission to explore space travel. As the film progresses, however, while the American ideals are still present, there begins to be a shift to concerns of the broader humanity, discussing personal love, the tension of personal love with the desire to save humanity, and generally the human spirit and its motives as seen through characters like Mann. Even elements like the Dust Bowl evoke an American experience, yet this is expanded into a global Dust Bowl and thus a universal human problem, not just an American one.

Concerns: Making sure that due to the large amount of content within the film that the argument and explanations remains concise.

For the archetypal tradition, two very important symbols come into play, namely the clown portrait and the water imagery. While only appearing once in the film, the portrait of the clown as Benjamin descends into the party suggests that he is about to put on an act, degrading himself for the amusement of the audience while simultaneously transforming into someone other than himself. The reason this can be called a universal is that the story in this case is not simply conveying how he felt in the moment but rather attempts to break through to the deeper notions of how people must hide their true selves within social interactions. This in turn is further compounded using the fish tank and water imagery. Repeatedly throughout the film, water is used in either the form of a fish tank next to his bed or the pool outside his house. In both cases, a diver is present; in the fish tank, it is a toy, while in the pool, it is Benjamin. Such an image evokes within the viewer metaphorical elements so often associated with water in mythology, such as being submerged and struggling to stay afloat as well as drifting in an ocean like a lost survivor of a shipwreck. When Mrs. Robinson throws the keys in the water, for example, the connection can be made that this is the first of many steps submerging his whole life in the affair that will follow.  In this way, the imagery of the water can be understood as speaking to a universal human experience for trying to stay afloat in both a literal and metaphorical sense, as water is everywhere and as such the concept of drowning is something every human being more or less is familiar with, but also every person relates to the struggle of trying to escape metaphorical drowning.

In terms of following the national archetype there is much more concrete evidence. The setting of LA (while not uncommon due to budget constraints) elicits an iconic distinctly American environment. Moreover, the presentation of Benjamin as having just graduated college and his nature of being from an affluent family put him directly into parlance with conceptions of the American dream. He is pressured by his parents to pursue success and build the lifestyle they have given him for himself. He is also encouraged by Mr. Robinson to have a few summer flings, a distinctly American concept. More generally, the way the movie treats sexuality itself can be regarded as distinctly American; one could not imagine the affair happening in this way in any other country besides America and perhaps Britain. The fact that the parents are shown to understand he is having an affair and not being upset about it lends to this understanding, as in conservative countries this could not only lead to being excommunicated from society but death.

In Sunrise, the boat scene represents the struggle of the man between the temptation of the city and his loyalty to the country. The city woman who had been tempting the man into his life of sin is connected to money lenders from the city within the early scenes, and so her desires for him to strangle his wife are essentially equated with the pressure of a rural society to move to the city, giving up traditional values for city values, sacrificing simplicity for the complexity so characterized by the backlog of cars when the man and woman kiss later in the city. The ultimate decision for him comes early on the boat scene, and his attempted murder of his wife thus represents his struggle between these two. Therefore, his decision to not drown his wife represents his rejection of the call to the city.

While Sunrise was more of a myth meant to represent human universals, Red River matches more the definition of a national myth. This comes as a result due to the distinctly American genre of the Western, highlighting American ideals contextualized form a distinctly American experience of the frontier. Moreover, this story is set after the Civil War, leaving the South in complete economic shambles. As a result, the fighting between Wayne and Clift is not just a family squabble but is representative of the American experience of this time as a whole. The growth of his ranch is akin to the growth of the nation; the fighting over which direction to take the cattle evoking within the metaphor the understanding of a divided America with two very definitions for what direction the country should take. Therefore, the climatic fight scene ultimately represents this tension that came out in the same way as the Civil War; brother physically fighting brother. Thus the resolution of the movie can be seen as one of reunification, the ‘M’ being added to Dunson’s brand, showing Matt being finally welcomed to join Dunson as well as the establishment of the Chisholm trail representing the South economically joining the North.

Ari had just gotten back from school, having finished his third run through of the novella Animal Farm for a school project when his father, who had come back from work early, beckoned him to come watch the film Dr. Strangelove. Ari was less than enthralled by this offer. He saw the film was in black and white, and immediately felt that it would be yet another in what he saw as boring, “primitive” films. But as the film progressed, Kubrick’s cinematography spun Ari ever further in its web. Instead of an insipid, colorless film full of antiquated references, what he instead found was a story that, though in black in white, had been colored in with the pastels of humor and vanity, nuclear war and bitter sarcasm to form a disturbing image of not only Cold War era politics but of the very nature of humanity.

Plot points like the general Jack D Ripper losing his sanity, believing the Communists had infiltrated America by poisoning the water and trying to steal his “essence,” or a deranged ex-Nazi scientist working for the president serve for comedic effect as well as to instill a sense of deep disgust within the viewer. Furthermore, the Nazi scientist, Dr Strangelove, is a commentary on the opportunism of Americans utilizing Nazi research after the war in that it immediately elicits a caricature of Von Braun, putting in clear terms just how ironic it is that the man Americans venerated for his contributions to the space program was a product of the very regime they set out to destroy during the second World War.

But the scene that really tore Ari to sheds was at the very end. Throughout the whole film, the Americans and Russians work together to stop rogue bombers armed with nuclear weapons from reaching Russia, as any bomb dropped on the USSR would set off their doomsday device. Almost all planes are either shot down or called back, but a single plane detonates its bomb, activating the doomsday machine. Instead of cooperating after this, the representatives of the USSR and the US attempt to fight each other in the Pentagon, bickering over which mine shafts each side would use to wait out the fallout, demonstrating that even in the face of absolute annihilation, people will never be able to look past their differences long enough to acknowledge their mutual humanity.