My first goal for the final draft of my paper is to finish the second half of it. My first draft only addressed the movie Call Me by Your Name, but it did not fully discuss the movie Farewell My Concubine. In the second half of the paper, I will claim that with the historical story “Farewell My Concubine” as a underlying model for this movie, we could conclude that the main character Dieyi has fit himself into the character of the woman he is playing in the historical opera “Farewell My Concubine” , so his love for his stage partner resembles more to a woman’s love than a man’s love. Even though this story happens between two men, we could not assume that it is a typical male homosexual movie addressing men’s attraction to other men.

My second goal is to make clear the underlying model/story for Call Me By Your Name. In the first draft, I mentioned pederasty because I thought of the age difference between Elio and Oliver, but I did not have a pederasty story. I also mentioned Alexander and his lover because the movie name “Call Me by Your Name” comes from this source, but I still haven’t found any other direct evidence supporting that Elio and Oliver are like Alexander and Hephaestion, so this still does not constitute a complete model. I will continue to search for other stories or dig deeper into the Alexander and Hephaestion story to find the best model for this movie.

The last goal would be to refine my analysis. The previous draft was very sketchy in that I did not fully develop my claims and argumentation. I did not describe fully the distinctness of the love between Elio and Oliver, and many implications to ancient Greek was still not addressed. I only talked about a few minor details of the movie. At the same time, my argument for pederasty is still underdeveloped, as I mostly only pointed out their age difference but overlooked their personal attributes which might or might not support this argument.

There are a few concrete changes I would like to make to my paper in my second draft. The first and probably biggest change I would like to make is incorporating the production history of my films into the paper. The first draft has a very brief paragraph detailing the style and philosophy of the Coen Brothers, but nothing more. Additionally, the source that I thought would actually contribute the most to my paper, No Country For Old Men: From Novel to Film didn’t make it into the essay at all, since I couldn’t find a way to incorporate it. I would like to use that source in my second draft, though, maybe replacing part of the paragraph analyzing No Country For Old Men as a western (that part is a good amount longer than it should be).
Another thing I would like to do is make my paragraphs and topic sentences more arguable and concrete. Right now, I have multiple paragraphs talking about the semantic and syntactic elements of the two movies, but I don’t really come to a clear resolution on what genre they fit into. I would like to revise the paper to show clearly whether or not they fit into the genres they are presented as. To do this, I want to use more sources that describe elements of Western movies, or maybe just do deeper analysis of the sources I have.
Finally, I want to do a more thorough analysis of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Right now, I only really analyze one of the stories in the movie, kind of just assuming that the others clearly fit into the genre role that I’ve presented. I want to make the section about this one vignette more concise and incorporate the others as well (though I’m concerned that this might be too much, since there are so many stories in the film.)

Concerns for the paper:

• I think one of my biggest concerns that I came across while writing this was the fact that I felt like I hadn’t incorporated the historical background/production history as best as I could. I emphasized the parallels between David Seidler’s disability and King George VI’s disability a lot in my initial outlining, but it didn’t seem to be a natural focus point for the paper aside from providing background information as to why the movie was produced. I think I want to focus on tying in the life of Seidler with the historical accuracies and explore a lot more as to why Seidler chose to tell the story the way he did. This is going to require more interview-type sources that will ultimately dictate the direction of this perhaps new paragraph.
• Not too sure if this is a similar concept as to what was expressed before, but I am considering fleshing out the significance of why the movie had to be made so historically accurate. Why go through all the trouble of splashing dirty water all over the streets? What was Seidler/the production crew trying to create through this extreme level of historical accuracy? I think this focus would also help emphasize why the historical inaccuracies are significant.
• I have a lot of personal interest as to how Seidler’s identity as a British-American influenced his decision to tell this story but within the American perspective of what an American hero is. I think the concept of an American hero is strong, but that the argument that Bertie is an American hero is a little tenuous other than the interview in which Seidler states so. However, I think I should maybe consider more the friendship angle that Seidler mentions and explore how making connections and establishing friendships to help achieve success is an American concept (so Seidler claims).

For the revision, my first goal is to strengthen the second part of my argument. I feel like as I continued writing the paper I sort it ran out of fuel so I put all my energy into writing about the national myth and didn’t do enough work on the archetypal aspect of my thesis. I think by doing more research and finding more evidence in the movies, I should be able to build a stronger case for that part of my argument. As of right now, I feel like my paper looks sort of like this:

By putting more evidence and effort into the second half of my argument, I should be able to reach the page count and have an even amount of strength throughout my paper.

My second goal is to make my argument cohesive. I want it to sound like one smooth process instead of choppy and jumping from one idea to another. In the past, I’ve found myself getting too excited about different parts of my argument and wanting to put too many pieces together. This leads to loose ends and a messy delivery of my argument. I’m not sure if I’ve done that in this draft or not, but I do know that one of my major goals for the revision is for all my ideas to flow together nicely and in a correct/logical order.

Finally, I don’t know if my paper is actually answering the prompt or if I just created a prompt for myself. There were certain times where I was writing my paper and I felt like I wasn’t really proving that Avatar was myth-inspired. I’m not sure if that’s a problem with my thesis or with my delivery. However, I do know that if whether or not I’ve answered the prompt is unclear to me because I don’t understand the prompt or if it’s because I’m being too hard on myself. Before turning in my final draft I’d like to be completely sure that my essay answers the prompt and has enough evidence to prove my answers to the prompt.

As I was writing this paper, my first problem came kind of as a surprise to me: I felt as though my thesis was fairly weak. I added my thesis and conclusion at the very end of the writing process, and (maybe because I procrastinated just a little too much) I found myself at an inability to form a sentence that, in my mind, summarized my argument and provided a “so what?” for any potential reader. It was weird, as I knew exactly what I wanted to argue within the paper itself, but perhaps due to the vagueness of my topic, my biggest challenge was forming a thesis. Overall, one of my biggest focuses during the revision process will be to improve the concision and specificness of my arguments.

The second problem that I encountered was incorporating specific evidence from the two movies which I criticized. Think of my paper as split up into two, four-page papers each about one movie. In a normal, four-page paper, I usually cite my primary source around four times. However, in the first four-page section, I only cited my first movie twice, and in the second part, I did not directly cite a specific moment from the entire movie. During revisions, I hope to add more specific examples that enhance my argument from both movies to improve the narrowness of my topic, which should also help me with my first concern.

My last and probably least concern is that I just found myself running out of room to fully criticize each movie. For example, Loki in Thor is probably one of the best and most complex villains in all of not only phase one but the entire series, but I had no room to discuss his impact on the story because I was too busy focusing on Thor’s character arc. My writing style, as you can clearly tell from the fact that I will be going way over the 300-word suggested length for this assignment, involves very flowy and sometimes needlessly complex sentences, just like this one. Yes, I am well aware of the irony behind that last sentence, but I think it proves my point. As I have mentioned in both of the previous concerns, concision is an important aspect for me during revisions. I will focus on editing down some sentences and paragraphs so that my argument will not feel so rushed.

First thing I need to do is go back an restructure my essay. Looking back on it, some of my points are seemingly out of place, and a rearrangement would help convey the argument that I am trying to make. Specifically, I should introduce the idea of a Hero’s Journey before I begin to make my argument that connecting Gunn’s hero’s journey to that of the movie characters. In its current state, my discussion of the hero’s journey ends up breaking the flow of the paper. I am also worried that this part had too much summary. There are also other parts of the paper where my ordering of information might make my argument unclear.

My second change would have to be adjusting either part of my thesis or the presentation and writing of the argument. Right now, there are arguments in the essay I feel could be considered a stretch. One example, would be the argument about Gunn’s addition to the production of the movie being anti-mythic. But it was a bit clearer in my head, so I will first try to fix my writing, and if that fails, I will augment that argument. Based on the feedback that Griffin gives me, I will decide whether or not I want to keep my thesis or remodel it more exhaustively.

Finally, I feel that I don’t have enough to write about to fill up the space. This was partly the reason I ended up adding the Hero’s Journey at the end,and while I don’t think it was a poor addition, I wondering if there are better options that can take up space and remove some of my weaker arguments. Also, I was a little bit repetitive in a few of my topics, which probably tied into the fact that analysis was not very wide. As I have some time still before the final draft, I will continue looking for more topics and hopefully it won’t be an issue.

Note for Meeting: Ask if source usage is fine, ask  if I am accomplishing my so what, ask what I could talk about or if my current set is fine, ask which arguments are faltering

My first goal that I want to accomplish for my next draft is cohesion and flow. I had difficulty organizing my thoughts, ideas, and paragraphs. The flow of my essay is choppy, which may seem confusing to the reader. After reading my essay a couple times after it was due, I myself found it difficult to follow. I feel that my ideas and paragraphs are strong but need to be organized differently in order to make sense. I plan on making a physical outline of my next draft to help rearrange my paragraphs. I also think it will be helpful for someone else to read my paper to see if it makes sense to other people.

My second goal that I want to accomplish is incorporating more myth into my analysis. Looking back, I only talk about myth for about two paragraphs. Additionally, I mention my mythical analysis too late in the paper. To fix this, I want to further my argument that the mental illness of the main character stemmed from an Oedipal complex. I want to mention the Oedipus complex earlier in the paper to introduce the mythical aspects in the movie. To make my argument more credible, I need to research and find more sources about the Oedipus complex and its presence in movies, specifically during the 60s.

My third goal for my draft is solidifying a strong thesis. After submitting my paper, I noticed that I never had a clear thesis or even one to begin with. It was hard for me to think of a sentence that encapsulates everything that I talk about in my paper: production history, mental illness, myth, and movie elements. With that being said, it is definitely unclear to the reader what my paper and my argument is about. Moving forward, I need to think of a way to create a thesis that casts a broad enough net that covers all of my points. Since I believe that the movie had an impact on bringing light to mental illness, I think that will be a good way to cover my argument.

Here are my three goals for the paper:

1: Better dialectic.

I feel like I have a lot of ideas, but currently I’m struggling to connect them in a natural way. I feel like my paper, as a whole, is rather disjointed and is more of a mash of ideas than one cohesive whole. It’s like in TV where you see the guy use string and thumbtacks to find connections and uncover a conspiracy, and stuff is circled in red and there are arrows and stuff. When you step back you get the idea, but it looks like the ravings of a madman. I don’t want to be a madman. I want my ideas to make sense, to be clear, and to be concise. And I feel like something that will help this is…

2: Less summary, more analysis

I feel like a lot of my paper right now is stating what happens and essentially talking about how it can be interpreted. But I feel like I’m largely missing that “so what?” For example, I talk about the ways in which both Neo and Truman are commodified by greater forces, and I kind of talk about how break out of it, but I feel like I can go deeper into explaining the significance of this commodification. And that’s just one of my many points I need to improve. I feel like once I improve my analysis, the point-to-point transitions will be greatly strengthened. But I feel like a major part of this analysis involves…

3: Better use of outside sources

I’m having a little bit of trouble determining how to implement my sources. There are a lot of good ideas I’ve found from outside sources, but I’m not sure how often I should cite my ideas in relation to theirs. Obviously I feel like the primary purpose of these should be to support my point, but some of the ideas are so strong that I want to explore those and I’m worried that my analysis of their analysis will overtake my own analysis, if that makes sense. So I need to find a good balance there.

In conclusion: I intend to work on tying my essay together tightly through the use of more analysis and the implementation of outside sources in those analyses.

After reading my essay my first concern regards my use of Spencer Ackerman’s article “Iron Man Versus the Imperialists”. It’s been a very useful source to me and I cite it alot, however I am concerned because I worry that my argument is too closely related to the source. Am I citing the source too much, especially in comparison to my other sources? Reading through my essay it seems I cite his article a lot more than my others, so in the final draft I either need to use his less, or use the others more. Also I need to elaborate on these citations more. It kinda seems like I am using the citations to just borrow his points, so I should work on building off of his points to help form an argument of my own.

The second thing I want to do is make the connection more clear between the major points of my thesis (that the plot line of the comic and film are allegories towards the two wars, and the comparison between Iron Man and Achilles). I feel their is a rather weak connection of the two in the conclusion, and a weak transition in the essay. I want to elaborate upon it more to make the argument stronger. Also I need to add more to the part about Iron Man and Achilles to go more in depth, because the comic book section is much longer.

The final thing I want to work on is fixing up the intro, because it is long and kinda sucks. I have always struggled with intros and make them too long, complex, and unrelated to the rest of my essay. Now that I have written out my whole essay and know the points I want to make, I can go back to it, and change it, to make it more related.

As I reread my first draft, I notice that I did not successfully incorporate myth into my essay, Since I have gotten most of the remaining content more or else squared away, in my next draft, I want to actually discuss the coming-of-age as a mythical archetype. To accomplish this goal, I will invest ample time into locating and examining the Eliade text from fall quarter. If I recall correctly, this reading was particularly lengthy and dense. However, I do not suspect this will be a big problem now that I have more time to dedicate to this essay.

Another transformative change I want to make is regarding the thesis of the paper. In parts of my essay, I tried to create a sense of continuity through references to Gerwig’s motivations. Particularly in the introduction paragraph but throughout the entire essay, these references varying in effectiveness and in presence. I plan to incorporate references to motivation in my analysis of quotes and into the introductory and conclusion paragraphs. I am also open to other ways that I could create a sense of continuity but perhaps through a different idea.

The last transformative change I am considering involves improving my usage of sources. I used plenty of sources in my essay, but I feel that often I only used a source in a very surface, or otherwise not very enlightening, way. Other times, I used two sources to discuss one topic, and the second source did not add much to the essay.  In both situations, I will decide on a case-by-case basis to find a better source of information, to simply remove the redundant sources, or to leave the section as is.