Gender 2000 Paper #2: Cultural Critique
Note: You may choose one of these two options for this assignment.
Option #1: For this paper you must find a work of mass media--whether it is art, literature, journalism, advertising, or music--and critique it based on what you've learned in class for the purpose of determining whether the work is feminist or not.
This paper should help you explore how society affects what you see (or how and why you interpret what you see) in a given work and how that work affects what society sees or understands. You might choose a movie, a poem or a series of poems, a short story, a novel, a television show or shows, television commercials, magazine articles, or print advertisements. To make this assignment more meaningful to you, you should choose the subject from part of your normal out-of-school-life; that way you can understand how the work affects you and/or your beliefs.
You should relate at least one theory or class concept to the work(s) and show whether the work is a good model for feminism. You need to define feminism and probably should define bias, perspective, stereotyping, roles, etc. in this paper. You may focus on the portrayal of women, men, or men and women.
Your finished paper should be at least five pages long with one-inch margins using MLA documentation style. The Works Cited page is not inclusive of the five pages. You should have at least three sources, at least one of which should relate directly to your primary source (the work you're critiquing). The text book can be counted as one of these sources, and a scholarly source would be good, too.
The paper may be longer, of course, and/or include more sources.
Option #2: This paper will be written in class on Friday,
December 9th. You may write a gender analysis of media, as provided in class,
either on December 7th or 9th. Using the clips shown, you will argue whether the work is a good
model for feminism and discuss the gender roles presented. You will need to define
feminism, bias, perspective/positionality, stereotyping, roles,
etc. in this paper. You may focus on the portrayal of
women, men, or men and women. Viewing The Incredibles before class can
only help you on this, although that will not be the extent of clips shown.