Today was my essay consultation meeting with my film studies professor. We get to choose our own esssay title, which is what I've always wanted - yet after a decade of footnote snobbery I find myself terrified. The whole academic machine is designed to discourage originality. How can I possibly add something original? Most proper academics stay "in their place" by merely quoting Fanon, Freud, Malvey and the rest - but they only created something groundbreaking by ignoring everyone else and stating their own opinions.
Ugh. Nasty. Academia regularly comes along with an "abstract", a summary of the essay to come. But I thought I'd introduce my topic with a slightly more entertaining literary convention from the Renaissance: "the argument".
Ugh. Nasty. Academia regularly comes along with an "abstract", a summary of the essay to come. But I thought I'd introduce my topic with a slightly more entertaining literary convention from the Renaissance: "the argument".
"Cidade de Deus claims to be
an expose of urban misery.
Alas! The truth is mask'd behind the style:
It's quoting Shaft and Marty all the while;
The bloodshed and the shooting there for fun,
to fetishise the gangster and the gun.
All this, we humbly place before your ear
If this our tragic discourse you would hear."
Yes, my friends, I am for the first time writing and being graded on my all-time favourite soapbox. I'm writing about movie violence. Woot.
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