Today in class, we first discussed future assignments such as the Senior Paper, the Narrative Film Project, the Podcast Project, the Senior Film Bricks, and more. Then we discussed the different levels of analyzing film. We discussed close reading, as well as what we focused more on today, focusing on the big picture. We read an excerpt from William Earnest's Making Gay Sense of the X-Men. This article discussed similarities between the prejudice against the X-Men and prejudice towards homosexuality, using specific characters and scenes such as Bobby Drake's so-called "coming out" scene. This was interesting to read about, considering I watched these films many times when I was younger and never realized how little subtlety is put into these metaphors. Perhaps this is because Bryan Singer, the director of the first two X-Men films, and an openly gay man himself, was using some of his own experiences as inspiration for these certain scenes.We read some of this article, and then made generalized statements about the article such as, "The article is set in a book-like format," or "The article draws parallels between issues that homosexuals face and issues that the X-Men face." In my group, we discussed how certain characters were used to depict different aspects of homophobia. For example, Mystique's shape-shifting abilities could represent Bisexuality, and Rogue's lethal touch could represent the fear of HIV/AIDS.
The majority of the text analysis that I have done in school has been reading in between the lines and trying to figure out what the writer means, so it was interesting to take a step back and do the opposite. In the future I will use what I learned in today's class to really flesh out what a writer is trying to do with their text, instead of trying to analyze the small things.
No comments:
Post a Comment