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What is Film?

Film is one of the most versatile subjects in the arts and humanities, appearing in courses ranging from media studies and communication to sociology, psychology, and cultural criticism. What makes it academically compelling is its dual nature: film functions simultaneously as an art form with distinct technical and aesthetic conventions and as a cultural artifact that reflects the values, tensions, and relationships of the society that produces it. Students are asked to analyze specific works such as Mean Girls, Tough Guise, Sarafina, Wit, Menace II Society, and True Grit precisely because these films open up larger conversations about identity, violence, gender, race, and human behavior.

The papers archived here approach film from several directions. Some focus on technical and production elements, examining terminology, cinematography, and the conventions of silent film. Others take a sociological or psychological angle, using specific movies to explore addiction, domestic violence, and human behavior. Comparative essays place films side by side to highlight contrasting storytelling choices, while genre analysis papers examine why a film like The Hangover operates as comedy. Reflective and reaction-based writing also appears frequently, asking students to connect a film's scenes and story to real-world experience.

A strong film essay anchors its argument in specific scenes, dialogue, or cinematic techniques rather than plot summary. A well-scoped thesis makes a clear interpretive claim about what a film communicates and how it achieves that effect. Evidence drawn from the viewer's experience of particular moments carries more weight than general impressions. The most common pitfall is treating a film purely as a story to retell rather than as a constructed text where every choice — sound, framing, character relationship — contributes to meaning.

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Research Paper Doctorate

How Hotel Rwanda challenges American perceptions of genocide

It is often said that Americans, because of the youth of the American nation, have little sense of a common world history. However, the drama of the film "Hotel Rwanda" also suggests that we as Americans may have too…

Research Paper Doctorate

Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion

At the outset one has to understand that Eliza Doolittle is a character created by George Bernard Shaw, a famous English playwright and to understand her we have to start with Shaw.

Research Paper Doctorate

Examining Pope's paradox: admiration for what we don't understand

Commonplace: "You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand"

Research Paper Doctorate

Racism and jealousy in Shakespeare's Othello modernized

Shakespeare is a universal playwright. He deals with common, human themes in all of his tragedies and comedies, whether the setting is Italy, Scotland, a forest in Athens, or a fictional kingdom.

Paper Doctorate

Smoke Signals: identity and reconciliation in Sherman Alexie's film

Released on video in June 1999 by Miramax films, Smoke Signals is the first full-length film that has been performed and directed by the American Indians. Smoke Signals is "from top to bottom, an American Indian…

Research Paper Doctorate

Marketing failure of the 2004 Catwoman film adaptation

It is quite rightly said that results are assessed not by the effort one puts into a venture, but the results it produces. Cutting across industries, the ultimate test of any marketing venture, be it movie making, it is…

Research Paper Doctorate

TiVo's target market strategy and mass consumer adoption approach

TiVo's target market should be the mass consumer market. The article notes that TiVo is faced with a choice between speeding consumer adoption or striving for increased levels of innovation to differentiate themselves…

Paper Undergraduate

The Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis of 1957

Until 1957, the Little Rock Central High School had been an all white school, it was a breeding place for nationwide merit specialists, future ivy-league students, and specialized athletes. Nonetheless when the doors had opened for the first day of school in 1957,the world would not be the same again, Arkansas National Guardsmen and crowds collected out front to see if nine back students, which were recognized as the little rock nine, would be allowed to go inside.

Paper Doctorate

Godard's Masculin Féminin and 1960s French youth counter-culture

This paper is about Goddard's Masculin Feminin. Godard has managed to capture the ignorant side of the youth –maybe even all of humanity- along with the concerned informed side, showing the disparity and variance in attitudes towards society that the coming together of cultures and increasing globalization has instigated, through the matter of war. Paul has concerned himself with the issues of the world as shown in his off-screen question in a bookstore, heard over the chatter of the gathered crowd: "Do you know that a war is going on between the Iraqis and the Kurds?" In direct contrast to this, is the scene where Paul is interviewing Elsa at Miss 19 for a magazine survey and asks about the ongoing war which she appears to be unaware of.

Paper Undergraduate

American values in "3:10 to Yuma" and "Unforgiven"

Most Western films provide information that would make most people nostalgic concerning the idea of the old U.S. and the values it promoted. Even with the fact that most people today did not have the chance to see the old West; it is nonetheless intriguing to observe how many motion pictures provide scenes that emphasize typical American values. James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven both go at discussing ideas characteristic to the old West, but, at the same time, attempt to focus on American values in general, taking into account that they follow the typical ‘gun-slinger gone honest' story.

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