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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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Paper Undergraduate

The power and problem of Canadian feminist media

People with regular and stable access to the Internet, for example, may learn about cultures they have only imagined, or feared, or otherwise. Therefore, media has the power to broaden the experience and the horizon of consumers. Media can educate, entertain, and potentially enlighten. Of course, the disposition of the individual consumer and the cultural context within which that person is influenced contribute to the assimilation of the media into that person's experience. Nonetheless, the power and potential of media is evident; professionals across a vast spectrum of industries and underrepresented groups across the world understand this. Attempting to harness the power of media to empower and expose an underrepresented group, experience, or perspective is a worthwhile endeavor. Thus, the importance of a study of Canadian feminist media is apparent.

Paper Doctorate

Gender dynamics and family danger in Hitchcock's postwar films

In the postwar America, expectations for men and women diverged from those that prevailed during the war years. The exigencies of World War II interrupted the evolution of social progress for Americans, substituting a "fast forward" that could better serve the national initiatives. From positions where everyone became focused on the war effort and their roles in supporting it, the postwar period saw a return to the traditional values that had dominated in the past. Supported by the G.I. Bill, men sought education at unprecedented levels and located themselves in business, resuming the positions and leadership they felt were their due. Homemaking and childrearing returned to center for women in postwar America. If women were engaged in business, it was considered to be secondary to their gender-based roles as mothers, wives, and daughters. Some effects of the wartime patterns were resistant to change. Women did press for more entry points into corporations, in addition to their more traditional employment as teachers, nurses, and secretaries.

Essay Doctorate

Hamlet on Stage: English vs. European Interpretations

This paper illuminates two different interpretive approaches in 20th century theater by comparing two different ways of staging Shakespeare's Hamlet. It contrasts the more politicized Continental European view of Hamlet as a dissident with the English-speaking theater's view of Hamlet as man with a tortured individual psyche who tragically could not make up his mind.

Paper Undergraduate

Relational development stages in "Good Will Hunting"

This paper analyzes the movie, Good Will Hunting. More specifically, this paper assesses the relationship between Will and Skylar. We decided to evaluate the connection involving Will and Skylar simply because, whilst Will's connection with Sean has been probably the most direct prospect to analyze the consolatory ideas within the film, his interaction with Skyler additionally reveal Will to a life-making impact determined by emotional development.

Essay Doctorate

Media stereotypes of teenagers in advertising and film

The modern media portrays the average teenager as a stereotype. Instead of portraying teenagers as individual people, the media tends to depict a stereotypical entity without unique idiosyncrasies or differing…

Paper High School

Character development and dialogue in the film Juno

"Juno" is a great movie about a young high school girl who gets pregnant and rather than go into a terrible tail-spin, she intelligently and with humor devises a plan to have a worthy couple adopt the child. A far cry from other movies in which a teen gets pregnant, "Juno" has believable and intelligent characters who complement each other perfectly.

Research Paper Doctorate

Male-female relationships in French New Wave cinema

Films and Directors of the French New Wave Movement

Thesis Doctorate

Musical film adaptations: preserving stage production elements

It is rare to find a quality musical that is beautifully adapted from the stage onto the screen. In fact, throughout the years, American cinema has ping-ponged between deaths and revivals where musical film adaptations…

Research Paper Doctorate

Conformity and progress in Gary Ross's Pleasantville

The 1998 film, "Pleasantville," written and directed by Gary Ross, is an insightful commentary of society, both past and present. While many today are clamoring about the moral decay of family and society at large, and…

Paper Doctorate

Tarantino's Django Unchained: violence, history, and artistic excess

This film review looks at Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino as both a portrait of America's historical period of slavery and as a picture of revenge. While Tarantino is able to achieve some truly remarkable shifts in perspective, such as the disempowered portrayal of the KKK, there is still so much lurid violence in the film that it demonstrates a lack of imagination.

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