Senior Thesis & The Art of Watching Films

Topic: Women and their relationship with their families Focus 1: The idea of house vs. home and what it means and how it evolves for Alison in Fun Home and Nora in A Doll's House. Fun Home follows Alison through a large portion of her childhood and adolescence, while A Doll's House takes place over the course of a few days. It would also be interesting to examine the events that trigger Alison's and Nora's changes in perspective. Focus 2: How both girls/women (again in A Doll's House and Fun Home) cope with the treatment of the men in their life: Alison has an overbearing father, and Nora's husband is also very strongly paternal. Both women eventually manage to at least make steps towards becoming their own person, and I could look at the effects these men have in their life and how these relationships change over time (as well as what prompts these changes).

Topic: Ways of people dealing with the negative effect caused by traumatic war experience Sources: American Sniper & Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk 1. Psychological damage. Both productions depict an American soldier returning to home after fighting a brutal war in Afghanistan. There's clear evidence throughout the stories that both of the heroes suffer from mildly serious PTSD. Although their age and military service history differ, they share numerous common features when facing the haunting memory. Especially   Chris Kyle from American Sniper , who served four tours and had 160 confirmed kills as a Navy SEAL sniper, gradually becomes more and more and eventually extremely anxious, despairing and self-doubting with each additional enemy he takes down. It's a marvelous production that vividly captures the agony that most soldiers have to cope with. 2. Social pressure. As returning soldiers, both of our characters receive heavy focus from the society. It is mor...

Topic: The representation of women as superheroes Foci 1: How the visual aspects of the women superheroes of the Marvel/DC Comics and films project the physical appearance of the characters such as Wonder Woman and Storm for advertisement. I will use Mike Deodato's DC Comic version of Wonder Woman and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy  by James Gunn to show how women are sexualized in order to raise sales in the franchise. Foci 2: Comparing the portrayal (in physical appearance and ability) of female superheroes in comics versus films. Overtime the Marvel Cinematic Universe has adapted the depiction of females somewhat according to the values of society that encompass equality for women superheroes, however, Marvel Comics have not altered the depiction of the female heroes which they have sexualized.  

Topic: the different "masks" we put on in different environments Foci 1: The difference between who we are in out personal lives is completely different than who we are in the virtual world. This is a little more undeveloped than my other foci. But based on the novel Ready Player One , Armada and The Matrix . I would form a thesis that who we are in the virtual world is completely different than how we display ourselves to our friends and family. Foci 2: I have a lot more examples for; I was thinking of doing the difference of who we are with our friends vs. who we are with our coworkers. Movies like Baby Driver, The Social Network, The Intouchables, Burn Country, Robot and Frank, Wolf of Wall Street, and the movie and novel of Fight Club. In most of these movies, the character works a 9-5 job and then after work is very crazy and creates mayhem, or, they are very polite during their office job and then completely ruthless to their friends. The two opposite masks of nice...

Topic: Novels to Film Adaptations Foci 1: How directors depict the characters from the novel onto the big screen. I would use The Maze Runner by James Dashner and the film to depict this and The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins along with the portions of the film. The Maze Runner is about the society burned by sun flares and how their government is trying to draw out those that are immune to the diseases that come from these flares. The Hunger Games  is about a dystopian society in which their are twelve districts that each end contenders to fight a battle to the death in order to win a better life. Each of these novels shows the characters personalities and their physical appearance and how they interact with other characters. Foci 2: Comparing the settings between the two novels and their films. Which would include the way the author paints the picture of the world and the way the director does. This could be through setting and how the world is constructed. Using the two n...

Topic: Parent and child relationships/child dealing with the death of a parent Foci 1: How a child copes with the loss of their parent. Although "The Love of my Life" and "Heroin/e" are both by Cheryl Strayed and her dealing with the loss of her mother, each story has a different way that she grieved her mothers death. Similarly "Coming Home Again" by Chang-Rae Lee is about the death of his mother, but this story is more about how he dealt with his mother dying and what he did during this time. Foci 2: Symbols used in the stories, life/death. I have noticed similarities in all of the stories I have read and I think it would interesting to dive into what these symbols could mean. For example, I was thinking today about why both authors would include the child cooking for their mother. One possibility I thought of was maybe it was showing the role reversal and how now the children were caring for their parents. There were many more symbols in these stori...