pop culture

First Assignment 2CO3 Movies

Due Date: February 10th, 2025

PLEASE NOTE: The above date is the official due date. However, I will accept the first assignment papers until February 24th with no late penalties deducted. However, you will not receive feedback along with your grade (this does not mean that I will not discuss your paper with you if you have concerns). Also, if you choose to submit your paper later than the official due date, the instructor is relieved of responsibility for providing a grade before the drop date.

There are many students in this class and the class moves quickly. I understand that students sometimes need time to do their best work and that this is difficult to accommodate in a busy term. My policy, if you are struggling to meet the second due date, is to be very open-minded about granting extensions.

Note: The first official deadline is not to be understood as a practice run where you receive feedback and then resubmit your paper. This is the final deadline for students who want to receive feedback.

Students with accommodations for extensions should note that any possible extension applies to the first official date.

Advice on How to Approach This Paper

I do not have strict rubrics. Some students dislike this. My reason for not having a strict rubric is my belief that rubrics encourage students to write a paper that performs to specific expectations. I feel that this limits your critical thinking and reflection.

Here is what I am looking for: your clarity and thoughtfulness. Clarity means that your sentences are clear, well connected to each other (organized), and that you communicate your point of view to your reader. As your readers, it is not my or the teaching assistants responsibility to figure out what it is you are trying to communicate.

By thoughtfulness, I want to see your thinking about the question prompted and what you think, even if just temporarily, about the topic. However, there is also more to this. Thoughtfulness wonders about what it initially thinks and digs deeper into its own thought to ask questions of why we think as we do, and where we might be wrong. Thoughtfulness wants to think about the question and not quickly answer it. Clarity is also connected to thoughtfulness you should strive to show why you think as you do and that your thought is a product of a process of questioning and wondering, in conversation with the course material.

This assignment will be graded in relation to the depths of your insights (avoidance of quick and clichd conclusions, demonstration of your new theorizing) and the clarity of your expression (are you communicating your point, or is it lost in your own private language/ideology or unclear language).

Reflection is not a reaction or a long-held presumed belief. Instead, it reflects fresh thought within the parameters of the material and ideas we have been considering. Feeling that the work you are doing is important to you is essential to an excellent grade. This feeling of importance is not well built on the desire for an excellent grade. It is built on an engaged and caring interest.

Write simply; academic expertise is neither expected nor desired. Use your own voice but be clear. Explain why you think as you do and do not rely on declarations. The number one issue with problematic papers is relying on presumptive declarations that are not made compelling through careful explication. Accept that your reader is not going to be compelled by claims that certain psychological behaviors are human nature or the result of evolution. Also, while the power of social media and the experience of the pandemic have certainly affected our social psychology, do not presume that they have created phenomenon that did not previously exist.

You must refer to lecture videos or updates. Your paper should be in conversation with the lecture material. I am not particular about citation styles. According to lecture… is an adequate way of citing lecture. You should feel encouraged to write in the first person.

The lectures to choose from are as follows:

Comedy Films (Video and Update)

Hero Films (Video and Update)

Fantasy and Dystopian Films (Video and Update)

Horror Films (Video and Update)

Please do not refer to television shows as examples in your paper.

There are to be no secondary sources used in this paper.

As I presented in my first lecture, the practice of social psychology begins in the development of potential theories about group and individual behavior. Throughout history, many of those theories have originated in works of literature and observational writing. This course is looking at our recent popular culture to identify themes and develop theories. There is no expectation that your paper is going to prove anything given that no evidence has been significantly gathered. The task is to start potentially important conversations, not conclude them.

This is a course in how our popular culture depicts social psychology. It is not a course about politics or ideologies. You may have some judgments to share, but your paper should not be a pamphlet defending these judgments. In your identification of what is happening in our culture, it does not matter if you approve or not. It should be about what you think about the question asked. Make sure and focus on social/personal psychological elements. While psychology intercedes with the political world (as it does with all worlds), the essence of your paper should not be about your political views but about your discernments regarding our social psychology (and its potential impact on the self).

Use the question as a provocation to your own thinking about the subject or theme that the question represents. You may find the questions to be sprawling, but they are pointing in a general direction. This is not a short answer test. Find your way into the question and do not necessarily feel a responsibility to touch on each aspect equally. However, do take note that the questions are trying to include you as a unique person and that you should not avoid how you think and live in your response. You are encouraged to think about yourself but also give thought to the existence of other people. Even if you dislike horror films, other people love them, and it is our task to wonder why.

Your response should not be much more than five double spaced pages. Five and a half pages are fine, more than that is too much.

Note the sample paper attachment. This is a paper that received a high grade. The question being considered in the paper is:

I suggested in lecture that at the essence of horror films is the fear that basic senses of order and common codes of morality (which are different in different eras) are inadequate and that they are no match for the actuality of disorder. Expand on what this thought means and compare it to how you consider modern horror films. Recently there are two sorts of horror films that we watch. In one type, the main characters end up badly damaged, their trauma has left them lost in terms of understanding their lives and who they are. The other sort presents new orders/ways of thinking and being triumphant and victorious over forces of evil and terror. Which of these two accounts do you find the most realistic? What does it mean to your understanding of our social psychology that both are popular? What is our social psychological understanding of evil and its power?

Question Prompt Choices (Choose One Question)

1. Comedy films, of recent years, often rely on the mockery of other human beings (often the unrepresented or disenfranchised). What do you think the social psychological meaning of modern film humor suggests about how we co-exist with other people? If humor provokes a private response that is natural, (that we laugh without it necessarily being willed), what is it within our personal psychology that our modern comedies are stimulating, confronting, or encouraging? Are comedy films changing, or are they still mostly on the same path? What does your response say about the state of our social psychology?

2. In the last decade with the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we have been provided with figures who are largely super human (inhuman in relation to people like you and me) and are mostly defenders of our North American system. We have also, in the last few years, been presented with heroes who were older and consistently identified as male. In many cases these heroes challenged corruptions within systems but left the systems in the place. What do these representations of heroes, and its difference from the hero that questioned society and power, tell you about the ways we are encouraged to think of fighting evil or power? Are the battles that are fought on the screen battles that matter to you. Is the understanding of heroic changing, and if so, or not, what does this say about our shifting social psychology, and does this touch how you think on a personal level?

3. Fantasy films were once cinematic representations of a desire for personal and social psychological hope in something more and better than what is generally provided in adult life. This hope, in fantasy films, tends to be supported and/or offered by magical or spiritual forces. What do you think the popularity of fantasy films says to us, as a social psychology, about the absence of spirituality or mystery in our modern understanding of the psychological self? What do you think the cost would be to popular cultures relationship to our social psychology if fantasy films, of the sort described above, faded from our screens? Is this already occurring? Given that many fans of fantasy films do not actually believe in the power of magic, is our escape to this genre a sign of promise in something other than ourselves or is it an escape into a temporary delusion where we imagine we live somewhere else, for a little while?

4. Traditionally, dystopian films have presented future worlds where natural disasters or the growing divide between those who are powerful and those who are not have led to paranoia and the need to protect yourself and your dependents to survive. Recently we have been given films where individuals are dependent on artificial intelligence technologies that are superior not only in terms of intelligence but also in basic ideas of moral goodness. What do dystopian films seek to tell us about our current reality? Why, given their often negative and condemning comments about humanity, are they popular? From feeling paranoid, to the desire for self-protection (which breeds further paranoia), to new appreciations of non-human guidance (Artificial Intelligence, what can we theorize about the social psychology of dystopian films in terms of personal warnings or social criticism?

5. In my lectures on horror films (video) I suggested horror films are largely about disorders that threaten our fragile faith in order. In the past few years, we have films focused on trauma caused by fractured social structures, including the family, mental illness, and media identity (the development and presentations of media influences as representations of oneself). We have been fearfully wondering about who we really are and whether we are the good people we want to think ourselves to be. More recently, we have had a number of horror films about threats to tight knit communities and to our children. What do you identify as a main trend in recent horror films (the past few years) and what do you think it shows about our shared fears or concerns? Are our fears about real threats or are we hiding from those?

6) All these film genres, discussed in this class (with the possible exception of fantasy films), have become more violent and graphic than they have been in the past. Many comedy films have characters badly hurt and bleeding, hero films demand violent solutions to problems, and dystopian and horror films have become more violent than they have ever been. Are we starting to change our views on the value of violence. Is it funny? Is it becoming necessary? Why is body horror such a component of many popular films? What sort of social psychological theory can you initiate based on your observations about our appreciation for more violence in our entertainment?