Sinemagination Researched Imagination Prompts e301 sinematic bodies Talmase y Nericcio, inc. We begin with a snapshot of an intellectual theft: the particulars of this sinematic writing prompt borrow ideas from the intellectual imagination of Gore Vidal--and one can easily pilfer ideas from shoddier sources. Vidal, in one of his countless essays, looks into the murky past of that scary word essay and finds another word not usually associated with the term.  That word is "attempt."  Where all too often one imagines an essay as a finished product, Vidal argues that the emphasis for a writer in confronting the challenge of the essay should be less product and more process, less clear conclusions, than messy, delicious and invigorating questions. You see, most people think of an essay as a finished product--a dull, lifeless, inert textual body with a static introduction, an "A-B-C" body, and a clear, let's-tie-up-all-the-pieces conclusion.    You will not write this kind of essay for our sinemadness odyssey. That's right, I am asking with no little nostalgia to return to the origins of the essay. Your only task is to make a sincere attempt to produce a set of ordered reflections, a group of carefully arranged tasty words which respond in some way to the novels, films, short critical treatments and lectures you have worked through and will continue to work through in the coming weeks--much better than tidy conclusions, preferable to the facade of master, will be the accomplishment of wrangling with provocative questions.  That indeed, paradoxical as it might seem on the surface, be the KEY to the perfect essay: the construction of a question that cannot be perfectly answered, but in the performance of which raises readers to a new level of understanding! Are you writing for Bill Nericcio and Tricia Almase?    In a way, of course you are. But in order to do well on this assignment, you must forget about your peculiar, if affable, intellectual guides. The only people who really count are the readers you write for: the audience for your paper--in short, YOUR READER.  Who is she? What is he like? Well, regardless of his or her various genitalic configuration, he and she are a lot like you. When it comes to reading, they are impatient and easily bored. They like specific details; they love direct, succinct quotes woven carefully into the fabric of an essay. If you are going to write about an image, they want to see a reproduction of that image. They hate misspellings and passive verbs. They like tangy language which is fresh and not filled with stupid, tired phrases. Like you, they resent having their time wasted. Regardless of which prompt grabs your eye, there is a Research component to this exercise--you should consult, cite and interweave material from at least two (2) outside published scholarly sources that relate explicitly to the particular thesis your essay unfolds-- acceptable research materials include: scholarly books and essays in academic journals--cite these sources using the MLA Bibliography style sheet.  Please DO NOT merely quote from a local newspaper or unedited online zine you find through GOOGLE on the Internet. (NOTE: I WOULD PREFER YOU NOT USE ONLINE RESEARCH RESOURCES NOR ENCYCLOPEDIAS; I ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO CAREFULLY AND WITH PLEASURE USE THE LIBRARY--walk through the corridors of books and get lost even.  Some good starting places for published scholarly approaches to the materials in this class are the Modern Language Association Bibliography and the ProQuest Research Library, available online through Love Library: http://infodome.sdsu.edu/research/databases/databases.shtml.** **ProQuest is good for lazy researchers in that it archives full text versions of published scholarly articles, saving you the bother of finding out if Love Library carries the journals cited in the MLA Bibliography--heck, even some of my articles are indexed on ProQuest. However, there is no substitute, even in this the high age of cyber fetishization, there is NO substitute for physically prowling the library stacks for salient critical artifacts. Please throw yourself into the pleasure of writing this paper!  Take chances and don't hold back--the best A+ essays will probably be efforts where the student, that's right YOU, adapts, warps, refracts, and/or re-imagines the questions provided. You should use no less than 5 and no more than 8 pages (double-spaced typed, carefully proofread, with a dynamic, suggestive title) to complete your task. No cover sheet or folder-cover is necessary and late papers will NOT be accepted.  The completed essay is due Friday, April 28, 2006 @ 12noon in the special box in front of my office, AH4117--no late papers accepted; no emailed papers accepted. Here are your prompts--you are welcome to adapt them as you see fit, especially if it means you producing a work of art that will blow your reader out of the water with excitement, enthusiasm, and ecstacy. NOTE 1: all essays that focus on works that are visual (film, photography, etc) MUST include the source for all visual works in the bibliography or in captions under the selected images. NOTE 2! I highly encourage you to illustrate your forays into rhetorical sinemadness!!!!! PROMPTS ROLL YOUR OWN ESSAY Use any two or three texts we have worked on (films, novels, short stories, essays, graphic narrative) and develop a critical thesis of your own design. Please write out a proposal for this thesis and email it to me no later than APRIL 18, 2006. PHARMAKOS--POISON OR CURE Jacques Derrida writes in DISSEMINATIONS in an essay on the PHARMAKOS (pharmacy) that the Greek word has in it elements that suggest both cure and poison; it strikes me that cinema, especially in the works rounded up for our class, has this configuration in its own DNA.  Select three authors/artists from the required works and explore this idea in dramatic fashion. SINNING PSYCHES Contrast the 'theory' or the 'philosophy' or the 'dynamics' of "sin" and cinema" as they unfold in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Nathanael West's Day of the Locust. MAD MEN and a CANVAS Todd Hackett, The "Professor" in THE KEY, Norma Desmond and Ricky Fitts .  How is their psychology a function of their relationship with the visual arts--painting, television, film and photography?  Use specific examples NOT DISCUSSED in class to support your findings. SEXY BEASTS Is human sexuality a practice that relieves psychological pressures or is the sex act indeed THE act that creates the possibility of psychological monstrosities.  Explore this idea in a comparative analysis of American Beauty, the Moviegoer, and (your choice!). MOVIE MONSTERS Cinema: dark, safe wombs of sorts; the first thing most people think of with regard to the movies? ESCAPE.  Yet this semester we will learn that the movies, far from being a sanctuary, can also function as monstrous prisons, subjecting their denizens to pain and worse.  Explore these notions in a comparative essay on Tino Villanueva and two other writer/director/visual artists (one from the class, one that you bring in on your own). SADISM, MASOCHISM AND SADO-MASOCHISM Sexual pleasure through the administration of pain? Sadism is a pathology, and, for some, a religion, named after the infamous Marquis de Sade--it is a world where sexual pleasure flows through the administration of pain. Masochism, named after the singularly deranged Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, involves acts of violence against the self. Net gain? Again, pleasure. In the hands of filmmaker Michael Powell and two others we have encountered this term, however, we are introduced to studies wherein sadomasochistic characters--odd, disturbing and compelling fusions of Sade and von Masoch--rule the screen and book page.  Why do directors and writers weave these tales? (Use two or three artists/writers/directors studied this term to build your answer.) ART AND THE SELF Self-referentiality is the credo of postmodern literature and cinema.  Yet different artists inject autobiographical references into their work for different reasons.  Explore eruptions of the autobiographical in four of the works we have addressed this term.            MORE PROMPTS VOYEUR CITY Tanizaki, West, Wilder, (and others this term) have focused on the psychology of the voyeur. Using three of our guides keen insights into what it means to be a scoptophiliac, take your readers on a critical tour of the observer. Look up John Berger's Ways of Seeing  (perhaps the work of Susan Sontag and  Laura Mulvey as well)--theymay help as a type of navigator for this trip. Women as "Other" Explore how women are portrayed as objects of sex and beauty and thus objectified and made into the exotic "other" in three of the works we studied this term. Crossing Borders/ Transformations Several of our texts deal with characters who cross social, intellectual, or personal borders or transform themselves and their ways of seeing or representing what they see in a new or different way.  Explore the different types of borders/transformations and the causes and effects of crossing/transforming in two written works and one visual text we studied this term. Desire plays a role in many of our texts this semester. The desire for fame, fortune, individuality, and sex make up only a few of the controlling ideas thrust upon us. Using two or three (even four!) of the texts, sketch a map of desire. How is desire portrayed? What are the results of the desire?