the movie Thirteen

thirteen
For this assignment you are expected to write a critical and intellectual response to the movie Thirteen, directed by Catherine Hardwick, and co-written by her and thirteen year old, Nikki Read, who also portrays the character of Evie in the movie.

Your response should be 2-4 pages. It must not be personal or generic. It must be like an academic research essay. You are expected to draw on the reading by Phil Cohen (and associated lecture) we discussed in class, and one research article/ book.

The key to the essay is to focus on one aspect about the movie. Pick a topic (most obvious is youth-subculture, or gender, or family life, or youth-made media, or consumerism, or role of media, or constructions of childhood/youth, sexuality, and so forth) and write about it in depth (one main argument) by using support and evidence from film and outside sources.

Any claim or argument you make in your paper regarding the movie must be supported by evidence from the film (such as, shots, dialogues, scene descriptions, etc.) or from some other academic resource (a journal article, chapter from a book, etc.). For this, you may also find useful the theories of Bourdieu on social/ cultural capital from lecture, or you may draw on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony also from the lecture. Or use any other scholarly material you want to include to support your claims (make use of your library research session).

I am sharing one article written about the movie as a sample for helping you write your paper. Read it because it is informative; and use as model or as example, but don’t duplicate. However, you can use the first sample document by Allison Wright Munro, as a reference/ source in your own essay. Hence, be sure indicate what your sources of evidence are (page number, year of publication, author, title of text) and add the full citations in your paper.

also attaching a pdf document on “The Process of Writing About Movies” as a “cheat sheet” for you to quickly learn how to write a paper response. It is a long document, but potentially very helpful for you when you write for your classes (now or later). For our purposes, focus on page 21 and onwards. But feel free to read the whole thing, of course!

Remember to start writing out your ideas first (an outline) and then craft your final draft that you will submit to me by Dec 10. Post it under assignments tab on sakai as a word document.