While I will not claim to have become the next Ernest Hemingway over the course of the past four months, I do feel that I have ventured on quite a journey with regard to my blog postings. Until this class, I had never kept a blog, journal, diary, or any form of medium within which I simply recorded my thoughts and reactions. I had really only ever written analytical essays with a defined thesis and conclusion. The completely novel element of this semester’s blogging was actually recognizing the thoughts that I had, putting them on paper, and then trying to take that extra step. I feel that I am still struggling with this to be honest; the extra step that must be elucidated is not easy for me to find. I do feel, however, that this class has forced me to think and write in a completely new way, and I believe I have certainly changed as a blogger (I will decide at the end of this reflection if I feel that I have really shown great improvement).
In my response to my Unit II blogs, I stated that I felt I had stayed away from summary decently well, but I still was not very adept at incorporating the technical terms and tools that we had learned to analyze the films. In my previous comments, I again wrote that I was having trouble connecting ideas and themes to illustrate a broader point about the world.
After recognizing this flaw in my own reading and writing, I feel that I did show improvement in being able to delve a bit deeper into the works’ true issues. I began to utilize the terms of analysis, such as diegesis in my Killing Fields – Reaction on February 23rd. Looking back, I am pleased to see that I did not simply throw the word “diegesis” on the page and feel accomplished for using the word. On the other hand, I analyzed the diegesis of The Killing Fields and concluded that it aimed to relate the seriousness of the Cambodian situation to Americans. Still, though, I feel that I could have and should have gone a bit farther than this. I wish that I had asked the “so what” question that I have begun to ask myself now. So what if the diegesis of the film is one of disaster? This blog posting took place on February 23rd, and I feel the course of the next two months I did place more emphasis on the “so what” question.
While I will admit that it took me a while to come to this understanding, I have realized that this “so what” question is the crux of the course. I spent the first half of the course simply analyzing the techniques, themes, characters, and plot of the various movies we viewed. I never took that extra step to ask why the director did this. This is far and away the area in which I have made the most marked improvement. I have honestly begun to feel comfortable asking myself this question while reading only in the past few weeks.
I am most proud of my April 7th posting, entitled Compulsion. For the first time I actually posed my own questions in the blog! I ask, “Why do we think that Compulsion decided to analyze this portion of the murder as well? What effect does it create?” I then go on to formulate my own, original conclusion. While it is not necessarily a groundbreaking discovery, I am proud of the fact that I took the extra step that I had been lacking. Therefore, while I honestly know that I have not morphed into the world’s best critical thinker and journalist over the last four months, I am extraordinarily satisfied to know that I eventually did accomplish the goal that I set out with.
I had a very difficult time adjusting to the new way of thinking that News, Story, Film forced me to undertake this spring. Like I stated before, it was the first time that I analyzed film and tried to elucidate worldly, thematic conclusions from it. I am extremely happy with the Rope presentation that my group and I recently accomplished. While I know that this was not a blog post, I feel that many of the ideas posed in the presentation originated in my blogs. I finally dug deep in this project, and I am thrilled with the conclusion that arose from it. Whether it is right or wrong, the project theorized that Rope is a commentary on the tension and paranoia of post WWII and pre Cold War culture, concluding that this paranoia was justifiable. Temporarily ignoring the validity of the argument, this answers the “so what” question that I now know the course is grounded upon.
In conclusion, I am happy with the improvement I have exhibited this semester. Despite the fact that the progress appeared rather late in my blogs, I am most proud of the improvement I made in my thought process. I feel that my quality of analysis in this class has skyrocketed since my last blog commentary in February. I have graduated from simply recognizing themes and ideologies to actually acting upon them and asking the golden question, “so what?” My recognition of the “so what” and “next step” elements of analyzing these films is where I have progressed the most in this class. Therefore, while there is obviously much more room for improvement, I am excited to see that my later blogs demonstrate my boosted ability to successfully analyze aspects of film.
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