Provide a detailed response to THREE of the following five questions on the course films, lectures, and readings. Be sure to answer all posed subquestions in your response. Each response should be roughly 1-2 paragraphs in length.
1. J. Hoberman notes that the release of Nashville and Jaws in the summer of 1975
marked a key transitional moment in post-classical American cinema. How, according to
Hoberman, are both films in dialogue with the disaster film cycle of the era? How do the
films represent different approaches to the blockbuster aesthetics outlined by Sheldon
Hall in the textbook? Use specific examples from the films to support your answers.
2. Using specific examples from Apocalypse Now, discuss two key goals of sound design
in the film. How does the soundtrack function to “enhance storytelling” in the film? And
finally, what was the key problem, as identified by Jay Beck, with the expansion of
Dolby Stereo over the course of the 1980s.
3. Matthew Tinkcom argues that Kenneth Anger’s films are groundbreaking in their
examination of “the fetishistic fascination of the mass-produced commodity” through a
“camp critical lens.” Explain Tinkcom’s argument using a specific example from Scorpio
Rising. Be sure to analyze both sound and image as well as their relationship to one
another.
Part Two:Section Three: Essay
Construct an analytical essay in response to the posed questions below. Be sure to frame your essay around a central argument about the overall topic and remember to answer all of the subquestions. Your Essay response should be roughly 3-5 paragraphs in length.
Film scholar Juan Suárez has argued that Hollywood Renaissance cinema of the late ‘60s
and 1970s was “simultaneously an homage and an elegy to popular myths.” Using
specific examples from Midnight Cowboy, Nashville, and Apocalypse Now, discuss how
these films both explore and interrogate America. How do these Hollywood Renaissance
films specifically use formal/aesthetic techniques to challenge the conventions of
classical Hollywood cinema and the popular myths fostered by that system? How do the
films use genre traditions (e.g. the western, the road, the musical, the war film) and visual iconography both to convey and to revise American myths? Finally, are there any
potential limitations to the critiques of America and American myths in these Hollywood
Renaissance films? How, for example, does Apocalypse Now function in relation to what
Viet Thanh Nguyen calls the “industry of memory” in the U.S.? Remember to use