Midterm on Spanish democracy and media

RUBRICS - check list:

Accuracy, relevance:

• Is your summary and understanding of the reading accurate? • Does your summary address the most important parts of the argument made? • Is your film scene selection relevant? • Is your film scene analysis (description and interpretation) accurate and clear?

Style and composition:

• Are your answers/arguments well-structured (intro, pros and cons, conclusion) and well supported?

• Are your sentences grammatical and complete? Is your use of words accurate? Have you used a spell and grammar checker before handing in your work?

 

I. Answer 2 of the following prompts. Write about 3 paragraphs each. (30 pts each = total 60 pts)

 

1. Plastic. Summarize Heather Davis’s  (P.347-358) main arguments about plastic (history, aesthetics, control and separation of the human and the non-human, down- cycling) and show how the films Waste Land, Albatross, and The Island and the Men can be seen to engage with (at least some of) these arguments. Pick an exemplary scene in each film to support your discussion. (“Pick” means: describe what kind of shots, editing, framing, soundtrack are used and what effect they produce or how they invite us to feel. Remember the Ivakhiv chapter if you need help with this.)

 

AND/OR

2. Islands

Summarize Hau’ofa’s and Patel and Moore’s arguments about how capitalism is linked to colonialism/imperialism and to the creation of the idea of “nature” - and of certain groups of people as part of this nature – making them available as something to be exploited, extracted, and disposed of.

Contrast the way Chris Jordan (director of Albatross) and Iñaki Moulian (director of The Island and the men0 have us thinking of islands, their historical past and present,

and the way they have become available for capitalism. Pick an exemplary scene in each film to support your discussion. (“Pick” means: describe what kind of shots, editing, framing, soundtrack are used and what effect they produce or invite us to feel. Remember the Ivakhiv chapter if you need help with this.)

 

AND/OR

3. Non-humans

Summarize how De la Cadena explains three different indigenous (Awajun Wampi, Mapuche, and Quechua) views of the non-human. Summarize how Haraway understands entanglement. How do Daughter of the Lake and The Island and the Men invite us to sense non-human actants and human-non-human entanglements? Pick an exemplary scene in each film to support your discussion. (“Pick” means: describe what kind of shots, editing, framing, soundtrack are used and what effect they produce or invite us to feel. Remember the Ivakhiv chapter if you need help with this.)

 

II. Answer the following question. Write 1-2 paragraphs (20 pts)

 

The potential of open endings

Patel and Moore as well as Haraway encourage us to think less about what things are and more about how things become, how they happen, transform, interrelate, impact on each other. Give an exemplary quote from each text to illustrate this. Ivakhiv discusses how films invite viewers to sense agency for certain human and non-human actants and how that can spill over into our own sense of agency as viewers. What happens when films have “open endings,” where things are shown to be in process, unfinished and messy, when they do not spell out what we should do? I’d like you to focus on the advantages of such open endings in contrast with films that clearly tell you what to do and think. Give 2 examples from the films we have studied in this class and discuss what impact they have had on your thinking, acting, and or sense of agency.

 

III. Answer this question. Write about 1 paragraph (10 pts)

 

Trempulcahue

The last sequence in the film The Island and the Men is titled “Trempulcahue shows the way.” The scene focuses on whales breaking through the surface of an ink-black ocean. If you google the word Trempulcahue, you’ll see it refers to a Mapuche legend where the machis (women healers) take on the form of whales to guide the souls of the dead to an island called Mocha where the souls are transformed into spirits which then travel off to the west. (The Mapuche live on both sides of the Andes, in what is today Argentina and Chile; the Chilotes have Mapuche, Chono, and Spanish ancestry.) What do you make of this ending?!

 

 

Total points 100