Please do my homework

>>84193329

this is heavy

>OP is literally in summer school

>>84193576
you're right

this is some stupid liberal arts shit that i had to take over this summer so i can graduate uni this autumn

>>84193329
Is your teacher a Jewish commie? If he is then just try to argue Back to the Future is sexist/racist. You'll get an A no problem.

>>84193329
Give us a little more info than that, anon.

Looks like you're not graduating soon.
:^)

>>84193329
Post Robin Wood's evil critique then

>>84193765
500-750 words

One of the 6 reassurances that I think is pretty easy to write about

Special Effects: Wood, like Prince, cites “spectacle” as the inspiration for the development
of special effects. He writes: “Spectacle – the sense of reckless, prodigal extravagance,
no expense spared – is essential: the unemployment lines in the world may get longer and longer, we may even have to go out and join them, but if capitalism can still throw
out entertainments like Star Wars [...] the system must be basically OK, right?” I think
this could be said of most entertainment; even those films that do not fit the characteristics
of the Blockbuster. Think about why Wood thinks these films in particular are specifically
guilty of this charge.
• Underlying this charge is the assumption that Blockbusters do not question or challenge
authority, since – as the argument goes – they are produced, funded, or somehow subject
to the authorities in question. Think about this: How do Jaws, Star Wars and Back To
The Future represent authority? How does they represent the concept of “the
system”? Last, are these films in any way “reckless” in their use of special effects?

. Childishness: or what Wood claims is a “widespread desire for regression to infantilism,
a populace who wants to be constructed as mock children.” Fueling this desire,
according to Wood, is “the urge to evade responsibility – responsibility for actions,
decisions, thought, responsibility for changing things”. This is why, Wood declares,
“[T]hese films must be intellectually undemanding.”
• Think about the theme of responsibility in Jaws, Star Wars and Back To The Future: Brody,
Luke and Marty, it seems to me, all accept their responsibility in the face of danger, and
even death:
§ Star Wars is certainly made for younger audiences, but, I hope that I have shown that it is
not intellectually “un”demanding – there is enough in the way of ambiguity and openness
that can challenge even younger audiences.
§ There is a connection between responsibility and the next issue

Imagination/Originality: Robin Wood argues that while these words are used to describe
the work of Lucas and Spielberg, they are not being used properly. “Imagination is a
force” he writes, surprisingly un-ironically, given that George Lucas is his subject, “that
strives to grasp and transform the world, not restore ‘the good old values’.” As for
originality, the “spectacle” of these films is applied as “window dressing to conceal – but
not entirely – the extreme familiarity of plot, characterization, situation, and
character relations.”
• What I want to suggest that the originality of these films do not necessarily lie in these
elements, which are very familiar, but in the medium itself: “The medium is the message”.
Further, the characteristics of the Blockbuster genre can be regarded as a change or
innovation in the medium that has a particular effect on people and the industry. This will
become an important issue when we come to Avatar.
• Marshall McLuhan tells us that a "message" is, "the change of scale or pace or pattern"
that a new invention or innovation "introduces into human affairs."
Think about the idea of “scale” or “pace” in a Blockbuster; in some ways it directly relates to
the changes in “Human affairs” we’ve experienced over the past forty years. The Blockbuster,
perhaps more than any film genre, has kept pace with the Human experience in the
Western World.
• We can know the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium)
by virtue of the changes - often unnoticed and non-obvious changes - that they effect
(message.)
One of the ideas we’ve discussed – and will discuss more – are these kinds of changes; in
particular, how we relate to one another through technology, and how we use and reuse
narratives within the context of this change. The Blockbuster may or may not incite or ignite
the revolution, but it is also demanding and original.

Nuclear Anxiety: Wood writes, “the fear of nuclear war – at least, of indescribable
suffering, at most, the end of the world, with the end of civilization somewhere between
– is certainly one of the main sources of our desire to be constructed as children, to be
reassured, to evade responsibility and thought”, that these films deploy the message
“‘There’s nothing you can do anyway’ and ‘Don’t worry’” as “deterrents to action”.
Again, think about the messages in Jaws, Star Wars, and Back To The Future; are they
advocating these positions? Can we claim the same thing for Independence Day and Avatar? I
would suggest that they all encourage action to either maintain or change the circumstances
presented in the narrative.

Fear of Fascism: Wood argues that one of the ongoing anxieties of American culture is the
rise of fascism from within the country, not without. On this topic he writes of one of
the films we’ve already studied: “The most positively interesting aspect of the Star Wars
films (their other interests being largely of the type we call symptomatic) seems to me their
dramatization of this dilemma. There is the ambiguity of the Force itself, with its
powerful, and powerfully seductive, dark side to which the all-American hero may
succumb: the Force, Obi Wan informs Luke, ‘has a strong influence on the weak-minded,’
as had Nazism.” (Note that Wood admits a little ambiguity into the film.)
In my opinion, Wood is reaching a bit here in order to strengthen his claim. The “force” in Star
Wars is itself neutral; it functions like a Rorschach test – which side will you choose? It
becomes a test of humanity, rather than a default fascist tool.
• Wood continues: “There is also the question (introduced early in Star Wars, developed as
the dominant enigma in The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Kershner) and only resolved in
the latter part of Return of the Jedi (1983, Marquand)) of Luke’s parentage: is the father of
our hero really the prototypical Fascist beast Darth Vader? By the end of the third film the
dilemma has developed quasi-philosophical dimensions: as Darth Vader represents ruleby-force,

I've been patient with Robin Wood. I've even avoided being drawn in by his provocative rhetoric. But I've finally had enough. It is first necessary, however, to make clear which facts are not in dispute. There is little dispute that Back to the Future is a trash movie unworthy of analysis. There is also hardly any dispute that one fact with which you should decidedly be aware is that I once heard someone remark with mordant wit that Mr. Wood is a proponent of “nihilism”—a term he uses catachrestically in place of “denominationalism”. I should point out that Mr. Wood has never once denied that fact. That unmistakably tells us something. It tells us that a classmate recently observed Mr. Wood drowning all of us sojourners of truth in a riptide of vigilantism. That's just Mr. Wood being Mr. Wood, of course. It says nothing about how over the past semester I have had occasion to evaluate his asseverations in terms of their ability to weaken our mental and moral fiber. What I have discovered shows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if we let Mr. Wood take away what few frameworks we have left, all we'll have to look forward to in the future is a public realm devoid of culture and a narrow, routinized critic's dogma.

Believe it or not, Mr. Wood has come extremely close to crushing people to the earth and then claiming the right to trample on them forever because they are prostrate. True story. Anyhow, the entire premise of Mr. Wood's expositions is incredibly offensive to any self-respecting person. What's my problem, then? Allow me to present it in the form of a question: What in perdition does Mr. Wood think he's doing? Personally, I don't believe the answer has anything to do with Machiavellianism. Rather, I believe it involves Mr. Wood's tendency to promote the total destruction of individuality in favor of an all-powerful group. And there you have it. Mr. Robin Wood's continual falsifications of history neatly illustrate his adherence to moral relativism.

>>84194205
if Luke resorts to force (the Force) to defeat him, doesn’t he become Darth
Vader? The film can extricate itself from this knot only by the extreme device of having
Darth Vader abruptly redeem himself and destroy the unredeemable Emperor.”
Well, is his redemption really so “abrupt”? Even without the context of the prequels (which I only
mention here, and they are never to be spoken of again), Darth Vader’s turning is pointed to in
Empire, where Vader’s plea to his son, even slicing off his hand, can be seen as a foreshadowing
of his remorse. One of the central themes in Return of the Jedi is redemption, through Luke’s
unswerving belief in his father’s essential goodness. Ok. Nerd rant over.
• Fascism, then, is reassuringly defeated by the inner goodness, the “light” of the enemyturned-hero
who defeats the Empire’s Führer.

Restoration of the Father: Wood argues that this is “the dominant project ... of the
contemporary Hollywood cinema, a veritable cinematic metasystem embracing all the
available genres ...” He writes: “The Father must here be understood in all senses,
symbolic, literal; potential: patriarchal authority (the Law), which assigns all other
elements to their correct, subordinate, allotted roles; the actual heads of families, fathers of
recalcitrant children, husbands of recalcitrant wives, who must either learn the virtue and
justice of submission or pack their bags; the young heterosexual male, father of the future,
whose eventual union with the “good woman” has always formed the archetypal happy
ending of the American film, guarantee of the perpetuation of the nuclear family and social
stability.”
Wood might be on to something here; we do see this idea expressed in many Blockbusters,
especially, as we’ll see, in Independence Day. However, it’s not as clear as Wood suggests, as the
“father” is not always accepted in the manner he outlines here; fathers in these films can be absent,
evil, impotent, or sometimes even unnecessary.
• This focus on the reestablishment of patriarchal authority is the apex of Wood’s hypothesis of
“childishness”; we, through fear and anxiety, seek the father to absolve us of responsibility, to
support the systems of rule, and to be taught.

>>84194332
In conclusion, what underscores Robin Wood’s critique of the Lucas-Spielberg “syndrome” is its
reflection of and its complicity in what Wood regards as the overall “spectacle” of “Imperialist
Capitalism” that seeks to infantilize the audience and in so doing creating a populace that
does not challenge set beliefs, and accepts the word of the “father” at face value; an audience
that accepts the restoration of what he sees as a regressively conservative ideology. Indeed,
many critics, whatever their ideological position may be, agree that it is this form of film
production, via familiar narrative structures, tropes and characters, which for them is the most
unpleasant characteristic of the blockbuster.
In response, part of my work in this course is to suggest that the Blockbuster genre is not as cut an
dry as this analysis suggests; that some filmmakers, especially as we come to the close of this
course, use the genre to challenge these familiar ideas