Aristotle's "Rhetoric" offers a model for applying the concept of the enthymeme to the work of film scholars to understand the role of the audience. Used from an analytic perspective, enthymemes emphasize audience reaction to a film, with the focus on how the film is seen, not on how it was made. Applying viewing skills to a sample of…

Using great literature to clarify and to improve students' writing is like using the unknown-literature to explain the only slightly less unknown--the writing of compositions. An alternative is to study films to foster an awareness of technique, for films contain many of the same rhetorical and structural devices as literature. It is possible to…

Fifteen years ago, J. H. Rushing published a seminal article addressing the fragmentation within contemporary society and the ways in which myths (films) may address this exigence. The exigence of fragmentation is relieved, according to her analysis, by mediated recourse to the perennial philosophy of monistic holism that is found across the…

Both film and ancient religious writing have much in common, especially in regard to their ability to convey powerful messages to modern audiences. A study analyzed the timeless meta-narratives in the ancient Hindu poem, the "Bhagavad Gita," and in the 1998 American film, "The Thin Red Line." It used the methodology of…

Focusing on documentary elements, this study examines the film content and film techniques of 681 motion pictures produced in the United States prior to 1904. Analysis of films by type, subject matter, and trends in subject matter shows that one-third of the early films are documentary in type and three-fourths of the films use subject matter of a…

A psychological/ritual model of criticism is used to examine the movie "The Deer Hunter" as a rhetorical event in which males undergo psychological change through their war and postwar experiences. The critical model depends on understanding a Jungian interpretation of the human psyche, the form and function of initiation rituals, and…

Intended as an examination of both the novel and the film, this study analyzes the themes and images of "Slaughterhouse-Five." The study is divided into three sections: a thematic analysis of the novel; an examination of the images and camera techniques in the film; and a discussion of similar themes in an effort to show how they are…

An increasingly popular form of mass media persuasion is the "docudrama," a hybrid of the informative documentary and the dramatic film. The docudrama format presents viewers with a purposive viewpoint or value-laden interpretation of reality and contains some degree of historical accuracy and factual authenticity. The docudrama also…

Explores the response of a Vietnam veteran to the film "Platoon." Notes that the film combines two voices, the veteran as journalist-critic and as priest, which mystify rather than explain the Vietnam experience. Argues that this form of priestly rhetoric serves an enduring hierarchy of power and knowledge. (KEH)

To parallel Lester Asheim's doctoral thesis that compared the endings of 24 novels with their 1935-1945 filmed adaptations, this study examined the endings of 88 films produced between 1946 and 1977, comparing the literary endings with the filmed endings by the same criteria that Asheim used. The data indicate both similarities and differences to…

To examine the rhetorical vision of nuclear war presented in the television show "The Day After," it is necessary to consider (1) the motives of those involved in producing the film, (2) the debate over the film that preceded its presentation, (3) the effect of the film's message, and (4) how the film's rhetorical structure contributed…

This study analyzed girls' reactions to Disney's animated feature film "Pocahontas" in light of conclusions drawn from a previous critical textual analysis of the movie. The research addressed three questions: (1) how do Disney's claims to creation of positive prosocial representations of women and Native Americans in the movie…

When the film "The Last Waltz" was released in 1978 the rock music press lost itself in comparisons of the performances of the rock group. The Band's many famous guest artists, while movie critics, for the most part, considered it only a concert film. Few critics saw the film as an integral part of director Martin Scorsese's continuing…

For at least two kinds of literature instructors, classroom use of a film derived from a Shakespeare play is potentially promising: a Shakespeare course instructor can present one attempt to visualize the implications of the printed word, and a teacher of a course which compares film and literature has at least one respectable film adaptation of a…

George Lucas's Star Wars trilogy is used as the basis for the creation of a political subtext arising from one of America's most enduring literary myths--the American Adam. That subtext, when translated into a modern political context, pinpoints two central issues to face this democracy in the coming years, as well as a national ambivalence about…