Instructor
English
Unit 3 Essay
Throughout this unit, we’ve seen how the popular media we consume is like a mirror that reflects our cultural values back to us. Superman and Batman, for instance, represent shifting cultural attitudes towards the concept of “heroism,” reality TV shows like Pawn Stars reflect our shared economic anxieties (and perhaps fantasies as well), and modern hip-hop fulfills a desire for “honesty” and “sincerity” that fans crave. Each author and essay in this unit conducted a semiotic analysis of their chosen media in order to express a larger idea about modern American society. For your next essay, you will be doing the same.
For this essay, you will have to:
- Choose a TV show (single episode or entire series), movie, or album/music video to analyze. Like on your last essay, you can also choose to compare/contrast more than one show/film/album.
- Describe and provide adequate background information about that show/movie/album (What genre does it fall under? What’s the basic plot? Who are the main characters?)
- Make a larger point about that show/movie/album – what does it suggest about our shared cultural values, attitudes, fears, anxieties, or fantasies? Your thesis should center on this idea.
Note that there are many directions you can take this paper in, and there are many claims you can make about any given subject. Your job here is to make that claim convincing in an academic essay.
Formal Guidelines:
*MLA format (Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, 1” margins, double-spaced)
*At least 5 full pages in length.
*Include at least 2 outside sources to provide support for your essay (you can incorporate more if you choose to; incorporating a reading from the textbook is optional)
*Include a Works Cited page as a separate page at the end of your essay
