Spring 2000	Pat Day
English 270 Tu Th, 9:30-10:45	Rice 114 x8574
King 327	Office Hours: TTh 3:--4:15 W 3-4:30 & by arrangement
	email: william.patrick.day@oberlin.edu

The Scene of the Crime

This course has two objectives. One is examining some versions of Crime Stories in recent American cinema. What does these movies say, how do they work as film narrative, what value do they have for us both as individual works and as a group? But to accomplish this goal we need to understand our assumptions and ways of posing and answering these questions. This leads naturally to other objective of the course, to understand more fully the possibilities and limits of critical inquiry as an organized approach to works of art.

	Movies	Readings
Feb 7	Intro	"Culture/ Narrative/Power; Monkeys at the Typewriter Rounding up Some Usual Suspects Themes, Narratives and Elements of Style
Feb. 14	Chinatown 1974; Roman Polanski, director; Robert Towne screenwriter	Genre and Other Assumptions Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films
Feb. 21	The Long Goodbye 1973; Robert Altman, director; Leigh Brackett, screenwriter)	Notes on Film Noir Crimes of the Self
Feb 28	Devil in a Blue Dress 1996 Carl Franklin, director & screenwriter
Mar. 6	Dirty Harry 1971; Don Siegal, director; Harry Julian Fink, screenwriter)	Missing Lttrs
Mar 13	Silence of the Lambs 1991 Johnathan Demme, director; Ted Tally screenwriter
Mar 20		The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Mar 27	Spring Break
Apr. 3	The Godfather 1971; Francis Ford Coppola, director; Mario Puzo screenwriter
Apr. 10	Badlands 1974 Terrence Malick, writer and director
Apr 17	House of Games 1987; David Mamet, director and screenwriter
Apr. 24	One False Move 1991; Carl Franklin, director; Billy Bob Thornton andTom Epperson, screenwriter
May 1	Fargo 1996; Ethan Cohen, director; David and Ethan Cohen, screenwriters
May 8

The Reader for this course is available in the English Department Office, Rice 130. It costs $5.00; please bring exact change.

1) I assume valuable things happen in class sessions. I take attendance; I expect you to keep track of your attendance too, because "I didn't realize I'd missed that many classes" is not an excuse. You get two unexcused absences, that is absences other than illness or family emergency . "I had a paper due for another course, my fish was depressed, I don't do Tuesdays, I'm in a production of The Sunshine Boys and we had rehersal" are not excusable absences.

We only have 26 classes, less than 33 hours over the semester. More than 2 unexcused absences and your grade goes down; after 6 unexcused absences, you've no-entered the course.

2) You have to participate in the class. Participation doesn't mean talking a lot, it means being engaged in the interchange among the members of the class: asking good questions, responding to other people's questions, thinking before you talk. Talking in groups such as a class is a skill, every bit as much as writing is. Its a skill worth having, because in fact a lot of work in all institutions gets done in that way. Being able to talk effectively in a group is, as they say, an important "self-empowerment." I know that a number of people have trouble speaking up in class. You should feel as free to consult me on strategies and methods for doing that as you'd to consult me about your writing.

3)You have to form, with other members of the course, a discussion group that meets outside of class once a week. Some groups prefer to meet before discussions and/or lectures, other prefer to meet after. That's up to each group to decide. Groups should be 4 or 5 people maximum.

Academic or emergency incompletes are yours to take if you want, as long asyou are in good standing in the course. You don't need to tell me the story, unless you want to; I trust that you wouldn't take an incomplete without a good reason. "Good Standing" means that you have completed all the work assigned for the first module and at least some of the work for the second.

• Written work must be handed in on time.
• Late essays will be accepted at the discretion of the instructor
• All work must be handed in in order to get credit for the course.
• Essays must be typed, double spaced, stapled together,with pages numbered.
• Backs of previously used paper is fine for drafts; final version should be printed on both sides of the sheet.
• Essays must have a title, though they don't have to have a cover sheet.
• References should be in the following form: (Wordsworth, "Preface" p. 2) with full citation in end notes

I'll divide you into 5 listserve groups. Once each module, all the members of a group will be required to post a short essay (about 900 words) about a movie on the listserve for the course. Half the essays will be posted on Monday by 5 pm; the other half on Wednesday by 5 pm.

These essays should comment and pose a question about the movie, though the essay can also put the movie in relation to the earlier works and to the readings. The essay should have a point of view, a way of interpreting the movie, rather than emphasizing plot summary or description.

Each week half of a listserve group which is not writing a essay for the week will be responsible for a brief presentation the goal of which is to start up discussion.

A 3000 word essay on a topic of your choice. The essay will be developed over the course of the semester in five stages.

1. A 750-900 word essay in which you explain why crime stories are interesting.
2. Midterm essay, 1000 words. This essay will take the form of a reflection on what we have done in the first half of the semester. You may revise or reflect back upon your first essay, or you can write something totally new. Due the week before Spring Break
3. Proposal. A brief 500 word explanation of what you want to write about and why. due 4/17
4. First Draft due 5/5. I'll read and comment on this draft. It should be as complete as possible, but I don't expect a "finished" product. You'll read and comment on the drafts of 2 other members of the class.
5. Final Draft. Due at the end of Reading Period.

The comments on your writing will be, as one former student put it, "ambiguous." I don't do much "this is good, that's bad" commenting. The comments I make will be directed to making you think about what you're writing about, raising issues you may want to consider in revising, or writing about in the next prep essay. For specific advice on how to revise, what to do with a particular argument, etc., we should set up a conference.

You won't receive any grades over the course of the semester. This isn't because the grade is unimportant (if it was unimportant we wouldn't give it, would we?) but because the work in the course is part of a process, rather than a sequence of discrete units. If I am trying to encourage you to use your writing to be experimental and speculative, leading to your final essay, it makes little sense to grade it along the way. But if you want a sense of how you're doing, you should feel free to come and speak to me about your work. I will be able to tell you if you are making what I see as reasonable progress, what things you may want to work on, what things you seem to be doing best. I won't be able to be extremely precise about a grade equivalent, however. On a rough scale, though, I would say that if you are doing intelligent analysis of the works we consider and are able to state your own views clearly, that is C- to C+ work. If you are able to interpret the material we are working with, discuss not only what is "said" but what its significance might be, you would be in the B- to B range. If in addition you can demonstrate a capacity for self-reflective critical work (thinking about your own way of thinking and what it means to think as you do) you would be in the B+ to A range. So these are the kinds of mental activity you will be doing in the course: analysis & response, interpretation, and self-reflection.

As this course is about crime stories, it's important to begin by thinking about what assumptions and attitudes you bring to this material. Why does this topic seem important to you? I don't mean just that it seems "so cool" or some such thing, that might be why we like to watch them, but what makes them worth studying? Some obvious reasons might be that crime is a concern in contemporary culture, raising issues about ethics and the relations of people to society and each other, the nature of justice, and the meaning of human desire. But as I just said that, you'd have to go further and say what all that might actually mean.

This isn't a sociology course; we're going to be dealing with the subject of crime and criminals through their representation and use as tropes, signs, and conventions in fictional movies, often mainstream movies which were meant as entertainment and exercises of artistic technique, though I think their makers also had serious thematic and cultural concerns as well. Why is it valuable to think about crime movies? If you want to say that movies are some kind of evidence about culture, I guess you can, but as movies are part of culture you'll have to go farther than that. Why is one part of culture "good evidence" about other parts of it? And what makes movies particularly "good evidence?"

You could also say that these unique works of imagination illuminate the issues of morality and the individual's relation to society through the complexity and sophistication of their art, but I've just said that, too, so if you're going to take this approach you're going to have to be more specific. What makes a movie (or any work of art) the source for unique insights or ideas about our lives and our values?

This essay should be 750- 900 words.

Please print out the linked page and return it in hard copy on Tuesday, May 9th. (Click here to access.)