- You joined the Main Room. ( 7:21 PM ) - - Your chat permission has been enabled. ( 7:21 PM ) - formalist, Marxist, rr tichure 7:15 PM 103 - kathy joined the Main Room. ( 7:44 PM ) - tichure 7:39 PM hey there kathy ho wcan i help you 7:39 PM kathy 7:40 PM Hello Professor! I am currently working on my paper which is on the A Quiet Place. I wanted to apply Historical and New Criticism. I watched your video on Youtube, but I am still a little bit confused on New Criticism. 7:41 PM tichure 7:42 PM 213? kathy 7:42 PM yes! tichure 7:42 PM okay tichure 7:42 PM well NEW criticism is actually formalist criticism. The honors classes and the 103 courses are not allowed to use formalist criticism because every student who is in those classes has already taken English 101, in which the entire semester is based on formalist/new criticism. 7:43 PM New criticism is simply called new criticism because it was created later than many of the critical perspectives, including psychoanalytical criticism. Authors came up with this formalist/new criticism because they wanted people to stop psychoanalyzing them through their work and simply look at the words on the page… The form of the primary source. 7:43 PM It's simple symbolism, irony and conflict. 7:43 PM It's the most basic critical perspective there is and it's the one that is first introduced to students the first time they do literary analysis. 7:44 PM However, a lot of people like discussing symbolism or the author's use of irony or conflict. 7:44 PM These would be discussed in a more complex way doing different critical perspectives. 7:44 PM For example, if you want to discuss the author's use of symbol and irony and conflict as part of presenting an idea or concept to the audience, you would catch this in MARXIST criticism and give us other elements of the author's methodology as well as the intended audience and the message to it. 7:44 PM If you want to discuss symbolism in a profound and meaningful way, you can apply either as psychoanalytical criticism (the work is a symbolic manifestation of the author;'s own struggles) or mythological criticism, which we discussed briefly in class as a series of symbolic characters, settings and plots that ultimately show symbolism in a much more profound and universal way. 7:45 PM In other words, you're in the right ballpark, but you just need to choose the critical perspective more carefully. It will involve a more sophisticated argument than simple new/formalist criticism. 7:46 PM kathy 7:47 PM I have to pick a different criticism...I keep reading over all the different perspectives, but I am having trouble picking out what is right for this movie. tichure 7:48 PM Is this what you're doing for your paper or is this what you're doing for a presentation in class? kathy 7:48 PM this is for my paper. For my presentation I am doing War of Worlds 7:48 PM tichure 7:48 PM Okay the reason I ask is as follows: you ultimately left to come up with a total of four critical perspectives and you need to have a primary source that is going to be conducive to that type of analysis. You also have to have enough secondary source material that will be conducive to that particular approach. 7:49 PM Did you find any research that would offer ideas as to how people have translated this, such as through feminist criticism or some kinds of cultural response? 7:49 PM In other words, is there any critical analysis of the movie at all? 7:51 PM kathy 7:55 PM I did read some articles, but it didn't really help? (New Yorker) I did watch many interviews of the director talking about the movie. Such as why he decided to make this movie, and why he casted his own wife into the movie I remember in class, you stated that there are movie critics online, and it shouldn't summarize the movie. 7:57 PM tichure 7:58 PM That would certainly work with Marxist criticism. Well movie critics can summarize the movie but eventually they will get to the real analysis. I would suggest that you go to the KPCC website, also associated with NPR, and find "film week" and see what they said about the work. 7:59 PM kathy 7:59 PM I will look that up and come back tichure 8:00 PM Likewise, you might look for articles written by individual movie critics, such as Tim Cogshell, Lael Loewenstein, Amy Dickinson, etc ok 8:00 PM check Rolling Stone, salon.com, New York and LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times, etc. 8:01 PM Claidia 8:01 PM Claudia Puig 8:02 PM kathy 8:03 PM I know for my interview, it talked about why he casted certain people for certain roles (such as the daughter being deaf, and his own wife) I am confused because in class I know you talked about why certain people was chosen. For example the characters in Birdbox. However I thought Marxist criticism was about class struggle. tichure 8:04 PM Marxist criticism, like several of the criticisms that we will discuss in this class, are multifaceted. For example, you can apply psychoanalytical criticism on a character, which shows the author overtly intended that analysis. You can also apply psychoanalytical criticism on the author, in which the author overtly intended to HIDE that meeaning. 8:05 PM We talked about Marxist criticism with both class struggle and with author intent when we discussed TRUCKS. 8:05 PM Every work can be analyzed with Marxist criticism in terms of author message, audience and method if you have the information from the author as to why and how they made that work. 8:05 PM kathy 8:06 PM Right I remember that.. tichure 8:06 PM However not every work has class struggle in it. If it does, you need to determine whether or not the author is intending that we like one particular class more than another. If the author has indicated through characterization and plot that we are supposed to like one group of people over another group of people as they struggle for superiority, then you would include that as part of the authors message. 8:06 PM For example, Bruce Springsteen constantly writes songs that champion the working-class at the expense of the upper-class, who he sees as oppressive and complacent. 8:06 PM Stephen King constantly writes stories that extol the virtues of the working class at the expense of the leisure class and the executive class because he sees those two upper classes as oppressive, exploitive and dangerous. 8:07 PM In those stories and songs, there is definitely an author bias, which is also been applied as part of the authors MESSAGE and would of course indicate which audience he is pandering to. 8:07 PM Not every story has class struggle. 8:07 PM Not every class struggle is going to indicate through the story which when we are supposed to like. Sometimes they simply give us a class struggle that is well known without editorializing one way or the other. 8:08 PM My inclination is that this particular movie wants us to like the family 8:08 PM and dislike the monsters 8:08 PM and since the family is in a position of oppression, the proletariat, 8:08 PM and the monsters are the oppressors, the bourgeoisie, we are on the side of the lower class trying to overthrow or at least survive the oppression of the upper-class. 8:08 PM The director chose the actors and their characteristics in order to further that story, to create empathy for this character so that we like them better. 8:09 PM That's all part of Marxist criticism. 8:09 PM kathy 8:18 PM Thank you! That makes more sense. tichure 8:23 PM Are you finding anything that's helpful? kathy 8:25 PM yes! I have sources that I will defintely work tichure 8:26 PM For more than one critical perspective? kathy 8:27 PM Right now, I am concentrating on the two critical persepctives, which are Historical and Marxist For historical: The director talked about how this was a "crazy love letter to his own children" If I connect that to his family in real life to the kids in the movie, would that be a good way to apporach this? 8:31 PM tichure 8:31 PM Historical criticism is not about the director historical criticism is simply going to explain what's going on at the time that the work is depicting 8:31 PM as well as explain any actual people or events that are depicted in the work 8:31 PM since we do not have the "everyone be quiet" monsters, they are not part of historical criticism. 8:31 PM kathy 8:32 PM I meant to type biographical tichure 8:32 PM However, there are other elements of the story, especially the setting in both the physical sense and also in the context of the cultural setting that would be relevant to historical criticism. Well, you can't do biographical criticism at all. 8:32 PM Biographical criticism is a critical perspective that applies when a work is literally autobiographical. 8:33 PM We know this is not autobiographical 8:33 PM there are some occurrences in which a work may be autobiographical but anything that involves the supernatural or beings that simply do not exist in any real way automatically knock biographical criticism off the table 8:33 PM and the fact that the director did not live through this in a literal way makes biographical criticism inappropriate. 8:33 PM kathy 8:33 PM oh.. tichure 8:34 PM If this is somehow symbolic of the conflict that the family has struggled through, that would be appropriate for PSYCHOANALYTICAL criticism. kathy 8:34 PM I see thank you for clarifying tichure 8:34 PM In other words, if Krasinski had actually gone through situation, such as an abusive family member, that caused everyone to have to be quiet and act in the ways that they do in the movie, you could transpose that into explaining the work using the biographical information from the director to make a psychoanalytical criticism. what is the setting for the movie? In other words, what year, what place etc. 8:35 PM if, under the monsters, this is set in the real world, we can use historical information to give it context and value. 8:36 PM For example, in our discussion of trucks, the story is set in the real world. Trucks and bulldozers and backhoes and stuff actually exist, as do truck stops, gas pumps and cooks and lovers and truckers. 8:36 PM kathy 8:36 PM 2020-2021 tichure 8:37 PM That means we would look at the possibilities as to whether or not certain things can happen. certainly within the context of that original story, the ability of a vehicle to drive itself would be fantastical, but from a modern historical perspective, we do have vehicles that may drive and operate by themselves. So look at the rest of the story other than the monsters. Is the story, for lack of a better term, REALISTIC or historically accurate? Since we essentially are in the era that is the setting of the movie, is the rest of it documentable? 8:37 PM Is the human behavior accurate? Given the circumstances of course 8:37 PM that's how historical criticism can be useful. 8:37 PM The other option of course is to go read a response, which, comes back to what I said about whether or not this might be symbolically biographical. 8:38 PM Can you think of someone who has had a particular experience who would view this movie and see themselves as the family? Who has existed in an environment like that but in the real world? 8:38 PM You could use that information as a reader response from someone who's been a victim of that type of environment. Is the depiction of the impact of this terrorism portrayed accurately from their perspective? Would they agree that the characters are acting in accurate ways? Do they like the editorial of the movie? 8:39 PM kathy 8:42 PM If there was a real life situation where a family was under attack at their own home (for example) they would try to protect their children by hiding and staying quiet until help arrived or until that person leaves tichure 8:43 PM Of course. How difficult is it to keep a frightened child quiet? How difficult is it to simply exist and not make any noise? 8:43 PM What happens to the family dynamic when you are under constant stress that might mean your life? 8:43 PM This is where you would use information through resources like Ebsco in which people have been interviewed concerning living under a hostage or other similar situation, such as living with a violent alcoholic or other abusive relationship. 8:44 PM It's exactly the same and it takes what is a fictional work and places it in the real world 8:44 PM so Someone who has actually existed in this environment is notgoing to like this movie, not because it is inaccurate, but because it is accurate and watching it might place them back in that environment in and unpleasant way. It's not fantasy for them. 8:44 PM kathy 8:45 PM Right. They would be reliving that nightmare (PTSD) tichure 8:45 PM yes but it is specific to a very particular experience. kathy 8:45 PM I think I know which direction I want to go now, thank you so much for explaning tichure 8:46 PM In other words, you're not just finding PTSD victims. Your finding victims of PTSD that is a result of living under constant threat and especially being forced to maintain silence. Children who have abusive parents know this situation well that's why I'm here. 8:46 PM Anything else I can help you with? 8:46 PM kathy 8:47 PM no. I think I got it - kathy left the Main Room. ( 8:55 PM ) - tichure 8:47 PM poof