beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Amy Screams, The Doctor Yells: Gender in Stephen Moffat’s
Doctor Who

Exploring the extent of gender difference

Introduction

( Read more... )

Chapter One: Doctor Who: Casting for Loyalty

( Read more... )

Chapter Two: The Doctor and masculinities

( Read more... )

Chapter Three: Companions and Femininities

( Read more... )

Conclusion

( Read more... )


Go here for comments, questions, feedback, and arguments.

Explore the significance of Dr Caligari’s glasses.



Germany had entered the First World War as a conservative country dominated by military, aristocratic and bureaucratic elites. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles involved Germany admitting 'war guilt' and making financially ruinous reparations. The Weimar Republic was established as a liberal, democratic, constitutional state, but the time was characterised by social unrest and political divisions. [Aitken, 2001, pp50-51] In 1920 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari was written by Janowitz and Mayer, and directed by Wiene. The story of a psychiatrist obsessed with a mythical doctor, directing a somnambulist to do murder, it was filmed using a highly stylised Expressionist mise en scene, and became a classic of German Expressionist film. Later Kracauer saw in the film symptoms of the German national soul, tendencies that led to the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. His 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film made Caligari part of an explanatory myth about a people torn between tyranny and chaos. Elsaesser (2000) calls it a historical imaginary, an explanation for German history woven from symbols. Kracauer saw in one early horror film a collection of themes that reflected all the tensions of the time. He also believed that the potentially revolutionary message of the film, revealing and overthrowing the tyrant, was defused and contained by the frame story that portrayed the narrator as insane. But a more ambiguous reading is possible, especially if you focus on Dr Caligari’s glasses.

( Read more... )

Doctor Who (2005), Bad Wolf. By Russell T Davies

Bad Wolf & The Parting of the Ways are a two part story, but with such a change in tone and setting in the middle they separate pretty easily. ( Read more... )
All that gets recapped, quickly, at the start of Parting of the Ways. I’ll focus on that episode for my essay.

Doctor Who (2005), The Parting of the Ways. By Russell T Davies


If Bad Wolf was all about divisive competition, Parting of the Ways is all about collective action and how refusing to acknowledge the reality of the threat or join the collective is just going to doom everyone. ( Read more... )


I wrote this essay on accident while trying to write 500 words for a presentation. I got 500 out of Bad Wolf and 2200 out of Parting of the Ways. Then I handed in a rough draft two weeks early. I polished and sent a final version on the deadline day. Most straightforward essay ever. This is what happens when you get to write for credit the same stuff you write as a fan every week. Though the other thing that happens is I get sloppy about quotes and references, which is less good.

Haven't got a mark back for this yet, but have been told it definitely passed.

This one is hard to type up - we did a mini play in front of the class.  I did tech support, ie changing the backgrounds I had designed on the PowerPoint presentation as a backdrop, also doing the type up of the script.  I did the backdrops fine but mildly screwed up the script by failing to make it clear that the opening 'stage directions' were always intended to be the opening backdrop, so the audience would be told what the characters look like, rather than the actors trying to dress like that.  It was a whole Brecht thing that teach quite liked in practice but I forgot to write down clearly.
I contributed to the group work when we did discussing what the piece should be about.  It wasn't all my idea but I asked questions and made answers like you're supposed to.  The aim of the piece was to take the 4 texts we were studying - Great Expectations, Beloved, and the plays A Doll's House by Ibsen and Top Girls by Caryl Churchill - and make a new text that demonstrated how much we understood about them and the theory stuff we'd done in class.  Then once we'd done the presentation teach asked us questions about it that I rather figured were part of the assessment, so I didn't repeat those answers when I wrote up the commentary.  But teach wrote in that she preferred the other explanation on one bit, so maybe I should have repeated myself, because I meant it as well not instead.

The word limit was 600 words plus or minus ten percent.  My word count was 660 words.  Teach wrote at the end "A little short - I would have liked more."  I'd rather like to know how.

I supposed I should probably go and ask.

Anyways, the commentary which makes no sense without the live bits.
... urgh, now I can't figure out which of two drafts was the one I handed in.  Bother it.  Probably this one.  There's only 5 words difference.


This teach wrote in the margins a lot.  Useful things like "give the full references for the editions of all texts used when you first mention the texts in your essay".  "Use the present tense."  And my favourite - "Good point - expand?"
I'd have loved to expand.  I can always make more words.  But to get it in under wordcount I squished out little words like 'my' and 'which is' and 'we', all of which got put back in by teach with helpful arrows.  But I stayed under the word limit, so I don't know which is the more important bit.


(be adds - the brick thing requires some explanation.  I put the graphics up on LJ so I could grab them from school - there was a shopping basket which sometimes had a brick in it and sometimes turned into a gate opening out into a big wide bluescreen.
... you know, I'm not sure that'll make much sense even if I do explain it.  There was a whole hell-in-a-handbasket thing, and in the text the brick is nearly a murder weapon so it represents homicidal ideation, and it was suggested the character would end up stacking shelves at Tescos so the cagelike basket was the prison of her apparent fate, and the gate with the bluescreen was opening out into a wider world... to be made up later, cause you know, anything could go there, but it would be kind of imaginary.)
(Is it odd I can remember all that stuff still?)


Actually quite a few of those words are guesses, I'd have to ask teach what most of that handwriting meant.

69%

I went to college.
The traffic was better than usual close to home but waaaaaay worse once we got to Norwich. So we arrived about the same time as usual.

There was some confusion about which room we were in to do what, but we found the room and the teacher, and I said I was supposed to be there Tuesday but I wasn't (I think I forgot to say I was ill. I forgot to say most things actually.)

So I got my essay back first.

62%
for my Torchwood sonnet
about porn.

*big happy grin*

That's about in my usual range of marks, and poetry is the trickiest thing I've done so far. None of the usual hooks. Not sure I'm using the tools right. Tricksy. But useful, I think, once I get the hang of this stuff.
( Read more... )

62% for poetry :-)

She asked how I thought of the topic.
I, er, attempted to explain that the trouble with me is thinking of any other topic.
But I still think the bits of the essay where I explain how it is relevant and smart were quite well done. I mean, they passed, so obviously I sold it.



Now I just got to finish designing the T-shirt.
:-)

Access in Arts, Humanities & Social Science (CAVA)
MERIT

Cultural Studies 65.9%
History of Art 67%
Sociology 67.4%
Long Essay 71%
Stats & IT PASS

Total 68%

MERIT




:-) :-) :-)

Stats & IT was actually just Maths by the time I did it
and I did 2 essay units, not a long essay
but I guess because I started under a different structure it got writ down as long essay

which means those two essays added up to as much % as a whole year of any other subject... wow I'm glad I'd forgotten that...

I got 72% and 70% on those essays, which means I got distinctions there :-)

68% is 2% short of a distinction *sigh*
By the end of the course I was getting better marks than at the start, is the important thing. I learned. And demonstrated that knowledge.



Also in the post today arrived the finance forms for funding the degree course next year :-)
Already I have found a detail that makes life easier - for disabled students it looks like there is full funding if they only do 25% of the course, even though others have to do 50%.
I know full time is 3 days and I have done 2 days and so I can probably do 1.5 days and 50%, but the more wiggle room I have the more I like it.

The forms cannot be finished until I've done 2 weeks of the course, when college will fill in their pages. So for once I am early. Cool.



Now I just have to assure myself that one room at college can tell another room at college that I met the conditional offer... Or, possibly, get a helpful person to phone up and make sure...

Last essay of the unit, year, and course. One I'm least sure about.   The conclusion was weak in the previous version, teach said, and I'm not sure I've improved it.  In fact as per usual I've reached the point of not being sure the whole day's work has improved it, so I'm posting it.

I can't actually find a button to change or get rid of background colors in the rich text editor.  Is there one?

You know those days when you should just not make words?
I survived another one of those days.

Note to self - when you've been up since yesterday, it is time to relax and go input only.

I gave more amusement than offence, I think, but... *sigh*


On the up side, I handed in my essay, being one of only 2 who got it handed in before class. Teach has declared that she won't be picking them up until lunchtime Monday, which is like giving everyone the weekend as an extension, only sneakier. I couldn't get here Monday anyway. Also, I don't think I could improve the essay. I think I hit all the points she mentioned. Probably. Though apparently postmodernism got dropped from the to do list at some point and I did not hear it. I'm not sure that happened out loud, but regardless, I'm sure I'll get points for it now I did write it.


On the *very* up side this essay on Buffy, femininity and feminism, in a pink dress got 72%
Distinction!
Two distinctions in a row!
Numfar! Do the thing!
#numfar#

... Yes, I was convinced it was a bit mess. This is the problem - my grades say I'm getting the hang of essays, but I'm still not sure what I'm doing right. *sigh*

But, very good grade!
and entirely without teacher input, for he did not answer email and I couldn't find him to talk to him. My bad, but very *headdesk*.
And still I get the distinction. Yaay!


I been stuck at 65 to 68 for ages, now I seem to have figured where the other percents were hiding. Very cool.

I got 72% on my essay
which is a distinction
yaays!

#numfar#

I think I posted it on here somewhere
with some comment to the effect it probably sucked

:eyeroll:


so, another chunk passed :)

am on the final unit of my 4 years of study.
three more essays, 4000 words total, and I will have passed Access.

happy :)


Also I'm getting that warm I know something feeling from class lately, rather than that swimmy glug glug feeling of not knowing something. I like knowing things much better.

Would probably work even better if I remembered to do the reading some time before the half hour between the taxi getting there and the class starting...

Again, posting this so I can grab it to print at college.

While constructive criticism would usually be welcome, I'm fully aware this essay is rather rubbish. Its main virtue is it has the required number of words in the right week to get handed in. I'm not even sure I'm using any of those words correctly, but they are written now and therefore greatly decrease my chances of failing utterly. I'm an idiot and didn't ever talk to the tutor or remember to start the actual essay part of the study unit until this week. So by now it's pretty much past saving, and all crit will do to me is make me hide under the duvet, which is pretty much what got me in the mess in the first place.

Yet I post it public cause I'll have to get it from the not-mine computer.

( Read more... )