Another Disscussion of Reality
I also wrote on writing prompt #4. My writing was informed by the idea that all texts (films included) are a (re)presentation or (re)telling of a story (whether fictional or real). All films and media can do is reconstruct the real world on film, and we as viewers are responsible to judge the degree to which it is an authentic (re)presentation. I tried to explore the question of: do films and media need to be "real stories" to reveal truths or realities? I used the films The Watermelon Woman, Boys Don't Cry, and Live Nude Girls UNITE! as well as the television genres of news and reality television to illustrate different ways reality can be constructed on screen. I found that directors/producers/writers have a lot of power as intermediaries between real stories and any cinematic representation. (If one were to draw a picture it might look like this: REAL WORLD–>writers/directors/producers->MEDIA) In retrospect, I wish I had realized how ambitious this paper was and started it much earlier.