Humanities Homework Help

Part 1.

Discuss at least 5 storytelling/narrative/plot)
devices or editing choices that you have seen in recent films or TV
shows. How did these devices or choices help drive the story? Then link
those narrative techniques to the films you watched.

For example: In Walk, – You, Walk!
(1912) Rose gets the help of friends to teach someone who mistreated
her a lesson. This is common plot device in today’s situation comedies

Part 2.

The Birth of a Nation
(1913) is still seen as a monumental film due to its innovation of
filming techniques that are still used today. For example, one of D. W.
Griffith’s key contributions was his pioneering use of “cross-cutting”
to follow parallel lines of action. An early audience might have been
confused by a film that showed first one group of characters, then
another, then the first again, But Griffith successfully uses such a
technique in a chase scene that is rarely not use in an action movie
today. Besides “cross-cutting,” There are at less 16 other ways in which
Griffith was an innovator, ranging from his night photography to his
use of the iris shot and color tinting. Due to Giffith’s efforts, this
is a film of great visual beauty and narractive power.

However,
the movie is racist and unapologetic about its attitudes, which are
those of a white Southerner, raised in the 19th century, unable to see
African-Americans as fellow beings of worth and rights.

With that in mind, answer the following questions:

• Is
  it possible to separate the content from the filmcraft? If art should
  serve beauty and truth, can great art be in the thrall of hateful
  ideologies? Can we still find beauty in such an ugly past? Is it
  reasonability “okay” to enjoy viewing such art with such a message?
• Are
  there more recent films, TV shows, music, pieces of art that press
  against the same types of issues? If so, how do we/should we respond to
  them?