I think this is one of the toughest projects I have ever undertaken in my time in education. I have felt both scared and stressed out believing I will fail this whole course if I even remotely submitted anything subpar and thus fail at having a career in animation. Not helping was the Covid pandemic which has greatly affected the university, my mental health, my course, my family, among much more. While I think I am likely to pass the course now that I have submitted all the necessary components for my major project, needless to say there is quite a bit I wish I could have done better. The reason I believe for a lot of this was simply time. Some was out of my control other times I feel I could have done something to help myself give a better outcome of the project. I cannot help but feel that while it could've gone a lot worse my project could've been a lot better if I had a bit more time such as having better time management and stopping myself from procrastinating as often....
OGR 02/03/2019
ReplyDeleteHey Ted - okay, so you've got some interesting collections of ideas here and each paragraph looks promising, but I guess as I was reviewing your structure I wasn't sure of your overall point/purpose in presenting me with this information.
Let me put it as simply as I can: female Disney villains are interesting because their 'villainy' seems to relate to they various ways in which they transgress the cultural expectations of their gender - they tend to be clever, independent, queer-coded and older. You do make this point in different ways, but you in making these individual points, I don't yet get the sense that you're drawing any conclusion. I was also left wondering why you begin your assignment by 'not' talking about female Disney villains, but talking about The Little Mermaid? It does feel as if you're still holding onto an older version of what this essay is about and my advice is to let go of that aspect completely and just commit 100% to a discussion of female Disney villains and what that can tell us about our ingrained cultural expectations of 'good' or 'obedient' women. To put it more simply still, you're essentially identifying the recurrent characteristics of female Disney villains by which to shine a revealing light on gender as socially constructed in particular ways. I think you need to re-focus more narrowly on this sense of purpose.
I'd also suggest, in order to bring your assignment up to date, you should perhaps consider looking at the film Malecifent, because of the much more sympathetic way in which that 'villain' is represented - as evidence that some of the old ideas about gender are being challenged and re-shaped accordingly.
So - my advice in a nutshell is: re-focus to ensure your essay is about female Disney villains exclusively and how those representations can be used to critique entrenched ideas about 'what good women look like' more generally and consider driving your reader towards a more contemporary case-study which might be used to suggest that ideas about gender are shifting...