First Paper

The first paper of the summer session comes in today. I already have a student requesting an extension. I gave him an extra day. I really can't do much more than that because the next paper will be so squeezed as it is; they have a little more than a week to do it, and it won't be easy. I was working on a sample paragraph on a scene of District 9, the topic of our next paper, and found it difficult to write. For these students, many of them guys, the video game similarities will be all they see. I have had students write about film before in the summer session, but always these have been complex masterpieces, such as The Third Man and Vertigo, that offer lots of topics for discussion. While District 9 is innovative and provocative, it is nowhere as artistically accomplished or complex as these other films. In my experience, that will make it harder to focus on anything but the plot, which will not be sufficient. As well as it fits the rest of the course, it will not be easy to teach in this limited time.