SO WHATS AND ENCOUNTERS

Are there phallic symbols in Ghostbusters?

How does the emphasis on a physical world made up of phallic symbols in Ghostbusters modify the analysis of the movie's response to increasing female power?

Defining the physical world in terms of its connection to male genitalia changes

analysis of Ghostbusters

by

suggesting that the challenge of the movie is not ghosts, but rather reaffirming masculine power, particularly through sexuality.

Librarians have not been portrayed as downright villains. The closest example is "Their Last Night", where the librarian image is just that -- the protagonist is really a master thief. (Magill's 1988) The librarian is a petty thief in "Violent Saturday", while in "Goodbye, Columbus" the racism of a librarian is revealed through his prejudice toward a black child. Humor deflates the monstrous ghost librarian of "Ghostbusters", and the library worker transformed into a monster in "Mind Killer" is too outrageous to be a serious villain......film makers caricature the old-maid image in "Ghostbusters".

Walker, Stephen and V. Lonnie Lawson"The Librarian Stereotype and the Movies."

MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship,1.1,(Spring 1993):16-28.

To what extent does the way in which the fact that the first ghost is a librarian who draws upon stereotypes of librarians as weak and ineffectual women change our analysis of the role of powerful women at the end of Ghostbusters?

Specific Secondary Source

How does the usage of Phallic symbols in Ghostbusters modify the analysis of the movie's response to increasing female power?

Pretty much every text/idea out there has plenty of professional essays written about it. Such essays should not be seen as definitive truth, but rather as a part of a conversation to which you can respond, agreeing upon and expanding on some parts and taking issue with some others. Your paper should use the literary analysis as a way to develop your own ideas even further.

Encounters that Link Text to Historical/Social/Cultural Concern

So What?

Encounter

It is often helpful to understand what historical/social/cultural circumstances an author is writing in/responding to. Use research about a specific historical/social/cultural framework to deepen understanding of a text. You are not writing a history paper, so you don’t want to cover everything about the time in which the text was written. Rather, your goal is to choose a specific, historically based, idea/issue/fear/desire that the literary text is grappling with and then make and support a claim about how the text responds to it.

Why does [COLLATION] surface in [PARTICULAR WAY]? (order/causation/

analysis)

How does [COLLATION] modify [PARTICULAR PRACTICE/ANALYSIS/ UNDERSTANDING]?

To what extent does [ELEMENT 1 of COLLATION] replace/change [ELEMENT 2 of COLLATION}? (order/causation/

analysis)

This collation [or describe it] changes

[PRACTICE? ANALYSIS? ASSUMPTIONS? CAUSATION (SOME REVERSAL OF THE INITIAL BELIEF OF RELATION OF TWO THINGS)? ORDER (CHANGE IN THE INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN THINGS HAPPEN)?]

by

[HERE YOU EXPLAIN THE CHANGE].

Encounters usually focus on a specific part of the object of inquiry

Encounters usually focus on the higher learning objectives

Good encounter questions tend to be open-ended.

Data Dumps and Collations

Data Dump: Gathering Information

• Encounter

So What?: Explaining the payoff of your thinking/ writing

Why does [PARTICULAR ASPECT] surface in [PARTICULAR WAY]? (order/causation/

analysis)

How does [PARTICULAR ELEMENT] modify [PARTICULAR PRACTICE/ANALYSIS/ UNDERSTANDING]?

To what extent does [ELEMENT 1] replace/change [ELEMENT B]? (order/causation/

analysis)

This pattern changes

[PRACTICE? ANALYSIS? ASSUMPTIONS? CAUSATION (SOME REVERSAL OF THE INITIAL BELIEF OF RELATION OF TWO THINGS)? ORDER (CHANGE IN THE INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN THINGS HAPPEN)?]

by

[HERE YOU EXPLAIN THE CHANGE].

__Specific Detail 1__ is surprisingly like __Specific Detail 2_ in terms of _choose 1 from box below____.

Shape

Size

Placement/Timing (either in terms of plot or in terms of the actual text)

Make-up/components/ function within a group

Use/Purpose

Outcome

Definitions

Reasoning

Causes

By this, I mean _____term from the box above__ is ____description of how it fulfills the term in the box__ in ____Specific Detail 1___ and the same holds true in ___Specific Detail 2___ in terms of ____description of how it fulfills the term in the box__. Noticing this pattern of ____a more precise definition of term from the box above¬___ suggests that ____Specific Detail 3 that was not in original dump____ is also a part of this collation because it _____ description of how it fulfills the term in the box__.

Application: Developing Your Ideas, Often for a Reader

What does X mean?

What is the significance of X?

What conditions, influences or events caused X to be as it is? How or why did it become what it is?

What is the process that led to X? What were the steps in the process? How did that process take place?

How could it have happened differently, and what might be the effects of changes to the process? What

is the significance of this process?

Who is the audience for X? What is that audience’s expectations, and how are those expectations

addressed?

How does the word “X” work in the text? Does it convey meanings other than its literal definition? Does

it mean different things to different audiences? How would the text change if “X” were replaced with a

synonym?

What caused x event to happen as it did? Where did it happen, who was involved and what was the

outcome? What might have caused it to happen differently? What controversies surround the event?

What is the effect of X text/film/visual? How does it achieve that effect? What details contribute to the

overall effect? Might it have different effects on different audiences? What choices did the author/artist

make in order to achieve that effect?

What are the various opinions about X? What do they disagree about? Do they share any common

assumptions? Is there any overlap between positions? What are the reasons for each opinion?

Definition: Yes AND: Phallic Symbols

tall towers, buildings, hold guns at crotch level, call them "sticks" "tools," marshmallow man explodes into white goo...

__The frequent shots of tall towers and buildings_ is surprisingly like __the men calling their guns sticks and tools_ in terms of _defining masculinity._By this, I mean _that masculinity is defined__ by __creating a world made up of phallic symbols__ in __the many shots of towers and buildings___ and the same holds true in ___calling guns sticks and tools___ in terms of __drawing attention to physical objects being defined as phallic__. Noticing this pattern of __defining the physical world in terms of its connection to male genitalia_ suggests that __the marshmallow man exploding into white goo__ is also a part of this collation because it _portrays the outcome of a world built around masculine sexual power __.

Critical frameworks, rather than focusing on one specific text /idea, use a larger starting point to derive a series of principles, or things to look for, in a broad variety of texts. Think of them as lenses through which to view the world. There are bunches of others out there: formal criticism, post-structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, Queer Studies, Science Studies, Cultural Studies, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, etc.

You can also create your own critical framework by transferring a way of reading one text to another based on some sort of "yes,and" connection

ENCOUNTERS AND SO WHATS

How does understanding the homosocial love triangle and the way in which male desire can be about thinking about power relations change our analysis of the final scene in Ghostbusters?