Topics

Explore the different topics and issues raised by this year's Oscar Nominees: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight are, compared to one another, incredibly diverse, and they demonstrate that Hollywood this year has been experimenting in new interesting ways. Especially focus on issues of gender, race and genre.

Youtube is one of the most popular streaming platforms on the internet. Its biggest stars have several million people who tune in each week to their videos. Many of its stars have the opportunity to use their fame to create other products. Beauty gurus create cosmetic lines, many write books, create gear with their taglines, and over all have many products that they have been able to create thanks to their internet celebrity. With the following they have amassed, it would be foolish not to use their Youtube platform to promote their products. So then why do so many of their viewers become annoyed or upset when these channels take time to promote their products during their videos? The same issue arises when channels are sponsored by companies like Audible, Loot Box, and Crunchyroll.

Analyze Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's filmography (specifcally Memories of Murder, The Host, and Mother) and present how he uses visuals, themes, and insertions of comedy and tragedy to show the incompetence of the Korean police force.

Now a days the new anime that come out either depict two of the following: 1) Action w/ a romantic interest who barely has any clothes on or 2) A romantic interest who's over-sexualized. Most of the time it's a combination of both.

The question now becomes, does the over service of 'fan service' take away from the anime itself (artwork, story line, and character development)? Or does it bring to the table something that we have yet to notice? (This I doubt, but just to cover the basis and everyone's views).

Examples of these would be: Free!, Food Wars, Keijo!, and Okusama ga Seitokaichou! !.

While the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings have gained their well-earned places in western literature, Tolkien's published works were only a small scrap of the material he created and wrote about Middle-Earth over a span of 60 years. Tolkien's ideas of Middle-Earth's languages, history, and cultures changed time and time again, even in the span of writing a single short story. Tolkien's 'Legendarium' evolved so frequently that it took a life of its own.

What does Tolkien's Legendarium teach us about the creative process? Most of the work he created violently contradicted itself, does that impact what we view as 'canon'? Can having this outside body of work flavor how we read the Lord of the Rings? Do the works published after his death, such as the Simarillion and the Children of Hurin count as Middle-Earth 'canon'? Was it acceptable for Christopher Tolkien to compile these new books from his father's works? Since new Tolkien work is being published to this very day, can we say that Tolkien's stories are still evolving even in the post-Peter Jackson age?

What are the most relevant examples of free speech that has been expressed through creative mediums. Have they perfectly expressed their point or even crossed the line?

This one is self-explanatory if you have read the comics, but it made me think of this article as a reference: (link) The political standpoint of where we are now, or where we have been in the past and how Southern Bastards connects to that. You can talk about how certain characters are treated in the comics and compare it to the real world and how things are going currently. There are so many standpoints you can make politically within this comic even certain storylines as well. I would love to see an analysis piece about this and how comics are closely based on real life at times.

Discuss the current direction of the show, especially its later seasons and their emphasis on Sherlock and Watson's personal lives.

Arthur Conan Doyle's character has been successful for so long and undergone many adaptations because of the clever use of the powers of deduction to solve mysteries that boggle lesser minds.

Is the BBC show wandering from its origins? Is that something that contributes to its success and popularity, or will it trip it up if it continues?

There have been many films that follow a romantic relationship from hopeful beginnings to an optimistic future and there are those that take it to the other end: when a relationship fails and the repercussions that entails. While some take a more realistic approach to the emotions riding through a former couple and their separation, there are others that follow one partner and see the other as almost literal monsters. Examples like David Cronenberg's The Brood which gives the main character's wife the ability to create child monsters or Andrzej Żuławski's Possession having from Mark's perspective seeing his wife Anna become a crazy sociopath and another woman as almost a double of the former, go into an almost otherworldly plane to explore how painful separation from a loved one can be. There might be other examples of this, like maybe Hideo Nakata's Dark Water, which is more of a focus on how divorce can effect children in the short term and long term in the realm of a ghost story. So I think the article should be an exploration of films that go into themes of love lost that goes more into the horror aspect and how people can seem to change into monsters when the rose tint is taken away.

Undertale is a game that has exploded to absurd levels of internet popularity since its release in September of 2015, especially considering that the entirety of the game was created by one man, Toby Fox. Playing it myself, I absolutely loved the game–its mechanics, the writing, and the story as a whole. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I may have only liked it because of all the parallels and references the game made to other games and game genres. In other words, I'm not sure I would ever recommend Undertale to someone who has not already played a lot of video games.

I have lots of questions surrounding this topic. Is Undertale only good because of all of its in-jokes? As far as it relates to modern internet humor, that seems to be an essential part of that brand of humor nowadays. Is it a good/bad/neutral thing that this extremely compelling video game is really only accessible to a seasoned gamer? Are there other game genres that are ripe for the type of commentary and inside jokes that Undertale pulled on the RPG genre? Can anyone come up with an idea for a game to poke fun at another genre of game?

Films and TV shows have soundtracks. Authors often write to specific songs or associate music with their works. The "writing playlist" is sought after by many fans, and famixes (playlists often created for public listening attempting to capture the mood or heart of a character or story) in and of themselves are becoming a new genre of playlist. Some songs even today tell stories, and may rise out of the tradition of epic poetry. To what degree can music tell a story on its own? How often does the line intersect? Should it? Is some form of narrative inherent in any medium using words? And how does this relate to scores or instrumental themes?

Considering current claims that Hollywood, media-making populations are out of touch with "regular Americans," and often prioritizes the stories of people on the east and west coast, how can we interpret the depiction of Texas culture on a show like Friday Night Lights? How does the show use, misuse, or rethink stereotypes about Southern/Texan tradition to portray a nuanced and realistic culture, for media consumers both from and outside of that culture?

Discuss the rise of image-based social media often portraying stylized images of food, clothing and interiors. Do these portrayals (both seeing them and creating them) allow all of us to become artists, forcing us to appreciate visual beauty in the everyday? Or do they force us to value the narrowly beautiful at the expense of more complex encounters with beauty?

Superman arose in comics in the aftermath of The Great Depression. Captain America was designed to fight Hitler. The X-Men were a brilliant allegory to the Civil Rights Movement. Comic book superheroes were created or rose in prominence when readers saw them fighting their enemies or representing and overcoming their struggles. Although the last 10 years haven't featured any crises of that scale, superheroes have dominated our media. Has the stigma of comic books simply elapsed and everyone can be a nerd in the mainstream or does the rise of superhero media indicative of a country looking to be distracted?

It seems the last years have brought several games that are merely multiplayer platforms for running and gunning, or some other vaguely unique multiplayer archetype. Rainbow Six Siege, Titanfall, Evolve, Battlefront, and the like. In previous years, these games may have simply been considered unfinished or still in progress; they wouldn't have, or shouldn't have, been released. In addition to games without campaign or story-mode, many titles have taken to increasingly short stories that can be completed in a day or two. Call of Duty and Battlefield are perhaps the most blatant offenders; and though most don't buy a CoD game for its story, I can still remember the days of Call of Duty 2 and Modern Warfare 1 & 2, and the enjoyment of playing their campaigns. They may not have been exceptionally long, but they were far more thorough than what we see today.

One could argue that not every developer has the money to implement a quality campaign and multiplayer platform, but this could be, in part, because most try to issue a new iteration, sequel, or game relatively every year. Is this good? I enjoy both story and multiplayer modes, though I hardly consider a game worth its money (especially $60) if it has only multiplayer. This is not to say there are not very long story modes that fall prey to repetitious mechanics and gameplay.

With the rise of so many news stories revealing how Reality TV isn't real at all, should the name "Reality TV" be changed to reflect what it really is–Fictional Reality TV (FRTV) Reality TV truly represents the idea of what people experience on a daily basis, but these experiences that are showcased on Reality TV are forced manipulations to make it appealing to watch. For example, Discovery Channel's Alaskan Bush People supposedly live off the Alaskan land, and they barter for the things they need. Since they are getting paid for the TV show, do they really barter to get the things they need? Furthermore, if the name is changed to FRTV, will the ratings of these shows be impacted? Are people or a reality show's audience more likely to discredit the show if the genre is visible, calling the show what it is?

Netflix's Stranger Things, although set in the 1980's, seems to reflect the current state of life in America. How does the notion of the "Upside Down" speak to life today? The Oxford Dictionary word of the year in 2016 was 'post-truth' which states that objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief. How does the notion of the Upside Down reflect the current post-truth era that we live in?

The 1970s saw a big push in public consumption of television. With well written programs like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M*A*S*H, and Good Times, society scheduled their evenings around television programming. This trend continued into the 00s until the rise of reality tv and the advent of DVR and streaming networks like Netflix. The public began moving away from tv for a more niche market suited for individual experience. Analyze the rise of binge-watching and how this reality changed the ways writers approach script.

Analyze the way George Carlin, in his comedy routine titled "Soft Language", discusses the evolution of language through jargon and euphemisms in daily society and interpret the effects of this evolution over time, beginning with the groundwork laid by Carlin in his 1990 Comedy Special Doin' It Again and ending with modern day jargon and euphemisms.

Justified aggrievances have been raised of the sparse –or narrowly stereotyped depiction– of Asians in the entertainment media. While recently there’s been slow traction in seeing Asian faces in traditional filmic and televisual roles, Hollywood has been reluctant in portraying multi-dimensionally complex Asian characters. But with the accessibility of YouTube, content production has been much more democratized, allowing particularly Asian-American vloggers to present multi-faceted personas. YouTube allows Asian-American personalities to channel their aspirations, without the consent of the gatekeepers standing watching at the Hollywood studio system. In many ways, Asian-American vloggers are using YouTube as a Third Space. Rejecting traditional forms of media and tritely scripted clichés, they are finding an alternative space through YouTube in expressing the diverse complexion of Asian-American identities.