MTA 378 ("Comparative Critical Approaches to Film and Theatre")

Prof. Walter Metz

Fall 2002

Sample Final Exam

Essay Questions

In the blue books that you’ve been given, please write well-formulated essays (2-3 blue book pages or so, 5-10 paragraphs or so) in response to each of the questions below.  When at all possible, do not write about the same critics or plays in more than one question.  Each question is worth 25 points.  Suggested time per question: 30 minutes.

1.  The term “culture” is used in the title of both “Mass Culture Theory” and “Cultural Studies.”  Compare and contrast these theoretical approaches, explaining how the term “culture” is defined and applied within their methods.  In the course of your answer, be sure to discuss in detail the work of two critics prominent in each of these areas of criticism.  Then, explain whether you’d imagine Wendy Wasserstein’s play, The Sisters Rosensweig, would be considered by these critics a defensible example of “culture.”

2.  Compare and contrast the approaches employed by Laura Mulvey and Salman Rushdie in their BFI Classics monographs that we read for this course.  To which critical schools, as defined by The Film Studies Reader, do these two critics most closely conform?  To demonstrate your answer, carefully connect each monograph to one of the essays in The Film Studies Reader.  Then, explain what sort of argument Mulvey and Rushdie might have in discussing Wole Soyinka’s play, The Lion and the Jewel.

3.  At one point in the course, Walter made an observation that European (British, French, German) theory might be more abstract than its American counterpart because of the pragmatic and anti-intellectual facets of American culture.  Test out this hypothesis by re-arranging the theory we’ve encountered this semester by attending to the national origin of its practitioners.  Compare and contrast two American and two European critics as support for your thesis agreeing or disagreeing with Walter.  Then, make an educated guess as to whether your chosen critics would be more inclined to use their approaches to defend Samuel Beckett’s Endgame or Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.

4.  Of all the methods presented in The Film Studies Reader, which do you find the most useful for understanding the culture that surrounds you, or the work that you intend to do (as a film producer or otherwise)?  In addition to explaining at least three of the practitioners of your chosen method, and how their work helps you understand the cinema, also suggest how the theory helps you analyze one of the plays we’ve read for this course.

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This page was last updated on December 10, 2002

Questions or comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send an e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman