The Weeks Before My Analysis Essay
Hi everyone! This page will be dedicated to an analysis of my quarter long journey. It's been a long and tough quarter and it's almost ending. Since the beginning of the quarter, we have done many assignments to help us focus and find and answer to the course question. On this page, we will analysis these pieces of writing and see how they helped me develop my essay. Lastly, we will see how each these assignments helped me get closer to the course objectives.
Planning & Exploratory Writing
Assignment That Helped Me Develop a New Perspective
This demonstrates Rapunzel's courage in the face of danger and her quick thinking that allowed her to blackmail Flynn and control him. These characteristic separates from her former Disney princess counterparts as she is able to take action on her own and defend herself, instead of just laying asleep for the entire film like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty.
Excerpt from an extra credit assignment where we reviewed a later Disney film. I chose to review Tangled.
This is from an extra credit opportunity where I analyzed Rapunzel's character and dominance in the film, while comparing her to past Disney princesses. The assignment relates developing openness, " the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world", as it made me see a childhood film in a new light through new interpretations of the same scenes. I realized that Rapunzel, although Flynn was suppose to save her, it was she who ultimately save him, physically and mentally. This new perspective I developed from the assignment inspired me to write about this more in depth in my essay, where I talked about Rapunzel being in charge and saving herself.
Their early films often had a beautiful female-lead living in unfortunate circumstances, waiting for their prince to save them (Haas & Trapedo). Disney often edited their films to make them more appealing to the public, yet they chose to keep the passive female, since “the passive female role was the mainstream perception at the time” (Haas & Trapedo).
Exploratory Writing
Excerpt from week 2 exploratory writing discussion where we wrote about the main ideas of Haas and Trapedo's essay.
This is from week 2's exploratory writing where we discussed main ideas of Haas and Trapedo's essay. I chose this because it showed me that Disney possessed the power to edit their characters to compliment the era, so the characteristics they chose to keep are telling of the messages they try to portray. I go into the idea of Disney princesses changing, but still possessing toxic characteristics a bit in my essay. This assignment connects to "understand and practice the conventions of academic writing" as it because it taught be how to integrate my evidence into my writing and use this evidence to support my topic sentence, which was the purpose of the assignment
Peer Review
I’d encourage you to incorporate more ideas and evidence from your annotations to strengthen your thesis, such as when Belle refuses to eat with the Beast, and when she attempts to stop Gaston from attacking the Beast. When you use the word, “strange,” I feel like it’s possible to find a stronger adjective, such as “rebellious,” because she opposes the mentality of her village. While your thesis discusses the ways Belle breaks standards, are there any aspects or moments in which she actually conforms to gender stereotypes, because I feel like it would be interesting to talk about the dual nature of the film.
Advice For Me
Excerpt by Ryan Khan reviewing my paragraph for my analysis of the Beauty and the Beast film.
This is Ray Khan's review of my paragraph on Beauty and the Beast, which I found most helpful because his comments were very thoughtful and clear. He showed me weaknesses I had, like lack of evidence, poor word choice, and advised me to question the film itself, which are things I looked out for when revising my essay. Peer review revealed weaknesses I failed to see by allowing my writing to be analyzed through new eyes.
Topic sentence: Disney movies often portray characters who are perfect.
Review: The least effective sentence was the 4th one because I felt like you could’ve added more, like implying the consequence of making characters who are perfect.
Advice From Me
Excerpt of my review of a student's annotations where I analyzed the effectiveness of their topic sentences during week 2.
This is my review of a student's work from week 2, where we discussed Jean Killbourne's Killing Us Softly 4 lecture and Haas and Trapedo's essay. We peer reviewed each other's topic sentence, listing which ones were most and least effective. I thought this was my most effective advice because it revealed a weakness of the topic sentence was that it was vague, so to make it more effective I gave them advice on how to be more specific by adding what I think should be included in the sentence. By reviewing my peer's works, I was able to learn "through peer review practice how to become an effective editor," which are skills I'd apply to my own writing.
Self Review
Pt. 1
Left: Screenshot from the self-review of my essay, where I looked over my textual analysis. Right: Picture of the scene I was analyzing
This is an annotation for my textual analysis of my essay, where I realized I could making the image more meaningful by analyzing it within my essay. I wanted to expand on Rapunzel's strengthen as seen through the anger in her eyes and her physical strength as she grabs Mother Gothel. Self-reviewing is important because it allowed me to see weaknesses in my essay and how to improve it by making the little things more meaningful, like this picture.
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Pt. 2
Excerpt of an annotation for my self-review of my essay, where I looked for weaknesses in my organization and topic sentence.
This is from my annotation of my essay where I noticed that my topic sentences lacked flow because it was missing transitions. My topic sentences were very blunt, especially those for Tangled because they followed the introductory paragraphs of the segment. I realized that I needed to add some sort of transition to make it better. Practicing self-review helped me see my essay as a whole, rather than just by parts, revealing to me the flaws in my transitions.
Revision
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After
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This is from the second segment of my body paragraphs from the second sub-segment where I talked about Rapunzel and her dreams and how it relates to what Disney is teaching us about gender values. After doing the self review on connect, I realized that I lacked a transition in between the sub-segments, so I added on that acknowledges the change in era. I also edited other lines to make it more accurate to what I was trying to get across and reworded phrases to prevent repetition. Lastly, I got rid of the pictures because I felt that they were irrelevant to essay.
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After
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This is from segment one of my essay and is the second paragraph where I talked about how Rapunzel's agency and actions set her apart from earlier Disney princesses. I added a line because while doing the self-review on Connect, I realized that the image itself had a lot to say, so I wanted to address the scene to bring more focus on the picture. I also reworded the second line to bring make the connection between Rapunzel and Cinderella more obvious, but still subtle. This makes the essay better because throughout my essay, I emphasized the similarities between the two princesses to make their difference seem more important.
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