Practice Research Investigation

We are going to practice the skills necessary to complete a decent research investigation essay.

To do this we are going to complete the Primary and Secondary research necessary to piece together a first draft of the following essay...

Explore the representations of women in Thelma and Louise

Thelma and Louise is a road movie from 1991 made by celebrated director Ridley Scott (Prometheus and Gladiator). The film was notable for having two central female protagonists and challenging the usual representations of women in a Hollywood movie.

 

First of all we need to think about what academic theories would be approriate to research...

... the following are all theories relating to representation in general or the representation of gender in the media...

• Mediation
• Constructionist approach - Stuart Hall
• Stereotyping
• Archetypes / Character Types - Propp
• The Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey
• Queer Theory - Judith Butler

Your next task: Now find as much information as you can about these theories. If you can't remember where to look then perhaps this page might help.

Save your list of websites, essays and journals on to a Word docment -as if you were creating a bibliography.

There are lots of resources to be considered and huge amounts of writing on the representation of women, you should have already read and made notes on the chapter Representing Gender in Nick Lacey's book Image and Representation.

There are however lots of other resources specifically about Gender in film and feminist film theory - below are just some of the resources you might consider reading in preparation for such an essay.

FFT

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Thelma and Louise was as well received by the critics as it was the public scoring a high rating of 92% on the film review website Rotten Tomatoes.

The film was considered by theorists as worthy of studying, therefore academics have had as much to say about this film as the critics.

Here is an example of an article written as recently as last year about the film's enduring appeal and relevance...

T&L article

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You don't have to search too far to find Secondary research specifically written about Thelma and Louise -  however this isn't always useful for every research project.

Without a new angle or a new perspective the question will always remain:

Why write something if it's already been written?

For our purposes this is just a practice so it's fine, but the point made is important for you to remember - don't worry if you can't find the exact academic writing that answers your question, find the writings on the subject you are investigating and use it - that's where you get the marks in this essay.

Once you have read some different sources you can write them up on a research log like the one you have in your coursework booklet.

Example research log

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Finding research like this can sometimes be tricky - the specific texts that you have chosen may not have lots written about them but if you want to find out more of where to research specific texts then you can look at the bottom of this page for more information - but also remember that you will all be conducting similar research so look at the MS3 research tab on the right.

Now that you have completed your Secondary research it's time to do some Primary research.

For the essays that you are writing Primary research will probably not not consist of questionnaires or focus groups - but instead our old friend: Textual Analysis.

This should be your bread and butter - the easy bit! You spent a year studying AS media and beoming an expert in analysing texts and your Primary research will cosist of analysing texts chosen by you in order to prove or disprove the things you found out during your Secondary research. Here are some sequences that are useful to analyse. Remember to look at a variety of codes, including:

• Technical
• Audio
• Narrative
• Characters

As the women flee the police their characters grow and their confidence blossoms. Their life on the road is liberating and they decide to take revenge on the kind of men that have made them feel trapped their entire lives. In this montage of three scenes a sexist truck driver underestimates the two friends... 

...and this next scene where they take on the patriarchal society by showing a police officer who's boss!

The next task is to write your own textual analysis of about 500 words - remember to answer the question and cover a variety of different codes...

So by now you should have:

• Academic secondary research into the subject of Representation
• Textual Analysis (primary research) of how women are represented in Thelma and Louise
• Research into Thema and Louise

Now you are in a position to...

Write an Essay.

This should be as simple as fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle - follow these steps and you should be able to answer the question:

Evaluate the representations of women in Thelma and Louise

• Read your textual analyssis and find a section that you believe sums up exactly how women are represented in the film.
• Find a quotation from your academic research that either proves or is at odds with the point your textual analysis makes.
• Explain the quotation and why t either proves or challenges your textual analysis.
• Give your own opinions

...alternatively...

• Find a quotation from your academics research that makes a statement about the representation of women in film or the media, or summarises a theory
• Find a section from your textual analysis which either proves or disproves this theory or point made by the writer
• Explain what your own thoughts are on this area

Either of these two options are useful and may be combined when writing the paragraphs of your own essay. The second option might require you to do additional textual analysis. The first option might require you to do extra reading. However, if both your Textual Analyses and Academic research is thorough then you should be fine.

If you want to see some examples of how essays have been written well then click here.