This is an analysis of my quarter-long process for creating an analysis essay that answers the course question and a reflection of your progress toward course objectives. Through the whole quarter, we are trying to answer the question: "How do Disney films contribute to the construction of society's values and norms about gender roles? How have these values changed over time?" by reading different sources about gender roles like films, texts, and lecture. I combined two Disney films(Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 3) with some secondary sources like Jean Kilbourne's lecture, the article "What is Toxic Masculinity" by Salam, the podcast "MCU Rewatch - Iron Man 3 (2013)", the Iron Man 1 film reviews, and the Iron Man 3 film review to help me answer the course question. During the whole process, it helps me to achieve one of the goals in the course objectives, “Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media”.
Planning and Exploratory Writing
The first meaningful and helpful assignment I did to help me answer the course question and achieve the course question was the lecture given by Jean Kilbourne "Killing Us Softly". This assignment was to watch and annotate the lecture about gender. "Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media" is one of the course objectives that I developed during this process because I need compose all the details and opinions of the lecture to be the useful and effective evidences in my own work. Below is a screenshot of my own work on this assignment to show how I annotated the lecture and composed the scenes into my own language and opinion.
The exploratory writing in week 1, we watched a video of introducing the definition of social construction. It was also connecting to the course objective "Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media", because the video is one kind of media, and I need to extract the infromation and details to form and create my own opinion. Like the screenshot of my work below, I used the exact example of the video to support and help me explain my opinion about social construction. Through this process, the ability of one of our course objectives "Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media" has improved a lot. Below is a screenshot of what and how I annotated and summarized the example of the video.
Peer Review
The best advice that I gave on Peer Review is the reply to one of our podcast group member, Jenny Kim. Before our final podcast, our group members discussed the sturcture and the content of our podcast and I suggested that we can combine the changing of the gender roles by using and analyzing the fairy tale films and suprehero films. This suggestion just became the final idea of our podcast and through giving the feedback to my group members,one of our course objectives, "Improve your peer review skills through practice", has developed a lot because giving feedback to my classmates is the best way to improve my peer review skills. Below is a screenshot of what I suggested about the structure and the content of our final podcast.
The best advice that I got is also from our discussion before the final podcast. One of our group members, Tianai Fuo said, "However, the movies you choose are original and focus on males,". I choose this reply as the best advice I got because she reminded me that only analyzing the two superhero films is not enough and I need to think how can we combine different sources into one podcast. "Improve your peer review skills through practice" is the course objective I developed through this process because getting useful and helpful feedback is also the best way to improve my peer review skills. Below is the best advice I got which reminded me to think more about our podcast.
Self Review
The first thing that I found was that I used a lot of subjective terms and words in my essay such as "good" and "bad". These kinds of terms and words are also too vague to understand. I will change these terms and words to more specific and clear words such as "tranditional" and "modern". Then I still need to add more sources in my final essay which means I will utilize Jean Kilbourne's lecture, the article "What is Toxic Masculinity" by Salam, the podcast "MCU Rewatch - Iron Man 3 (2013)", the Iron Man 1 film reviews, and the Iron Man 3 film review in my fianl essay. Through this process, I enhanced the course objective "Understand the importance of self review" of myself that I will make my final essay better after this self review. Below are the two screenshots of myself review.
Revision
The first revision is the terms and words. There are a lot of subjective and vague terms and words when I analyzed the scenes of Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 3 to claim my main idea. I will change these terms and words to more objective and clear terms and words. After the first revision, my essay will be more effective and more clear for readers to understand. The second revision is the secondary sources. Because of the word limit of the final essay, I did not put a lot of secondary sources into my essay. I will shorten the analysis of the superhero films and add more examples and details of the secondary sources into my essay. The process connects to the course objective "Understand the importance of self review" because one of the best proofs of an effective and useful self review is the revision that make my essay more clear for readers to understand or make my essay more convincing with more details. Below are three screenshots of my own work that show the process before and after the revision.
Before the revision:
After the revision:
