Blog prompt 6: due Monday, Oct. 24 by 5 p.m. (surnames A-K); comments due Wednesday by 5 p.m.

Assignment:  As for last week, explore your creative side by modeling one of our writers.  Modeling is a powerful tool for developing your own distinctive voice, as well as the best possible way to learn scansion and form. 

The only restriction, this week, is to broaden your sources of inspiration a bit—stretch your own writing range and keep your classmates guessing! Remember that all our authors, including critics and theorists, are fair game.

Guidelines:

This is your opportunity to learn from a master craftsman!  Model your writing style, imagery, themes and tone on one of the writers we’ve read so far. As always, decide whether you want to stretch your analytical or creative voice, or something in between, and choose the author to model yourself after accordingly (our theorists and critics are fair game). 

After carefully reading your model author and analyzing their choices, create a brief scene in essay, fiction, or poetry form. For your subject matter, pursue what has interested you most in our readings so far.

Whatever author you choose, to get credit for this assignment you MUST take the modeling requirement seriously.  When we read your post, we should know just from your language (syntax, diction, etc.) or form which writer you’re channeling.  Do NOT tell us, though—part of the fun will be guessing, via comments and in class, the source of each short piece.

No restrictions on word limit this week!

Extra Credit prompt: due Wednesday, Oct. 19 by 5 p.m; comments due Friday by 5 p.m.

Prompt:  Explore your creative side! Practice modeling one of our writers. Modeling is a powerful tool for developing your own distinctive voice, as well as the best way to learn specific writing techniques (e.g. a particular sentence structure or rhythm you admire, tricks with diction, figurative language, or form, etc). 

This is your opportunity to learn from a master craftsman!  Model your writing style, imagery, themes and tone on one of the writers we’ve read so far. As always, decide whether you want to stretch your analytical or creative voice, or something in between, and choose the author to model yourself after accordingly (our theorists and critics are fair game). 

After carefully reading your model author and analyzing their choices, create a brief scene in essay, fiction, or poetry form. For your subject matter, pursue what has interested you most in our readings so far.

Whatever author you choose, to get credit for this assignment you MUST take the modeling requirement seriously.  When we read your post, we should know just from your language (syntax, diction, etc.) or form which writer you’re channeling.  Do NOT tell us, though—part of the fun will be guessing, via comments and in class, the source of each short piece.

Target audience: your classmates

No restrictions on word limit this week!

Gender Expectations in Harold and Maude

An illustration from the original poster for the film, 1971.
(Source: http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/stone-cold-masterpieces-harold-and-maude-1971/)

My favorite film of all time has become even more interesting to me after looking at it through a gender studies lens.

I first saw Harold and Maude when I was in middle school, probably around thirteen years old. As a young outcast, it immediately spoke to me, with its friendship between a young man who’s obsessed with death and a 79-year-old woman that’s full of life.

Police Officer: License, lady?
Maude: I don’t have one. I don’t believe in them.
(Image Source: https://i0.wp.com/film-cred.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/harold_maude.jpg?fit=1600%2C907&ssl=1)

Maude is a character that lives outside the bounds of what is expected for women. She’s loud and full of personality. She bends and even breaks the rules many times. For example, she gleefully goes on a high-speed police chase after stealing a small tree from a street corner that she wants to plant in the woods. The way she lives perplexes most of the people around her because she isn’t the traditional, passive old lady that needs help crossing the street.

Harold, after one of many pretend deaths.
(Source: https://www.criterionforum.org/Review/harold-and-maude-the-criterion-collection-blu-ray)

Harold, as a man, is expected to appear strong and stoic, and get married to a nice young girl. He rebels against this notion of masculinity by displaying his emotions in dramatic outbursts where he fakes his own demise.

I had never thought of this film through this lens before, and I feel that doing so gave me a new understanding of it.