Critical Reflextion 4

When writing my Research Paper I used many different goals, three of the main goals I think I used were, thinking, reading, and writing. My first goal, thinking, I feel I used by reading different articles to have a better understanding for my topic and for having a better understanding of other views that are associated with my topic. Also when doing my research I considered different perspectives of the people that may be reading my essays. For instance I know that many people who may be looking at my essay are in college so they have a general understanding for many key topics that I am talking about so I know I do not need to go into great depth when describing something. I also now have worked to understand how to better understand and evaluate evidence. For instance when I first started I watched movies for my main research but I did not know how to evaluate them properly. After working on understanding the movie better and talking to my peers about it I know have a better understanding for this. My next goal is reading. I struggled with analyzing articles and understanding where the data was coming from in the beginning of this semester. With help from my teacher and peers I now know how to find where the data a article is from and how important it is to find out about the articles author before writing. I also have a better understanding for analyzing, mostly be trial and error. When I first started my movie analysis's were way to long and then piece by piece I learned how to shorten them, while still keeping the valuable information. My last goal that I will be covering is my writing  goal. Before starting this class I struggled with developing well supported arguments and refuting counter arguments. I have now learned how to do this, something that helped me a lot with supporting my arguments were the essays that we did in the beginning, like "The Weir" these essays helped me because they required a lot of thought and they made me really work towards a strong argument. I also have been able to identify, narrow and develop a topic that is appropriate for my research paper, I did this by looking up interesting topics, and in class we did an activity that really helped me narrow down what I should write about (bubble). lastly with my research paper I am now learning how to support a thesis using credible, appropriate, accurate, and sufficient source material. Supporting my thesis has been a bit of a challenge for me and finding credible material has also been a little challenging. The class discussion that we did on thesis's helped me understand more of what a thesis was and also having a general understanding of the importance of a scholarly article before I started this semester helped a lot.

Critical Reflection III

In conducting my research I did a cultural analysis where I watched the movies "The Exorcist" and "The Ring". My results from my research were showing how the child in the movie scared us, by what they wore, how they talked, and what they did. My results showed that when the child did something we could never imagine a child doing that's when we were given the most fright. For example in "The Exorcist" when Regan is possessed there is a scene when she is says she is the devil and talks very sexual. This scene was very repulsing, it was hard to watch a child do something like this. My primary research will help me with my research question because I am finding out on my own why children in a horror film scare me and how they do it, I can then compare that to other peoples findings.The connections I see between my secondary and primary research are in some of the secondary sources they talked about these two movies. With these secondary sources I will be able to compare my findings to the findings of someone else. The differences of my secondary sources and primary research are, some of the research is trying to find out different parts of the movie that scare us and not focusing on the child scaring us, and I am focusing just on the child. My ideas as of right now in structuring my research paper are to start out with one of the movies that I have watched and explain a frightening scene to catch the audiences attention. I will then explain why this scene scares us so much. I will organize my secondary and primary research by supporting the primary research that I did on my own with secondary research that I found. I will also use some secondary research and go more in depth about what they are talking about and use my primary research to support that.

Annotated Bibliography Feedback

The feedback I received from my annotated bibliography was altogether very good. My summaries and analyses were focused and she could tell that I really tried to stick to my research question, but allowed myself to deviations when something interested me or suggested a new direction. The only thing that may be a problem is how some of the sources discuss several different movies, and I may need to watch the movies in order to get  a real understanding from where they are coming from. I feel that I have very good articles for my secondary research, I may have to view a few more in order to make my research paper well thought out. The sources that I may use are more articles from MLA Bibliography, and two books that I have gotten through Inner Library Loan. I will use these sources because MLA Bibliography seems to have the best scholarly articles for my topic, and the books I have gotten may have valuable information that I can use in my paper.

Essay III-- primary research

The primary research I decided to do was to watch two different horror films that centered around the child becoming possessed. I chose the movies, "The Ring" and "The Exorcist". I watched the movies over the weekend and over this week I am hoping to further examine them. I hope to answer questions like, what are the camera angles they shot the child at, how does the child act before/after becoming possessed, is any music playing, and are children's toys present? This will help my research paper by helping me to explain why children in scary movies frighten us so much because I can evaluate what they do in the movies that frighten us. My secondary research influenced me to choose movies because many of the articles I read also examined horror movies. Yes I see many connections between my primary and secondary research for example one of the articles talked about the movie "The Ring" and that influenced me to watch the movie "The Ring" to even further examine it. The choices I made in developing my primary research was deciding which movies to watch and what questions to ask myself. I already said a few of the questions I asked but a few others I may ask are, where the story takes place, and how the parents play a role in the child's like. I took notes during these movies and the questions I have I will be answering in my notebook. In my research I may also talk about the movie "The Woman In Black."

Annotated bibliography

Mckenzie Marshall

Colleen Halverson

English 102

4/02/13

Thesis: Why children in horror movies seem to scare us as a culture so much.

Lennard, Dominic W. “All Fun And Games..: Children’s Culture In The Horror Film,

 From Deep Red (1975) To Child’s Play (1988).”Continuum: Journal Of Media

 and Cultural studies 26.1 (2012): 133-142. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25 March 2013.

In Lennard’s article “All Fun And Games..: Children’s Culture In The Horror Film, From Deep Red (1975) To Child’s Play (1988),” Lennard analyzes the movies From Deep Red and To Child’s plays. He talks about the different symbolizations in these scary movies he says that by far children toys, especially dolls are the most frightening. He explains that children want their dolls to come to life but adults are very much opposite, the thought of dolls coming to life is very frightening to them. He also talks about how a childhood melody playing before murders is a scare to many. Lennard says that children’s play is much messier and unorganized than what is idealized by adults and the movies present child’s play as something terrible and unsafe.

            Lennard tells many of the factors in scary movies about children that frighten us and explains why these objects tend to scare us so much. This article helps to support my thesis by telling why some childhood objects seem to frighten our culture so much, which will help me in explaining why children in scary movies seem to frighten us more than anything else in horror films.

Calhoun, John. “Childhood’s End: Let the Right One In And Other Deaths Of

Innocence.” Cineaste: American’s Leading Magazine On The Art And Politics

Of The Cinema 35.1 (2009): 27-31. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 1 April 2013.

In the article by John Calhoun, “Childhood’s End: Let the Right One In And

Other Deaths Of Innocence,” he talk about how children or in his words, “little monsters” inspire terror among grown-up’s. He examines many different horror movies and what makes them so frightening. John talks about the contrasts between the child’s evil behavior and the normal assumption of childhood innocence. Calhoun also explains that parents and adults are supposed to protect children and when they cannot do so this creates horror for both children and adults.

            This article tells about different horror movies and centers on the horror of children becoming possessed and adults not being able to help. This article will help to support my thesis because it analyzes different movies and talks about adults being frightened because the child cannot be help, which will help me in explaining why children in horror films scare us.

Renner, Karen J. “Evil Children In Film And Literature, Part II: Notes Toward A

            Taxonomy [Special Issue]. “ Lit:Literature Interpretation Theory 22.3

            (2011):177-196. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 31. March. 2013.

            In Renner’s article “Evil Children in Film and Literature II; Notes Toward a Taxonomy,” Renner talks about the ideological involvement of two types of evil children, the possessed child and the feral child and why they frighten us. She also explains that in horror movies the possessed child does not start out possessed instead the movie spends time developing characters that will be victims and their families. She also tells that young girls are often the victims of being possessed in horror films. Also she expresses that parents are more to blame for a child becoming possessed than the child itself.

            This article describes how the child in the horror film scares us and what the reasons are for the child’s possessions. This article will help support my thesis by telling  different reasons why the possessed child scares us and why the child becomes possessed. This will help me to explain why children in horror films scare us.

Schlobin, Roger C. “Children Of A Darker God: A Taxonomy Of Deep Horror Fiction

And Film In Their Mass Popularity.” Journal Of The Fantastic In The Arts 1.1

(1988(: 25-50. MLA International Bibliography. We. 31 Mar. 2013.

            In Schlobin’s article “Children Of A Darker God: A Taxonomy Of Deep Horror Fiction And Film In Their Mass Population,” Schlobin explains that the word “horror” has become an overused word that people use carelessly.  He then explains what deep horror is, a “participatory experience, one that deeply involves personal responses.” Schlobin also gives many different characteristics that many horror films have and explains why these characteristics entice us as an audience. He also explains that deep horror is filled with promises that turn to lies, freedom that turns to bondage, and opportunity that turns to despair.

            Schlobin explains the real meaning of horror and what a horror films characteristics are. This article will help to support my thesis because it explains the feelings that a horror film brings out in people, which will help me to generate a better understanding of why children in scary movies scare our culture so much.

Wandless, William. “Spoil The Child: Unsettling Ethics And The Representation Of

            Evil.” Lit:Literature Interpretation Theory 22.2 (2011):134-154. MLA

            International Bibliography Web. 1. April 2013.

In the article “Spoil the Child, Unsettling Ethics and the Representation of Evil,” by William Wandless, he analyzes different movies that center around a possessed child. He analyzes the movies Halloween, Joshua, Home Movie, and Orphan. He explains that we find children “much to be nurtured, much to be feared.” Wandless also talks about how horror movies “raise disquieting questions about the world in which we live.”

            Wandless explains that children are something we love and also fear. He also talks about horror movies make us question the way we live. His article will help support my thesis because it explains why we love children and fear them. I may also choose to watch and analyze one of these movies further for my research paper. This article will help me to learn how to analyze the movies I will watch and to better understand how we can value children so much but be so afraid of them at the same time.  

Critical Reflective Essay II

To compose my annotated bibliography I started out by coming up with a Boolean phrase, I used the Children AND Horror, Haunted AND Children, and Horror movies AND Children. I made sure to use children in my Boolean phrases because I wanted to make sure the article was about children. I used the search engines Academic Search Complete, and MLA bibliography. I determined that these articles were scholarly by making sure they had a reliable bibliography, also many of the articles I used had a little section about the author that made the author credible. For the articles I took notes on a sheet of paper and took basic notes or drew a mind map. I found that drawing the mind maps helped me because it made me focus on what was the most important in only a few words which helped me to understand the authors main points. In doing this scholarly research it was not much different than other research I had done before. Last semester I also had to write a scholarly research paper and in high school I had to write a 10-page research paper. During my research for this paper I did further my search engines, I had used Academic Search Complete before but due to my research project not being as well known I had to evaluate other search engines and I found that MLA bibliography was by far the best search engine for me to use for my research. The problems that occurred while I was doing my annotated bibliography was that articles pertaining to my research questions were hard to find, I had to really search in order to find them, which was time consuming, but very worth it in the end. After completing some research my research question has not changed, doing the research actually helped me in deciding that my research question was exactly what it should be. Although doing this research did change my mind about the movies that I am going to watch and analyze. Many different articles analyzed different horror movies and they all fit very well with my topic that it is going to be hard to narrow it down to the 2 or 3 that will work the best. During my research I have arrived at a more complex understanding of my research question. I now understand more of what I am researching and know much more about my project than what I did starting it. I do not have any new questions and I have now narrowed down what I was going to research for my project more, which will help me to go further in depth about my research question. I composed my annotated bibliography by starting with my thesis and then I put my works cited. Under my works cited I then quickly paraphrased the article and then made a new paragraph analyzing it and telling why the article will help support my essay. I do think my annotated bibliography could be a good resource to other people. I cannot think of anything in my annotated bibliography that I would revise, the only thing that I can think of is that it may be to short. I tried to keep my summarizing short so people could easily read about the article to determine if they would use it and I am hoping that was a good decision. For example my shortest paragraph is 3 sentences, which may seem short but it does contain all of the information that I found useful in my reading.