Analysis of “Black Swan” 2010

Anth 132 Psychological Anthropology

Creative Midterm

Due: Tuesday February 10th by 6pm

Creative Midterm: (CHOOSE EITHER ASSIGNMENT 1, 2 or 3)

Please follow one of the prompts below. Your creative response paper is an exercise in analytic and interpretive reflection. Your paper should be at least 4-5 double-spaced pages (and no more than 5) in length (not including the bibliography). You should only cite the readings on our syllabus. Pay careful attention to citing your sources and quotations and include a bibliography. In the body of the text, you can quote using the authors last name, year of publication, and page number. For example, in his essay The Uncanny Freud states: this uncanny is in reality nothing new or foreign, but something familiar and old-established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process of repression (Freud, 1963: 47). If you are using a PDF without page numbers, you can cite the year. If you are citing lecture, you can indicate it with (Mojaddedi, date of class).

Pick one option. You must draw on one of the conceptual pairs listed (and the associated readings) in your interpretation.

1. Pick a short story, novella, museum exhibit, theater performance or a film/documentary. Your analysis should draw from the concepts we have been explicating in class to demonstrate how the film or exhibit relates or illuminates them. How do you understand the relationship between your object of analysis and the analytical frameworks we have covered so far? How does your film or exhibition illuminate these themes for you and how does it encourage us to challenge assumptions and ideas about society, the self and psychic life? You must cover at least one of the conceptual pairs listed below.

2. Immerse yourself in a place (bus station, caf, dormitory, on campus, etc.) or your immediate surroundings (for example, at home). Carefully observe, record and analyze the milieu, event, or culture through a thick or detailed description that reveals hidden layers that might otherwise go unnoticed. What is your encounter? What exactly do you see, hear and notice? How would you describe the experience? What is the phenomenon you are observing? What does it reveal about psychic life, madness, unhappiness or the uncanny? You must divide your paper into two sections. The first half is purely descriptive and utilizes creative writing to bring to life the encounter or setting, and the second half is your interpretation which draws on the course readings and insights and one of the conceptual pairs below.

1. Create a podcast! Show off your savvy media skills and create host and be your own guest on your own podcast episode. The episode will need to be at least 30 minutes long and is entirely up to you. The only requirement is that you speak about the course materials and readings. You can play the role of a professor, an analyst, a novelist, artist, a therapist, a patient in an institution, a warden, etc.

Conceptual Pairs:

1. Life and death drive (Thanatos and Eros)

2. the uncanny and the self

3. civilization and discontent (you can include the metropolis)

4. madness and society

I think the uncanny and the self reflects this the most, I have a few readings that you can/ need to use as a source