For your assignment on Schindler's List, you may choose from a variety of topics, listed below:
1. Many of the assigned readings provide various people's reasons for Oskar Schindler's selfless behavior. Do you agree or disagree with these assessments? What do you think motivated Schindler's actions?
2. Some people have criticized the film adaptation of Schindler's
List because they feel it furthers the stereotype of Jews as passive victims,
needing the aid of non-Jews such as Schindler in order to survive. Do
you agree that the film glorifies Schindler at the expense of the Jews he saves?
Do you feel the film presents enough evidence to subvert the commonly held
belief that the Jews did little to resist and instead,
went to their deaths "like sheep to the
slaughter?"
NOTE: If you choose to answer this question, make sure you consider, in
addition to narrative events, whether the film personalizes the Jews, e.g.,
providing point-of-view shots from their perspectives, close-ups of them, use of
angles in their delineation, their placement within the film frame, whether or
not they are made out to be individuals, etc.
3. The original title of the novel upon which the film is based was
Schindler's Ark. Some people believe Schindler's List is a better
title because it underscores the notion of personalizing the victims. It
also meshes with the importance of language in the film version. How do
the Nazis employ language to take away dignity from their victims, thus
dehumanizing them?
4. Explain the importance of the girl in the red coat. Make sure
your paper addresses visual techniques used to represent her significance, e.g., how does the use of color affect the way Schindler and
viewers perceive her.
NOTE: You may want to read the sections of
the original book to see how faithfully Spielberg reproduces her on-screen
appearances.
5. A noted film scholar who appeared at a Villanova screening of
Schindler's List in the mid-nineties criticized the end of the film.
He claimed that there's a sense of disconnection between the end of the war and
the move to contemporary times (and also in moving from black and white to
color), and the movie would have been better if it had ended with Schindler's
departure and the release of the Jews. Do you agree or disagree with this
assessment? NOTE: If you tackle this question, you should include
two things:
- Remember that the film starts out in color, seemingly
in the present and then dissolves to black-and-white images of the Holocaust.
Does using the reserve technique give a kind of "bookend" or "matched pair"
sense of construction?
- Could the ending reflect a tie-in between
the Holocaust and the creation of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948?
6. Discuss whether you think Spielberg's film is realistic, formalistic,
or an amalgam of both, and why. Which film do you think is more effective
in portraying Schindler's heroism, Schindler's List or the documentary
Schindler, and why?
Whatever topic you tackle, make sure you adhere to my usual parameters:
- Include a cover page or title
explaining exactly WHAT you are writing about in regard to the film.
- Write about films in the present
tense, although you'll certainly want to address historical events in the past.
- Use characters' -- not actors'
-- names, unless you're dealing with a performer's persona.
- Make sure you treat titles of books,
periodicals, plays and, of course, films appropriately, by underlining them,
putting them in ALL CAPS, or italicizing them.
- Be very careful with possessives and plurals, especially when employing plural
possessives.
- Any citations must be acknowledged somewhere within the paper.
AS ALWAYS, CONTACT ME WITH ANY QUESTIONS.