10 page paper, done by monday night may need text. i have details in word document. Final Paper Prompt

This paper is due at the beginning of class on December 10. It should be about 10 pages long (double-spaced, one side of the page, 12-point font, stapled). Concentrate on creating a real argument, not just listing observations about the works (I should be able to disagree with your paper, while still thinking it’s good work). As with your short paper, end your opening paragraph with a question; answer that question in the conclusion.

AUDIENCE

This course has considered towards two very different approaches to the relationship between a work of art and its audience: Interactivity and Alienation. The first approach holds that art is improved or intensified via an interactive relationship, that an artwork is a kind of partnership; the second implies that art should work against its audience, not letting them slip into escapist pleasure or consume an artwork mindlessly. Un Chien Andalou, for example, knowingly alienates and disturbs its audience: it doesn’t see them as friendly collaborators in making the meaning of the work, but a group that needs to be attacked or challenged. Choose two works, one that embraces interactivity and the other alienation, and make an argument about which is more successful and why. At least one of the works should be one that we studied in class.

SYMBOL

Look at two works that use the same symbol (or related symbols – “fruit” or even “food” rather than “apple”) in different ways. Show how each work uses its symbol to advance a different, and ideally opposite ideological position. In other words, one work might use a hat (or “clothing”) to aid in an argument celebrating individuality or independence; another might use it to imply authoritarian control. Explain – in detail, and without making obvious or simplistic points – why the difference exists: you could do so by referring to historical context – a hat might have meant something different in the eighteenth century than it does today; or you could look at how different audiences (men vs women; upper class vs working class, etc.) will interpret a symbol differently; or you could talk about how a symbol changes when it appears in different media. Once you have done that, explain which work uses the symbol in a more compelling way, and why.