Friday, November 30, 2007

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

I'm writing papers this weekend. I have three that are due next week. 1. For my Post Colonial Fiction class I have to write about Cultural Hybridity. 2. For my United States Literature class I have to write about the rhetorical strategy of Herman Melville. and 3. For my Western Literature class (the class where we watch films and never read) I have to write about American Values and/or Identity in the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance".

Ouch! Gracie just bit my knee!!!

So anyway... I need to watch this movie and figure out what deep message about American values the director, John Ford, is supposed to be saying. For his movie "Stagecoach" our professor said that the stagecoach was America and the Indians who attacked were representing the communist countries; so the movie was all about America struggling to become a superpower after suffering from the great depression, and it was about WWII, and it was about McArthism.

Hmmm.... I totally missed all that! I saw a stagecoach, John Wayne and some comic book kind of Indian attack. Now when I watch the Liberty Valance movie I'm going to have to pull from the clear blue sky some sort of far fetched ideas about what the movie means and write a paper on it. Any ideas?

I'll work on Cultural Hybridity and Melville's sarcasm later. Tonight is John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart night. Of course, I have to wait until "Finding Nemo" is over - we have to watch Fishies!

No comments: