Difficulty drawing parallels between Shakespeare and related text (1 Viewer)

[imogenhubber]

I'm using Raschella's Leaky Boat doco for my related. The core text is Julius Caesar, and I'm having real trouble sustaining an argument between them not just because of the vastly different subject matter but mostly because the documentary is so much less complex a text.

Essentially the only conflict presented in the doco is between the Howard government's anti asylum seeker rhetoric and the composer's humanitarian viewpoint (and the factions of the public that support those views respectively), whereas Shakespeare's characters have a multitude of conflicts between characters, within characters, between composer and character, contextually, etc. etc.

It's hard to even write a conclusion, since for Shakespeare the audience leaves with highly varied conclusions despite the composer voicing his own at the end ("and he was the noblest Roman of all") because of the nuanced characterisation, but Raschella's audience comes away wholeheartedly agreeing with the composer.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

 

[Sammy Robinson]

Sorry -I don't know this documentary, but I just wanted to mention that your focus is not so much on the conflicting perspective itself (although that's obviously got to be identified), but on how it is represented. You have written, above, "Raschella's audience comes away wholeheardedly agreeing with the composer". Why? How is the text constructed and presented so that we are sympathetic to that particualr viewpoint? What features, such as dialogue, lighting, camera work, tone, register, juxtapositioning and so on, influence viewers and shape our responses? (By the way, I actually don't believe that Shakespeare is condoning/supporting Brutus' actions in any way. He does encourage sympathy for the man-in much the same way that he does for Macbeth-but, in my view, totally condemns his actions! Remember, it is not so much the text you choose but what you do with it. Make sure you have a sound thesis, some specific textual detail and that you maintain your links to the question on the paper and you will be O.K. All the best for tomorrow!