I've been trying to figure out exactly what I've wanted to write on since last Thursday. After our in depth discussion of the events on pages 193-205 in House of Leaves I thought that I wanted to somehow relate film with House of Leaves. In particular, I want do a critical paper that looks at eye witness to history videos (ie Zapruder film), how these videos are studied and how Danielewski attempts to recreate this in the most dramatic moments of House of Leaves. I have a feeling that once I start writing, there will be more information on the Zapruder film and how it is tied to House of Leaves than anything else, but I think that by discussing how it is analyzed could also draw some interesting parallels to how the scene starting on 194 can be analyzed.
The one difficulty I am finding is in developing a thesis for this. It will probably come easier once I actually get a little more into writing the paper, but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. Thoughts on either on the more general topic, or on a potential thesis would be much appreciated.
1 comment:
I don't have a thesis for you (I don't know much about this kind of film myself), but I do have one idea which might push you closer to forming one. We talked a little bit in class about how the Zapruder film has generated endless conspiracy theories (Oliver Stone's film _JFK_ is a brilliant and demented example). So you might have an argument which was directly concerned, not simply with "eyewitness to history" films, but with how "eyewitness" films somehow become the fuel of weird, counter-factual conspiracies instead of actual receptacles of "truth."
Maybe that helps, or maybe it just illustrates what you _don't_ want to do, but there it is.
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