Your final paper will analyze the film Snowpiercer. You will write 10 to 12 pages, double-spaced, following the guidance provided below. We are writing this outside of class and turning it in on Canvas by May 16th at 10:00 am. This means you do not come to the classroom on the final exam day and time.
Overall Aim
You are trying to thoughtfully analyze the whole film Snowpiercer using our course materials (lectures, slides, videos, readings).
Objective One
The first objective for this paper is for you to use these four key topics from the class in your analysis: neoliberalism, empire (sometimes called imperialism), environment, and culture. These four main topics are a guide for how to approach the film. Your paper must cover them all, but how you cover them will vary.
There might be key concepts you use that derive from or are a subset of these topics, say, for instance, for environment you might find the more specific concepts of environmental justice and/or climate migration most appropriate. Culture is certainly a broad topic. To narrow in to concepts useful to your analysis, you might think about our study of language, homogenization and absorption, religion, and/or multiculturalism. You want to choose ideas that you think best help you explain this film and what it means. It is vital that you define each key term you use in your paper.
You are welcome to use examples or comparisons from the class of similar phenomena in the film. This is a great way to show knowledge. Examples or comparisons do not stand in for definitions, though.
Note: We are only using ideas about these topics that come from our class lectures, readings, and videos. No outside sources are to be used. AI or other online sources should not be used, as first of all it is against academic integrity, and second, it will not be able to utilize our ideas in a way that is specific to the class. Violations of academic integrity must be submitted to the university, so please only use your own thoughts and our class sources.
Objective Two
You are also explaining how the film shows the viewer how it thinks about the class topics listed above. In other words, you are being asked to think about the film as teaching you how to understand its logic.
Recall, for instance, how the opening scenes from Crazy Rich Asians show us how to interpret the narrative and characters. I want you to utilize specific scenes, symbols, narratives, and characters from Snowpiercer to show how the film is depicting issues related to neoliberalism, empire, environment, and language.
The following questions are meant to be suggestive, but you should not feel like you must answer them all, or only as I have framed them:
What does the opening of the film tell us about this world?
What does the train represent? What about the sections of the train?
Who are the characters that are powerful and the characters in a subordinate positions meant to refer to in our actual world? We are not speculating here. We are trying to discern how the film tells us about the real world based on this fictional world using our class materials.
What key term or terms help you explain the resistance movement?
What does the “Sacred Engine” mean? The engine only works through a certain kind of laborers. What is this meant to represent from the real world?
The story will come to a conclusion in a certain way. Is that ending meant to suggest something about what needs to change in our world or what we must do to “save” or “heal” our world?
Similar note as above: You are welcome to use examples or comparisons from the class of similar phenomena in the film. This is a great way to show knowledge. Examples or comparisons do not stand in for analysis of the film itself; it is a complement to that analysis.
Citations
You will use our class sources in your paper. We are not using any outside sources. If the idea is not yours, you cite it, whether you paraphrase a source or provide a short quote from it.
If you paraphrase or quote, use this format at the end of the sentence, after the period: (Moreton 201). If you are using a source that does not have page numbers, you could write something like: Taub writes, “Quote from Taub’s article here.” If you use a video, you could write: In the video entitled, “Here’s Why Reaganomics is so Controversial,” the speaker says, “Quote from the speaker.”
You do not need a works cited or bibliography at the end of your paper because all sources are internal to the class.
Formatting
Include your name on the first page
Add a title to your paper
Double space your paper
Times New Roman 12-point font
1″ margins
Indent all paragraphs
See citation guidelines above
Organization
You have two objectives. How you organize your paper to address these two objective is up to you. Something we do not need is a long plot summary. You can assume that the reader knows the plot of the film.
What you must have is an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. This is a longer final paper, so your introduction might be more than one paragraph if you wish. Do not veer from the purpose of an introduction, though, which is only to tell the reader what will happen and the flow of the paper. We do not need a long intro that waxes poetically about the film or the state of the world. Your analysis belongs in the body, not the introduction. A conclusion only recaps your analysis.
Body paragraphs always begin with a topic sentence. A topic sentences introduces the topic of the paragraph.
These are some possible ways you could organize the body of the paper:
You might have four sections of the body, one for each topic. In each section, you define terms and show examples from the film.
The body of the paper may be divided into two sections, the first for objective one and the second for objective two.
You might use a certain scene, character, or storyline to talk about multiple topics and repeat this process until all four topics have been handled well.
You might have early body paragraphs that introduce all of the key concepts you will utilize later. The other body paragraphs are all application to the film, as in, we can see aspects of neoliberalism in X scenes or Y character conflicts.
As you can see, there are various ways to accomplish the two objectives. You can organize the paper in a way that makes sense to you, as long as it is clear that you are completing both objectives.
