“A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here” — Quentin Tarantino
In high school we are given a specific way of writing. The teacher would give us the prompt and also tell us how she/he wanted the composition to be organized. This instruction was helpful to me because it gave me something to work off of, but this left little room for creativity. When I came into English 1101 I thought that I was given too many options, so, I thought that when I came into English 1102 there was no way that I could possibly write a paper with a million choices to choose from: the prompt, the material, the structure. It was quite overwhelming at first but I am starting to get the hang of it. To write a paper that hooks your reader that is not just another English paper is quite difficult. It requires you to do a lot of research and brainstorming about what you think you should include. That’s where I lacked at first. I knew some research was required, but not that much. We are given maybe three movies to reference and then asked the question — what topic could you derive from these movies as a group or what topic could only one movie or scene provide?
Paper one was the most difficult because I had to transition from English 1101 which gave me a little bit of guidance. In English 1101 I was given a choice between specific prompts and sometimes I was even given specific materials to reference, but it was completely different in English 1102: Quentin Tarantino and the Director as DJ. Before writing our first paper we had watched the movies The Hateful Eight, True Romance, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction. This gave me hours of film to choose from. I decided to write about a specific scene in The Hateful Eight. Since it was my first essay, I didn’t exactly know what my professor expected of me in my writing. After receiving my grade, I was disappointed, but I knew that there would be another paper; I could prove that I was better than that grade. Professor Simrill recognized that he hadn’t really dedicated a lot of time to the analysis of the films and more so to the watching, so we went over cinematic terms and script analysis so that we could better our second essay. He showed us examples and gave us a clearer picture of what he expected of us, to be “film critics.” The improvement was shown in my second paper.
For paper two we had watched the movies Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 1, and Kill Bill Vol. 2. For my second essay I chose to write about the “Kill Bill Saga.” Professor Simrill wanted to make sure that we were more prepared for our second essay so he wanted us to make an outline for him to look at before we fully compiled our essays. In my first essay I didn’t have enough research and in my outline I had way too much. He told me “It looks like you’re trying to write a book, there are at least 10 topics here,” or some variation of that statement. I then had to look throughout my outline and see which point I could write an entire essay on rather than making each point into one essay. I finally chose to write about how Beatrix Kiddo, the main character played by Uma Thurman, is compared to a black mamba, which was her nickname in the “Kill Bill” movies. I did more research than my first paper and it showed in my grade. It still wasn’t the grade that I had hoped for, but there will always be room for improvement especially when being introduced to a new way of writing.
After struggling to find topics for my two essays that were completely different and original, I then had to find out what connected them. So, I arrived at the theme of revenge. Revenge is in our nature. If you believe in evolution and our primates, they have been recognized to seek revenge. Primatololgists, Frans De Waal and Lesleigh Luttrellave, have conducted numerous studies and collected data confirming that retaliation is evident in several species such as camels, elephants, fish, and of primates such as chimpanzees and baboons. Studies have also been performed on less cognitive species such as fish and birds to demonstrate that not only intellectual animals execute revenge, which connects to Beatrix Kiddo’s nickname, the black mamba. Even though a snake may not have as much intellectual abilities as other species, they can still hold some form of revenge.
In Major Marquis’ case, scene in The Hateful Eight, he had also wanted revenge but while Beatrix used her physical strength, her speed and skill, Major used his intellectual strength. He came up with a lie, he was what people call a human snake. He tried to get someone to believe in a false truth in order to manipulate them and get what he wanted.
Overall, English 1102 has been a new and challenging experience for me. I had to let the lack of boundaries allow for my own creativity to flow in and recognize that there can be too heavy of a flow of information. Sometimes instead of focusing on numerous parts, you should just focus on one, and elaborate on that.