Faith Klijian
UID 50425736
Professor Keeler
Writing 39 B
7 March 2022
RIP Project Essay
The film, The Power of the Dog, shares the hauntingly beautiful tale of toxic masculinity and sexuality of Phil Burbank, the main character of the film. For my RIP Project, I reviewed the movie and informed my audience of the stereotypes regularly associated within the Western genre. I compared characteristics of the traditional Western aspect to Neo-Westerns, which is a more modern and late-contemporary adapted version of a Western, still falling in the same category. I took the part of a credited film reviewer for the New York Times Vulture Magazine, and spoke of both the positive and negative sides of the film.
The genre of my project is informational/persuasive, as I teach my audience more about how Westerns are being presented on screen today compared to the past, and how it differs from other Western films or clichés they may have heard. I established my ethos by using various sources to support my argument - that the audience that my review is directed towards should consider watching the film, The Power of the Dog, and teach them how this film both complements and contrasts other genres of Westerns that have been demonstrated throughout the years. I used credibility by doing my research on the director and actors of the movie, as well as using what I gathered as a form of persuasion in my writing. To be particular and exact, the people I intend my audience to be are the New York Times Magazine subscribers, as well as individuals who enjoy or like learning more about the analytical aspect of films or Western films. This would most likely be from the middle or upper socioeconomic status’, and additionally focus more on an audience between the ages of 18 and the 30s, since they, more often than not, share an interest in reading articles written about films. I would attract my audience by making the site look more appealing to my particular type of consumer, and include advertisements of things that are of general curiosity to them. I would provide my opinion and ask what they would think of it towards the closing of my review. Lastly, I would support the criticism and respect of my readers, that way I could possibly be more open to new ideas and judge the story and my subscribers without prejudice.
Throughout writing and preparing my project, I applied several conventions and implemented them into my assignment.The first one I used was sentence structure. I wanted my project to sound professional and what an actual film review would appear as, so I looked into the format of how to set up my article. Secondly, I used punctuation rigorously. I wanted my review to include a variety of sentence elements, simply to change what I had been writing and to avoid repeating the same things. It is also evident that I utilized spelling and capitalization to its largest extent, since I wanted to make my review more realistic and authentic.
Also demonstrated in my review were visual components. I included three images of some of the more significant characters in the film, as well as the trailer for the movie. I tried to separate them evenly, that way my audience would be exposed to both words and images at an equal amount. I made this choice due to the fact that I wanted my audience to stay engaged in what I was trying to get across, as well as giving them my message through diverse symbols. I believe I was quite successful in my project. The strength of what I wrote had most definitely been the length and word choices. I wanted to convey all of my thoughts and aimed for my ideas to be masterful. However, a weakness of mine may have been long-winded sentences or phrases, and maybe a slight confusing sense of rhythm. The letter grade I would give my project would be an A-. I believe I deserve this grade since I completed the requirements needed for it, and hopefully sounded convincing and knowledgeable of the message I gave towards my audience.
Works Cited
Campion, Jane G., director. The Power of the Dog. 2021
Kang, Inkoo. “Killing Eve Season-Finale Recap: In Love and War.” Vulture, 28 May
2018,
https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/killing-eve-recap-season-1-episode-8-finale.htmlLinks to an external site..
“Vulture.” New York Media, 2019, http://mediakit.nymag.com/vulture/.