I felt the most interesting thing about Neupert’s The 400 Blows article was not the content but the structure of the article. Neupert alternates describing
parallels between the movie and the authors life
historic background behind the making of the movie
production techniques
analysis of the movie’s narrative
and probably one or two other things that I haven’t pinpointed
I am not sure that Neupert’s method of the weaving these things together is affective. It feels a little too all-over-the-place for me. But, perhaps I write that way myself — I don’t know. I do like writing that is wildly structured — Kerouac, Burroughs and others. But, it their cases it is semi-fictional writing — and the feel of the piece or how the piece means is integral to what the piece means. This article is not that kind of writing. The is intended to be criticism or analysis and the structure here bothers me.
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February 6, 2013 at 8:32 pm
Rayne Zhou
Well, I’m not a big fan of Kerouac. I read half on On the Road and then threw the book away. But let’s coming back to your question here. For me, the structure of Neupert’s article is indeed interesting too. I feel like he is trying to lead me into the reading by provide some realistic background information other than trying to talk about the film directly, and this makes me feel like he was trying to write something in a newspaper. (That’s odd…) Another possible reason of why he did this is that because this film itself is so much related with the director, so he decided to talk a little bit about the director first, then it would be much easier for he to discuss more about the film.
February 6, 2013 at 9:14 pm
dsplant
I will start this comment by saying that the structure of the article didn’t bother me. It seemed pretty strait forward, and I stayed with it throughout the article. I will agree that the article didn’t strictly move with the parallels you mention in the order they come in the movie. It definitely seemed to jump around. I will suggest however, that since he starts the article by claiming:
“The 400 Blows is one of the most written about motion pictures in history”
I think Neupert is using this structure to both explain why the motion picture is written about so much, but also perhaps to distinguish himself from those other writers.