Critical investigation tutorial 09/12/16

Question – excellent, clear question and hypothesis. This will really help the essay – make sure the argument runs clearly through each section.

Introduction – Your introduction needs to answer the question, lay out the argument and mention the primary text and any secondary/historical texts. Present your angle/hypothesis. 200 words. 

Section 1 – Primary text: Narcos. You’ve currently got this over three different sections – I completely agree that you’ll want multiple paragraphs here (you always will for a major section of an essay) but I think it’s easier to view it as all part of the main primary text section. This means introducing the text, textual analysis and any related research/reviews etc. Make sure you’re addressing media key concepts, film language etc. Very detailed deconstruction please! You also need to make sure you offer quotes that analyse the issues (representation; Hispanics) rather than just tell the story from the programme. 600 words.

Section 2 – Wider context regarding Hispanics and American society. Statistics, social context etc. BUT you must link this to media – so make sure you’re looking at Hispanic representation (or under-representation) and perhaps discuss the fact that the rapid rise in Hispanic population has not been reflected by mainstream media. 300 words.

Section 3 – American TV; institutional context of Hispanic audience and importance to TV Networks. This should follow well from last paragraph but make sure it still is focused on the question… will the financial pressure on networks actually lead to more positive representations of Hispanics in American TV? 300 words.

Section 4 – secondary & historical texts: Breaking Bad and Tequila Sunrise. You could look into ‘24’ as a potential secondary/historical text (pretty sure one of the villains from a season was Hispanic/Mexican). 300 words.

Section 5 – Research: representation of Hispanics in the media. Stereotypes etc. Loads of potential here to discuss research, Guardian/MM articles. This is where you need to bring in your academic research from the BFI and the PDFs in your notes and quotes etc. 500 words. 

Section 6 – How will Hispanic representations change in the future? How will technology change this? Are Hispanics starting to take influential jobs in the media or using technology to attract a new audience? Will Trump change things? 300 words.

Conclusion – sum up your argument, snappy ending please! 150 words.

Next steps… update/finish your plan based on this tutorial. You don’t need to stick to the above by any means but hopefully it has at least clarified your thinking and provided a potential structure that will be easy to follow.

I need to have a quick read of your opening paragraph when it’s written but otherwise you are good to go.

This essay has great potential – the key is making sure that the research section in the middle about Hispanic representation is really strong – that is where the marks will come from. You may need to do a lot of additional research to have enough to write about here. 

Publish this tutorial to your blog with your next steps as usual.