analyze The Gender Knot and Moonlight by choosing from one of the topics below. You will narrow your topic down to a provable, specific thesis and create supporting claims, and find and analyze appropriate evidence to support your thesis. You will also need to further narrow down by choosing a subtopic depicted in the film that’s impacted by patriarchy. We’ll be discussing parenting, queerness, and male identity as subtopics, but you may think of others too.
You will be using a compare and contrast structure in this essay to explore how the book and film explore similar topics in different ways, and your thesis will argue which of the two is more persuasive at making an argument about patriarchy’s impact on culture and people
The questions below are to help generate ideas of claims you might explore as you compare and contrast the book and film. You do not need to answer every one of these questions in your thesis statement – they are brainstorming prompts to help you begin generating ideas and to guide your reading and note taking on the film. If there are additional issues you’d like to explore in your essay that aren’t covered here, just let me know.
Audience: Who is the audience for this book? This film? How do Johnson and Jenkins approach persuading that audience about the importance of understanding patriarchy as an issue?
Rhetorical techniques: Johnson’s book leans more on facts from sociology, psychology and history (logos, or appeal to reason) whereas Jenkins’ film includes more narrative and personal stories (pathos, or appeal to emotion). Which do you feel is more effective and why?
Arguments: How do Jenkins and Johnson go about building and supporting their arguments (consider specific examples), and which is more effective at proving its arguments, and why?
Creating change: Between the book and the film, which do you feel is more likely to lead to better understandings of how patriarchy works, and why?
The main question you need to answer in your thesis is this: Both The Gender Knot and Moonlight present arguments about patriarchy, but which is more effective at persuading readers and viewers that this is an urgent social issue when it comes to [parenting or queerness or male identity or another subtopic], and why?
