Hey, so after getting a 15/20 for my Module C . I decided to rewrite my whole essay after completely screwing it up. I would like to be able to get some feedback, (depending on if you still have the time to do this) on where I can improve this essay in order to not get that mark again come trials :c.
Thanks 
Hey gstaah! Whoa, first of all, that mark is awesome!! Don't be disappointed with it! Seriously, 15/20 is a strong essay, that needs some additional work and love and care to turn it into an 18-20/20. No need to completely dismiss it, try building on it!! The core of it was bound to have been awesome based on that result
That said, of course I'm happy to provide some feedback!! I'll mark it generally on quality, since there is no specific question involved.
Spoiler
Politics is influenced by the intrinsic nature of society’s constructed artifices; and is sustained by conflicting differences within people and the perpetuation of their co-efficient power struggles. Ironically, the instigation of a society is subject to the individual political ideals constructed by these adversaries despite society itself consisting of a conglomerate of wide-ranging political ideals. As such in “Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley’s textual illustration of society induced in complacency emanates from his idiosyncratic perspectives on the increasing governance of society through these artifices. This is supported by later novelist E.A Blair, who asserts “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. This idea, reinforced through Kurosawa’s filmic exploration of medieval class systems in “Ran”, is criticized by the disparagement of those in power and evidently, a consequence of the stylistic articulation of the composer’s ideals.Whoa! You have a seriously impressive vocabulary on display here. However, I think the clarity of your ideas is ever so slightly lost in the verbosity of your introduction. Or perhaps it is just how you have approached the paragraph. Essentially, an introduction should clearly detail what each of your subsequent paragraphs will be about, and I don't get that here. Further, this is a representation and text essay, and I don't representation part isn't overly stressed in the introduction either. I think your Thesis, however, is brilliant!
The subtle manipulation through delegated artifices within society, allows Huxley to impassion the audience through his idealised societal class systems. The novel has a perspectivistic structure, allowing the composer to engender a dystopian atmosphere throughout and both sustain and highlight the differences between each class. The delegation of human characteristics “I’m awfully glad I’m a beta. We are much better than Delta’s” anthropomorphises spectrometric waves, a technique used to allude to growing segregation of Jews in Germany; a dichotomy of society which perpetuates a system of imbalanced Autopoiesis. This provides Huxley a means to articulate the differences, “Gammas are stupid”, created within society through symbolic artifices. What does this communicate to the AUDIENCE about the ideas you are discussing? The emblematic anaphora, “the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly soma-holiday” and assonating dialogue of “a gramme is better than a damn” contextualises Huxley’s perspectives on growing consumerism in the early 1930’s, yet ironically, despite being satirical prose fiction, is only further relevant today - a society enveloped in complacency due to technological artifices. The composer utilises anadiplosis, ‘you ought to be a little more promiscuous – promiscuous but not with the, others?’ to highlight the high suggestive tonality of specific rhetoric’s; and encourage coition within separate classes allowing the government to control levels of populations. Such stratagems are recurrent in the novel, as “No family, monogamy, or romance” juxtapose Huxley’s stance on marriage, yet highlight the effectiveness of political manipulation within society through artifices. This paragraph does almost everything perfectly. Techniques: Brilliant. Explanations Huxley's Personal Context and Effect on Representation: Brilliant. What I am missing is the impact on audiences, both contextual and contemporary, you allude to this but you need to really hammer it home. What is Huxley representing in his texts and, more importantly, is this effective/ineffective in terms of how we as an audience perceive it? Again, you are so close, but I think you need to hammer it home a little more.
Similar situations arise in Kurosawa’s filmic portrayal of Ran; however, they are not limited by the perpetuation of power struggles and thereby accurately represent the magnitude of the Motonari War period. And yet, in tandem with Huxley, Kurosawa employs sarcastic dialogue and aggressive rhetoric’s such as “In what kind of world do we live in, of children schooled in violence and power seeking” to represent the irony of duplicity within society originally built on Nobel foundations; an eventual situation of recurrent power struggles. The high modal anastrophe “Saburo don’t, of nonsense speak” with close up shots of Saburo’s expressions is a metaphoric insular for Kurosawa’s values within the film. Such characterisation is only further juxtaposed by the dialogue “When flesh is rotten…even our own…cut it away!” a metaphor, accompanied by repeated caesura and thin string textural tempo for the consequences of infidelity; symbolic for the fall of the political Sengoku period -a time of deceptive and conflicting governance. Despite this, Kurosawa’s subtler translations are often overlooked; his use of contrasting colours “Green, his eyes shined, fighting back”, and “Waves of red, they flooded” during far angled shots articulate synesthesia within the audience; with the toning of green and red representing the conflict between two powers – symbolic of greed and violence respectively. In essence, the exploration of ironic perfidy throughout Ran allows Kurosawa to express his humanistic ideals, in just contrast to the artifices used to attain said power. This paragraph, similarly, has extremely powerful explanations of what Kurosawa is doing and how he does it. But I'm missing WHY, I need a central idea that he is trying to push (which you have, but I think including an introductory sentence that sets it up is more effective), and what impact this representation has on the AUDIENCE.
Through the portrayal of foreign perspectives, Huxley asserts the effectiveness of despotic governments, thereby aggrandising his own representations of political divarications. This is closer to what I would like to see earlier, a topic sentence which sets up the concept that Huxley is pushing. The structure of the novel is intermittently disrupted through the contrast between dystopian “the flower of the present rosily blossomed”, and savage society “it's all different here. It's like living with lunatics” which allows the audience to identify the contrasts between these people. Essentially this didactic symbolism for the fate of the archetypal dissident, John – an individual with differing political ideals, is only further exacerbated by his erroneous appellation of ‘The Savage’; and designed to invoke pathos “Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet”, a metaphor representing Huxley’s view on the eventual death of truth within politics. Verbosity and sentence length is a tool to communicate ideas, but it can work against you. This sentence, for example, is too long and "exhausts" the reader. Clarity does not come from excessive detail, clarity comes from clever word choice and length suited to the idea being communicated. The juxtaposing idiolect “We prefer to do things comfortably” and “All right then," I'm claiming the right to be unhappy” between Mustapha and John, consolidates Huxley’s representation of political compliance through the rejection of contrasting ideals. And yet, the recurrent contrasts of hypnopaedic slogans are an ironic antithesis towards the established artifices; allowing Huxley to establish cognate parallels by intertextually linking The Tempest “Ariel could put a girdle around the earth in fourty minutes” through John and the World Controllers. In essence, “they are bokanovskified” is an emblematic expression of Huxley’s vision; a society induced in mass political complacency due to the constructed artifices of the people in power. This paragraph has a better flow to the ideas than the previous two, but again, what impact has this had on audience understanding?
Ran however, presents a historical approach to the fervent disparagement of politics contrasting the form of digital media, film, it’s conveyed through. As such, Kurosawa’s characterization of Kyoami “entertain us, like you would a frog” is a verisimilitudic simile depicted by low contrast clothing; one of kurosawa’s stylistic efforts in highlighting differences within characters. The composer’s prominence as an experienced political film maker enables him to create dramatic irony as “Master. Take your men to the Azusa Plain!” refers to the jester’s power over his master; easily distinguishable by the audience due to the character’s high modal language which further explores the composer’s emphasized disparagement of classes within society. The established hierarchical order; an artifice for control in the quote “These peasants. They are fools used as our Tools” is accentuated by diegetic cacophony during wide pans of villages and contrasted by smooth camera transitions to the higher ranking classes. This enables Kurosawa to create aposiopesis, “The people are in anarchy and climbing the— “, a symbol for society, malleable in political ideals and thereby brittle in nature and essentially, a stark contrast to Huxley’s represented situation. Yet, the dialogue “Control them, and unbounded problems rise. A new tool needed for each” is an oxymoronic statement, which provides didactic values similar to Brave New World; that social artifices create power struggles because of political differences. My comments for this paragraph are similar to earlier.
While the nature of politics is clear, it’s complexity lies in the inherency of artifices within society. Both Aldous Huxley and Kurosawa are able to convey their interpretations; whether factual or not, and shape the audience’s understanding of disparate perspectives in response to events, personalities and situations. But have you shown us how the audience's view is affected by the representation? Through deliberate selection of prose and filmic techniques, both composers are therefore able to explore political ideologies created within differing individuals.
I'll start by saying that your vocabulary and use of techniques is absolutely fantastic. Way better than my own when I did the HSC, no doubt about it. You show an impressive ability to link the technique and example with the idea being portrayed by the composer, and link to context effectively. There are two things I would suggest as improvements.
1 - Your conceptual base is a little bit unfocused. What I mean by that is, your Thesis is fantastic, but it isn't
quite backed up in your body paragraphs. The idea is that each body paragraph explores a different aspect of your Thesis, with a topic sentence linking the new idea to the Thesis, and a concluding sentence reaffirming that link and saying something like, "Thus, I've further proven my main idea." Essentially (and very basically paraphrased), I take your Thesis to be that dysfunction and conflicting perspectives in governments promotes discussion and effective politics. You sort of back this up throughout your body, but it could be stronger. Be sure that each paragraph has a specific mini-idea that you are backing up to support your Thesis.
2- The missing components of your analysis is
audience impact. This is a representation module, and what you are looking at there is how composers represent ideas
for audiences. You have the representation part nailed, but I'm missing the audience. Be sure to make it clear how the work of the composers is framed to have a specific effect on the audience, this is the idea of representation, and you can even assess the effectiveness of this representation.
A final, totally subjective suggestion I'll make is trying an
integrated response. This means each body paragraph will discuss both texts simultaneously, linking them through some central idea (EG - "the effectiveness of despotic governments"). This has numerous advantages, primarily that your response automatically becomes conceptually focused (a big plus for other modules and still advantageous when discussing representation), and it is much easier to make comparisons between the two. Your paragraphs become slightly longer as a result too, and you'd likely cut from 4 to 3.
Integrated responses, in general, tend to be more effective than non-integrated responses. This doesn't mean that markers view them favourably, it just works out to be an easier and more effective way to structure ideas when you are talking about two texts in tandem. Something to consider, I can go into a bit more detail if you'd like?
All this said, this is a fabulous essay,
do not scrap it! Just take these suggestions and the suggestions from your first response and use them to refine and improve this one
I hope this is helpful for you
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Topic: English Advanced Essay Marking (Modules Only) (Read 714124 times)