My Work

• Sophia’s Script, and Video Essay

Student Work

• Justin’s Post, Script
• Neil’s Post, Script
• Satchel’s Post, Script
• Dexter’s Post, Script
• Sam’s Post, Script
• Jadee’s Post, Script
• Laari’s Post, Script

Guidance for Your Work

“Simple formative analysis of film elements, no matter how precise or insightful, won’t cut it which is why the research question needs to be crafted in such a way that it provides scope for theoretical and socio-historic exploration. It’s basically an EE in disguise but focusing on two very different textual sources.”

• Thoroughly read the Comparative Study requirements in IB Film Guide PDF (including rubrics)
• Watch Mr. Le Duc’s CS Overview Video
• Watch Garrett’s CS Example and Read Garrett’s Two Column Script
  • Notice the color designating justified film language elements
• 3 More Examples and Scoring Guides
  • Comparative Study #1  sources  score
  • Comparative Study #2  sources  score
  • Comparative Study #3  sources  score
• Explore the CHS Library: capital.osd.wednet.edu/academics/library
• Explore The Moving Image Source Research Guide: www.movingimagesource.us
  • The Moving Image Source Research Guide is a gateway to the best online resources related to film, television, and digital media
• Explore Mr. Le Duc’s Film Resources Page for Video Essays
• Examine the CS Poster 1 (PDF)
• Examine the CS Poster 2 (PDF)

Steps and Tasks

1. Brainstorm possible films for the task. You must select TWO films from contrasting cultural contexts.
2. Brainstorm and justify at least three different areas of FILM FOCUS for your two chosen films.
3. Brainstorm and justify at least two different CULTURAL CONTEXTS for your two chosen films.
4. Consolidate your ideas and develop at least three different RESEARCH QUESTION topics for your study.
5. Finalize your choices and select your RESEARCH QUESTION. Choose two films for comparison.
6. Develop the main arguments you will make about your topic.
7. Collect evidence from the films that support your argument.
8. Research secondary sources for information that supports your argument.
9. Write your Narration and plan the audio-visual components of your video essay.
10. Record, assemble, and edit your Comparative Study Video Essay.
11. Create a Works Cited document (separately) once your Comparative Study is finished.

Comparative Study Task Components

For this assessment task, each student identifies, selects, and researches each of the following task components.

1. TASK 1: One area of film focus.
2. TASK 2: Two films for comparison from within the chosen area of film focus, one of which originates from a contrasting time (historical) or space (geographical) to the personal context of the student, and the other film identified for comparison must arise from a contrasting cultural context to the first film. Students are required to select films they have not previously studied in depth. The selected films cannot come from the prescribed list of film texts provided for the textual analysis assessment task and, once selected, the films cannot be used by the student in any other assessment task for the DP film course or the extended essay.
3. TASK 3: A clearly defined topic for a recorded multimedia comparative study, which links both the selected films and the identified area of film focus. Each student should invest time in researching, developing, and honing their topic (which in most cases is likely to be expressed in the form of a research question) to ensure it is clear, focused, and concise, in order to provide them with the maximum potential for success in this task. The topic should seek to enrich the student’s understanding of the chosen area of film focus and should avoid a plot-driven approach to the comparison.

The assessment criteria for this task require students to provide a strong justification for the choice of task components as part of the recorded multimedia comparative study. This includes the student’s justification for how films arise from contrasting cultural contexts.

1. FILM Choices List

Sources about Parasite:

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/parasite-movie-analysis/

Parasite’s win is the perfect excuse to get stuck into genre-bending and exciting Korean cinema

‘Parasite’: Shooting Bong Joon Ho’s Social Thriller Through the Lens of Class Divide

Analyzing Social Class Inequality and Poverty in Parasite With Marxism Theory

Parasite: The Pseudo-Marxist Film on Class Conflict That the Ruling Class Wants You to Watch

A Marxist Analysis of Class Consciousness in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

Class Conflicts seen in Parasite by Bong Joon Ho: A Marxist study (Undergraduate Thesis)

The Social Implications of Metaphors in Parasite

Parasite and the Curse of Closeness

• disillusionment arc, social satire
• wealth vs poverty represents the Kim family’s aspirational beliefs as well as the truth they can’t escape, enriching the character’s emotional journeys.
• The Scholars Stone – represents Ki-Woo’s aspiration for wealth, and wants to be like his friend Min. Line in the CC caption when he first got the stone, “this is so metaphorical” and in the screenplay, How perfect for us. Symbolic. Bong Joon-ho says ” the rock is assigned this very unique position. It’s a kind of obsession for the young son. Throughout the film, he is trying to imitate Min, his rich friend who initiated him into this world.
• SMELL – symbol represents the inescapable poverty of the Kims. People in poverty, regardless of their dreams often do not have the power to join the affluent class.

• production, design, blocking, lighting, and costumes – portray the contrast of class.
• light and darkness, upper – lower, natural- urban.
• Bong Joon Ho – “you’re still half overground, so there’s this hope and this sense that you still have access to sunlight”
• Scholars stone – a symbol of wealth and a physical manifestation of Ki-Woo’s dream of climbing out of poverty
• a path leading up to the light in beginning.
• The film does a good job of illustrating that the Kims are fully capable and intelligent people they work hard and seize any opportunity available to them. But, the parks can afford schooling and tutoring. Unrealized potential of the Kims
• Parallel in the achievements of Chung- sook and Dong-Sik. The medals and certificates. They’re not unskilled workers, they’re not lazy, they just don’t have the same opportunities as those above them.
• with rain, see the wealthy can “stay dry” with the poor having to deal with awful circumstances.
• Min is like a bridge between worlds.

Sources about Fight Club –

• Fight Club follows an unamed narrator who’s struggling to find meaning amid his late-90s consumerist wasteland until he meets the charismatic radical Tyler Durden. Tyler’s philosophy is a total rejection of the unchecked capitalist system that was making people like the narrator miserable and stealing the precious moments of their lives “so, fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns. I say let’s evolve…” – scene in the bar near the beginning. He wants to destroy capitalist society – seen in the end.
• Tyler complains about the spiritual costs of turning ourselves into consumers instead of people.
• At the beginning of the film, the narrator is fixated on the things that he owns and sees his value through the lens of what he can afford. – Tyler’s ideology is a reaction to the narrator’s empty consumerist lifestyle.
• THE MOVIE IS LITTERED WITH ALLUSION TO STARBUCKS- a Starbucks cup is in most scenes. Starbucks is the most visible icon of 1990s consumer culture. they feature in countless frames to convey the ubiquity of a major corporate presence and how it threatens to homogenize our lives. David Fincher described wanting to target Starbucks because while he liked Starbucks coffee personally it was becoming “too successful”.
• Tyler’s dream for the world, and for his terrorist group Project, Mayhem is to return to a primitive state of being where humanity and men in particular can cast off the trapping of modern civilization and go back to being animals.
• Tyler’s plan succeeds, marla and the narrater at the end watch at Tyler’s bombs go off demolishing financial centers and apparently ending wealth inequality – THIS SCENE HAS BEEN CENSORED PARTICULARLY IN CHINA.

Used this video below !

• the film is concerned with us focused on items that we want but don’t need
• implies that advertisements try to shape us into something that we aren’t – subway scene
• Fincher’s intentional Starbucks cup placement, ant-product placement. commenting on our desire to consume but maybe even cinimas involvement in the advertisement.
• the narrator is very focused on material items in beginning he is putting more stock in his items than himself
• the character suffers from insomnia, he is almost like a mindless drone.

• many if not the majority of the scenes are shot at night
• at the time there was a Prada campaign, with monochromatic
• dark and rich scenes. Bright overlit convenience stores. took reality and offset it and add
• a lot of contrast because there was a lot of tension

2. Areas of FILM FOCUS

• Research Film Movements
• Research Film Genres
• Research Film Style (the difference between genre and film style defined)
• Research Film Theory
• See the Examples of Possible Task Components section further down this document

• https://tvovermind.com/interesting-video-visual-aesthetic-fight-club/
• From the sickly glow of fluorescent lights to Tyler Durden’s over-the-top sartorial choices, every color (and color contrast) in this heavily-quoted modern cult classic was meticulously combined — and contrasted— in every scene. In the basement where the punching happens, for example warm lights and warm blood make the scene feel more real and more human than the scenes in office buildings or houses, which are by comparison heavy on sterile, sinister blue and green hues. Watch this video to find out more about how color created the world of Fight Club, which still packs a killer punch almost 20 years after it was released.
• David Fincher movies are dark, very dark.
• Fincher wanted Fight Club to be “a dirty-looking movie, kind of grainy”
• Jeff Cronenweth cinematographer – “the colors we used were more somber than reality
• Lurid was definitely one of the things we wanted to do. We didn’t want to be afraid of color. we wanted to control the color palette.
• In fight club, the strongest contrast is between the narrator and brad Pitt’s clothing. Starch to vibrant.
• Fincher uses color to change the mood and editing to highlight their contrast. To show the corporate/consumerist world vs the fight club world/Tyler world. WHILE PARASITE USES LIGHTING TO SHOW THE DIFFERENCES IN THE POOR Vs WEALTHY.
• The fluorescent green hues on the walls and the character’s skin create a sterile unfriendly environment.
• Fincher cuts away from the corporate world to enter Lou’s Tavern where everything feels warmer. THE TWO WORLDS CLASH WITH COLOR!

The visual style of Fight Club matches the theme of the story. Harsh lighting and dark bleak colors help to convey the tone of the film. But also the shift in colors and lighting also help to show the schizophrenic nature of the protagonist. In scenes where the narrator is away from Tyler and the fight club, the lighting is soft, high-key, and without any shadows. In his office, all the props and costumes have very neutral colors and are plain. Everything in the “normal world” is flat and bland reflecting the protagonist’s feelings towards corporate life and the rut that he feels he is stuck in. Although scenes with Tyler are not necessarily more colorful, the colors are a lot more saturated and vivid. When Tyler is around the lighting is dark and there is a larger contrast in colors and light. The scenes with Tyler are very tense and excessive compared to everyday life, and the hard lighting emphasizes the intensity of this. The low-key lighting in the film creates dramatic shadows, and in many cases there appears to be no fill light at all, creating some very harsh shadows. Although it is a very stylized approach, the lighting of the film still appears realistic. This may be because some of the sources were practical lights that belonged to their locations, such as streetlights for backlighting and fluorescents, which gave the actors a cold, off-color hue that suits the tone.

An example of the cinematography and editing coming together well is during a brutal scene where the narrator beats up so badly that his face is permanently disfigured. The camera angles are important in this scene because the camera was placed beneath the main character, pointing up at him. This placement means the audience has to look upwards at him, therefore making him appear larger than them, this makes him appear more powerful and threatening. This is an intense moment that is supposed to make you cringe. There are even a few shots done in the POV of Angelface, in which it appears that Edward Norton’s punches are coming straight at you, and as the fight progresses these shots become blurrier. According to director David Fincher, when that scene was first screened, no one had a problem with it despite the highly graphic violence. For effect, reaction shots of the crowd watching the fight were added. The next time this scene was screened, the audience was highly disturbed by it. Seeing the men onscreen looking appalled and cringing made the audience feel the same way. This is called the Kuleshov Effect, in which the viewers apply their own emotional reaction to the images they are watching. This is another interesting example of how the form of a film can affect the audience directly.

‘Fight Club’: David Fincher’s Stylish Exploration of Modern-Day Man’s Estrangement and Disillusionment

Jim Uhls (screenwriter) – In our society, kids are much more sophisticated at an earlier age and much less emotionally capable at a later age. Those two things are sort of moving against each other. I don’t know if it’s Buddhism, but there’s the idea that on the path to enlightenment you have to kill your parents, your god, and your teacher. So the story begins at the moment when the Edward Norton character is twenty-nine years old. He’s tried to do everything he was taught to do, tried to fit into the world by becoming the thing that he isn’t. He’s been told, “If you do this, get an education, get a good job, be responsible, present yourself in a certain way, your furniture and your car and your clothes, you’ll find happiness.” And he hasn’t. And so the movie introduces him at the point when he’s killed off his parents and he realizes that they’re wrong. But he’s still caught up, trapped in this world he’s created for himself. And then he meets Tyler Durden, and they fly in the face of God—they do all these things that they’re not supposed to do, all the things that you do in your twenties when you’re no longer being watched over by your parents, and end up being, in hindsight, very dangerous. And then finally, he has to kill off his teacher, Tyler Durden. So the movie is really about that process of maturing.

What did you envisage in terms of style?
Lurid was definitely one of the things we wanted to do. We didn’t want to be afraid of color, we wanted to control the color palette. You go into 7-Eleven in the middle of the night and there’s all that green-fluorescent. And like what green light does to cellophane packages, we wanted to make people sort of shiny. Helena wears opalescent makeup so she always has this smack-fiend patina, like a corpse. Because she is a truly romantic nihilistic. [Cinematographer] Jeff Cronenweth and I talked about Haskell Wexler’s American Graffiti and how that looked, how the nighttime exteriors have this sort of mundane look, but it still has a lot of different colors but they all seem very true, they don’t seem hyperstylized. And we talked about making it a dirty-looking movie, kind of grainy. When we processed it, we stretched the contrast to make it kind of ugly, a little bit of underexposure, a little bit of resilvering, and using new high-contrast print socks and stepping all over it so it has a dirty patina.

Fight club Satire source

Film Focus Possibility – identify the broad focus area and then add specifics (e.g. “THEORY – Auteur theory” or “GENRE – Horror”). Develop at least THREE options…you can create more by adding more rows.	Justification for this Film Focus. Be as specific as possible.
Marxist Film Theory	Social Class Structure/ Class Conflict/ and other class topics are heavy in the films. – Class relations.
Genre Social Satire: more info on the 3 types of satires.	Social satire is a genre of film that relies on irony, exaggeration, ridicule, or humor to critique an unfavorable aspect of society and/or human nature.
Film Style: Social Realism?	Social Realist films reflect the working person’s life, casting a critical commentary on the government, class-divided society, or cultures that exclude the working class based on prejudice.

What Issue Are You Satirizing in Your Social Satire? 
A social satire revolves around whatever aspect of society it’s critiquing. 
Some possible topics might include:
Politics – Power struggles, deception, and deceit in the political sphere.
The Social Hierarchy – How society is structured, and how that structure often disadvantages people of certain races, classes, genders, sexualities, etc.
Technology – How people communicate, how society is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, etc.
The Environment – How humans affect the environment and their ignorance regarding their impact. 
Religion – The psychology of religion, the corrupt aspects of the institution, etc.

Irony

An effective way to highlight the hypocrisy, draw attention to the absurdity of an issue, or even just elicit laughs from an audience. 
There are three types of irony:
Verbal irony occurs when a person says one thing but means something different, often the opposite. One of the most common forms of verbal irony is sarcasm.
Dramatic irony takes place when audience members know information that the characters in the story don’t. 
Situational irony occurs when the expected outcome of an event or situation and the actual outcome doesn’t match. 

Project Mayhem becomes a brand in and of itself, capped with a smiley face – an image borrowed and borrowed REPEATEDLY in ads, t-shirts, motivational posters, plastered in work environments, etc. (If you think that smiley face symbolizes anarchy, I’ll just point out that Tyler quotes Forrest Gump at one point and I’ll let you figure out the rest.) The whole thing is borrowed, commodified, and sold to more and more recruits. Tyler’s great rebellion against corporations and IPs is by… wait for it… creating his own startup company. And these men can’t tell the difference.

Exaggeration

Exaggerated scenarios and characters make it easier to identify the topic being satirized and often force viewers to confront an uncomfortable truth. Almost every social satire features some amount of exaggeration:

Through Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden, Fight Club exaggerates (and personifies) toxic masculinity. 

Exaggeration in fight club – violence, Tyler’s flamboyant personality.

Ridicule

Cruel or harsh are the keywords here.

Juvenalian satire, one of the most abrasive types of satire, relies heavily on ridicule to deliver its critique. Juvenalian satires disdainfully and indignantly attack their subject matter and aim to spark anger in their audience. 
Some examples of Juvenalian satires include:
Social satires that ridicule their subject matter are often more biting and can leave a longer-lasting impact. 
But the best social satires typically don’t attack their subject too harshly. The goal of the critique shouldn’t necessarily be to draw blood or do any real damage, but rather to open viewers’ eyes to an issue. 
Even if you’re condemning something that most people agree is wrong, an overly aggressive approach can make your audience defensive. A social satire should force viewers to look inward and accept their role (if any) in perpetuating the issue. 
But it’s easy for a message to get lost amongst heavy-handed ridicule. Remember, social satire can be biting without being offensive. 
This is not to say you shouldn’t be bold in your critique. Just keep in mind the goal you’re trying to achieve. If you’re striving for a more lighthearted social satire, you may opt to use humor rather than ridicule.

Humor

satire, utilize some degree of humor to critique their subject matter. 
In a social satire, humor should contrast with the significance of the film’s message. This juxtaposition highlights the film’s central critique while also garnering laughs. 
The three previously mentioned elements of satire (irony, exaggeration, and ridicule) can all be used to a humorous effect. Here are some other ways to infuse humor into your social satire script:
Incongruity, or a mismatch between a thing and its surroundings. An incongruity is a form of juxtaposition that typically results in humorously absurd situations.
Inversion, where a script subverts a well-known situation or character type.
Repetition, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a repeating joke whose efficacy relies on audience recognition.
Slapstick humor, or physical humor. In THE FAVOURITE, characters fall out of carriages, throw shoes at one another, pretend to faint at Parliament meetings, and much more. 
Although humor can be a great tool, not all social satires have to be laugh-out-loud funny. In fact, humor in social satires is often more subtle and offbeat. 

Metaphors/Allegories

Metaphors and allegories (extended metaphors) are two commonly used tools in social satires. They’re a simple and effective way to infuse deeper meaning into a story.
Metaphors and allegories create a contrast between the absurdity of the film’s surface-level plot and the gravity of its underlying message. This contrast typically alerts the viewer to the fact that the film is satire. 
The best social satires don’t make their critiques too obvious, however. Viewers should have to work to connect what’s unfolding on screen with the statement the film is trying to make. 
Metaphors and allegories can help a social satire script achieve the optimal balance between subtle and explicit critique. But a social satire should be more than its central metaphor – it should still feature interesting characters, believable conflict, and a structure that makes sense. 
Viewers who don’t catch every intricacy of the metaphor should not only still follow the plot, but they should also be interested in it. So make sure your script isn’t all metaphor with no surface value. 
Social satire metaphors often utilize absurd/outlandish/fantastical elements, which contrast with the film’s serious theme. 

Parasite and Capitalism

While taking place in a foreign country, it is still very relatable. It speaks to our societal structure. It speaks to the gap between the lower and upper classes. It speaks to all of our inner desires for wealth and respect. Parasite speaks to the realities of a Capitalistic society, and Americans know full well what life is like under Capitalism.

Capitalism pits different classes of people against each other. The work of the lower class feeds the profits of the upper class, and the profits of the upper class feed the lower class. It’s a system that requires co-dependency, not unlike a parasite and its host. What question Parasite poses is, “who is the parasite and who is the host?” In a capitalistic society, the gap between classes ensures that one class of people live with constant overabundance, while the other class of people live with constant scarcity.

Parasite follows a lower class family that deceives their way into the upper class before they fly too close to the sun.

Parasite first establishes the barriers between the two classes. Bong Joon Ho does this visually by continuously staging lines or physical barriers between the characters, separating them by class. This effect is also done largely by Dong Ik (Sun-kyun Lee), who repeats many times that he doesn’t want the driver “crossing the line”. Essentially, he’s okay with those in the lower class feeding him, cleaning for him, driving him — doing everything for him — as long as the help remembers to stay on their side. This is demonstrated with the motif of these privileged characters smelling Ki Taek (Kang-ho Sang). Dong Ik says at one point that the stench crosses the line, this being the stench of his poverty; Ki Taek can’t afford to keep his clothes clean.

In the third act of the film when Yeon Kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo) smells Ki Taek in the car, Ki Taek has literally been covered in sewage water, unable to shower, and is barely able to find clean clothes. The smell is a reminder that Ki Taek is not one of them. Throughout the film, as much as the family tries to integrate themselves into the culture of this upper-class family, they are continuously reminded that they are not one of them.

While Parasite acts as a social commentary for South Korean culture, it also speaks so directly to the issues that exist in American society. The middle class is shrinking exponentially. The upper class grows more and more wealthy, and the lower class are left with less and less. Parasite speaks to the co-dependency between these classes, and how both would be devastated by the absence of the other.

It speaks to how our society is structured so that the pursuit of wealth is the ultimate goal, and having as much wealth and power as possible is the game. Even when Ki Woo learns that this pursuit is ultimately hollow, in that the game is rigged against him from the very start so that he will never be able to reach the final destination, he still pursues it.

American audiences are seeing Parasite and are noticing similarities to their own lives. Audiences are recognizing their hopes and desires and realizing their frustrations. It’s pointing out to people the structural flaws in Capitalism, and the myth of the American Dream that anyone can ascend from rags to riches. The most brilliant part about this is that it’s all being done by a film set in South Korea, made by South Koreans.

Fight Club and Capitalism

Tyler Durden says, “We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.”

Fight Club also draws attention to society’s infatuation and obsession with materialism. Hatred of consumerism drives the plot. When the Narrator describes his home, he states, “Like so many others, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.” He obsessively buys useless shit for the sake of buying. He buys food that he doesn’t eat. He buys designer clothes, a form of “masturbation”. He watches the Shopping Network for entertainment. Tyler breaks this dismal cycle with nitroglycerine, blowing it all onto the street. Tyler instructs us to destroy the consumerist culture that plagues the world of Fight Club, but we must personally determine if we find this culture a issue in modern society.

Fight Club also insists popular culture is obsessed with masturbation. Fight Club’s term “masturbation”, emphasizing the self-pleasure connotation, means any form of self-improvement to meet society’s standards. Giving up masturbation means no dieting or working out to look like models, no liposuction to become skinny (when the real problem is poor nutrition in the modern diet), and no shopping for brand-names. The film rails against narcissistic investments to improve our looks in unnatural ways. We should not derive pleasure from wearing Ralph Lauren or by going to the gym to look like Brad Pitt (Tyler).

Tyler sums up the incessant materialism of society in three ways: 1.) “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need”; 2.) “The things you own end up owning you”; and 3.) “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” The capitalist nature of modern society infuriates Tyler, who, in turn, asks us to embody his anger. Corporations bombard us with advertisements 24/7. People salivate for material wealth while compromising their happiness in jobs they hate. Tyler implores the audience to understand that we are not what we own or possess. Living a fulfilling life trumps everything.

Tyler states that “it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” This is where Project Mayhem comes in ‒ the climax of the plot and Tyler’s ultimate goal. Behind the Narrator’s back (actually while the Narrator persona is sleeping), Tyler organizes multiple cells of trained fight clubbers to carry out anti-corporation attacks. They detonate explosives on the foundations of a corporate work of art which then rolls into, and destroys, a corporate coffee shop. They vandalize large corporate buildings. They destroy Apple computers in a store. They accomplish their end goal, blowing up credit company headquarters which erases the debt record. They aim to stymie consumerism and devastate a corporate industry that survives on our materialistic addition. Fight Club’s answer to materialism is the destruction of capitalism.

Fight Club uses visual and auditory elements that imitate advertising tactics. David Fincher, the director, hides a Starbucks cup in every scene. The Narrator claims that in the dystopian future, “when deep space exploration ramps up, it’ll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.” This movie asks us to relook at these seemingly convenient corporations as tyrants seeking to control our lives. Subconscious mind-control through advertising is this story’s antagonist. Even the song that concludes this film, “Where is my Mind” by the Pixies, instructs us to reconsider our existence in society and break-free of our capitalist chains.

Juvenalian

Instead of making the audience laugh, Juvenalian satire aims to make the audience angry. Named after Latin satirist Juvenal, a writer known for his abrasive and vicious rhetorical attacks on the Roman elites and power structure, Juvenalian is Horatian’s darker and more cynical brother. It can be funny, but Juvenalian is rooted in drama.

Parasite – The film has jokes and puts the characters into funny and awkward moments, but the real satire of Parasite is the straight-face depiction of the major gap between the rich and poor. There are moments of heavy irony like the ramen scene when Kim Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) boils instant noodles and tops it off with expensive beef. The scene is a symbol of the collision between the rich and the poor in the film. Symbols like the ramen scene are repeated throughout the film to showcase how the elite family will never allow the Kim family to “fit into” their social class. It is the heart of Parasite, and it is why the film is heartbreaking and deeply troubling. 

Source – Juvenalian satire tends to be more bitter and dark, expressing anger and outrage at the state of the world.

3. Chosen CULTURAL CONTEXT

For this assessment task, “cultural context” involves consideration of some of the following factors, some of which may be blended (such as socioeconomic factors).

• Economic, Geographical, Historical, Institutional, Political, Social, Technological

Identify at least TWO Cultural Context possibilities for your chosen films.	Justification for this Cultural Context. Be as specific as possible.
Socio-economic	The films are about socioeconomic contexts displayed in the films and are represented under criticism of capitalism. In Parasite, the Kims are highly cunning people but their economic fortune forces them to stay impoverished. Their low social status causes them to have a lack of opportunities. So, to use their brilliance to con their way into an advantageous position. The class disparity in South Korea portrayed in Parasite drives a parasitic lifestyle that doesn’t leave room for everybody.  In Fight Club – Tyler and the narrator fight back against the consumerist aspects of Capitalism.
Geographical	The films have contrasting geographical locations, which shows the similarity and differences between the two cultures when it comes to socioeconomic means and/or class structure. In Parasite, the geographical location is South Korea in 2019. This is a relevant cultural context to my topic because… In Fight Club, the geographical location is the USA in 1999. This is a relevant cultural context to my topic because…

The cultural context of Parasite in relation to class inequalities in 2019 –

• in the 1960s, it was an undeveloped country with a poor economy and a poorly educated population.
• for most of the first half of the 20th century Korea was under Japanese occupation. With the end of WW2, they left but the North attacked the south and the war that broke out that left their population mostly illiterate, an industry agriculture based. Then came the “economic miricle”
• Secrets of Korea’s Economic Boom. The first decision of the Korean government in the early 1960s would transform the economy form agricultural to industrial. The way they decided to do it was instead of supporting small businesses, the government decided to build a new economy on several hand-picked family-owned companies. These companies would be called Chaebols.
• Chaebols would be given enormous support from the government in forms of loans, subsidies, tax breaks and any other support they would need in exchange, they would deliver the economic growth that the government wanted.
• The chaebols turned into gigantic global cooperations, and thus needed workers with college education.
• Education fever, a university degree is necessary for anyone to have any kind of success in life.
• It went from a country where only 22% of people could read and write in 1945 to the most educated countries in the world. More than 2/3s of young people have university degree.
• the chaebols made sure they worked HARD. Nowadays south koreans are known to have extreme work ethic and this culture came from the Chaebols, the job at the company was not just a job it was a commitment, the success of the company and the company comes first before family
• Gigantic monopolized companies supported by the state, population were almost everyone has college education and culture of extreme work ethic.
• BUT, this has created a problem. Chaebols comprise of 84% of GDP but only 10% of the jobs, this is because over the years they became really good at growing with out needing to hire many new workers. Today, it is extremely hard to find jobs with a college degree. So there is a
• Even though the South Korean economy is doing really well, the benefits are not trickling down to the regular people and none of the college grads want a manual labor job as they are looked down and have alow pay
• SO, there is a lack of blue collar jobs on one hand and a ton of college grads that can’t use their degrees.

Source 1 – cited

• The film is set in modern-day South Korea and involved many of its day-day customs.

The alcohol – South Korea has a big drinking culture. When Ki-Woo is drinking with his friend, there’s a green bottle on the table that he’s taking shots of. This is soju, South Korea’s number one most popular alcohol. It’s sold everywhere and many people can handle more than one bottle, despite its high alcohol percentage. The second most popular drink in Kora is beer. The Kim family is seen drinking a certain brand of beer. FiLite beer is the cheapest beer on the market and doesn’t have the best flavor.

Housing – The half-basement house the Kim family lives in is a huge topic of discussion. They’re still seen in some neighborhoods in Seoul and this says a lot about social class. The Kim family is halfway between the ground and the rest of the world. In comparison, the Park house is a big deal. Not many can buy an actual home in Korea and the majority of Seoul’s population live in apartments. It’s very high status to be able to not only live in a secure neighborhood but have an actual house with a yard.

The meat in the Ram-don (ramen) – Parasite created a ramen frenzy, as audiences rushed to the supermarket to buy Jjapaguri and Neoguri ramen. Mrs. Park eats the dish after her son doesn’t want it anymore. Mrs. Kim had no idea how to make Ram-don, which is a combination of two ramen flavors mixed with high-quality strip steak. The class divide as “Hanwoo” or strip steak is very expensive in Korea and is seen as a luxury. It can cost up to $10 for 100 grams. Beef is often seen as a meal to eat on special occasions. When first meeting in-laws or important people, it’s a sign of respect and wealth to gift them different cuts of quality meat.

Source 2 –

In a country dominated by Samsung Group and other family-owned chaebol conglomerates, wealth is decidedly concentrated at the top. The top 20% earn the equivalent of around $8,400 a month on average, according to data from July-September 2018. The bottom 20% only make about $1,100 a month.

Compounding matters, there is hardly any class mobility: One’s lot in life is pretty much determined by which family a person is born too. A person is either born with a gold spoon, a silver spoon, or a dirt spoon in his mouth, as the local saying goes.

Despite South Korea’s rapid globalization, many are forced to live underground, much like the protagonists in “Parasite.” The scent defining those left behind symbolized the class difference in the film.

Source 4 – cited

The apartment the Kims live in is not a work of fiction. They are called banjiha, and thousands of people live in them in South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

The banjihas are not just a quirk of Seoul architecture, but a product of history. These tiny spaces actually trace their roots back decades, to the conflict between North and South Korea.

In 1968, North Korean commandos slipped into Seoul on a mission to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee.

The raid was thwarted, but the tension between the two Koreas intensified. That same year, North Korea also attacked and captured a US Navy spy ship, the USS Pueblo.

Armed North Korean agents infiltrated South Korea, and there were a number of terrorist incidents.

Fearing an escalation, in 1970 the South Korean government updated its building codes, requiring all newly built low-rise apartment buildings to have basements to serve as bunkers in case of a national emergency.

Initially, renting out such banjiha spaces was illegal. But during the housing crisis in the 1980s, with space running short in the capital, the government was compelled to legalize these underground spaces to live in.

In 2018, the UN noted that despite having the world’s 11th largest economy, South Korea’s lack of affordable housing was a substantial barrier – particularly for young people and poorer people.

For under-35s, the rent-to-income ratio has remained at around 50% during the last decade.

So semi-basement apartments have become an affordable response to rapidly-growing housing prices. Monthly rents are around 540,000 Korean won (£345; $453), with average monthly salaries for people in the 20s around 2m won (£1,279; $1,679).

Nevertheless, some banjiha dwellers struggle to overcome the social stigma. But not all.

“You know, I’m genuinely OK with my apartment,” says Oh.

“I chose this place to save money and I’m saving a lot from it. But I’ve noticed I can’t stop people from pitying me.

“In Korea, people think it’s important to own a nice car or a house. I think banjiha symbolizes poverty.

“Perhaps that’s why where I live defines who I am.”

Parasite and the Curse of Closeness

The anxieties of proximity explored in Parasite are rooted in South Korea’s past. The first half of the 20th century in the country was marked by brutal Japanese occupation and the devastation of the Korean War. But since the 1960s, the gross national income per capita in South Korea has risen from $120 to $30,600. This rapid economic growth, which was driven by a handful of family-owned companies known as chaebol, relied on extensive government support for enterprises deemed most likely to succeed. The development strategy of rewarding the moneymakers has neither the scholarly propriety of supposed meritocracies based on exams nor the implied inescapability of heredity and, after nearly 60 years, this approach remains embedded in the country’s economic policy.

The antipathy between rich and poor that lies at the core of Parasite, then, is rooted less in the difference between the two families than in their similarities. The Kims and the Parks bear two of the three most common last names in South Korea and, like 96 percent of the population, they share the same ethnicity and language. Each household’s wealth was likely made within a single generation. In theory, the financial inequality between them is recent and precarious enough to be provisional but is undeniable in material terms. Both sides eat the same instant noodles, yet only one can afford the beef.

Though Parasite is mainly about interclass conflict, its most brutal scenes depict fights between members of the working poor. Here, as in the rest of Bong’s films, violence is not a path to liberation; it instead offers a fleeting catharsis that upholds more of the status quo than it destroys. For families like the Kims, advancement under capitalism involves beating out their peers for limited opportunities, to the extent that parity with others in the working class begins to feel like a failure.

In their attempts to get ahead, the Kims end up replicating the abuses of the wealthy—fraud, conspiracy, blackmail, and assault—against the poor, whose ranks they desperately wish to leave. When Ki-taek wonders about the fate of the driver his family schemed to get fired, Ki-jung snaps: “We’re the ones who need help. Worry about us, okay?” But unlike the rich, the Kims cannot hide their transgressions behind masks of respectability and institutional legitimacy. When the basis for their employment by the Parks is revealed to be nepotism, a mainstay of elite consolidation, the news media and their audiences are scandalized.

There is a Korean phrase that is commonly used to police people who act above their station: niga mwonde? Though the most faithful English translation is “Who do you think you are?” the sentence literally means “What are you?” South Korea is not the only country in which the rich and poor continue to live in close quarters, even as the disparities between them widen. The danger in such a system, Bong’s film suggests, is that one day people may find it easier to discount the humanity of fellow citizens than to address the unfair divisions in their heavily stratified society. That is the nightmare world of Parasite, where the question niga mwonde? is earnestly posed and yields no easy answer.

The cultural context of Fight Club in relation to consumer capitalism during the 90s

Source 1 –

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-brief-history-of-consumer-culture/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23860393

Economic ‘Boom’ of the 1990s is a Bust for the Middle Class

• For the last few years, the American economy has been on a real bender. Consumer spending, fueled by mounting personal debt and a gravity-defying rise in the stock market, has set off an economic boom that has boosted job prospects and incomes across the board
• Economists like to measure economic performance over a complete business cycle. This avoids exaggerating the bad news in downturns or the good news in upturns. The last business cycle reached its peak in 1989 when the unemployment rate hit a low of 5.8%. Using 1989 as a benchmark, the economy has grown substantially more productive in the 1990s, but working families have seen little of the gains.
• The average American worker now produces about 12% more in an hour’s work than he or she did back in 1989, but, after adjusting for inflation, the typical worker’s wages have increased only 1.9%. The typical woman (up 3.4%) did better than the typical man (down 1.8%), but she still earns only 77 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart. Given that wages and salaries are the main source of income for middle-class Americans, it’s not surprising that the inflation-adjusted income of middle-income families grew just $285 between 1989 and 1997 

https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2000/delong.html

https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1999-12-19-3271480-story.html

• the decade started with a recession but became a decade of acquiring things for self-worth
• “a robust economy created an orgy of consumer spending. And it is consumer spending that has continued to fuel economic growth”
• “Never before have Americans had so much credit available and so many products to buy”
• “We began around the mid-80s hearing the question: ‘Will you be able to live as good a life as your parents?'” said Lehigh University sociology professor Jim McIntosh.
• A 1995 survey found 82 percent of Americans agreed most people buy far more than they need, according to a report sponsored by the Merck Family Fund called “Yearning for Balance: Views of Americans on Consumption, Materialism and the Environment.”

The 1990s economic boom in the US impacted consumerism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58fL6zBnnUM – use this video in the comparative study? when talking about cultural context?

• late 1990s economy, a portrait of high consumption. VIDEO FROM 1999! – perfect
• expansion, thanks to spirited consumer spending
• Personal income shot up at the highest rate in five years and the unemployment rate remained near a 30-year low.
• Also, initial jobless claims fell by 13,000 last week suggesting increased demand for workers.
• consumer spending helped the growing economy.
• Worries for inflation in the future.
• consumers are spending a great deal of money on debt, stock market is a driver for the consumer as well.
• Break in the stock market = impact negatively on consumer spending and the economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom

• The 1990s were remembered as a time of strong economic growth, steady job creation, low inflation, rising productivity, economic boom, and a surging stock market that resulted from a combination of rapid technological changes and sound central monetary policy.
• The prosperity of the 1990s was not evenly distributed over the entire decade. The economy was in recession from July 1990 – March 1991 GDP growth and job creation remained weak through late-1992. Unemployment rose from 5.4% in January 1990 to 6.8% in March 1991, and continued to rise until peaking at 7.8% in June 1992. Approximately 1.621 million jobs were shed during the recession.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/10/the-roaring-nineties/302604/

• At the height of the 1990s economic boom—a period of unprecedented growth—capitalism American-style seemed triumphant. After sluggishness in the 1970s and 1980s, productivity in the United States had risen sharply, to levels that exceeded even those of the boom following World War II.
• There is no question that the nineties were good years. Jobs were created, technology prospered, inflation fell, and poverty was reduced.
• Any story of the economic boom of the nineties has to begin with the recession that preceded it, in 1991—a recession brought on in part by the long-overdue bursting of the 1980s real-estate bubble. This bubble was caused primarily by the tax giveaway of 1981 and by the poorly designed financial-sector deregulation carried out under Ronald Reagan. The infamous savings-and-loan debacle—in which the U.S. government had to bail out banks devastated by nonperforming real-estate loans—dearly cost not only the federal budget but also the economy. In its aftermath new banking regulations were put in place, and the flow of capital dried up—as did, in a slowly unfolding way, the economy itself. 

4. RESEARCH QUESTION Possibilities

Your Chosen Area of Film Focus	The topic for Comparative Study (written as a research question)
Marxist Film Theory	To what extent does the socio-economic environment of a film influence its depictions of class conflict?
Marxist Film Theory	How do the films Parasite and blank use Marxist theory to portray socioeconomic classist imbalance?
Genre: Social Satire	How do the films Parasite and Fight Club use the elements of Social satire to capture the oppressive culture of capitalism?

5. Final Decisions

Your Chosen Area of Film Focus	Film 1	Film 2	Contrasting Cultural Context	The topic for the Comparative Study practice task (written as a research question)
Genre: Social Satire (Juvenalian)	Parasite	Fight Club	Geographical and socioeconomic	How do the films Parasite and Fight Club use the elements of Juvenalian satires to criticize the realities of capitalism?

6. Developing Your Topic

Develop 3-5 main arguments that can be made about your topic based on your research question and chosen film focus.	Brainstorm how you could support these arguments within your video essay.
Stairs	To symbolize the struggles with climbing up the “social ladder”. Seen with falling, and other actions to show the struggle.
Lighting	Lighter – bourgeoisie area < – > Darker – proletariat
Visual Inequality	Significant height and structure differences/choices to show the contrast between classes.
The infiltrator	Parasite – in up and out down. / The mirrors in the Servant show ulterior motives.
Chekov’s gun?	The rock – Parasite / and the poison – The Housemaid

7. Selecting Supporting Evidence (Primary)

Identify at least 15 scenes from your chosen films that will help support the arguments you have outlined above. Screen clip a frame from each scene below.	Write notes about how this scene helps support your argument. (These notes will help form your voice-over narration.)

*Add more rows as needed.

8. Selecting Supporting Evidence (Secondary)

• Set a timer
• How much time did you spend:  ? 

Identify at least 3-5 secondary sources (articles, books, websites, video essays, etc.) which provide information that help support your arguments being made. In this column include the specific source citations.	Summarize the detailed information from the secondary source that you can use in this column. (You can copy+paste if they are from online sources.)

*Add more rows as needed.

9. Writing Your Narration

• Set a timer
• How much time did you spend on the first draft: ? 
• How much time did you spend on the final draft: ? 

Using the information, scene choices, and external sources you have compiled in steps 6-8, you will now write your voiceover narration and match it up to your chosen visual examples.

Length (</= 10 Minutes)

• For the final Comparative Study, your narration should be no longer than 10 minutes in length.

Remember that you need to:

• COMPARE and CONTRAST your two chosen film using the arguments and evidence you identified in parts 6-8, above
• Begin your narration with a detailed justification for the chosen cultural contrast
• Use an equal balance of the two selected films.
• Write in a third-person voice to construct your argument (similar in tone to your Extended Essay and other
  comparative analytical work you have written in Film class).
• Identify where any WRITTEN TEXT will appear on the screen and highlight this (to reference during the
  creation/editing stage)

Which Visual Evidence/Scenes line up to this part of the narration?	Voiceover Narration Ideas

Formatting Guidelines

• Watch the Formatting of an Audio/Video Script in Celtx
• Assemble in Two-Column AV Format in an option below
  • in Celtx
  • in Google Docs (Tutorial) (2:00)
  • in Word (Tutorial)

10. Assembling the Comparative Study

• Set a timer
• How much time did you spend:  ? 

Now you will collect all media resources needed for the task and construct your video essay.

REQUIRED STEPS

• Import the digital copy of your chosen films into editing software
• Identify and extract chosen scenes and clips
• Place and edit clips into a rough timeline for your video essay
• Record audio narration (both partners should participate in narrating this practice task)
  into an audio file using recording equipment (Zoom recorders, iPhone, DSLR Rode video
  mic, etc.)
• Import your recorded narration audio file into your project timeline
• Assemble, edit and fine-tune clips and narration until your video essay takes shape
• Create and add any required textual information in the timeline (including black slate at the start)
• Audio mixing of narration and movie clips (adjust levels so that narration and movie sounds complement each other)
• Export the final video essay movie file
  • Upload Unlisted draft to YouTube for peer review

11. Create Works Cited

• Set a timer
• How much time did you spend:  ? 
• Create Works Cited document separately (Google Doc)

Examples of Possible Task Components

Area of film focus	Film 1	Film 2	A possible topic for comparative study
Film movement: German Expressionism	The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)	Edward Scissorhands (1990)	How and with what effect are specific film elements of German expressionism used within a chosen contemporary film?
Film movement: French New Wave	Breathless (1960)	Badlands (1973)	The influence of the French New Wave on New Hollywood’s use of innovative film elements in its representation of youth and violence.
Film genre and film style: Black comedy	No. 3 (1997)	The Big Lebowski (1998)	To what extent do “black comedy” films differ according to cultural context?
Film theory: Soviet Montage	Battleship Potemkin (1925)	Koyaanisqatsi (1982)	To what extent are specific features of Soviet montage theory faithfully employed in a contemporary experimental film?

External Assessment Criteria SL and HL

• Thoroughly read and examine your work with the Comparative Study Rubric (PDF)

Peer Review Checklist

TASK COMPONENTS (ACTION)	Notes / Suggestions
__	Assemble Findings
__	Develop a personal and critically reflective perspective
__	Identify and gather appropriate audio-visual material to support the study
	SCREENPLAY
__	Justify the chosen topic and selected films
__	Make sure that the text is in a formal academic register (can be in the 1st person)
__	The balance between visual and spoken elements
__	Make clear reference to your sources as on-screen citations (text on-screen)
__	Make sure the primary weight of evidence for the study from the two chosen films
__	Make sure each film is given equal consideration
__	Make sure film language information is communicated clearly throughout (avoid “to be” verbs – make statements like “blah is this.”)
__	Make sure information is communicated logically rooted in film language
__	Have another student highlight the WHAT WHY HOW in your draft screenplay
	VIDEO ESSAY
__	Recorded voice and edited commentary numerous times until happy with the material
__	Make sure your name and the school’s name ARE NOT IN THE ESSAY
__	Make sure to have 10-second title card with:1. Area of film focus2. Titles of the two films for comparison3. The chosen topic
__	Include breaks in your recorded commentary to enable other audio-visual material included in the study to be clearly heard (if needed)
__	Make sure film clip length matches points being made
__	Make sure still images have citations on-screen if you have them
__	Make sure text on-screen is legible and spelled correctly
__	Make sure information is communicated audibly (levels are good for all sound)
__	Make sure information is communicated visually appropriate manner
__	Make sure background music is from Creative Commons and is cited
__	Make sure edits are clean
__	Make sure the presentation is 10 minutes maximum, including title card and credits
__	Make sure two films are listed in sources