User:Juliacohen15/sandbox

Influences on Style and Work
Coppola arrived at a career in filmmaking with a background by means of acting, modeling and design, all of which have influenced her directorial work. Her background in fashion, especially, has played a large part in the aesthetic tones of her films and has heightened the roles of design and style in her work. Her upbringing in a Hollywood family has also greatly influenced her work, as well as her public reception and image, and has always had to fight accusations against her background of privilege. After both winning an Oscar for Lost in Translation and showing The Beguiled, Coppola was accused by some critics of displaying the social and cultural privileges of her own childhood.

Coppola has described some of her influence as coming from her own work, with each film actively influencing the next. She points to Jeffrey Eugenides’s book The Virgin Suicides, which was the inspiration for her first film of the same name, as the reason for her career in film.

Coppola has had to deal with sexism in the industry, and her quintessentially feminine work has been dismissed as decorative and insubstantial. Coppola has said that she is proud of the more “girly” aspects of her work, and that she feels that she has a feminine point of view that she is is happy to project. She has cited her upbringing around so many strong men as a possible reason for her strong connection to femininity. She has been open about her experiences with sexism in the industry and has cited them as a reason she favors working in the independent realm. Coppola has also said that big budget productions hinder her creative freedom, and so she prefers to work on films she can control. She has also criticized big studio production for its focus on business rather than art.

Coppola has cited her own perceptions of gaps in the film industry as her own inspiration, explaining that she has always made the films that she herself would have wanted to see as a younger person. She has described this younger demographic of girls as deprived of high quality videography and as disrespected as an audience. She has also said that she likes making films for a young audience because she perceives them as smarter and more sophisticated than they are often given credit for.

Zoetrope, Francis Ford’s production company, has backed all of her films. Her family ties have proven to hold both pros and cons for Coppola, which she has articulated. Though she learned from her father and is proud of her family, she has said she is happy to have carved her own way. Coppola has also said that she is aware of her hard work and is grateful for her film education, and that her connections in the film industry were helpful because of the lack of female directors She said that she did what she could and is confident that her work is her own. After Francis Ford Coppola did not assist Coppola in securing the rights to the Jeffrey Eugenides novel The Virgin Suicides that her 1999 film was based on, much of the criticism surrounding her familial benefits subsided. Coppola usually involves her father in her projects. She has said that she likes being independent but respects him and his suggestions, though in the end always makes the choice she feels is right for a given movie.

Coppola professed a love for being behind the camera and is not upset by the divisive reactions to some of her films. She has said that she “would rather do something that some people really connect to and some people reject” and that she never wants to make something that is just mediocre.

The Virgin Suicides
Coppola was first drawn to the story after reading the book by Jeffrey Eugenides, who she said she felt really understood the teenage experience and the mystery that exists between boys and girls, as well as emotions. She has also said that if not for the book, she does not know that she would have a career in film. Coppola was scared to direct the film, but felt so connected to the material that she felt she needed to create it. Specifically, Coppola has highlighted the representation of teenagers “lazing around,” a situation she connected with but felt was not seen very much in films in any relatable way.

The story’s theme of loss was a personal connection for Coppola, after her oldest brother had died suddenly in a boating accident, though she says this personal connection was one she says she did not immediately realize. She wanted to make a quality film for young audiences and treat that group with respect and properly examine this deeply emotional period of childhood. The film was low budget and critics were supportive. Coppola credits the start of her career to the Cannes festival after the film premiered there, and has said that this film was what made her a film-maker.

The film has also been said to mark the point at which the public ceased to point to Coppola's father as a reason for her success. Coppola's father would not help her secure the rights to the novel, and so at that point she adapted the screenplay herself.

Lost in Translation
Coppola’s desire to shoot in Tokyo, specifically at the Park Hyatt hotel, is what brought the film to life. The film was a challenge to make, with a low budget and a time frame of 27 days. Coppola wanted to make a film that was a romantic love story without being nerdy.

Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was shot on location at the Château de Versailles.

Coppola has stated that with time, reception to the film has strengthened and reception has warmed and that the film has found its own place, describing it has having more of a life now than when it first came out.

Coppola has managed to forge a distinctive identity in spite of her father’s reputation as a major figure in American cinema. Notably, a commonality of her films is that they all in some way touch on complex relationships between youth and age.

The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, the three aforementioned films, all in some way approach issues of identity and the question of whether it is made or imposed, and do so through elements of teen films such the rites-of-passage narrative and contemporary scores, yet still manage to maintain a specific European arthouse feeling  It has also been suggested that Coppola herself identifies with film’s young woman protagonist, characterized by a sense of naivety and uncertainty of the future.

Coppola herself has claimed that she was initially pulled towards the character of Marie Antoinette as an innocent and caring character who found herself in a situation outside of her control, and that rather than creating a historical representation, she wanted to create a more intimate look into the world of the heroine.

Scholars have highlighted the film as one that contains obvious parallels between Coppola’s own life as a Hollywood “royal” and Marie Antoinette’s position as the victim of xenophobia, malice, and envy.

In terms of Coppola’s personal connections to her films, scholars have described the films as “deliberately idiosyncratic,” as opposed to explicitly autobiographical. Coppola has also not disputed viewers’ readings of her films as somewhat personal to her own life and story, and has claimed that her films are made more for friends and family than the outside world.

In regards to the critics’ divided views of Marie Antoinette, it has been said that Coppola’s use of travesty in the film could have been a factor in the industry’s disparate opinions. Fashion, which can facilitate travesty, is a large part of Coppola’s film in the ways it was used to represent the nature of the period of time and create mood.

The Bling Ring
The film premiered at Cannes and Coppola described the reception as enthusiastic and exciting.

Coppola was first attracted to the story because she felt that it had elements that would make an entertaining movie but also said something important about contemporary culture. Coppola was also struck by the difference in the mentality surrounding fame than when she was growing up. Coppola’s intended audience for the film was both the age of the film’s characters as well as her own generation, and thought that the cultural aspect of the film would be interesting to both audiences.

Coppola has said that younger audiences are more intelligent and mature than most people perceive them to be, and so she likes making movies for this group. Coppola has described the group of teenage criminals as “products of our growing reality TV culture”. She chose to use young, unknown actors (aside from Emma Watson) who were the same age as the real kids because of the freshness they brought to the film.

The house that was used in the shooting of the film was owned by Paris Hilton, who also had a cameo in the film. Hilton was also a victim of the real robberies. Coppola’s father was one of the executive producers of the film.

The Beguiled
The film is based on the 1966 book of the same name by author Thomas Cullinan and was made for under $10 million. The film has been described as a departure for Coppola because of its thriller-like features, among other things, and was the first film she screened for competition at Cannes since presenting Marie Antoinette in 2006—an experience Coppola herself described as nerve-wracking.

Coppola cited her intrigue with the South as part of the story’s intrigue. Coppola has said that she “wanted the film to represent an exaggerated version of all the ways women were traditionally raised there just to be lovely and cater to men—the manners of that whole world, and how they change when the men go away”. Coppola has cited Gone with the Wind as her inspiration for creating a film that was relatable despite its position within a different era.

The 2017 film, however, was not without its own wave of controversy and division amongst critics. Coppola faced accusations of ‘whitewashing’ the original story after she chose to both remove the supporting role of a black female slave in her version of the film as well as choose actress Kirsten Dunst for a character who was biracial in the original novel. She faced criticism for minimizing the story of the people experiencing actual hardship during this time period, in favor of depicting, albeit authentically, the lavish lifestyle of her protagonists.

Coppola has spoken out in support of her directorial choice to not lightly brush over what she recognizes as an important and weighty topic, further citing the presence of young girls as some of her film audience as a reason not to depict this representation of an African American character. The Beguiled is not the only of Coppola’s films to be accused of exposing the sociocultural affordances of her own childhood.

Coppola was also drawn to the story on a more personal level. She has explained that she wanted to tell the story of the male soldier entering into a classically southern, female environment, but flip it and tell the story from the point of view of the women and represent what was like for them. She has described her version of the film as a reinterpretation, rather than a remake, of Don Siegel’s 1971 adaption of the same book. Coppola has described her story as one about strong women, in which she wanted to explore the characters more deeply than was done in the 1971 version of the film. Coppola thought that the earlier version made the characters out to be crazy caricatures and did not allow the viewer to know them.

While some critics claim that Coppola intended The Beguiled as a feminist work, Coppola has explained that she is not in favor of that labelling. Though she has said she is happy if others see the film in this way, she sees it as a film, rather, that possesses a female perspective—an important distinction. The Beguiled was also made as a contrast to The Bling Ring, and Coppola has explained that needed to correct that film’s harsh Los Angeles aesthetic with something more beautiful and poetic.

Additions to "Personal Life"
When it comes to her family, Coppola has purposefully kept a low public profile, and ensuring her daughters’ lives are unaffected by her career and travel is a priority. When asked if her choices as a parent to keep her children out of the spotlight is a result of her own upbringing, Coppola has explained that she never wants her children to be jaded. She fails to see the point of bringing them into her work rather than  allowing them to have a real childhood.

New Section: Family Influence
At 19, Coppola’s family ties to the Godfather Part III, and her performance in it, became a huge Hollywood controversy. It has been suggested that the situation further damaged Francis Ford Coppola’s career and ruined Sofia’s before it had even begun. Coppola has said that she never really wanted to act and only did it to help out when her father asked her to. After shooting, she that she did not want to go into acting. It has been suggested that Sofia’s role in the film may have contributed to its box office performance, which started strong and then began to decline. Coppola has said that her father based a lot of her character on her while writing the script, before she was cast into the role. Sofia herself worried that she had only been given the role because she was the director’s daughter, and the role placed a strain on her during the time of shooting that her mother observed in a series of diaries she wrote for vogue during the filming.

Drafting an Article
New Section: Influences on Style and Work

Coppola arrived at a career in filmmaking with a background in acting, modeling and design. All have influenced her directorial work. Her fashion experience especially has played a large part in the aesthetic tones of her films. It has also heightened the roles of design and style in her work. Her Hollywood upbringing in a prominent family has also greatly influenced her work, public reception, and image. Throughout her career, Coppola has had to fight criticisms of her privileged background. After winning an Oscar for Lost in Translation and showing The Beguiled, Coppola was accused by some critics of displaying the social and cultural privileges of her own childhood.

Coppola has described some of her influence as coming from her own work, with each film actively influencing the next. The Beguiled, especially, was in contrast to The Bling Ring, and Coppola explained that she felt she needed to correct the intense, Los Angeles glare with something more beautiful and poetic.

Coppola has dealt firsthand with sexism in the industry, and has had her quintessentially feminine work dismissed as decorative or insubstantial. Coppola has said that she chooses to be unfazed, and  is proud of the more “girly” aspects of her work. Coppola has also said that she has a feminine point of view and is happy to project it. She has cited her upbringing around so many strong men as a possible reason for feeling so connected to femininity. Her experiences with sexism in the industry have also contributed to her choice to work predominantly in the independent realm. She has said that when it comes to big budget productions, she has less creative freedom and prefers to work on films when she can control every element. She has criticized big studio production for its focus on business rather than art.

Coppola has cited her own perceptions of gaps in the film industry as her inspiration. She has said that she has always made the films that she would have wanted to see as a young person. She thinks that the younger demographic of girls has been deprived of high quality videography and disrespected as an audience.

Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola’s production company, has backed all of her films. Her family ties have proven to hold both pros and cons for Coppola. Though she learned from him and is proud of her family, she has said she is happy to have carved her own way.

In an interview with GQ, Coppola was asked about dealing with questions of her success resulting from family ties. Coppola stated that she is aware of her hard work and is grateful for her film education and that her connections in the film industry were helpful because of the lack of female directors. She said that she did what she could, and is confident that her work is her own.

Additions to “Filmmaking”

Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette was shot on location at the Château de Versailles

Coppola has stated that with time, reception to the film has strengthened and reception has warmed and that the film has found its own place, describing it has having more of a life now than when it first came out (Lodge).

Marie Antoinette, along with The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, all approach issues of identity and the question of whether it is made or imposed. The films do through elements of teen films such as rites-of-passage narratives and contemporary scores. All, however, manage to maintain a specific European arthouse feeling. It has been suggested that Coppola herself identifies with the film’s young woman protagonist who characterized by a sense of naivety and uncertainty of the future (Cook). Coppola has confirmed that she was initially pulled towards the character of Marie Antoinette as an innocent and caring character who found herself in a situation outside of her control, and that rather than creating a historical representation, she wanted to create a more intimate look into the world of the heroine. Scholars have highlighted the film as one that contains obvious parallels between Coppola’s own life as a Hollywood “royal” and Marie Antoinette’s position as the victim of xenophobia, malice, and envy.

In terms of Coppola’s personal connections to her films, scholars have described the films as “deliberately idiosyncratic,” as opposed to explicitly autobiographical (Cook). Coppola has also not disputed viewers’ readings of her films as somewhat personal to her own life and story, and has claimed that her films are made more for friends and family than the outside world (Cook).

In regards to the critics’ divided views of Marie Antoinette, it has been said that Coppola’s use of travesty in the film could have been a factor in the industry’s disparate opinions. Fashion, which can facilitate travesty, is a large part of Coppola’s film in the ways it was used to represent the nature of the period of time and create mood (Cook).

The Beguiled

The film is based on the 1966 book of the same name by author Thomas Cullinan. The film has been described as a departure for Coppola because of its thriller-like features, among other things, and was the first film she screened for competition at Cannes since presenting Marie Antoinette in 2006—an experience Coppola herself described as nerve-wracking. Coppola, who was born in New York and raised in California, cited her intrigue with the South as part of the story’s intrigue. Coppola says: I wanted the film to represent an exaggerated version of all the ways women were traditionally raised there just to be lovely and cater to men—the manners of that whole world, and how they change when the men go away.” Coppola has cited Gone with the Wind as her inspiration for creating a film that was relatable despite its position within a different era.

The 2017 film, however, was not without its own wave of controversy and division amongst critics. Coppola faced accusations of ‘whitewashing’ the original story after she chose to both remove the supporting role of a black female slave in her version of the film as well as choose actress Kirsten Dunst for a character who was biracial in the original novel. She faced criticism for minimizing the story of the people experiencing actual hardship during this time period, in favor of depicting, albeit authentically, the lavish lifestyle of her protagonists. Coppola, however, has spoken out in support of her directorial choice to not lightly brush over what she recognizes as an important and weighty topic, further citing the presence of young girls as some of her film audience as a reason not to depict this representation of an African American character. The Beguiled is not the only of Coppola’s films to be accused of exposing the sociocultural affordances of her own childhood.

Coppola has described her draw to the story on a more personal level, explaining that she wanted to tell the story of the male soldier entering into this classically southern, female environment, but flip it and tell the story from the point of view of the women and represent what it must have been like for them. She has highlighted her version of the film as a reinterpretation, rather than a remake, of Don Siegel’s 1971 adaption of the same book. Coppola has described her story as one about strong women, and that in her version, she wanted to explore the characters more deeply than was done in the 1971 version of the film, which to her makes the characters out to be crazy caricatures and doesn’t really allow the viewer to know them.

While some critics claim that Coppola intended The Beguiled as a feminist work, Coppola has explained that she is not in favor of that labelling. Though she has said she is happy if others see the film in this way, she sees it as a film, rather, that possesses a female perspective—an important distinction.

Additions to “Personal Life”

When it comes to her family, Coppola has purposefully kept a low public profile and has prioritized making sure her daughters’ lives are unaffected by her career and travel. When asked if her choices as a parent to keep her children out of the spotlight is a result of her own upbringing, Coppola has explained that she never wants her children to be jaded and fails to see the point in bringing them into her work as opposed to allowing them to have a real childhood.

Finalizing My Topic: Sofia Coppola
In my research on Sofia Coppola, I hope to be able to dig deeper into the background and context of her work. By more throughly examining writing on Coppola's work, conversations and interviews with Coppola, and other written work that discusses who Coppola is as a person and filmmaker will undoubtedly provide a more personal means of discussing her work, and a greater understanding of how her family, personal, and professional background ultimately impacted her directorial work. Coming from a Hollywood family, Coppola had to deal with challenges that went beyond gender, and there is definitely a huge lack of information surrounding this side of her story.

Below are five additional sources that explore some of these ideas, and more:

1. Cook, Pam. "Portrait of a lady: Sofia Coppola." Sight and Sound 16.11 (2006): 36-40.

2. Kennedy, Todd. “Off with Hollywood's Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur.” Film Criticism, vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, pp. 37–59. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44019394.

3. Lodge, Guy. "Sofia Coppola: 'I Never Felt I Had to Fit into the Majority View'." The Observer, Guardian News and Media, 2 July 2017, www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/02/sofia-coppola-beguiled-i-never-felt-i-had-to-fit-into-the-majority-view-interview.

4. Ruby, Jennie. "Women in Media." Off Our Backs, vol. 37, no. 1, 2007, pp. 14-16. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20838762.

5. Shostak, Debra. "'Impossible Narrative Voices': Sofia Coppola's Adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides." Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 2013, pp. 180-202. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/intelitestud.15.2.0180.

Research on Three Filmmakers
1.    Sofia Coppola

'''a. Lodge, Guy. “Sofia Coppola: 'I Never Felt I Had to Fit into the Majority View'.” The Observer, Guardian News and Media, 2 July 2017, www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/02/sofia-coppola-beguiled-i-never-felt-i-had-to-fit-into-the-majority-view-interview.'''

i.     Lodge’s article focuses on Coppola’s newest film The Beguiled. It is important because while it is not included in Coppola’s existent Wikipedia page, it provides important information about her newest work—and her own thoughts on it. While the article is not a peer-reviewed journal article, it includes important, direct quotes from Coppola about her own, most recent work in a discussion context that is unavailable in previous, peer-reviewed work.

'''b. Ruby, Jennie. “Women in Media.” Off Our Backs, vol. 37, no. 1, 2007, pp. 14–16. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20838762.'''

i.     This source provides information about Coppola specifically and her position as one of the only female directors to be nominated for best director. While this fact itself does appear on Coppola’s Wikipedia page, this article can provide an important quantifiable look at the statistical success of female filmmakers in Hollywood.

'''c. Shostak, Debra. “‘Impossible Narrative Voices’: Sofia Coppola's Adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 2013, pp. 180–202. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/intelitestud.15.2.0180.'''

i.     While this source is Shostak’s own writing on one of Coppola’s most famous works, the article delves into more detail about Coppola’s cinematic technique and the implications it had for the transition of this particular story’s form from writing to big screen.

What I notice most about Coppola’s page and my subsequent search for sources to add to it is that what is most lacking is any critical background to Coppola’s choices both as a female voice in Hollywood and to her films themselves. While on her page currently, all the bare-bones information is there (her films, who stars in them, if they won any awards), there is a huge lack of supplementary information about any of her work. For example, one sentence on a film notes that despite boos from the audience, the film still got a standing ovation and that critics were ultimately divided. Yet, the Wikipedia page does nothing to back up these claims or explain why this was the case or how Coppola reacted to or felt about it. It will be interesting to further dig into Coppola’s work not only through reviews of the work itself but through conversations with Coppola and writing done on her person that will undoubtedly provide a more personal means of discussing her work, and how her family, personal, and professional background ultimately impacted her directorial work.

2.    Lena Dunham

'''a. Columpar, Corinn. “THE FEMINIST POLITICS OF COLLABORATION IN LENA DUNHAM’S TINY FURNITURE.” Indie Reframed: Women's Filmmaking and Contemporary American Independent Cinema, edited by Linda Badley et al., Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2016, pp. 276–287. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0529f.22.'''

i.     This article is important for any discussion of Lena Dunham because of the background and more theoretical aspects it discusses when it comes to her ties to HBO. While her Wikipedia article does of course address her ties to the network in the context of reading scripts and the production of Girls, this article provides important background for the ways in which her relationship with the network influenced her artistic process.

'''b. Filippo, M. S. "“Art Porn Provocauteurs”: Queer Feminist Performances of Embodiment in the Work of Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham." The Velvet Light Trap, vol. 77 no. 1, 2016, pp. 28-49. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/609053.'''

i.     Filippo’s article, focusing on Dunham’s Tiny Furniture and the first four seasons of Girls, digs deeper into the elements of sexuality in Dunham’s work. Part of Dunham’s notoriety does come from the provocative nature of a lot of her work. Surprisingly, her Wikipedia article does not extensively touch on this, which seems odd considering if it’s a huge part of the content and message of her work. While this article is linked under the “Further Reading” section of her article, it is not directly linked to any information within the article, which increases its importance as a source to be examined.

'''c. Wagoner, Mackenzie. “Lena Dunham on Why Talking About Anxiety Is the First Step to Healing It.” Vogue, Vogue, 25 May 2017, www.vogue.com/article/lena-dunham-ocd-anxiety-depression-treatment.'''

i.     This source, with direct quotes from Dunham, explains some of the background of her struggles with mental illness and why she believes it’s important to talk about. While the personal section in her Wikipedia article does address that she has struggled with mental illness, it neglects to talk at all about how it has influenced and added to her professional work, which is usually the context in which she discusses it. While not in the Emory databases, I believe this source provides critical information straight from the source that is unavailable in other academic sources.

Dunham’s Wikipedia page is an interesting one because it discusses many elements of Dunham’s work. One important element that her page is lacking is a substantial personal section. Dunham is an interesting study because her personal life seems so intertwined with her work. Her discussions of mental illness is particularly interesting because she discusses the ways it has impacted her career and the content of her work. However, her Wikipedia article only states that she has battled with mental health issues—it does not include any context, however, for making these personal claims. I was able to find numerous articles that delve into more detail regarding this aspect of Dunham’s personal life, and even more importantly, the ways she has discussed that it has bled into her work. Further, Dunham’s ties to HBO go all the way back to the beginning of her career. Yet, there is no real information, history, or context of this relationship that is discussed in her Wikipedia article. Columpar’s article can provide a means of bridging this gap, as it discusses the “politics of collaboration” and Dunham’s entrance into and position within the HBO network.

3.    Greta Gerwig

'''a. Christian, Aymar Jean. “Joe Swanberg, Intimacy, and the Digital Aesthetic.” Cinema Journal, vol. 50, no. 4, 2011, pp. 117–135. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41240738.'''

i.     This source discusses Gerwig in the context of Joe Swanberg’s work, in which she got her early start. While the article discusses Gerwig more through the lens of its examination of Swanberg, the article none the less provides a means of gaining background and understanding of Gerwig’s earliest work and her breakthrough into the industry.

'''b. Smallwood, Christine. “Greta Gerwig's Radical Confidence.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Nov. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/magazine/greta-gerwigs-radical-confidence.html.'''

i.     This source goes into an in-depth discussion of Gerwig’s directorial debut film Lady Bird. It discusses Gerwig as a director, her cinematic choices, and why the film is such an important one in today’s world. It provides background on Gerwig herself, and answers and explanations for many of the film’s choices and its overall dynamic. This article is already cited in Gerwig’s article on Wikipedia, however, its use is solely to cite a fact of, one could argue, the least importance in the entire article—her parents’ occupations. It is a tragic oversight that this article not be used to provie information for the background of Lady Bird, Gerwig’s award-winning work and directorial debut! Thus, it is important to bring in information from the article that has substantive value for numerous other parts of the article.

'''c. Vilkomerson, Sara. “FLYING HIGH. (Cover Story).” Entertainment Weekly, no. 1500/1501, 02 Feb. 2018, pp. 32-36. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.library.emory.edu/login?url= http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=127578924&site=ehost-live&scope=site .'''

''                                             i.  This source goes to great lengths to discuss with not only Gerwig, but with Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf as well, the importance of Lady Bird not only for its filmic elements but because of its female directorship, as well as an explicit discussion of why it actually didn’t'' matter than Gerwig was a female director. The article’s discussion surrounding gender and its impact on the film, as well as how Gerwig’s own life story contributed to the work is a critical one for not only gaining more background on Gerwig’s directorial debut, but also for gaining background on Gerwig as a person.

Glaringly absent from Gerwig’s Wikipedia article is a section on her personal life. There is one sentenace that states her longterm relationship. While I was not able to find articles about Gerwig’s person per se, many of the articles that I read through the EBSCO search feature were articles that tied in Gerwig’s personal life within the context of her work, such as Sara Vilkomerson’s Entertainment Weekly article. I also found it surprising how little there seemed to be written on Gerwig’s page about Lady Bird. While Lady Bird the film does have its own Wikipedia article, it is also lacking a solid discussion of Gerwig’s overall significance as director, writer, and overall influencer of the work. There is definitely a need to peel back the layers of discussions of Gerwig’s early work and of Lady Bird to discover more about her as a person, and to more deeply explore how her professional and personal trajectory have come to influence and dictate her more current work.

 LIST: 

1.    Sofia Coppola

2.    Lena Dunham

3.    Greta Gerwig

Article Evaluation--Lena Dunham
I chose to evaluate Wikipedia's article on Lena Dunham. The article, in general, reads similarly to many others that discuss celebrities and other notable individuals. As a female filmmaker and an actress, Dunham's page naturally goes into the background of her career more than pages for others who know purely for one or the other. Again speaking generally, the article did a good job of covering all its bases in terms of breadth (as opposed to depth). It discussed Dunham's early life, family background, and education, as well as her breakthrough moment with her film Tiny Furniture. One thing that I did notice was that after noting one of the awards Tiny Furniture received, the article linked to an article on firstshowing.net, which seems to be a website with a wealth of information regarding the film industry, however this website included links to all the IMDb pages of the films it was discussing. I thought it was interesting that the writers of the articles chose to site firstshowing.net when the same information was available on IMDb, which is generally a more widely-known and trusted website. However, as with all of the sources listed that I investigated, the source did support what was written in the article. In this same vein, and to name another specific example, there is also a line in the article that states that the Dunham family are relatives of the Tiffany family, a notable family in the jewelry business. The source listed for this piece of information is an article the Hudson River Valley Heritage website that discusses a Dunham family real estate property in Irvington and claims the connection between the two families. However, it is unclear where this information came from as the HRVH website does not have a citation for this fact or more information about its knowledge of this information. While the aforementioned sources and their links for these specific examples all work and support the information in the article and seem unbiased, the reputable nature of the sources was, for me at least, slightly more uncertain and brought up questions for my own work surrounding how to determine reliability of a source and if one website's knowledge of a single fact is enough to state it as the truth.

I think that Dunham's article does a good job of staying neutral. I think that with artists and filmmakers whose personal lives and backgrounds are as deeply intertwined with their professional work and productions as Dunham's is, it can be very easy to discuss controversy and criticism as personal to them as people rather than to their work. However, I think that this article, for the most part, did a good job of separating and identifying criticism and controversy that was specific to Dunham's work rather than to her as a person. The article's section on Dunham's "Girls" is a prime example of this. Rather than putting the racial criticisms of "Girls" as a separate section in the article or following Dunham's personal section, I thought that it's placement within the section on "Girls" important. Though the criticisms against Dunham were of a more personal nature, and her response to it even more so, it was important to discuss this particular criticism within the framework of the TV show itself rather than tying it into other sections of the article that spoke of her personal life, background, or upbringing (all of which were elements discussed in this particular section on controversy).

Related to this discussion of appropriate placement of information within the article, as well as the question posed regarding distractions within the article, is the mention of the article's "Personal Life" section. This section of the article is shockingly sparse, three sentences long to be exact, which can again possibly be explained by the intertwined nature of Dunham's life and work. The third sentence simply but briefly states something actually deeply personal about Dunham: her diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well of her continued use of antidepressants for her anxiety. While this information certainly qualifies as "personal," the lack of context, background, or relevance for its discussion is completely absent. While Dunham's mental illness is, by any measure, considered part of her "Personal Life," and, shown in the sources, is something she's spoken about it to the public, this mention in the article is confusing. This is because the sources from which this information was obtained actually discuss the disorder in relation to Dunham's work and career, specifically how it influenced the content of "Girls," as well as her book. This again gives rise to the discussion of placement. It is odd, in my opinion, that the writer would choose to state this serious fact regarding Dunham's mental health in such an off-hand manner in the section on her personal life, with no outside context or explanation of relevance to go along with it whatsoever. This immediately makes the reader look at this disorder as a statement about Dunham's person, as well as randomizing and trivializing it, rather than as a part of her life that is important because of its influence and presence in her work. Importantly, it is within the latter context that the cited sources discuss the disorder as well. Based on the sources cited, their content, and their motivations for discussing the topic, it seems questionable that the article chooses to mention this fact as a personal statement rather than in a discussion of Dunham's work. While ultimately, it may be something that does make sense to discuss under "Personal Life," it is interesting to consider, in general, the use of isolated information pulled from cited sources, and the implications and importance of the context in which these sources originally discuss the information, and how the original discussion and context of information affects the placement and discussion of the content within Wikipedia's articles. In other words, what it means to discuss information in terms of Dunham's "personal life" that was originally discussed in the context of her work.

Finally, reading the Talk section of the article provided some interesting insight into the specifics of the use of language not only for the writing of this particular article, but of, as I would imagine, the writing of all of Wikipedia's articles. In a section entitled "Controversy," the article discusses Dunham's involvement in the "defense" of a situation of sexual assault in which one of the male writers of "Girls" was accused by actress Aurora Perrineau. The Talk section features a lengthy discussion centered around the language used to describe Dunham's response and apology for the situation, namely the article's description of her response as a "defense," as well as the intended object of her use of the word "shame" in her initial response. Further, the Talk section discusses the ambiguous nature of the article's language in its discussion of Dunham's apology and what her statement actually stood to represent. The discussion itself is incredibly interesting, and there is an extended argument about whether Dunham's comment of "it is a shame" was tied to the actress who made the claim of sexual assault on a personal level, or to the issue of wrongful accusations. Aside from the interesting content of the debate itself, the Talk page discussion also shed light on the core values of Wikipedia as they related to this specific debate. A large part of the argument was centered around the issue that there were no sources to back up the analysis of Dunham's comments and the claim's of the user who wanted to edit the article. The discussion of original synthesis of fact versus what was stated by the source ultimately became just as large a part of the discussion as the specific content and issue of the argument itself.