How It's Gone So Far

It's about ten p.m. on Sunday night. Suzanne, exhausted after a long weekend, is asleep. Parker is in her bassinet, snorting and grunting, trying to decide whether or not she's going to join Suzanne in dreamland. (I'm betting not - but that's okay. She's pretty adorable when I get to pick her up and walk her around in the night. She just looks up at me, her eyes bugged out because of the dark.)

We got back from Detroit last night around nine. Between rainy weather most of the way and the various delays and challenges related to traveling with an infant, by the time we got home, we were whipped. If it were any other Sunday, we probably would have stayed home from church this morning but the whole reason we came back from Michigan as early as we did was so the girls could participate in the Primary program in the ward. Plus, Suzanne and I both had to teach lessons during the third hour.

Anyway, our time in Michigan was short but rewarding. We got to see Suzanne's parents, Ben and Erin Griswold and their kids, Amy Day and her kids. There was plenty of laughing and good food. (We went to Pine-Land in Farmington Hills with Ben and Erin for dinner on Friday and lo, it was awesome.)I dropped by YDB for a quick visit and we even got to stop at The Peaceable Kingdom and The Vault of Midnight in Ann Arbor.



The exam? Well, that went okay too. I arrived in Detroit at about 8:30 on Friday morning and it was raining like crazy. Fortunately, no one wants to do much that early in the city so there was a free (!) parking space right next to my building. I parked, unloaded my fifty pound rolling suitcase of books, and headed to the 9th floor. The grad dept. secretary took me to a conference room, gave me a department laptop and a list of eight questions and basically said, "See you in four hours."

There were four questions focused on Classical Hollywood Cinema and four on Film Noir. I had to choose one from each category and then I got to pick whichever for the third one. I averaged about 1,600 words and an hour and a half per essay. The first two I feel pretty confident about and the third one was hopefully good enough. It wasn't awful but it wasn't the greatest thing I've ever written either.



The questions I wrote on were:

- Outline the history of the Production Code, and discuss its influence upon filmmaking in classic Hollywood. What changed between pre-code films and films made under the code? What changed when the Code began to break down in the 1950s? How did the Code affect, not just filmmakers' actual depictions of violence and/or sexuality, but in the ways in which they thematized violence and/or sexuality?

- Many film noirs deal with themes of alienation, social disaffection, or anxiety, what Georges Sadoul succinctly described in his review of The Big Sleep, as "fundamentally opaque, like a nightmare or the ramblings of a drunk," with characters as much entrapped in psychological malaise as in a criminal underworld. With detailed references to at least 2 noirs, assess the usefulness of this framework for understanding noir.

- After the debates of the seventies and eighties exhausted themselves over whether film noir could be considered a movement, a cycle, or a historical period, different theoretical approaches emerged to challenge then dominant readings of noir. Some of these approaches turned to the homme fatale, or looked at generically hybrid or "problem" noirs, or examined the structuring role of race or gender. With reference to at least two theorists, and at least one film noir, outline some of these methodological approaches and assess how they have challenged and reframed what we might understand as "film noir."

That last one was the question that, even as I write it now, I feel the least confident about. I hope to hear back from my committee chair this week and get a sense for whether or not my work was acceptable.

This coming Friday is the real nail-biter though. It's one thing to sit in a room by myself and pick and choose the questions I answered and be able to consult my books and notes. It's a whole other ball of frightening wax to sit in a room with three very knowledgeable professors and have to answer every question they ask with no notes or books to fall back on. I'm kind of freaked out.

I do appreciate the good wishes, prayers, Buddist incense, and good vibes that have come my way. Please keep it coming. I can use it now more than ever.