Movie Reaction Paper 1 — Political Anthropology
Film: The Wave (Die Welle) (Gansel, 2008) https://archive.org/details/the.-wave.-2008.1080p.-blu-ray.x-264.-aac-5.1-yts.-mxCourse unit: Chapter 8 — Authority, Decisions, and Power
PurposeThis assignment asks you to analyze how The Wave represents the formation, exercise, and normalization of authority and collective power. Using political anthropology concepts from Chapter 8, examine how leadership, conformity, discipline, and group identity emerge and operate in the film.
Length1,200–1,500 words (≈3–4 pages, 1.5-spaced).
Concise, focused papers are encouraged; meeting the lower end of the range is perfectly acceptable if your analysis is clear and well developed.
Key analytical directionsYour paper should engage with the film as an anthropological case study. You may consider questions such as:
How is authority established and legitimized in the film? What mechanisms of discipline, surveillance, or conformity appear? How do symbols, rituals, or collective practices produce solidarity? How do individuals negotiate obedience and dissent? What does the film suggest about susceptibility to authoritarianism? Your analysis must explicitly incorporate at least one political anthropology conceptfrom Chapter 8 (e.g., coercive power, hegemony, imagined communities, resistance).
Formatting, sources, evaluation, submissionFollow the Movie Reaction Paper guidelines shared in the Resources folder on Brightspace.
Submit as Word → PDF. 1.5 spacing. Proper citations for any course readings or external sources.