Group Presentation/Discussion

My English professor wanted my classmates and I to create a presentation from one of the primary texts he gave to us to choose from in class. At first I signed up to be in a group that would analyze the concepts of the famous hit television show Sex and the City. Literally 30 minutes after I signed up to be in that group I changed my mind. I wanted to study a text of which I didn’t know much about but had heard of a million times before. So I scratched my name from the list and added it to the Breakfast at Tiffany’s group instead. I feel so fortunate to have worked with such brilliant classmates. Most all of the members and I met once outside of class to figure out what research we would contribute to the presentation. It was then formed into an outline by Kim who emailed it to all of us.

I decided that I wanted to focus on introducing our discussion by watching a little bit of the movie and then telling the class briefly that the book is entirely different. Kaytlen would later describe some of the differences between the two. Before the movie starts I decided to hand out popcorn. This idea came about after reading page 7 of the Romantic Comedy Boy Meets Girl Genre text written by Tamar Jeffers McDonald. McDonald says genre critics have worked to unsettle assumptions contesting the idea that all genre films are inevitably “popcorn movies.” As soon as the section of film is shown the lights will go back on and I will explain to the class that while the movie may have a “popcorn” feel to it the book is completely different. The movie may be happy go lucky, but I want to introduce the real Holly Golightly.

After the movie is watched and all hungry tummies are fed I will go into a brief deconstruction of what Holly Golightly is like. Some examples of what I may talk about are:

1) Women were supposed to know their place in society. They were not to question who they are or should be. Golightly contradicts society’s values. She is born before her time.

2) Golightly hides everything, yet is blunt and straight forward toward others.

3) She acts as a constant binary. Also, she seems to always fleeing for something, but never searching for anything.

4) She is always on the run from herself yet she is not conscious of it.

I will then pose this question to the class: “When you think of Holly Golightly how does she bust all of the general stereotypes of her time?

Hopefully the class engages in my topic of the discussion and everything else I talk about will be branched from there. I want the students to use their creative minds without telling them every little detail in hopes that they read the book.

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