6 4 historical analysis essay progress check 2 1

Essay Progress Check 2

Reopen firstname_lastname.Essay and review the introduction and three body paragraphs that you’ve written. Make sure your introduction contains your thesis statement. Check that the three body paragraphs follow the P.I.E. method.

Proofread your document, checking for typos and missing words. After making any last-minute tweaks, save firstname_lastname.Essay locally on your computer. Refer to the Essay Progress Check 2 Guidelines and Rubric document located in Theme Three under 6-4 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check 2 to ensure that your work meets all the submission requirements and grading criteria. Once you are confident your submission is complete, save this document a final time and submit it to your instructor by clicking on the assignment title within Theme Three under 6-4 Histrical Analysis Essay Progress Check 2, then Add Attachments and uploading your assignment.

Drafting an Essay

Throughout Theme: Analyzing History, you have been learning how to draft and write the body of your final paper. Click on each of the tabs below to learn about some more general tips for writing a strong historical analysis essay:

State Your Argument Clearly

Use Evidence

Focus on the Text, Not on Yourself

Be Open to Revision

Sample Submission

The sample submission below is part of an essay on the integration of African Americans into the movie and television industry. It includes an introduction and three body paragraphs; those paragraphs provide historical context for the effort to “integrate Hollywood.” Read it over as a reminder of what’s expected in your own submission; pay particular attention to the thesis statement and the structure of the body paragraphs. But remember, this is a finished submission; you may not be this far along in your research at this point in the course.

Click on the highlighted text to learn more about the individual pieces of the writing plan.

Jane Doe

HIS 200: Applied History

Southern New Hampshire University

May16, 2016

Draft Submission: Integrating the Movie Industry

In 1988 Eddie Murphy, the African-American comedian and actor, presented the Oscar for Best Picture at the 60th Academy Awards—but not before chiding the assembled Hollywood movers and shakers about the lack of diversity in Oscar’s past.
As this video of Murphy’s speech shows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNAePAAYPrc ), when he was first approached about presenting the award his initial reaction was “I’m not going, because they haven’t recognized black people in the motion picture industry.” (Murphy, 1988) Fast forward 28 years, and the same complaints were heard about the lack of African-American representation among 2016’s Oscar nominees. But the continuing argument about the underrepresentation of African-Americans in Hollywood misses a crucial point.
Despite years of often-fiery debate over the lack of diversity in Oscar nominations and alleged racism on the part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, history shows that when it comes to dealing with racial themes and issues, the movie industry is motivated primarily by economic concerns. As the African-American Oscar winner Morgan Freeman once noted,
“I don’t think Hollywood is racist; I think Hollywood lives and dies on greed.” (Miller, 2016)

There can be little doubt that
the movie industry, as an economic institution, has long lacked diversity. While the proportion of African-American actors cast in movie and television roles has in recent years roughly mirrored the African-American share of the nation’s population (12.2 percent)—this figure has in fact fluctuated in a narrow range from 13 percent to 15 percent over the last 15 years (SAG/Aftra, 2009)—
the proportion of blacks in influential non-acting roles has been much lower. Recent statistics show that only 5 percent of the writers in the film sector of the Writers Guild of America (West) were African-Americans. And for movie directors in the Directors Guild of American, the comparable figure was just 3.6 percent. (Historical data show that the proportion of African-American writers and directors was even lower in past years.) (WGAW, 2014; DGA, 2015) The number of African-American producers (aside from actors and directors who establish their own production companies) is difficult to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is quite small. (Lee, 2014) Taken together, these statistics clearly show that, among the people who directly influence the content of the movies and the types of roles that will be available to black actors, African-Americans have been significantly underrepresented.
It is unclear what impact, if any, this underrepresentation has had on Hollywood’s artistic choices. But the historical record is very clear when it comes to another point: from its earliest days, the content that Hollywood created—”the movies” themselves—has typically reflected only what its audiences have been willing to pay for. At the beginning of the 20th century, before the Great Migration that drew millions of African-Americans out of the rural South, the potential African-American audience for Hollywood movies was extremely small (U.S. Census Bureau: American FactFinder), and the fledgling movie industry accordingly produced virtually no content for that audience. At the same time, overtly racist attitudes were common among many American whites, particularly in the South, and the movie industry catered to that potential audience with overtly racist films such as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. As the potential audience for films about African-Americans began to grow, small independent producers began to make “race films” aimed specifically at African-American audiences; these films did not receive wide distribution because the major Hollywood studios, which owned thousands of movie theaters across the country, declined to show them. It was only after the Supreme Court ruled that the studios would have to give up their ownership of theaters—forcing them to compete for the theaters’ business and for a share of the growing African-American market—that Hollywood began to incorporate more African-American characters into mainstream films.(Leab, 1975) This major change in movie content came about in direct response to changing market forces.
Other forces also influenced changes in Hollywood’s approach to African-American characters and themes, but most were rooted in economics, not ethics. One major factor: the outlawing of segregated public facilities during the civil rights era meant the end of “blacks only” theaters, which in turn helped put an end to “race films” and forced the studios to find ways to appeal to African-American audiences. (Caddoo, 2014) At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement itself generated increased public sympathy for the cause of African-American rights; this in turn boosted the marketability of films with African-American actors such as Sidney Poitier, or those that dealt with themes of racial tolerance, such as Lilies of the Field or To Kill a Mockingbird. (Bristor et al, 1995) Again, what America saw on the silver screen was a reflection of Hollywood’s bottom line.

The Body of Your Essay

You should have written the introduction to your historical analysis essay, and now it is time to start drafting the body of your paper. In this exercise, you will be required to draft three paragraphs that will go in the body of your paper. You should plan to spend one to two hours on this assignment.

Construct each paragraph using the P.I.E. method. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence, include evidence from you research, and relate back to your argument.