Upcoming Writing Project! Birdman Analysis

Last year I had turned in a final paper on the topic of Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) for my American Literary course. The movie is riddled with references to Raymond Carver works and even a little Macbeth. It was a paper that I struggled with but enjoyed writing because I am a diehard movie lover. I adored this movie and everything about it and jumped on the chance to write about not just the literary importance, but the cinematic value and themes of "reality versus perception" that the film explores.

With the advice of one of UPJ's Literature professors, Dr, Jeremy Justus, I'm returning to this paper and focusing more on those themes of reality. I'm hoping to really dig into this project and get a bearing for film analysis. I'm hoping, too, that the material I develop has enough weight that I can present again at UPJ's undergraduate research conference, SPACE. Even without that honor in mind, I want to polish this for my own growth in writing and humanities research ability.

To give a preview on what this will be about, I'm focusing mainly on the three realities of Birdman. There is the objective reality of the film's world, the subjective reality of Riggan Thomson's (Michael Keaton) mind, and the objective reality of the audience's world. I'll be looking at the diegetic elements of the film as evidence of which reality is present at which time and explain where they parallel.

I actually made three completely different drafts for the original paper and am pulling from all four versions along with additional research for this updated project. There is still a lot to decide if I want to keep the literary allusions as a topic (because they are important still) or if I want to keep this purely cinematic. For now, I'm just excited to be working on this topic I love so much again.