Jason Roberts
4th Year, Film Studies
Jason’s paper is trying to grapple with and understand the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, better known as the Coen brothers. He places particular focus on the kind of philosophy and organizing principles that connect all the films in their oeuvre. He pays special attention to their 1987 crime comedy film Raising Arizona as well as, their 2007 neo-Western crime thriller No Country For Old Men.
Jason was inspired primarily because he was taking a class on Auteur Theory that involved the Coen brothers and through the readings he felt that there was a severe contradiction on all the different takes on the directors and he wanted to reconcile those takes for himself – so he wrote a paper about it! Jason is most proud about the way he was able to balance out the theoretical and textual analysis of the films with the theories and interpretations of several scholars and his own.
Jason would consider further developing his findings and research for more of the Coen brothers’ films and of other directors, such as Wes Anderson. Jason is most interested and passionate about writing on the effects of cinematic techniques and how we, the spectators, perceive the information given to us in the film and the ontological effects of cinematic devices.
Having taken a number of Film Studies courses in his years in the program, Jason enjoyed taking Film Theory due to its sheer quantity of new and interesting things he learned each class, as well as the Genre classes, which allowed him to see and consider the cinematic systems of production. Lastly, he very much enjoyed FIST 100 or Introduction to Film Studies because he’s reminded of simpler times and how the course was able to cover a lot of ground in cinema.
Come see Jason Roberts’ symposium presentation on March 29, 2019 at 4:30pm in the Buchanan B Penthouse!
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