Don’t mimic this pedagogical approach in your essay, stick to developing your interpretation.

A 4-6 page interpretation of a film of your choice. The use of secondary sources is allowed but not required.
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In writing an interpretive essay, keep in mind that it shouldn’t look/sound like the classroom experience. In analyzing and interpreting the text assignments during class we have the freedom to get off track; therefore, the digressions and/or references to pop culture or real life current affairs are tools for ensuring everyone in class understands certain points, but in doing so we always return to the text. So, the classroom is a different kind of space and context which uses a different presentation “style.” Your essay needs to adhere to a formal style; i.e., one that is academic and “professional”—there is little space, if any, for drifting off topic or making jokes.
I don’t assign paper topics because part of the lesson is your taking on the task of choosing a subject, then figuring out what you will argue and why it is relevant. And I don’t want you to regurgitate your class notes only to tell me something I already said—this needs to be your essay. I suggest choosing a text for which you have some level of enthusiasm. All texts contain ideas, so your job is to discuss them with regards to content AND form. In other words, how the idea/topic/issue is expressed and how the formal choices in the text under consideration also contribute to expressing the ideas you are dealing with.
After choosing a text you need to focus on your thesis, evidence and interpretation of the evidence in the light of proving your thesis about the text. You do not want to get into evaluative issues; i.e., taking on the role of a reviewer who declares whether or not it is “good.” A passive reader reads a text and grasps what happens, who the characters are and might have some general sense of what it is “about.” The active reader makes the effort to analyze and interpret. You should avoid offering a collection of very brief plot summaries (i.e., what happens in the text) without interpreting why things happen in a certain way (i.e., through specific aesthetic choices) in order to present a particular idea to the reader.
A literary/textual interpretation is in effect your opinion about the “meaning” of the text under consideration (be it a novel, poem, film, pop song, a subculture’s fashion codes, whatever). Sometimes we begin with some large notion about the author’s possible intellectual intentions (i.e., the idea(s) the creator(s) wants us to think about it); therefore, the bits and pieces and passages and patterns we find in the text are the evidence helping to support our reading of the idea we are claiming is present. Other times, the “evidence” itself is our starting point. We notice patterns (repeated gestures), imagery, or maybe certain events in the text strike us as important so we attempt to figure out why they are there, how they are used–all with the assumption that they are part of how the “author” makes some kind of meaning present to the reader. Keep in mind you don’t have to limit yourself to the biggest idea in the text. There can be sub-themes and other smaller facets worth thinking about that may not necessarily be tied to the overarching primary theme. It is your job to show and explain why it is important; in other words, how it helps us to better understand the work under study.
No matter how you approach the “meaning” you are focusing on, you have to explain how the evidence you have chosen functions, that is, how it works to present the idea, but you also need to deal with the ideas themselves in order to fine tune your presentation of the position the author is presenting. In discussing the text you should assume a hypothetical readership composed of people who have already read the text, so don’t overly summarize the work for your “readers.” The vital twist is that you should assume we may not have read the text in quite the same way you did; therefore, we haven’t focused on the same scenes, passages, or and/or details you’re bringing to our attention. And we await to see how your argument will make sense of the text in a specific way.
In structuring the essay (organizing how best to present your ideas) you should not constrain yourself by following the plot (as I may tend to do in class). Think of each paragraph as a unit focused on a specific point you are using to make your interpretive case. A point may require more than one paragraph to adequately develop the idea but those additional paragraphs will have a specific focus related to the main point you are arguing for in that part of the essay. Each paragraph is built like a micro-essay: introduction (topic sentence or transitional sentence), body (evidence and interpretation), conclusion (a final point about what you have proven, sometimes followed by a transitional sentence that leads us into the next paragraph; i.e., the next point in your argument).
In those paragraphs, when you feel yourself getting stuck or running out of things to say then look at the idea/point you made in the sentence and ask yourself: So what? What is significant about what you have said or what you are looking at? How does it contribute to better understanding the text’s meaning? After you answer that question in a sentence ask it again. This is the process of developing your ideas because there is may be more to say and it needs more than two or three sentences (especially if one of those sentences is only describing the piece of textual evidence).
There a thousand other details I could address (which you can ask advice on when you confront a problem), but I’ve given you the structural basis of what an interpretive essay does, what you should do. I highly suggest you all begin thinking about it now.
Good luck to everyone,
DST
SOME REPEATED POINTS:
The purpose behind this essay is best framed as an attempt on your part to help a fellow “reader” better understand the text under analysis. In doing this assume the audience has read the text, therefore keep summary of the plot to a bare minimum (don’t retell the story).
Like any standard essay this one must have an introduction, body and a conclusion.
There will be a thesis statement: what specifically are you going to prove about the meaning of the chosen text?
There will be evidence to prove this thesis. The evidence is the specific details you take from the text to prove your interpretation. These details comprise choices we are going to assume that the creator has purposefully done to affect how readers can figure out what they are “saying.”
You analyze and interpret the evidence to explain how these details function in the text, how they contribute to creating or supplementing the meaning; in other words, how they work. You have to explain how the details work so that your audience understands what you see, what you are thinking.
You do not have to restrict yourself to simply choosing a large theme and then giving evidence of it. You can deal with smaller questions or consider more specific issues or stylistic patterns/motifs. For example, how is gender represented in a story. In asking why seemingly small things are done, and how they function in the text, you may open larger topics for exploration concerning what the author is up to intellectually (i.e., how those details work to present an idea to the reader).
Perhaps a pre-writing outline will help so you have a clear organization of the way you’ll present your argument. Take the thesis (the interpretive point you will prove about the text), list the evidence you will examine to support your interpretation, jot down notes about WHY this supports it, HOW does it work or function in the text to express the meaning you think it does, how it contributes to the larger idea or theme, etc.
To avoid summarizing: Are you including scenes or quotations but not discussing how details in those scenes work to prove the thesis/interpretation you are attempting to prove about what you think the author is expressing?
Use history and authorial biography sparingly, only if truly relevant to and necessary for your argument. This isn’t the kind of essay where you do a data dump to fill up the pages.
In class, I often use examples taken from current affairs or politics or personal anecdotes to help you more fully grasp certain points in the story or so you can see how these texts help us think about our lives and the larger world outside the classroom. Don’t mimic this pedagogical approach in your essay, stick to developing your interpretation.
Maintain a formal voice and persona in the essay. Don’t make jokes or cuss in an informal manner like you might privately with your friends or publicly we can make allowances for in the classroom. The essay is an entirely different context. It is too soon for you to develop a writing voice with “personality,” so consider how you present yourself like a professional academic in your writing.