New Paper Form, New Ophelias

Many of us probably recognize Helena Bonham Carter for her unique and dramatic roles, and the scenes I have seen of her as Ophelia in Hamlet are just as well done.  Ophelia went through a lot in her young short life, just as a traditional research paper does.  They are both used, abused, and confused in different ways.  Ophelia had multiple authors, if you will, shaping her every word and idea to rigidly fit their ideal.  Traditional research papers have a standard and rigid format as well, where little freedom can be taken to express new ideas.

While meeting with Dr. Burton, he asked me to consider ways to apply my paper to an audience outside of the scholarly realm and challenged me to think of new ways to present my paper to incorporate different media types in both the presentation and application.  I believe my paper expressed my ideas well, but they just did not come to life as they would have with the help of supplementary media material.

As I have begun exploring applications for my research during the writing process, I have considered studying Ophelia's loss of identity experience with the loss of her father, brother, and lover to the fear of loss of identity through Internet usage.  While meeting with Dr. Burton, we also discussed how the rigid format expected of traditional research papers are the Poloniuses of the scholastic world.  They leave little room for expression and femininity.  This presented the opportunity to argue that the old way of writing papers is the masculine form, where the new form, allowing writers to present their works in a new creative format, is the free and feminine form of expression.  The idea of being able to present your information in a form such as a Prezi presentation, would allow me to show the artwork that has supported my arguments in my blog, along with movie clips and other media to truly show the nature, psychology, and life of Ophelia.

When it comes to an audience, a very realistic one would be young girls experiencing Ophelia Syndrome.  I feel that a way to do this might be to create an appealing and interactive Prezi presentation that teaches about the dangers of this problem through the experiences of Ophelia.