Final Project Proposal

a) What is the topic you are interested in pursuing and why?
San Francisco has many stereotypes and I am really interested and intrigued by the manner that San Francisco is portrayed through films and televisions shows and popular culture in general.
I am not from San Francisco and I have always considered this a disadvantage during this entire course. Everything I knew about San Francisco came from television and movies. I feel that I would “get more” out of this class if I knew where Market Street was, if I’ve been to North Beach, or if I’ve been on the BART, etc. But for this project I figure that I may use my ignorance to my benefit.
In short: With my final project I would like to explore how San Francisco is portrayed in movies, commercials, television shows, and popular culture in general. Then describe the effect it has on “outsiders” of the San Francisco Contado. I plan to focus mainly on films, but I wish to include television portrayals such as Full House and Rice-O-Roni commercials. My essay will be analysis of the “Ideal San Francisco” that is portrayed in popular culture and how it influences people’s opinions of what is the “real San Francisco”
I want to explain something I call “The Full House Effect”: hallow portrayal of SF (just watch the Full House Theme song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO5oDScu4ps). The family, in the theme song, are doing things that a group of tourist would do. They are driving across the Golden Gate, they go finishing to Fisherman’s Warf, riding in cable car, aside from the fact that they live in a “classic” SF suburban Victorian house, THEY LOOK LIKE TOURIST.
The Full House Effect makes everyone think “Doesn’t everyone is San Francisco live in a big Victorian house like them?” And everyone eats Rice-a-Roni while riding in cable cars to work.
I quote a girl sitting next to me, “I live in San Francisco and I have never ridden in a cable car and I no idea what Rice-a-Roni was until I moved to Santa Cruz and someone told me.”


b) How does this topic relate to San Francisco materials or frameworks read for the course? Which of the readings are particularly relevant to this topic?
I would like to connect the films and television shows to Brechin and Hollow City, to historicizes and realize San Francisco. “You are Here (or you think you are): and the whole “Metatourist” idea I can see fitting in.

c) What are some of the other materials you will need or want to read and/or inter-connect to cover this topic?
I plan to look into the production history of the films. Review the film and look for any relevant information that could be useful. I would like to tie several movies:
1. The Pursuit of Happyness, it is an example of racial and economical conflicts in San Francisco. It shows the staggering economical gaps
2. The film “The Game” shows social hierarchies in action in San Francisco. The main character is wearing two-thousand dollar shoes, lives in a huge mansion, dines in sheik restaurants, and works in the alluring finical district of San Francisco.
3. Action movies such as “The Rock” and “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry,”
4. These are other movies I am still looking into for potential material: Vertigo, X-men the Last Stand, Sneakers, Sister Act One and Two, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Metro.



d) What is your provisional “thesis” (hypothesis) at this point concerning this topic and these materials?
The movies of Hollywood have portrayed San Francisco in a certain way, in a “ideal” way. Questions I desire to propose and answer are: What effect do these films and TV shows have on individuals not incorporated in the SF “Contado?” What ideas, opinions, and true or misleading information do they walk away with? What do people from the SF Contado think of these movies and TV shows? Do they consider them accurate, terribly flawed? My “outsider” perspective will help me answer these question.

e) What problems or limitations do you anticipate in pursuing, framing, researching, and writing on this topic?
Films and Television are an impressive didactic extension of art that have the ability to portray concepts and ideas. But I am worried about not having enough substantial and clear analysis. But hopefully I can show how the films communicate and echo the “history, values, and social energies” of San Francisco, and elaborate on the racial conflicts, gender dynamics, and social hierarchies themes that the film my present.

(a work in progress)