Regarding my last post-- I decided to give up on the hair idea, even though I'm sure that in Tris's position, I would cut my hair immediately. Not cutting it makes her seem vain, to me at least. I looked at it again, and that didn't really take me anywhere.
So, I've decided to do my project using genre criticism. Once I started thinking that way, I realized that Divergent (and a whole bunch of similar films) doesn't quite fit into any of the established genres, except broadly. You could call it an action film, or a political thriller, I guess, but neither of these is a comfortable fit.
I'm thinking it's a subgenre of political thrillers at this point; there's not enough action (it's not a "non-stop thrill ride," which seems to be mandatory lately for action films), and it's more about political ideas than anything else.
As I understand genre criticism, I need to identify the characteristics of political thrillers and then figure out how Divergent sets up a set of additional characteristics that amount to a subgenre. The most obvious other member of this category is The Hunger Games, and I'll be doing some thinking about what other films fit, too. For now, I have enough to start my research into the overall genre, and I've got a good (I think) draft of a proposal.
