Protagonism

• Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless” (1978)

Choose between one of the following pairs of films (and a critical essay) with an eye to how agency is expressed.

First, resistance to slavery:

• Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg (2012)
• Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino (2012)
• Adolph Reed, “The James Brown Theory of Black Liberation,” Jacobin 18 (Summer 2015)

Second, labor organizing:

• On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan (1954)
• The Salt of the Earth, directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders (1954)
• Enid Sefcovica, “Cultural memory and the cultural legacy of individualism and community in two classic films about labor unions,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 3 (2002)