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MATCH CUT: the making of professional screenwriters and a (counter)storytelling movement in film school

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Copyright 2022 Olivia A. González

MATCH CUT: THE MAKING OF PROFESSIONAL SCREENWRITERS AND A
(COUNTER)STORYTELLING MOVEMENT IN FILM SCHOOL
by
Olivia A. González

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

August 2022

ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my dissertation committee members, Larry Gross, Henry Jenkins, and Sarah Gualtieri,
this work could not exist without you. Larry, thank you for guiding me through every step of my
dissertation and doctoral journey. I am grateful for the support, inspiration, and insights that you
have provided over the past five years. Thank you for tirelessly investing in me and my
scholarship and cultivating my confidence as a scholar. Henry, thank you for shaping this work
from its earliest stages, for offering support on countless other projects, and for amplifying my
work on your platform. Sarah, thank you for encouraging me to steadfastly honor my voice in
this project, for helping me navigate and find ways to break norms in the academy, and for
expanding my community of support through welcoming me into your classrooms. Larry, Henry,
and Sarah, I am proud of this work, and of the scholar that I am today, because of you.
To Doe Mayer, you have made this research possible. Thank you for every phone call,
meeting, and meal, all from which this work took shape. You have made Los Angeles feel like
home. To Sarah Holterman, Anne Marie Campian, and Meredith Drake Reitan, thank you for
helping me navigate some of the scariest parts of this path to my PhD. To the USC Graduate
School, thank you for investing in my scholarship and allowing me to devote the final year of my
doctoral program to this work.
To my family, I dedicate this work to you. To my parents, José and Laura, and to my best
friend and hermana, Julia, te quiero mucho. Thank you for supporting this dream in its earliest
stages and sustaining me every step of the way. Thank you for every FaceTime, every phone
call, every gentle reminder to rest, every ounce of encouragement that helped me reach this
finish line. And to my abuela, María de los Ángeles, me gustaría poder compartir esto contigo. I
hope to honor your heart and emulate your bravery in this work.

iii
To my incredible partner, Keenan Hawekotte, thank you for keeping me afloat during this
entire process. Thank you for helping me tell my story, hold my OCD at bay, and celebrate every
milestone along the way. To George, thank you for joining me on this journey and reminding me
to rest. To Roy, thank you for supporting George and filling our home with laughter.
To the Latina PhDs at USC, thank you for your sisterhood, your querencia, and your care.
Abrazos fuertes, always. To my friends and colleagues, Ashley Mitchell, Lindsay Benster, Haley
Shipway, Claire Miller, Jessica Hatrick, Sierra Bray, Peter Kagey, Rogelio Lopez, Molly
Angharad, Briana Ellerbe, Cerriane Robertson, Steffie Kim, Yunwen Wang, Natalie Jonckheere,
Ana Howe Bukowski, Matt Bui, Ritesh Mehta, Emily Reed, Chelsey Pence, Harper Stewart,
Melissa Volbrecht, Amy Johnson, Michael Viscione, Joseph Tank, Ed Wagner, Hiustyn Fragale,
and Trystan Madison, thank you. Each and every one of you has profoundly shaped who I am as
an educator, scholar, and co-conspirator.
To Roger Pace, Susannah Stern, Ramiro Frausto, Deborah Kelly, and the USD Ronald E.
McNair Scholars program, thank you for helping me find and follow this path. I am becoming a
profesora because of you.
To Jed Dannenbaum, thank you for sharing your stories and your wisdom with me, and
for welcoming me into your home. You have significantly shaped the development of this work,
and I will be forever grateful that I had the privilege of knowing you.
And finally, to every SCA student, alum, and instructor with whom I have had the
pleasure of speaking, thank you for sharing your stories with me. Thank you for investing your
time and wisdom in this work.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ix
Chapter One: “Status Quo” Storytelling and the Transformative Potential of Film Schools ..........1
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1
Commercializing Crapshoot or Promising Pipeline?: The Evolution of Cinema
Education in the U.S. ...........................................................................................................8
Theories of Cinema Instruction and Professionalization ...................................................11
Why Screenwriting? ...........................................................................................................14
Critical Race Theory and Counterstorytelling ...................................................................16
Latina/o Critical Race Theory and Testimoniando ............................................................17
Methods..............................................................................................................................19
Chapter Overview ..............................................................................................................25

Chapter Two: Teaching “the Best Storytellers” - Screenwriting Instructors’ Pedagogical
Practices and Priorities ...................................................................................................................27
Introduction ........................................................................................................................27
“Master the Skills to Tell It Right:” Refining the Craft of Universal, Structured
Storytelling .........................................................................................................................30
“Tell a Story Only You Can Tell:” Prioritizing Personal Voice and Creative
Instincts ..............................................................................................................................31
Balancing Craft Skills and Creativity: Teaching along the Story-Based Spectrum and
Sustaining Frank Daniel’s Legacy .....................................................................................33
Craft Skills, Commercial Knowledge, and Creativity: Stocking Students’ Toolboxes .....36
“It’s the Doing That matters”: How Screenwriting Instructors Teach ..............................43
“The Best in the World:” SCA’s Status and Its Implications for Students’
Professional Socialization ..................................................................................................49
Discussion ..........................................................................................................................51

Chapter Three: If “Story is King,” Who Constitutes Its Kingdom? Interrogating the Sovereignty
of SCA’s Pedagogies .....................................................................................................................57
Introduction ........................................................................................................................57
Unlocking Doors, Denying Entry: The Promise and Perfidy of Universal
Storytelling .........................................................................................................................59
“Perfect English” as Professionalism: Linguicism in SCA’s Screenwriting
Instruction ..........................................................................................................................63
Missed Opportunities to Cultivate Critical Media Literacy ...............................................65
“We Are the Best in the World”: Imperial Logics in SCA’s Screenwriting
Instruction ..........................................................................................................................68
Telling “a Story Only You Can Tell,” and Seeing Specificity as a Superpower:
Alternative Pedagogical Possibilities in SCA ....................................................................70

v
Discussion ..........................................................................................................................77

Chapter Four: Screenwriting Students’ Educational Experiences and Endeavors to Transform
Hollywood......................................................................................................................................80
Introduction ........................................................................................................................80
Student Reception of the Story and Craft Success Narratives ...........................................82
Student Valuations and Applications of the Story and Craft Success Narratives ..............87
Successes and Shortcomings in SCA’s Professionalization Practices ...............................95
“Keep Your Chin Up”: Shifting Professionalization Opportunities and Career
Precarity for “the COVID Class ......................................................................................100
“Now Is Our Time:” Minoritized Students’ Storytelling Aspirations and
Motivations ......................................................................................................................103
“Casual Sexism” and “Backwards Tropes:” SCA’s Storytelling Politics .......................105
Supporting a Movement of Counterhegemonic Storytelling and Harnessing SCA’s
Power to Change Hollywood ...........................................................................................110
Discussion ........................................................................................................................116

Chapter Five: Posters and Exhibits “Endorsing Values Detrimental to My Existence”:
Examining SCA’s Built Environments ........................................................................................119
Introduction ......................................................................................................................119
Critical Race Theory and Decoloniality ..........................................................................122
Coloniality and Cultural Production ................................................................................124
Critical Race Content Analysis ........................................................................................126
“Examining Yesterday’s Culture Through [Eurocentric] Eyes” .....................................127
Recontextualizing as Retraumatizing, and Reclaiming Space .........................................132
Students Have to Be Loud, Until the Silencing Sets in: Calling for Change in SCA ......133
Canonizing Colonial Wounds: Analyzing SCA’s Film and TV Posters .........................136
Discussion ........................................................................................................................145

Chapter Six: Sí de Aquí, Sí de Allá .............................................................................................148
Introduction ......................................................................................................................148
Positionality Statement ....................................................................................................148
Sí de Aquí, Sí de Allá - A testimonio screenplay ............................................................150

Chapter Seven: Planting Stories That Won’t “Die on the Vine:” Reimagining Storytelling
Politics and Pedagogies in Screenwriting Education ...................................................................190
Introduction ......................................................................................................................190
Presence vs. Empowerment: Pushing Beyond Benchmarks and Reconceptualizing“
Inclusion” .........................................................................................................................191
Building a Strong Counterstorytelling Foundation: Revisiting the Story and
Craft Success Narratives ..................................................................................................193
“Practice What You Preach:” Diversify the Pedagogues ................................................195
Empower Educators and Students to Challenge Subordinating Storytelling Politics ......197
Cultivate Critical Media Literacy ....................................................................................199
Dismantle the Built Environment’s Eurocentric Mirror ..................................................205
Offer a Diversity of Professionalization Practices ...........................................................208

vi
Conclusion: The Match Cut .............................................................................................211

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................216

Appendices ...................................................................................................................................237
Appendix A: Instructor Informants ..................................................................................237
Appendix B: Guest Speakers ...........................................................................................238
Appendix C: Student Informants .....................................................................................239

vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Installation outside of the famed Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City ..........................2
Figure 2: Advertisement for the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Careers Program ...............2
Figure 3: “The Anatomically Correct Oscar” billboard by the Guerrilla Girls ...............................2
Figure 4: Wayne exhibit protest banner displayed at SCA entrance ...........................................119
Figure 5: Digital flyer for the Examining Yesterday's Culture Through Today's Eyes Event ....129
Figure 6: Poster for Think like A Man ..........................................................................................138
Figure 7: Poster for Shameless .....................................................................................................138
Figure 8: Poster for Temptation ...................................................................................................139
Figure 9: Poster for The Scorpion King .......................................................................................139
Figure 10: Poster for Fantastic Four ...........................................................................................140
Figure 11: Poster for Think like A Man ........................................................................................140
Figure 12: Poster for BUtterfield 8 ..............................................................................................141
Figure 13: Poster for Le Couple Invisible ....................................................................................141
Figure 14: Poster for The Gauntlet ..............................................................................................141
Figure 15: Poster for The Last King of Scotland..........................................................................142
Figure 16: Poster for The Scorpion King .....................................................................................142
Figure 17: Poster for Menace II Society ......................................................................................142
Figure 18: Poster for The Ugly American ....................................................................................143
Figure 19: Poster for The Scorpion King .....................................................................................143
Figure 20: Poster for The Spanish Main ......................................................................................143
Figure 21: Poster for Holiday in Mexico ......................................................................................143
Figure 22: Poster for The Invaders ..............................................................................................144

viii
Figure 23: Poster for King Solomon’s Mines ...............................................................................144
Figure 24: Poster for Appaloosa ..................................................................................................144
Figure 25: Poster for 24 ...............................................................................................................144

ix
ABSTRACT
Critiques of Hollywood’s hegemonic narratives and discriminatory storytelling structures have
increasingly circulated among academics, audiences, and entertainment industry professionals.
However, minoritized creatives—particularly minoritized screenwriters—continue to experience
exclusion, exploitation, and discrimination in the U.S. film and television industries (Henderson,
2011). Some media scholars suggest that film schools embody promising sites for challenging
and changing this “status quo” of inequity through providing better support for minoritized
industry aspirants and cultivating film students’ critical media literacy (Banks, 2019). This
dissertation explores and extends these assertions, pairing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and
Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) with a grounded theoretical approach to examine the
professional socialization of screenwriting students. Specifically, I analyze the curricula,
pedagogies, learning environments, and students’ and instructors’ experiences in an acclaimed
U.S. cinema school’s screenwriting programs. Further, I consider how, if at all, the programs
support minoritized students’ efforts to create cinematic counterstories and testimonios—
counter-hegemonic narratives rooted in their lived experiences and cultural knowledge.
Employing participant observation and in-depth interviewing, I examine instructors’ pedagogical
practices and priorities (Chapter 2), forward critiques of those pedagogies (Chapter 3), and
explore students’ learning experiences and storytelling practices (Chapter 4). Additionally, I
investigate the films and filmmakers canonized in the programs’ built learning environments
(Chapter 5). In the final chapters, I share my own testimonio to render my subjectivities visible
and trace my journey over five years “in the field” (Chapter 6), and proffer actionable changes
that film schools and instructors can make to better support their minoritized students and disrupt
“status quo” storytelling in the film and television industries (Chapter 7).

1
CHAPTER ONE: “STATUS QUO” STORYTELLING AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE
POTENTIAL OF FILM SCHOOLS
Introduction
“Representation matters” and demands for media characters and creators that “look like
me” have become widespread rallying cries over the past decade (Appiah, 2019; Warner, 2017).
Politicians, scholars, media creators, and audiences have variously come together for the cause,
producing research reports (e.g., U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2021; Smith et al.,
2019a; Hunt et al., 2019; Lauzen, 2017), articles (e.g., Longoria Baston, 2018), and campaigns
(e.g., #OscarsSoWhite) that highlight the need for diversity on-screen and behind-the-scenes in
Hollywood. Calls to support historically excluded and silenced creators, and critiques of the
entertainment industries’ exclusionary practices, have even become a part of the Los Angeles
landscape—displayed on movie theaters (Figure 1), park benches (Figure 2), and billboards
(Figure 3).
However, minoritized
1
creatives—particularly minoritized screenwriters (Friedman,
Daniels, & Blinderman, 2016; Henderson, 2011)—continue to experience exclusion,
exploitation, and discrimination in the United States’ film and television industries (Christian,
2018; Hunt, Ramón, & Tran, 2019; Smith, Choueiti, & Pieper, 2019). As Stacy Smith—a
researcher renowned for her work examining diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in the
entertainment industries
2
—has claimed, “there is a cacophony of voices crying out for change,
but Hollywood hasn’t changed its hiring practices…We’re seeing very stable trends and very

1
Per Chase, Dowd, Pazich, & Bensimon (2014), I use the term “minoritized” to refer to
individuals who face marginalization and inequities stemming from systemic oppression.
2
Smith has been deemed the “foremost disrupter of inequality in the entertainment industry”
(USC Annenberg, n.d.).

2
little movement in storytelling” (cited in Silva, 2018).

Figure 1: Installation outside of the famed Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, a venue built shortly after the dissolution of the
Hollywood Studio System. While the theater now serves as a playhouse, it continues to be recognized for its role in cinema
history and remains an emblem of 20
th
-century Hollywood.

Figure 2: Bus bench advertisement for the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Careers Program, an initiative aiming to
connect networks and studios who want to diversify their workforce and support minoritized film and television industry
aspirants.

Figure 3: Billboard created by the Guerrilla Girls, a collective of feminist artists, to highlight racial and gender inequities in The
Academy Awards. The original billboard was raised in Hollywood, along the historic Highland Avenue, in 2002 (Photo Credit:
Joseph Francis. CC BY 2.0). The collective produced an updated version of the billboard in 2016 (a photo of which was not
accessible for reproduction in this dissertation).

3
Indeed, as empirical studies have repeatedly revealed, creators and characters who are
women, queer, trans, racially minoritized, and who have disabilities are continuously denied
opportunities to shape and lead the film and television industries’ narratives (Hunt & Ramón,
2020; Smith et al., 2020). Further, these narratives are rife with misrepresentation, deploying a
vast array of sexist, racist, homophobic, ableist, and transphobic stereotypes (Crewe, 2015; Hunt,
Ramón, & Tran, 2019; Lauzen, 2020; Sink & Mastro, 2017; Smith, Choueiti, Pieper, Case &
Choy, 2018). And even “positive” or non-stereotypic representations of minoritized characters
are often lacking depth, complexity, and substance, as U.S. films and television series continue
to lack meaningful and “authentically inclusive” narratives that are rooted in non-white histories
and cultures (Higginbotham, Zheng & Ulhs, 2020; Warner, 2017).
To address these exclusionary and harmful storytelling practices, some scholars have
upheld film schools as a productive site for intervention, suggesting that these institutions have
the capacity to change minoritized storytellers’ access to, and experiences in, the film and
television industries. For example, Banks (2019) suggests that film schools can combat
Hollywood’s “status quo” of inequity and exclusion through encouraging students to challenge
their implicit biases and training them to work “across differences” (p. 75). Further, drawing
from their extensive work documenting Hollywood’s “inclusion crisis,” Smith, Choueiti &
Pieper (2017) theorize that film schools can disrupt this crisis through admitting, teaching, and
training greater numbers of minoritized students.
However, as I discovered during my first year as a doctoral student in Los Angeles,
industry professionals differ in their perspectives on how film students can be most effectively
trained to gain access to and participate in Hollywood, and frequently direct two distinct success
narratives toward film and television industry aspirants. Some prominent filmmakers, such as

4
Matt Reeves and Martin Scorsese, turn to personal storytelling, claiming that attaining a
successful filmmaking career requires Hollywood hopefuls to focus on “telling your story.” For
example, as Reeves claimed during the 2017 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
(AMPAS) third annual Careers in Film Summit, entertainment industry aspirants are “future
storytellers” who need to “tell your story…bring who you are to what you do” (AMPAS, 2017).
Similarly, in an advertisement for his online course on filmmaking, Martin Scorsese directly
claims that “‘if you're intrigued by moviemaking as a career this isn't the class for you but…if
you feel like you can't rest until you've told this particular story that you’re burning to tell then I
could be speaking to you" (MasterClass, 2017). Thus, some industry professionals insist that in
order for aspiring filmmakers to “make it” in Hollywood, they must prioritize personal
storytelling (González, 2020). As Archie Coleman, a queer Black screenwriter portrayed in
Netflix’s 2020 series, Hollywood, proudly declared as he celebrated successfully “making it” in
Hollywood during the show’s finale: “write what you know.”
However, acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Jorge Gutiérrez suggests that in reality, “telling
your story” and “writ[ing] what you know” often does not spell success for minoritized film and
television industry aspirants. According to Gutiérrez, his film school instructors discouraged him
from creating cinematic content that was personal and shaped by his experiential and cultural
knowledge—from telling his “super Mexican” stories. Specifically, Gutiérrez’s instructors
insisted that “if you keep doing this Mexican stuff, you’re never going to get a job” (AMPAS,
2017). Gutiérrez ultimately claims that “they were right,” and subscribes to an alternative
success narrative that may prove more feasible for minoritized creatives than telling their stories
or writing what they know: “refine your craft.” According to Gutiérrez and other filmmakers of
color, Hollywood aspirants must “follow your skills” (Jewerl Keats Ross, cited in AMPAS 2017)

5
and “work on your craft, that is the most important thing” (Haifaa al-Mansour, cited in AMPAS,
2017).
Through this dissertation, I examine manifestations of these narratives—“tell your story”
and “refine your craft”
3
—in contemporary screenwriting education. Additionally, drawing from
Gutiérrez’s experiences as a film student trying to tell and sell his “super Mexican” stories, I
explore the storytelling politics with which students contend during their professional
socialization
4
as screenwriters. My interest in Gutiérrez’s experiences, and the harmful narrative
norms that they highlight, is significantly shaped by my own experiences as a Chicana media
consumer, scholar, and storyteller. Over the past five years, my research has been guided by a
highly personal question: why are there still so few stories that reflect myself and my family, and
that celebrate our culture and our experiences, on screen? Attending the 2017 Careers in Film
Summit, and hearing Gutiérrez’s advice for Hollywood hopefuls, pointed me toward a previously
unconsidered phenomenon—storytelling politics—and site of inquiry—film schools—through
which I could address this question. My own journey has thus become deeply intertwined with
the development of this work, particularly given my proximity to my site of study: the University
of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts (SCA).
5

3
I approach these narratives not as mutually exclusive, but as dialectical professionalization
approaches; extant film school scholarship demonstrates that faculty in a single institution may
teach both the story and craft narratives, while upholding the importance of one over the other
(Henderson, 1990; Mehta, 2017).
4
Professional socialization refers to the process through which people learn and adopt the
knowledge, roles, skills, and behavioral and attitudinal norms that are needed for a given
profession (Price, 2009; Cohen, 1981). In the United States, this process often occurs through
higher-education and/or pre-professional work opportunities, such as internships and
apprenticeships (Kothwa, 2018).
5
In this dissertation, I deviate from the convention modeled in other film school scholarship
(e.g., Henderson, 1990; Mehta, 2015) of anonymizing my site of study. I directly name USC,
SCA, and the Writing for Screen and Television Programs (BFA and MFA) because the
university, cinema school, and screenwriting programs’ histories, relationships with the industry,

6
As a renowned pre-professional institution that is widely regarded as a promising (even
direct) pipeline to Hollywood (Cahill, 2017), SCA embodies a compelling site for exploring how
the storytelling practices and politics found in the U.S. film and television industries (Molina-
Guzmán, 2016; Shohat & Stam, 2014) and cinema education programs (Kearney, 2018;
Gutiérrez, cited in AMPAS, 2017; Springer, 1984) may be reproduced, challenged, and changed.
Through pairing a grounded theory approach with the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race
Theory (CRT) and Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), I explore the ways in which aspiring
cinematic storytellers are taught and trained in SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) and Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs—paying particular
attention to the programs’ storytelling politics and propagation of the story and craft narratives.
Importantly, I developed this work in the midst of tremendous upheaval and change—
within the site of study, the film industry, and the country writ large—as catalyzed by the novel
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The COVID-
19 pandemic has devastated communities on a global scale; a formidable reminder of our
interconnectedness and interdependence as citizens of a globalized world, and of our fragility in
the global capitalist system—in which the exploitation of natural resources and human lives and
labor remain the norm. This pandemic has also highlighted and exacerbated the systemic
oppression and resultant inequities sustained by the colonial matrix of power (Quijano, 2007), as

and statuses as acclaimed pre-industry pipelines are crucial for contextualizing the findings and
significance of this work. As I reveal, they play important roles in the programs’ professional
socialization practices, and have rendered some of the events and artifacts that I discuss
(particularly those in Chapter 5) highly public. Adopting the academic conventions of complete
anonymization thus feels both unattainable and unwise. However, I take the protection of my
informants seriously, and have adopted several IRB-approved measures to do so, including
providing pseudonyms and removing unnecessary identifying information for instructors and
students.

7
racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and ageism have significantly
shaped ruinous responses to, and the staggering effects of, COVID-19 (Tai, Shah, Doubeni, Sia
& Weiland, 2020; Del Rio, 2020; Selassie, 2020; Erickson, 2020).
And as the United States, in particular, has failed to effectively respond to, and protect
individuals from, the COVID-19 pandemic—a picture of a nation divided over cloth and carbon
dioxide, care and distance—it has simultaneously received a surge of pressure to contend with
another, centuries-long crisis: state-sanctioned and vigilante violence against Black communities,
sustained and supported by the structural anti-Black racism and white supremacy endemic in the
U.S. Following the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud
Arbery, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors,
and Opal Tometi in 2013—has come to the fore of public discussions and debates. A widespread
embracing of the Movement for Black Lives and surges in protests for racial justice have fueled
powerful calls for change across U.S. institutions—including within USC’s School of Cinematic
Arts. Beginning in the summer of 2020, Black students, alumni, and staff used an Instagram
account with the handle @black_at_usc as a “space to share your stories and experiences of
being Black at the University of Southern California” (@black_at_usc, June 25, 2020). The
account, which has garnered media attention (e.g., Nguyen, 2020; Navarro, 2020) and over ten
thousand followers, highlights the prevalence of anti-Black racism at USC, and within SCA in
particular. In this dissertation, I highlight some of these powerful testimonies—these “unheard
stories of Black Trojans” (@black_at_usc, n.d.)—and consider how SCA has responded to them.
Specifically, through this work, I ask: How are SCA’s aspiring screenwriters being taught
and trained to pursue careers in the entertainment industries—in other words, how are they being
professionally socialized? How, if at all, are students receiving, interpreting, and applying the

8
story and craft success narratives as a component of their professional socialization? Further, I
ask how SCA’s screenwriting programs encourage or discourage students from creating
nonmajoritarian narratives—from writing what Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholars call
counterstories and what Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) scholars call testimonios: stories
rooted in minoritized individuals’ cultural, community-based, and experiential knowledge? How,
if at all, are changes in the film and television industries—catalyzed by myriad factors including,
but not limited to, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and ever-
expanding and shifting demands for digital content—promoting changes in the programs’
approaches to career preparation? And ultimately, how can SCA—as well as other contemporary
cinema schools—better support minoritized creators and disrupt “status quo” storytelling within
and beyond its classrooms?
Commercializing Crapshoot or Promising Pipeline?: The Evolution of Cinema Education
in the U.S.
Film schools have become widely celebrated sites for the professionalization of future
filmmakers (Boorman, MacDonald, Donohue & Moverman, 2002; Henderson, 1990); however,
this acclaim is relatively new, as the form, function, and public perception of cinema schools
have changed substantially over the past century. Filmmakers aspiring to join Hollywood’s ranks
in the early to mid-twentieth century commonly received training in a vocational school created
by the studio system—a system in which the majority of U.S. film production and distribution
was controlled by five large Hollywood studios (20
th
Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Metro
Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Brothers Pictures, and RKO Pictures). Operating from 1920 to 1948,
the studio system functioned like a filmmaking “production line” (Boorman et al, 2002, p. vii),
and developed “extensive training schemes” to prepare trainees to participate in the “Hollywood

9
machine” (Boorman et al., 2002, p. 171); accordingly, the system and its trainees were frequently
denigrated and discredited as highly commercialized.
During this period, the University of Southern California became the first U.S. university
to create a Bachelor of Arts (BA) program in cinema, established in partnership with the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929. From its initial founding until the mid-
twentieth century, USC’s film program—first the Department of Cinema, then the Division of
Cinema and Media Studies, then the School of Cinema-Television (CNTV), and now the School
of Cinematic Arts (SCA) (Huang, 2019)—followed in the footsteps of the studio system, as it
was primarily concerned with technical training, “vocational guidance,” and professionalization
(Polan, 2007, p. 184). Students were taught to approach film as “professional work, an
instrument in the service of practical ends” (Polan, 2007, p. 235)—a pedagogical approach that
largely mirrored the training schemes utilized by Hollywood studios.
However, following the dismantling of the studio system, USC and other film schools
transformed from “a previously scorned career choice” to “an official, accepted exploit by which
film-makers can enter the American film industry” (Boorman et al., 2002, p. 171–172). In the
1960s, in particular, film studies began to flourish (Polan, 2007), with film school graduates such
as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola becoming Hollywood behemoths and accordingly
“legitimiz[ing] film schools as practical training grounds for accomplished film-makers”
(Boorman et al., 2002, p. 171). Film schools continued to grow in popularity and status into the
late 20
th
and early 21
st
century, with their graduates “learning their craft in film schools across
the country” (Orwin & Carageorge, 2001, p. 40) and coming to influence cinema on a global
scale (Boorman et al., 2002).

10
Today, while stereotypes or “skepticism” related to “film school ‘types’ (even film
school ‘brats’) in some industry sectors” persist (Henderson, 1995, p. 149–150), the number of
students pursuing film degrees has grown nearly 300% over the past five decades (Banks, 2019;
Hawkins, 2017). By the turn of the century, “hundreds of thousands of students” were reportedly
studying film globally (Boorman et al., 2002, p. viii), in schools where they were taught and
trained to look “more like filmmakers” (Mehta, 2017, p. 30) and had opportunities to develop
their professional networks, which are key for one’s success in the film and television industries
(Banks, 2019; Mehta, 2017; Mukerji, 1976).
And yet, as film school scholarship highlights, while film school training has many noted
and now widely legitimized advantages—such as access to high-grade equipment and
networking opportunities—a film degree is “neither necessary nor sufficient for success in
filmmaking or related professions” (Henderson, 1995, p. 149–150). As Boorman et al. (2002)
suggest, while film schools “seem to be an established entry into the business,” they may not
serve as a necessary means of entering the entertainment business (p. 179). Despite film schools’
now established legitimacy and renown, and the considerable time and financial investments
often required of their students, a film school degree comes with no guarantee of employment.
Thus, as popular (and often, pricey) sites for teaching and training by and for cultural producers,
film schools and their curricula, pedagogies, and efforts to prepare students to pursue careers in
the precarious creative industries—and in the highly inequitable sector of screenwriting, in
particular (Friedman et al., 2016; Henderson, 2011)—merit greater attention in contemporary
scholarship.
This dissertation strives to take up this task, paying particular attention to the ways in
which film students’ professionalization has shifted as a result of the novel coronavirus (COVID-

11
19) pandemic. Cinema students are now facing an educational system and industry undergoing
drastic transformations. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the film and television
industries’ uncertainty and precarity, halting film production in many sectors, putting many
entertainment industry employees out of work (Gardner, 2020), and accordingly reducing the
number of opportunities available for aspiring screenwriters—particularly those who do not yet
have their foot in the door. Developed within this context, this dissertation explores how
professionalization socialization practices in contemporary film schools are shifting to meet, and
how film instructors and students alike are responding to, the historic changes that COVID-19
has affected in film and television creation and consumption.
Theories of Cinema Instruction and Professionalization
Some scholars (e.g., Mehta, 2015; 2017; Henderson, 1990; Mukerji, 1976) have produced
grounded theoretical studies that provide foundational information about film students’ pre-
industry professionalization in cinema schools. These studies primarily illustrate how students
become socialized as productive entertainment industry aspirants through doing film, and
highlight the importance of studying film schools as sites of cultural producers’ training. For
example, through an ethnographic exploration of a Los Angeles university’s cinema school,
Mehta (2015; 2017) reveals that film schools are “industry facing” spaces in and through which
students are “made productive and ‘professional’” through hands-on work in student film crews
(p. 306). Specifically, Mehta (2017) forwards the concept of “hustling” to describe film students’
professionalization, which fundamentally includes developing their professional networks,
gaining pragmatic filmmaking experience, and developing their “‘authorial voice’” (p. 325).
Similarly, through examinations of a narrative filmmaking program in a New York
university, Henderson (1990) found that film students’ education is primarily pragmatic and

12
applied—students learn about filmmaking and develop their identities as “working artists” (p.
379) through “doing” film (p. 379), such as producing projects and gaining feedback from
faculty and peers in formal and informal interactions. According to Henderson (1990), this
hands-on experience proves vital for students’ future success, as it allows them to develop their
aesthetic competencies and professional identities. Thus, as Mehta (2015; 2017) posits, film
school training is imperative for Hollywood aspirants’ “early-career socialization” and
preparedness to enter the industry (p. 22), and accordingly merits attention in scholarship on
labor in the creative industries.
Additionally, these studies highlight the ways in which the “tell your story” and “refine
your craft” success narratives may manifest differently within and across various film
institutions. For example, Henderson’s (1990) work reveals that in the narrative filmmaking
program she studied, instructors underscored the importance of both craft development and
personal storytelling. According to Henderson (1990), story was a “key word” among film
instructors and students in her program of study (p. 140), who stressed the importance of using
personal experiences to construct cinematic narratives. For example, Henderson (1990) cites
faculty who “lamented that while most students had adequately mastered technical and craft
aspects…their stories were [emotionally] ‘distant’” (p. 142). Simultaneously, Henderson (1990)
found that instructors resisted the notion that stories are “an unself-conscious account of events
lived or imagined” or “a slice of life” (p. 144), arguing that they must demonstrate craft skills
vis-à-vis the use of specific narrative techniques. Thus, Henderson (1990) reveals that the
program socialized students to develop, and balance the execution of, personal narrative and
storytelling skills and craft development.

13
Similarly, Mehta (2017) demonstrates that students in his site of study negotiated
perceptions that filmmaking is “about great, individualist, visionary storytelling” (p. 30) or a
collaborative, “craft-based media activity” (p. 26). According to Mehta (2015), students
ultimately come to value professional connection-building and “hustling” above all, though they
learn to develop their “‘authorial voice’” in the process (p. 325). Meanwhile, through
examinations of the film program in a large university, Mukerji (1976) found that students
themselves valued storytelling and artistry over craft skills in their collaborative film crew work.
In comparison, Mukerji (1976) also explored a film program in a non-accredited institution, and
found that technical skill development was highly valued by students and prioritized in the
curriculum.
As each of these scholars reveal, while film students may be learning in similar ways
across institutions (e.g., through hands-on, pragmatic training), what they are learning—
particularly in relation to the value of personal storytelling and craft development—can differ.
However, with the exception of a study that I conducted on film production pedagogies
(González, 2020), scholars have yet to explicitly examine manifestations of the story and craft
narratives in film school instruction. Additionally, as Mehta (2017) highlights through his work,
differences may exist in perceptions of what constitutes effective storytelling; film students in his
study “differed in their taste about what constitutes a good or aesthetically appealing story” (p.
26). Through this dissertation, I explore and expand upon this understanding of divergent story
valuations, and examine how it shapes the professional socialization of screenwriting students, in
particular. In other words, what are screenwriting students taught constitutes a “good” story, in
general and as it relates to the narratives that they personally want to write?

14
Existing film education literature has also revealed that cinema schools in the United
States have historically reproduced the sexist and racist representations, production practices,
power dynamics, and storytelling politics that have long pervaded the country’s film and
television industries (Banks, 2019; Proctor, Branch & Kristjansson-Nelson, 2010; Springer,
1984). For example, minoritized students in modern film education institutions have encountered
curricula that primarily canonizes white, Western, heteromasculine filmmakers, and peers who
propagate Hollywood’s hegemonic stories and stereotypes (Proctor & Banks, 2017; Proctor et
al., 2010). Meanwhile, in their efforts to create cinematic stories that celebrate their distinctive
experiences and cultures and that challenge dominant narratives, minoritized film students may
be discouraged by instructors, face resistance from majoritarian peers, and contend with
pervasive notions that “authentic” storytelling necessitates narratives of strife or tragedy
(González, 2020). However, as these scholars have argued, cinema schools also have the
potential to challenge and change these practices—in their classrooms and in the industries to
which their students aspire. In fact, Banks (2019) claims that film schools are “uniquely
positioned” to “counter the industry’s status quo” (p. 75). Through this research, I examine how
screenwriting education programs can take advantage of this unique position and power to
challenge “status quo” storytelling in the film and television industries.
Why Screenwriting?
Myriad scholars have demonstrated that the domain in which cinematic stories and
storytelling opportunities largely originate—screenwriting—remains a highly exclusionary space
in Hollywood. In fact, as some critics suggest, “Hollywood's diversity problem begins in the
writing room” (Robehmed, 2016). Work by Hunt et al. (2019), Smith et al. (2020; 2019a), and
Friedman et al. (2016) reveals that while there have been some marginal shifts in the makeup of

15
the screenwriting workforce, minoritized creatives continue to be afforded few opportunities to
join Hollywood’s ranks of cinematic storytellers and the television industry’s writers’ rooms.
Further, these scholars highlight a clear correlation between this exclusion of minoritized
screenwriters and the lack of visibility—defined in terms of both quantitative and qualitative
representation—of historically marginalized communities on screen.
For example, examining box office films produced between 1995 to 2015, Friedman et al.
(2016) demonstrate that the majority of Hollywood films are crafted entirely or almost entirely
by men, and these films are more likely to fail the Bechdel test
6
(Friedman et al., 2016). In
theorizing about why this correlation exists, and thus why Hollywood’s storytelling inequities
persist—beyond overt discrimination—Friedman et al., (2016) posit that filmmakers “make
movies about themselves (i.e., write what you know),” thus, “when men make films, what’s on-
screen reflects the behind-the-scenes brotopia.”
More recent work by Smith et al. (2020; 2019a) demonstrates that little has changed, as
women consistently constituted less than 20% of screenwriters responsible for the top 1,300 U.S.
films produced between 2007 to 2019. However, those few films with women writers, as well as
women directors and producers, were significantly more likely to represent more women on-
screen in leading and co-leading roles, and to do so in ways that defied the stereotypic practices
endemic in Hollywood (e.g., hyper-sexualization). Like Friedman et al. (2016), Smith et al.
(2020; 2019a) theorize that this may occur because women writers draw from “what they know”

6
The Bechdel test measures women’s representation in fictional texts. The test was originally
created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who first introduced the concept in 1985. As outlined by
two of Bechdel’s main characters, Mo Testa and Ginger Jordan, in a comic strip titled “The
Rule,” to pass what would become known as the Bechdel test, a film must meet three
requirements: 1) It represents at least two women; 2) Those two women talk to each other; and 3)
Those women talk to each other about something other than a man. This test has since been
widely adopted by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences.

16
as they craft their stories (p. 140; p. 13). Similarly, Hunt et al. (2019) reveal that between 2011–
2017, the percentage of women and of creatives of color writing for top theatrical films did not
budge—sitting at 12.6% and 7.8%, respectively—and suggest that white men “dominat[ing] the
ranks of Hollywood writers” is directly associated with the dearth of stories about women and
people of color on the silver screen.
However, as Henderson (2011) demonstrates, providing room for minoritized creators at
the metaphorical table by no means guarantees a diversity of characters or stories. Through
extensive ethnographic explorations of the cultures and rituals in contemporary television
writers’ rooms, Henderson (2011) reveals that mainstream writers’ rooms are dominated by
heterosexist and racist norms to which minoritized writers must adhere or risk rejection (in the
form of interpersonal marginalization and/or loss of employment). These norms, which also
manifest among film industry gatekeepers (Young, 2021; Lussier, 2021), silence minoritized
writers—whose stories “die on the vine” (p. 147)—and contribute to the continued
(re)production of homogenous on-screen narratives. Through engaging with this literature and
the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latina/o Critical Race Theory
(LatCrit), I examine the ways in which such harmful storytelling politics may be reproduced or
challenged in screenwriting education.
Critical Race Theory and Counterstorytelling
Emerging from legal scholarship in the late twentieth century, Critical Race Theory
(CRT) originally served as a framework for examining the ideological (re)construction and
representation of race in United States’ legal system (Crenshaw et al., 1995; Tate, 1997). CRT
has since expanded to examine the ways in which social, cultural, and legal discourses construct
and maintain oppressive systems and categories of subordination, particularly those pertaining to

17
racial identities and power (Crenshaw et al., 1995). Specifically, CRT posits that race and other
categories of differentiation are socially constructed, and that their adjoining systems of
subordination (e.g., racism) are woven throughout the legal, political, cultural, and economic,
fabrics of the United States.
Further, CRT scholars view storytelling—particularly that of personal narratives—as a
powerful mechanism through which minoritized communities can confront and counter those
systems of oppression and subordinating ideologies (Barnes, 2011; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001).
Specifically, according to CRT scholars, through engaging in counterstorytelling, minoritized
individuals navigate their distinctive, daily experiences with institutional oppression and
challenge majoritarian narratives that silence them or situate them as “Other” (Delgado Bernal,
2002). In this dissertation, I engage with CRT to explore how this powerful narrative method and
mechanism may be utilized by screenwriting students, and encouraged or discouraged by
instructors and the curricula, in SCA’s screenwriting programs. Further, I investigate how the
cinematic storytelling practices and politics found in Hollywood (Molina-Guzmán, 2016; Shohat
& Stam, 2014) and some cinema education programs (Kearney, 2018; Gutiérrez, cited in
AMPAS, 2017; Springer, 1984) may be reproduced, challenged, and/or changed in USC’s
Writing for Screen and Television programs through examining how, if at all, the programs
encourage their students to support or engage in cinematic counterstorytelling.
Latina/o Critical Race Theory and Testimoniando
Stemming from critical outsider jurisprudence (OutCrit) legal studies, Latina/o Critical
Race Theory (LatCrit) confronts the invisibility of Latines’ concerns in legal discourses and
policies in the United States (Valdés, 2005, p. 149; Valdés, 2009). As a “branch”, genre, and
“close cousin” of Critical Race Theory (CRT), LatCrit shares many of the core beliefs and

18
visions of its theoretical kin (Pérez Huber, 2010, p. 77; Museus, Ledesma, & Parker, 2015, p.
20). Like CRT, LatCrit sees axes of differentiation (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender) as socially
constructed, and their associated systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism) as endemic in the
neocolonial U.S. (Valdés, 2009). Further, as in CRT scholarship, LatCrit scholars view personal
narratives as a powerful mechanism through which Latines can challenge oppressive ideologies
and systems of subordination (Barnes, 2011; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001). However, LatCrit also
extends the work of CRT scholars to examines how language, immigration status, and ethnicity
may intersect with other axes of differentiation to uniquely shape the experiences of Latines in
U.S. society and structures of power (Pérez Huber, 2010; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001;
Pérez Huber, Benavides Lopez, Malagón, Velez & Solórzano, 2008). Thus, I pair CRT with
LatCrit in this dissertation to ensure that I capture the nuanced experiences of Latine students
and instructors, as well as my own experiences as a Chicana researcher.
In particular, I draw from the LatCrit concept and method of testimoniando in this work.
Developed with deep roots in Latin American oral cultures, and subsequently adopted in critical
race scholarship, testimonios embody the personal made political, as a “verbal journey…of one’s
life experiences with attention to injustices one has suffered” (Brabeck, 2001, p. 3). Originally
produced in primarily oral formats, testimonios now take myriad written forms, such as song
lyrics, memoirs, prose, and journals (Reyes & Rodriguez, 2012). Testimonios can act as a
narrative mechanism or a “discursive mode” through which those marginalized and situated as
“Other” recount and denounce their experiences witnessing oppression (Zimmerman, 2004, p.
1119; Booker, 2002), as well as a “tool” through which education scholars can record and
theorize those experiences (Pérez Huber, 2010). In this dissertation, I offer my own testimonio to
render my subjectivities visible and reflect on my connections to this research.

19
Methods
Site of Study
Persistently placed at the top of national and global cinema school rankings (Variety,
2019; Appelo, 2018; Svetkey, 2018), noted for its famous film and television industry alums
(e.g., George Lucas, John Singleton, Ron Howard, Shonda Rhimes), and located in the
“backyard” of the Los Angeles media industries (Mehta, 2017, p. 32), USC’s School of
Cinematic Arts (SCA) is considered a promising (even direct) pipeline to Hollywood (Cahill,
2017). As faculty themselves have claimed, “we have been the number one film school for years.
We are directly feeding people into the industry, and they are going to be the next writers,
directors, producers, animators, and cultural creators” (Acham, cited in Hovsepyan, 2018).
SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television division has similarly received widespread
acclaim as an industry-facing facet of SCA (Hogan, 2019). Its BFA and MFA programs have
been deemed some of the best in the U.S. (Lucia, 2020; Wyland, 2020; Silver, 2014;), and both
boast connections with a wide array of notable screenwriting alums (e.g., Shonda Rhimes, Zahir
McGee, John Singleton, Dana Fox) and faculty (e.g., Jack Epps Jr., Howard Rodman, Georgia
Jeffries, David Isaacs, to name just a few). Founded by acclaimed film director, instructor, and
author, Margaret Mehring, SCA’s screenwriting division first offered a Bachelor of Fine Arts
(BFA) in “Filmic Writing” in 1982 (Ahmed, 2018). After several successful years, the division
began offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in 1988 under the leadership of renowned
screenwriter and script consultant, David Howard. Seven years later, John Furia— former
President of the Writers Guild of American and a celebrated screenwriter known for television
series such as The Twilight Zone and Hawaii Five-O—headed efforts to establish a more
“formal” division linking the BFA and MFA programs under the official banner of the “Division

20
of Writing for Screen & Television” (Ahmed, 2018). In the decades since, the division has
iteratively expanded and rebranded; bolstering its television writing and new media narrative
training (Ahmed, 2018), offering minors in comedy and screenwriting in addition to its BFA and
MFA majors, and adopting its present name—the “John Wells Division of Writing for Screen &
Television”—after receiving a sizable endowment from award-winning writer, producer, and
SCA graduate John Wells in 2017 (THR Staff, 2017) .
Thus, I focus specifically on SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television Program as a
powerful site for the professional socialization of aspiring cinematic storytellers. While all
creatives involved in the filmmaking process are arguably involved in storytelling, I address
screenwriters and their work as the primary site and source of filmic and televisual stories. As
the division itself suggests in its advertising materials, “it all begins with a script” (SCA, n.d.).
And as the long-standing School of Cinematic Arts Dean, Elizabeth Daley, has proudly
proclaimed, the Writing for Screen and Television programs are specifically designed to
cultivate “‘talented storytellers’” (THR Staff, 2017).
To examine the ways in which these storytellers are taught and trained, I pair a grounded
theoretical approach with the frameworks of CRT and LatCrit and utilize ethnographic
methodologies. Specifically, through using interviews, surveys, content analysis, and classroom-
based observations, and conversing with CRT and LatCrit, I explore the pedagogies, built
learning environments, and educational experiences of both instructors and students in the
Writing for Screen and Television BFA and MFA programs.
Research Questions
The questions guiding this work are as follows:
RQ1: How are SCA’s screenwriting students taught and trained to pursue careers in the film and

21
television industries?
RQ2a: What success narratives are screenwriting students receiving through their respective
program’s professional socialization practices?
RQ2b: Do the articulation and propagation of these narratives differ between the BFA and MFA
programs?
RQ3: How, if at all, have the programs’ professional socialization practices shifted as a result of
the COVID-19 pandemic?
RQ4: What stories do students want to tell through their scripts and screenplays?
RQ5a: How, if at all, do the screenwriting programs encourage minoritized students to tell
counterstories and testimonios?
RQ5b: How, it at all, do the programs encourage majoritarian students to support their peers’
counterstorytelling and testimoniando?
Data Collection
To answer these questions, I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with faculty,
students, and alumni, classroom-based participant observations in five screenwriting courses, and
a critical race content analysis of the iconography displayed throughout SCA.
Faculty Interviews: I conducted interviews with ten faculty members (including two
former division directors) in the John Wells Writing for Screen and Television division between
2019 and 2022. Eight of the interviews were conducted in person and two were conducted via
Zoom. Each interview lasted between forty to one-hundred minutes in length. To solicit
interviewees, I employed volunteer and snowball sampling methods—using a key informant in
SCA to identify and contact participants, and asking participants about colleagues who might be

22
interested in participating in the study after each interview. See Appendix A for information
about each instructor informant.
I recorded and transcribed the interviews, aside from two interviews that were typed or
written verbatim, per the interviewees’ requests. The semi-structured interview protocol included
questions regarding each instructor’s: a) background in the film and television industries; b)
courses and key concepts taught within them; c) primary pedagogical tools and resources; d)
perceptions of “good” or effective storytelling; and e) perceptions of the story-craft dialectic and
its potential manifestations in SCA.
Student and Alumni Interviews: I conducted eighteen interviews with students and alumni
of SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television BFA and MFA programs between 2020–2022. Each
interview was conducted via Skype or Zoom (per COVID-19 health and safety protocols; the
platform for each interviews was determined by participants’ individual preferences), and lasted
between sixty to one-hundred minutes. As with my faculty interviews, I utilized volunteer and
snowball sampling methods to identify and contact student and alumni informants. Student and
alumni participants received a digital $25 Amazon gift card to thank them for their participation.
See Appendix C for information about each student informant.
At the start of each interview, I administered a personal information questionnaire via
Qualtrics, an online survey software. The questionnaire asked participants to share their age,
gender identity, preferred pronouns, racial and ethnic identities, major courses taken, and year of
enrollment in their program (or alumni status). The semi-structured protocol guiding each
interview included questions regarding students’: a) motivations for pursuing a screenwriting
degree; b) motivations for enrolling in SCA; c) short-term and long-term career goals; d)
descriptions of the stories they have written and aim to write, e) motivations behind their

23
storytelling; f) challenges experienced in telling their stories through their screenplays; g)
primary methods and mechanisms through which they are learning in their program; h) primary
methods and mechanisms through which they are being professionalized in their program; i)
perceived success narratives articulated in the program; and j) perceived impact of the COVID-
19 pandemic on their learning and professionalization experiences. Each interview drew from
these questions, while remaining flexible to allow for expansion on participants' responses and
for additional questions to emerge.
Participant Observation: I conducted classroom-based participant observations in a total
of five SCA screenwriting courses during the Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, and Spring 2022
semesters. From August 2019 to December of 2019, I collected ethnographic data as a
participant-observer in Screenwriting 500
7
—a lecture-style course focused on feature film
scripts, which is required for all Writing for Screen and Television MFA students. Between
January 2021 and May 2021, I acted as a participant-observer in Screenwriting 400—a lecture-
style class focused on television scripts, which is required for all Writing for Screen and
Television BFA students. From August 2021 to December 2021, I acted as a participant-observer
in two courses: Screenwriting 100—a small seminar teaching students the fundamentals of
screenwriting, and Screenwriting 200—a lecture-style elective course focused on issues of race,
gender, class, and other facets of identity in television writing. And between January 2022 to
May 2022, I was a participant observer in Screenwriting 300—an elective class exploring
storytelling politics and the capacity for screenwriters to enact social change through their work.
During each class session, I took fieldnotes detailing my observations of, and personal
reflections on, the course materials, classroom dynamics, key course lessons, instructors’

7
As with my informants, I have elected to refer to each course in this project using a pseudonym.

24
pedagogical styles, and advice shared by guest speakers. See Appendix B for information about
each guest speaker.
Critical Race Content Analysis: I conducted a critical race content analysis of the film
and television posters lining the halls of SCA. I randomly selected a sample (n = 120) of posters
displayed throughout each of the central SCA buildings, and analyzed their representations of
race, ethnicity, and gender. I analyzed who is represented—identifying each actor and gathering
their demographic data through online resources (e.g., The Notable Names Database)—and how
they are represented (e.g., are they depicted in ways that reinforce or challenge stereotypes?).
Depictions of crowds and depictions of non-human characters (e.g., Thing from Fantastic Four),
were excluded from my content analysis.
Data Analysis
To analyze my qualitative data, I followed the example of scholars utilizing both
grounded theory and CRT to examine educational equity generally (e.g., LeChasseur, 2014) and
counterstorytelling specifically (e.g., Solórzano and Yosso, 2002; Delgado Bernal, 1998).
Throughout my data collection and analysis, I employed the constant comparative method—
inductively and iteratively analyzing my data and reviewing and refining my interview protocols.
I recorded each interview (with the exception of the two aforementioned faculty interviews) and
transcribed the recordings using Rev.com (a secure online transcription service). I also composed
memos after conducting each interview and after reviewing and editing each interview transcript.
I manually coded the interview transcripts and memos using two coding approaches.
First, to allow for new concepts and categories grounded in participants’ experiences to emerge
(Charmaz, 2006), I began each round of coding using open and axial coding procedures to create
and refine grounded categories (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Second, I engaged in selective coding

25
to identify manifestations of the story and craft success narratives, testimoniando, and
counterstorytelling (as conceived by Delgado Bernal, 2002). Additionally, drawing from the
work of Rodriguez (2019), each iteration of coding centered intersectionality—specifically, a
constitutive approach to intersectionality—to examine how racism, nativism, sexism,
homophobia, transphobia, classism, and ableism shape the educational and storytelling
experiences of minoritized screenwriting students in SCA.
I also employed a critical feminist approach to grounded theory—as outlined in Olesen
(2011)—through which I consistently adopted a high level of self-reflexivity in collecting,
analyzing, and presenting my data. Specifically, I engaged in regular reflexive and creative
exercises (e.g., keeping a field journal, writing my own short scripts, producing poetry) to track
moments in which my subjectivities were variously engaged during my research. I drew from the
resulting data to develop my testimonio (presented in Chapter Six), which traces my experiences
conducting this research and my relationship with this work.
Chapter Overview
In Chapter Two, I discuss SCA’s screenwriting instructors’ pedagogical practices and
priorities. Drawing from my faculty interviews and classroom-based participant observations, I
describe instructors’ perspectives on what constitute the fundamental and crucial aspects of the
professional socialization of film and television aspirants, and how instructors enact those in
practice. Additionally, I highlight manifestations of the “tell your story” and “refine your craft”
success narratives in instructors’ teaching strategies. Some instructors requested that they read
and give their “stamp of approval” on this chapter; their participation in, and my publication of,
this work appeared to be contingent upon this agreement. Therefore, to reduce the risk of losing
access to my research site and data, and to ensure that I fairly represent their voices, I present the

26
data in this chapter in descriptive versus critical ways. In the following chapter (Chapter Three),
I apply CRT and LatCrit to this data—analyzing the dominant pedagogical paradigms in SCA
and revealing how they disempower minoritized screenwriters and hinder counterhegemonic
storytelling.
Chapter Four explores students’ experiences engaging with those pedagogical paradigms.
Drawing from my interviews with student interlocuters and participant-observations in
screenwriting courses and SCA events, I discuss students’ professional socialization experiences
and storytelling practices—paying particular attention to the ways in which they are receiving,
interpreting, and applying the story and craft success narratives. Further, I reveal the storytelling
politics with which students contend in their classrooms, and highlight students’ visions for
transforming those politics in both SCA and the entertainment industries. In Chapter Five, I
reveal how the screenwriting programs’ storytelling politics physically manifest in SCA’s
learning environments. I explore students’ efforts to critique and change those spaces, and
interrogate the institutional factors presently disempowering student-led changemaking.
In Chapter Six, I tell my own story and use my nascent craft skills in the form of a short
testimonio screenplay. Through this screenplay, I render my subjectivities visible, share my
personal stakes in this work, and thus highlight the position from which I proffer potential
changes in the subsequent chapter. In Chapter Seven, I forward strategies for reimagining
storytelling politics and pedagogies in screenwriting education, and draw from the concept of the
match cut to theorize about the transformative potential of film schools.

27
CHAPTER TWO: TEACHING “THE BEST STORYTELLERS” - SCREENWRITING
INSTRUCTORS’ PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES AND PRIORITIES
Introduction
“My job is to teach [students] to be the best storytellers they can be and to have faith in
their work. In the last half dozen years, what I have been really guiding them to do is to open
their mindset, and to think of themselves not strictly as screenwriters, but as storytellers who can
create in any medium” (Instructor 4). Sitting in an office overlooking the northwest end of a
sunlit stretch of campus—clusters of cinema students convening around a bright shock of green
grass in the distance, others carefully lugging RED Digital Cinema cameras and electrical
equipment to the sizable production stage due just south—Instructor 4, a senior screenwriting
faculty member, describes their approach to teaching. Asked about how their own experiences in
the industry have shaped their pedagogy, Instructor 4 began by discussing the need for film and
television industry aspirants to be resilient risk-takers capable of enduring the “hills and valleys
of the story-making process.” According to Instructor 4, in teaching students to weather this
weary path, their job is defined by a core pedagogical concern echoed and shared by other SCA
instructors: training students to become “the best storytellers.”
Examinations of other film and television creators’ discourses suggest that Instructor 4’s
emphasis on storytelling is unsurprising. Early Hollywood behemoths such as Alfred Hitchcock
have asserted that “making a film means, first of all, to tell a story” (Truffaut, Hitchcock, &
Scott, 1984, p. 103). Among cinema contemporaries, film is persistently classified as “a powerful
storytelling medium” (Films for Humanity, 2019) and a mechanism for “telling our stories”
(Majumdar, 2018; Lewis, 2015), with filmmaking constituting “a business of storytelling…it’s
all about storytelling” (John Ptak, cited from AMPAS, 2017). As internationally renowned

28
filmmaker Mario So Gao claims, “film is not all about the fancy gear or camera movement”—
alike that I spied through Instructor 4’s window—"but about the story you want to tell” (cited in
Team Drilers, 2019). Television creators have similarly identified themselves as “storyteller[s]”
(Cody, 2008; Lindelof, cited in Lillie, 2012) and described their work as a process of storytelling
(Rhimes & Stivers, 2017). Film and television makers have thus become synonymous with
“storytellers” in entertainment industry rhetoric (Kelly, 2019), and the process of creating motion
pictures and television series accordingly synonymous with storytelling—discourses
demonstrated in Instructor 4’s own use of the term “story-making” in lieu of “filmmaking” in
their description of the industries’ hills and valleys.
Manifestations of this filmmaking-storytelling and film/television maker-storyteller
synonymity emerged in other instructors’ rhetoric. Myriad SCA instructors informed students
that they are fundamentally talking about “storytelling” in their courses (fieldnote, Screenwriting
200 lecture), and affirmed that when it comes to effective screenwriting, students must learn “A-
level, powerful storytelling” because “story is king” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture).

However, for an industry replete with variegated narrative styles, techniques, and traditions, what
constitutes “the best” or “A-level” storytelling for film and television industry aspirants? Is this
storytelling technique-driven and structured, akin to the “refine your craft” success narrative? Or
is this storytelling creatively-driven and personal, following the “tell your story” success
narrative? And what does this look like in pedagogical practice?
The present chapter explores these questions, examining the nuances of SCA
screenwriting instructors’ story-driven pedagogical approaches and the ways in which they
reflect or challenge the story-craft dialectic. Specifically, drawing from in-depth, semi-structured
interviews with faculty, analyses of some interviewees’ instructional materials, and classroom-

29
based observations in five screenwriting courses, this chapter’s goals are two-fold. First, I
examine the range of pedagogical approaches and materials employed by

SCA screenwriting
instructors. I explore what and how they are teaching their students, and their perspectives on
what constitutes the fundamental and crucial aspects of the education and professional
socialization of film and television industry aspirants. I ask: what do instructors believe are the
most important things for their students to learn in order to “make it” in the media industries?
Second, in examining instructors’ accounts of their teaching strategies, I highlight manifestations
of the “tell your story” and “refine your craft” success narratives, and thus theorize about the
story-craft dialectic’s resonance in SCA’s pedagogical practices.
I find that SCA instructors propagate both the “tell your story” and “refine your craft”
narratives, teaching students to utilize both in service of storytelling—a central concept used
synonymously with screenwriting. Through their pedagogies, instructors insist that learning “A-
level, powerful storytelling” is crucial for film and television industry aspirants’ professional
development (fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture), and that students “all need good storytelling.
They all need to know how to tell stories” (Instructor 6). Thus, as in entertainment industry
discourses, SCA instructors forward the making of film and television as synonymous with
storytelling, and accordingly teach and train their students to become “professional storytellers”

(fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture). However, the pedagogies that faculty employ to teach this
story-centric approach vary.
While all instructors agree that “story is king” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture), they
hold divergent views on what types of narratives can be conferred this royal status. Specifically,
I posit that the program’s story-driven pedagogical approaches can be envisioned as a spectrum,
with a universal and structured storytelling approach on one end (typified by Instructor 2), and a

30
specific/personal and unstructured storytelling approach on the other (a pedagogical position
modeled by Instructor 3). The majority of instructors fall along this spectrum, encouraging their
students to prioritize personal, unstructured storytelling or universal, structured storytelling to
differing degrees, though rarely—if ever—denying the importance of one or the other altogether.
“Master the skills to tell it right:” Refining the craft of universal, structured storytelling
Through my interviews and classroom observations, I discovered that one of the
dominant pedagogical paradigms in SCA’s screenwriting program focuses on teaching students
that the types of stories that are successfully told and sold in the film and television industries are
universal. As Instructor 2 claimed, “the best writers” are “able to tap into something universal,”
and there are specific elements and techniques that make that possible; “there are certain
storytelling techniques that have been used since the dawn of time.
8
All good stories, regardless
of the time period…no matter what the film is, the genre is…use certain storytelling techniques”
that are “universal” (Instructor 2). Learning and applying those elements and techniques is seen
as crucial for students’ success; “you must master these elements and techniques before you
graduate from USC” (Screenwriting 500 syllabus) and use them “when you write that feature
that’s gonna get you out of here” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture, November 22, 2019).
Additionally, Instructor 2’s students are taught to use the universal “language” of the
sequence paradigm. The sequence paradigm, referred to colloquially as “sequences” by
instructors—was developed by late Czech screenwriter, František "Frank" Daniel. Daniel’s
paradigm suggests that successful films consist of eight sequences (discrete narrative units).
Each sequence contains a sub-goal and tension that are tied to the larger goals and conflict in the

8
Per Instructor 2’s request, I do not elaborate upon storytelling elements and techniques that
were not publicly available or shared by other instructors.

31
film. Several screenwriting professors believe and teach that sequences are the “building blocks
of great stories” in both film and television (fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture), and “the
language of cinematic storytelling…how stories work” (Instructor 5). As Instructor 5 described,
the sequence paradigm, which is fundamentally about “somebody who wants something badly
but is having difficulty getting it,” constitutes the core notion of “what a story is.” Accordingly,
the sequence paradigm is conceived of as the form that “dominates modern and good
storytelling” (Screenwriting 500 lecture). Thus, a key pedagogical priority for several SCA
instructors is teaching students to develop and refine the pragmatic screenwriting skills offered
by this structural approach, which purportedly applies to both films and television series.
And through engaging with this type of instruction, students are taught to prioritize
refining their skills over telling personal stories, that utilizing universal storytelling techniques is
necessary for appealing to audiences and industry executives, and thus to actively avoid
“let[ting] your personal taste get in the way of you as professional storytellers” (fieldnote,
Screenwriting 500 lecture). Therefore, students who are exposed to this pedagogical approach
are taught to give precedence to the “refine your craft” (vs. “tell your story”) success narrative.
Additionally, they are taught to equate professional film and television creators with professional
storytellers, and professional screenwriting with applying structured and universal storytelling
approaches, such as those offered by the sequence paradigm.
“Tell a story only you can tell:” Prioritizing personal voice and “storytelling instincts”
Meanwhile, other SCA screenwriting instructors adhere to a second, alternative
pedagogical paradigm—one that teaches students that successful cinematic stories are personal
(and thus specific), and are not dominated or defined by structure (particularly sequence
structure). Various instructors, particularly Instructor 3, insist that students possess their own

32
creative instincts and capacities to tell “emotionally charged, living, breathing” stories, which
structural storytelling approaches can hinder. Thus, these instructors encourage their students to
focus on telling their stories in whatever manner and form that they prefer.
Specifically, Instructor 3, who identifies as a “rare bird” and “odd man out” in their
division, encourages students to use their individual emotions and experiences to guide their
storytelling, and discourages students from relying on structural approaches to storytelling (e.g.,
the sequence paradigm. According to Instructor 3:
anyone who goes to film school is creatively compelled. They have something
they want to say, a story they want to tell. I want to help them find that. I steer
away from systems of structural analysis. Breaking screenplays into sequences,
identifying the task of each sequence, is currently a popular system that has value
as a reflective, editorial tool. If a narrative is built upon the rules of an analytical
system, it loses its messy, glorious humanity and will end as a flat line, well
structured, linear narrative, not an emotionally charged, living, breathing story.

Additionally, Instructor 3 suggests that personal storytelling—storytelling that is “yours”
in content and form—will pave the path to a successful screenwriting career. Instructor 3 insists
that they are primarily focused on students’ “art” versus their “commerce;” that they are
“interested in the artistic voices of the people in my class. I treat them like artists, and I think of
them as artists.” And according to Instructor 3, “the more you know your own voice, the greater
the odds are you will succeed as a writer.” Thus, through teaching students to follow their own
creative instincts and artistic voices, and to reject a highly structured or formulaic approach to
writing scripts and screenplays, Instructor 3 believes that they can help students attain future
screenwriting success through cultivating their voices and confidence as storytellers.

33
Balancing craft skills and creativity: Teaching along the story-based spectrum and
sustaining Frank Daniel’s legacy
The majority of instructors communicated that their teaching practices and priorities fall
between the two ends of the pedagogical spectrum embodied by Instructor 2 and Instructor 3.
Instructors varied in their agreement with, and adoption of, Instructor 2’s emphasis on teaching
students to develop their abilities as skilled storytellers capable of using universal approaches to
screenwriting, and of Instructor 3’s focus on teaching students to tell their personal story using
their unique creative instincts. Notably, these approaches, while variegated, reflect the enduring
influence that Frank Daniel has had on SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television Division and on
the propagation of the story and craft narratives in instructors’ professional socialization
approaches.
Marrying technique and personal tales: The legacy of Frank Daniel
Some instructors insisted that successful stories can be personal—inspired by one’s life
and experiences; however, they also argue that those stories must be told in a specific, skilled,
and universal way—namely, through utilizing Daniel’s sequence approach to storytelling.
For example, Instructor 5, a former student of Frank Daniel, discussed the significant and lasting
impact that the late screenwriter has had on them and on SCA’s approach to screenwriting
instruction. Describing his experiences as a graduate student in SCA prior to Frank Daniel
joining the school and prior to the development of the school’s writing division, Instructor 5
shared that:
at a certain point while I was in graduate school, I realized that the films that I had
in my head were not getting up on the screen in the way that I had imagined…I
began to wonder whether I'd made a mistake in choosing to go to grad school in
film and in thinking that film was something I want to do with my life.

34
However, according to Instructor 5, these doubts were assuaged when Frank Daniel became the
new dean of SCA and they had the opportunity to learn from and work with him. As Instructor 5
claimed, Daniel brought to SCA an “incredible analytic understanding” of cinematic storytelling
and showed students how to see through the “mystery” of screenwriting by teaching them
storytelling techniques—particularly those found in the sequence paradigm. Reflecting on the
first class that they took with Daniel, Instructor 5 claimed that he “demystified a process that I
had been fascinated by, but unable to master…The first thing that I understood and took away
from studying film analysis with Frank…was the value of technique, the liberating value of
technique,” which became a “huge part of Frank’s legacy” at SCA. Instructor 5 shared that they
thus aim to teach their students—as Daniel taught them—that to tell an effective and engaging
cinematic story and to “express [your]self clearly,” screenwriters “have to have technique.”
Simultaneously, Instructor 5 cautioned that “technique can kill a story” if writers only
focus on structure (vs. content) and emphasized the importance of teaching students to tap into
their personal, lived experiences in their storytelling. Instructor 5 claimed that while
screenwriters do not “have to be writing autobiographical screenplays,” it is “when they are
working from something that's authentic” that their work comes “alive.” When writers draw
from their memories, experiences, and observations, they “bring something of value and life to
the page” (Instructor 5). And according to Instructor 5, doing so—creating content informed by
one’s life—requires its own set of skills. Specifically, they claimed that you can:
think about the imagination and where original stories come from in the same way
[that] you could think about technique. In other words, you could think about it as
something that has a specific set of skills, that can be developed in a deliberate
way, and over which you can have some mastery. In other words, it's not just the
muse whistling by whenever, you know, or just grinding it out day after day. It's
about where do we go for stories and characters and worlds.

35
Through developing this distinct skillset—this capacity to tap into personal, “authentic”
material—nascent writers can learn the “fundamental pathways that a writer has to travel in order
to produce original work” (Instructor 5).
Instructor 5 shared that they thus aim to help their students—particularly those in the
early stages of their screenwriting program—to cultivate those skills; to learn how to “look at all
that you've got inside of you just there to work with” and “what worlds do you have at your
fingertips” that you can write about. And according to Instructor 5, this pedagogical practice was
also modeled by Frank Daniel, who would spend significant time with students outside of the
classroom and:
tell these wonderful tales from his own life…stories about the places he grew up
in Czechoslovakia…and you were spellbound. And in the process of being
spellbound, you were learning how to tell a good story and you were also learning
from him where the stories in your life that might be worth sharing reside.

Instructor 5 thus learned through, and adopted, a pedagogical approach that emphasizes
the importance of both technical skills and personal storytelling skills. As Instructor 5 claimed,
“you have to have technique and…You have to know yourself and know yourself as a storyteller.
You have to know your imagination and where its resources and riches lie.” (Instructor 5,
underline added for emphasis). And according to Instructor 5, while “different faculty members
in different courses emphasize different parts of that” technique-personal storytelling dialectic,
they all contribute to a program-wide approach that emphasizes both:
we recognize as a program from the moment they walk in that they're developing
two things. They're developing their imagination and their capacity for original
work, and they're developing their technique and the ability to express themselves
clearly. And when you marry the two of them, you have a screenwriter. And what
I've now seen over the years is that with those two foundations underneath our
writers' feet, they can do more than just do well in grad school. They can do more
than just say sell a script or get a job on a shoot. They can have a career.

36
This effort to “marry” personal expression and technical skill development is further
exemplified by Instructor 7, who teaches students “to tell their story, but to master the skills to
tell it right.” As another former student of Frank Daniel, Instructor 7 subscribes to the sequence
paradigm and highlights the value that it holds for aspiring screenwriters and their ability to tell
stories in the “right” way. Simultaneously, Instructor 7 cautions against the heedless application
of sequence techniques; as they claimed, the sequence paradigm is “not meant to be a recipe” or
simple formula for success. Further, they discourage students from prioritizing craft skills and
techniques over personal storytelling, as you “really don’t want technique to get in the way of
telling their own story.” Thus, their pedagogy is designed to teach students to learn and
strategically employ the “practical storytelling techniques” of the sequence paradigm in service
of their personal expression and storytelling.
Craft skills, commercial knowledge, and creativity: Stocking students’ toolboxes
Other instructors deviate from Instructor 5 and 7’s emphasis on the principal importance
of the sequence paradigm, while still encouraging students to develop practical skills—to fill
their “toolbox” with craft and industry knowledge. Simultaneously, they urge students to be
strategic about their application of the “tell your story” narrative, discussing both the benefits
and limitations of personal storytelling.
For example, Instructor 9 underscores the importance of students’ “unique” voices and
their inevitably personal connections with their writing, claiming that “no one is telling the truth
when he or she says…‘it's not me. It's just my work.’ Of course it's them. It's the bleeding of
their soul.” This perspective fundamentally shapes Instructor 9’s teaching style:
At the beginning of every class I teach, whether it's a MFA class or a BFA class, a
Spring class, Fall class, a Summer class…I say to the student[s], I will never tell
you what to write. That's up to you. I will offer opinions. I will try to guide you. I

37
will hold a metaphorical lantern up so that you don't trip and fall down too many
times. But at the end of the day, it's your voice. It's your work.

Indeed, as I observed throughout their Screenwriting 200 course, Instructor 9 employed a
pedagogical approach that encouraged students to use their voices and share their experiences. In
each class session, Instructor 9 screened, and asked students to share their responses to,
television shows; in lieu of providing formal academic lectures, Instructure 9 invited the class of
nearly 200 students to speak about their experiences viewing each show. Rather than analyzing
writers’ use of storytelling techniques, students were called to reflect on the content and their
opinions of it.
Simultaneously, Instructor 9 emphasizes the limitations that personal storytelling and an
over-reliance on voice (versus craft) poses for aspiring screenwriters. According to Instructor 9,
there is a “danger in writing stories that are too personal,” particularly for students, who haven’t
had adequate time to “process” and present them in a way that will be engaging for audiences.
Additionally, given that “most of the work that writers are going to get…is in television,” a
medium in which “very few of them are going to get to create shows” that reflect their distinctive
story and voice, focusing on personal storytelling poses “practical” concerns (Instructor 9). Thus,
according to Instructor 9, students have to develop craft skills—in particular, they have to “learn
the craft of replicating a voice”— to ensure their future success. In other words, students must
learn how to contribute to existing content (e.g., as members of a writer’s room for an
established television series). To accomplish this, students do not need to rigidly adhere to
structures or rules (e.g., the sequence paradigm)—“you can break those rules;” but they must
develop the capacity to tell a fundamentally “human” story that appeals to all audiences.
Meanwhile, Instructor 4 emphasizes the value of teaching students to tell “any” story—
including, but not limited to, their own, and to cultivate skills beyond those in the sequence

38
paradigm, such as resilience, tenacity, and business savviness. Instructor 4 encourages aspiring
writers to “believe that he or she has something significant to contribute…to the world” through
their stories, and to “examine the abundance of their own personal ‘story material’” in their
writing. Simultaneously, Instructor 4 insists that students should develop the skills to tell and sell
any stories—not just those that are personal—stating in one of their written materials: “write
what you know and then, after you’re on solid ground, expand the playing field. Include a fusion
of opposites. If you’re male, write female. Female, male. If you’re white, write black, Young,
write old, etc.” According to Instructor 4, “writ[ing]” what you know” should be a starting place
for early television and film writers, but is not a sustainable long-term strategy. Eventually,
screenwriters must learn to branch out to tell or “play” with stories that are not their own—that
are outside of their personal experiences.
Further, reflecting on their own experiences taking screenwriting courses, Instructor 4
describes the detriments posed by instructors who solely focus on personal storytelling and who
lack an interest or ability in developing students’ practical and professional skills. As Instructor 4
claimed, young writers “need to know what their strengths are, and then they also need to know
what they need to work on” when it comes to their craft capabilities. Therefore, Instructor 4
strongly urges their students to develop their writing abilities and industry-facing skills (e.g.,
perseverance, entrepreneurial abilities), and accordingly provides myriad opportunities to learn
about the fundamentals of the business-side of film and television. Additionally, Instructor 4
insists upon the importance of developing students’ abilities to sell, “protect,” and profit from
their stories (e.g., through establishing copyright). Instructor 4’s students are thus taught to
cultivate skills outside of those found in the sequence paradigm, and to view both personal and
impersonal storytelling as valuable means through which they can develop their careers.

39
This perspective was shared in many ways by Instructor 8, who discussed the importance
of teaching students to utilize both their unique perspectives and practical skills in their
storytelling, as well as the detriments of prioritizing structure in students’ professionalization.
Instructor 8 claimed that one of the most important things that students get out of their time at
SCA is craft; after all, “no producer now has the time to teach anybody coming into a show the
nuts and bolts. You're supposed to come in prepared, which is why film school is so important.”
Further, referencing television writing in particular, Instructor 8 claimed that students are “in
school to learn craft and get a portfolio of work. And they’re gonna need that, because the way
you get into the industry is through fellowships. So they need an award winning script, which
would give them a fellowship, which will then get them on staff at some show.” Thus, Instructor
8 encourages students to develop at least one pilot during their tenure at SCA that will
demonstrate their craft skills to future employers.
However, Instructor 8 clarified that they believe structure, particularly the sequence
paradigm, is not a key or relevant component of aspiring screenwriters’ professionalization. In
fact, Instructor 8 declared: “to hell with structure…I don't think that they're in school to learn
structure.” While there are “practical considerations” that students “should be knowledgeable
about” when it comes to crafting compelling narratives, such as where “certain milestones” in a
narrative might be placed in a screenplay, students need to learn “how to tell a story that comes
from emotion and not from analysis. Too many of the students are relying on rules and that is not
the way to write. You need to write from your heart, not from your head.” Thus, Instructor 8
claimed that they disagree “completely” with instructors who teach the sequence paradigm,
arguing that the principles of the paradigm are “not true of the industry in general, especially not

40
on the streaming networks…those who are teaching feature film structure are teaching something
that's not relevant to contemporary television.”
Instead, Instructor 8 teaches students to focus on producing work that reflects their
distinct voices, which they argue is key for attaining industry jobs. Specifically, according to
Instructor 8, “what you're bringing is your voice…you're gonna get a job on [television] shows
by being needed, and you're needed because you are special because you are the only one who is
you.” And in order to tangibly present their voices to industry executives, Instructor 8 insists that
students create pilot(s) that “demonstrat[e] their uniqueness as individuals—the uniqueness of
their voice and their perspective and their talent;” in addition to showing their craft skills and
talents, students’ pilots should provide “a sense of who they are.” In this and other work,
Instructor 8 teaches students to draw from their own experiences when crafting characters—
suggesting that doing so gives students “more to write about” so that their characters are not
“flat.”
Notably, Instructor 8 described instances in which they saw students “running away from
their own backgrounds” in their writing as a result of “fear of being rejected by the industry
wrongly.” For example, Instructor 8 shared that they:
had a student who came from Miami who was writing about a girl gang from a
project, a Hispanic girl gang. She knew a lot about it. She absolutely was settled
in what she was writing. It was a great subject, great opportunity, because she did
know what she was talking about. Script comes in and all the characters in this
girl gang are white. And I'm saying to her, ‘you're from Miami. This is a Hispanic
housing project. Why are all of the characters white?’ And she said, I wanna
succeed in this business…I'm an all American girl. I don't wanna be defined by
my ethnicity. I only want to be like everybody else…because I wanna work and I
wanna make money.

According to Instructor 8, they challenged these claims and encouraged this student to embrace
her identity, arguing that she was more likely to get hired for her distinct voice than for “trying to

41
make believe who you’re not.” Instructor 8 thus teaches students that telling personal stories and
using their unique voices to shape their narratives can promote success in the early stages of their
careers.
Simultaneously, Instructor 8 emphasized the importance of storytelling that is “universal”
and not solely tethered to one’s personal experiences. They argued that audiences are interested
in stories that “speak to the reality of what it means to be human,” and critiqued the “old saying,
write what you know”—claiming that it is “wrong” because:
it denies the possibility of empathy and imagination. If you really believe that in a
very stringent way, no woman could ever write a script that had a man in it, or the
reverse. No one could ever write about anyone whose life experience was
different from their own. And that's wrong. So, it's not ‘write what you know’ in a
limiting way, but it's ‘write who you are,’ and who you are is a more universal
statement of being in touch with human truths.

Instructor 8 also argued that writers should be able to create characters that are “a different age
or gender or background or nationality or anything else, as long as you write those with respect.”
Thus, like Instructor 4, Instructor 8 challenges the notion that students can only write about
experiences and subjectivities of which they have personal knowledge. While engaging in
personal storytelling can be beneficial, students should ultimately prioritize creating narratives
that are “universal” or appeal to broad audiences.
Meanwhile, Instructor 6 argues for the value of pedagogical approaches that emphasize
both structured storytelling and one’s personal storytelling instincts, while ultimately adhering to
the latter in their own teaching. Instructor 6 suggests that students should begin by learning
sequences and the fundamentals of their craft—such as “what is a character? How do you create
really rich characters?… How do you write a scene? What is a good dramatic scene?”—and
developing a “toolbox” with this knowledge and skills. However, Instructor 6 claims that once
students have learned these fundamentals, they “need to make [their stories] personal” through

42
determining “where are you in there?” and “min[ing]” both their personal experiences—“I went
here, and I did this”—and their “emotional autobiography” for storytelling material. And while
Instructor 6 believes that students can use the sequence paradigm and “structure to help you as a
tool and as a guide” in writing about those personal experiences and emotions, they ultimately
argue that students should not rigidly rely on sequences, as some stories can “get lost in
structure.” Thus, Instructor 6 posits that while having the sequence paradigm in one’s “toolbox is
really important,” what they ultimately “hope we do in the program is create strong creative
instincts” and encourage students to “find themselves,” so that they can craft stories about their
experiences, memories, and emotions, and using their individual creative instincts.
Similarly, while Instructor 1 discussed the importance of developing students’ craft
“toolbox”—filling it with knowledge of screenplay formatting, how to generate conflict, how to
keep audiences engaged, etc.—they reject a “brutally instrumentalist” or “brutally practical”
view of screenwriting in their teaching. Instead, Instructor 1 encourages students to start their
writing by asking, “what is the story only I can tell? What is the part of the world I know better
than anyone else? And move forward from there as opposed to moving backward from: ‘what
was the movie that made the most money last weekend and how can I reverse engineer that to be
the exact same thing but slightly different here?” Thus, Instructor 1, much like Instructor 6 and
Instructor 3, teaches their students to develop their unique personal voice and vision as they
become professional storytellers—insisting that while developing craft skills is important, telling
the story “only I can tell” is crucial for early-career film and television industry aspirants. As
Instructor 1 shared:
what I think is important, it's not write what you know in the most flat footed and
literal sense. Like, I was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Does that mean that all of
my protagonists have to have come up in Brooklyn? I would hope not. But the
way you see the world and the world you experienced in childhood and the

43
community that you come from—particularly if they're a community that is
underrepresented in big screens or small screens—I believe you have a
responsibility to represent. Responsibility makes it sound like eat your spinach.
But, let's say the opportunity to represent. I can't tell you how many times my life
has been changed because somebody who came from a world very different than
mine had the courage and skill to put it down in a form that I could see. I actually
believe that if you write the screenplay that only you can write, not only will you
be served well in terms of your own soul, but I think as a practical business
decision, that is what will get you your first early traction.

Rather than examining existing content to determine what has made it successful and
working “backward” to create a story that fits that format, Instructor 1’s students are thus taught
to start with their story. And according to Instructor 1, as a former chair of the division, they
have contributed to a wider adoption of this pedagogical approach across SCA’s screenwriting
programs; as they shared: “I think I was able to help inculcate the division with a more writerly
ethos as opposed to a sort of brutally practical one, and also one where the dominant industrial
filmmaking paradigm was not necessarily the one we taught.” In fact, for the past several years,
they have witnessed the division make personal voice and vision a key criteria in their
admissions process—“we are selecting for who can write the best and who has a voice.”
“It’s the doing that matters”: How screenwriting instructors teach
As they teach along this pedagogical spectrum, instructors utilize a variety of teaching
methods. As documented in existing film school scholarship (e.g., Henderson, 1990; Mehta,
2015), my interlocuters collectively prioritized hands-on craft practice (e.g., writing and re-
writing), as well as engagement with existing film and television content (e.g., screenings,
screenplays). However, some instructors also occasionally utilized more traditional academic
materials (e.g., textbooks, exams, handouts). The specific materials and mechanisms that
individual instructors employed to teach students varied, and can be mapped—to some extent—

44
according to where they fall along the unstructured/personal storytelling and structured/universal
storytelling spectrum.
Instructors who emphasize the importance of universal and structured storytelling
primarily utilize films, television shows, and screenplays to teach—engaging with materials that
students produce, screening exemplars, and analyzing their use of universal storytelling
techniques in their classrooms. In comparison, instructors who believe that successful films and
TV series are personal and not rigidly structured primarily teach using creative and
individualized writing exercises, such as journaling. However, falling between these ends of the
pedagogical spectrum, the majority of instructors employ combinations of these two instructional
approaches—pairing technique-centered, skill-building exercises with experimental exercises for
developing one’s personal voice and vision.
For example, Instructor 2—whose teaching most strongly aligns with the universal,
structured storytelling side of the screenwriting programs’ pedagogical spectrum—stresses the
importance of applied versus theoretical learning techniques when it comes to screenwriting,
claiming that “I don’t teach from a textbook.” Accordingly, as I witnessed while taking their
screenwriting course, Instructor 2 primarily employs pragmatic, technique-driven pedagogical
practices. Specifically, when teaching large, lecture-style courses, Instructor 2 conducts
breakdowns of films and television shows to highlight the storytelling techniques utilized within
them. In smaller, seminar-style courses, Instructor 2 has students write, and provide and receive
feedback on, screenplays—“us[ing] their materials” as the primary pedagogical tool.
Additionally, Instructor 2 stresses that they actively discourage the learning or use of
“critical theory” in their courses, positing that the intellectual inclination to theorize about the
messaging and effects of a film or television show detracts from students’ ability to think

45
through the “practical storytelling techniques” that the screenwriters have used. Specifically,
Instructor 2 claimed: “I can talk critical theory, but I make a point of not doing that, and I don’t
want my students to either. As storytellers, we should all be focused on what the audience
actually understands, whether it's explicit or implicit.” Thus, as Instructor 2 screens, and analyzes
the use of the sequence paradigm in, media exemplars with their students, they discourage
attempts to apply “critical theory,” encouraging them to look instead at how screenwriters have
successfully employed universal storytelling elements, techniques, and approaches and to
consider how they can use those in their own work.
Similarly, in their courses, Instructor 7 screens and breaks down content that they believe
exemplifies the effective use of sequences. Instructor 7 also provides students with some
traditional pedagogical materials as they engage in this process. For example, Instructor 7
utilizes handouts outlining the use of sequences in the exemplars that they screen, and lengthy
glossaries of terms to facilitate students’ understanding of fundamental concepts, such as
sequences and rising actions. However, in both the screening process and handouts, Instructor 7
emphasizes that while students should learn practical storytelling techniques (e.g., those offered
by the sequence paradigm), they should not strictly follow these techniques like a “recipe” or
“formula.” Instead, Instructor 7’s pedagogical processes are designed to teach students about
pragmatic approaches to storytelling, and then encourage students to experiment with their
application of those in their writing—blending craft conventions with their personal voice and
vision.
In “prepar[ing] students for life as a screenwriter,” Instructor 5 similarly encourages their
students to learn the techniques of the sequence paradigm while also experimenting with their
applications of these techniques when telling their own stories. However, unlike Instructor 7,

46
Instructor 5 does not utilize traditional pedagogical materials, such as handouts or glossaries, in
their classrooms—citing an explicit disinterest in “training good students.” Instead, Instructor 5
claims that they prioritize in-class discussions, iterative writing and feedback cycles, and
assignments designed to teach students how to “mine” their personal experiences for story
inspiration and then transform those experiences into a comprehensible story via the “valuable”
techniques of the sequence paradigm.
In comparison, rather than teaching students about the mechanics and application of the
sequence paradigm, Instructor 4 utilizes writing, collaborative work, and practical skill-building
exercises to prepare students to navigate “the business” of screenwriting. Specifically, Instructor
4 suggests that writing tirelessly, cultivating entrepreneurial skills, and collaborative work are
key for students’ success, and thus constitute their core pedagogical approach. According to
Instructor 4, they have adopted a notably “tough-minded approach” in their classrooms, requiring
students “to do two drafts [of scripts] in one semester as opposed to one,” which other courses
traditionally do. Instructor 4 suggests that heightening the demand students typically face in their
screenwriting courses (moving the requirement from one script per semester to two) “was the
best preparation I could give them for the business, which is learning to…meet the demands of
the [industry] machine…you not only write well, you write fast, because the machine must be
fed.”
In addition to learning to meet the writing demands of the film and television industries,
Instructor 4 insists that students must develop skills as entrepreneurs and collaborators.
According to Instructor 4, “students don't fully appreciate the economics of the business”—thus,
they aim to teach them that “in addition to being the best storytellers they can be, they must
become entrepreneurial. I don't know how you survive in this business without being an

47
entrepreneur.” Students in Instructor 4’s courses are thus taught about intellectual property,
copyright, and how to become effective sellers/marketers of their work. Additionally, as echoed
by other instructors, Instructor 4 claims that students must also “learn to work together” as
collaborators, as doing so will allow them to “get the best work” following graduation.
Ultimately, Instructor 4 claims that “storytellers must be tireless,” and thus designs their courses
to cultivate this ability—teaching students to meet the expectations of the entertainment
industries through engaging in extensive writing, learning to effectively collaborate with peers,
and appreciating—and developing the entrepreneurial skills needed to navigate—the business
side of screenwriting.
Instructor 6 similarly stresses the need for students to develop the endurance and
resilience needed to navigate what they describe as a grueling and demanding business. As
Instructor 6 claims, “the business is just hard. You’re going to get your knocks. Everybody gets
their knocks. Will you stay in the game? I think that's what's really important.” To prepare
students to survive “the business,” Instructor 6 thus strives to teach their students to develop
“drive, ambition, and fortitude,” particularly as they relate to a key process that can be
“devastating” for aspiring writers: rewriting. As the author of a book on rewriting and a teacher
of rewriting courses at SCA, Instructor 6 insists that “what you learn as a professional is that you
have to write on a daily basis” and that “writing is rewriting.” Thus, their students are primarily
learning through consistently practicing their craft: producing scripts, receiving feedback, and,
most importantly, rewriting. And Instructor 6 teaches students how to effectively engage in this
process, showing them how to most productively receive and apply feedback and notes from
peers and professors (and eventually, industry professionals) without “throw[ing] the baby out
with the bathwater” or losing sight of their original vision for a story.

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While existing near the opposite end of the pedagogical spectrum, Instructor 1 is like
Instructor 7, in that both are explicitly unconcerned with training “good students.” As Instructor
1 claims, they “hardly at all” or “never” use textbooks as a teaching tool in their classes, because
while “there are many good textbooks about screenwriting…I don't think this is that kind of a
curriculum. I don't think it's like, master this lesson master that lesson.” While Instructor 1
shared that they often “make reference to something that is in a textbook or that is part of the
canon of screenwriting,” they insist that teaching and testing students according to what is
available in the traditional pedagogical content of textbooks “is not the basis of the curriculum in
any sense. At least not in my classroom.” Instead, Instructor 1 teaches their students to watch and
become “conversant” with a range of films to identify the storytelling techniques used within
them, while determining what they can or want to emulate as they write “the story only I can
tell.”
In comparison, Instructor 8 requires their students to engage with at least one textbook—
specifically, one that they themselves have authored on “the craft and the art of television
[writing].” According to Instructor 8, their book contains “everything that you wanna know”
about “the work and the world of writing for television,” and is thus essential reading for
aspiring television writers. Specifically:
it's required because it gives the nuts and bolts of everything… it's a basis to keep
going on after they get out of school. I have been in producers’ offices and seen
my book on the desk for a long time. And it's been adopted by network mentoring
programs everywhere. So it's the Bible of the industry on this subject.

Notably, however, as Instructor 8 clarified—and as I witnessed while taking their Screenwriting
400 class—they do not prioritize “book learning” in their pedagogy, “even though I have a
book.” Instead, Instructor 8 focuses on drawing from their own experiences in the film and
television industries—"everything I tell the students is based on what's real in the industry,” and

49
much like Instructor 2, “I am not really interested in abstract theory.” While students are required
to read the TV writing “Bible” outside of the classroom, class sessions are not spent pouring over
its pages; rather, they are spent asking questions, hearing Instructor 8’s industry insights, and
engaging with media exemplars.
Meanwhile, Instructor 3 employs a highly flexible and individualized approach to
teaching, in which they “steer” students away from highly structured approaches to storytelling.
Rather than screening and analyzing films and television shows, Instructor 3’s students are
primarily, consistently writing. And through providing iterative feedback to students as they
incrementally develop their work, Instructor 3 aims to listen to and help cultivate students’
unique “artistic voices” and writing, while also guiding them away from an overreliance on
sequences. As Instructor 3 claimed, they “steer [students] away from systems of structural
analysis,” such as the sequence paradigm, and instead encourage students to develop and utilize
their own voices and creative instincts. Instructor 3 thus teaches their students to experiment with
and develop their personal voice and vision through writing, and to avoid relying on purportedly
universal or popular storytelling techniques.
“The best in the world”: SCA’s status and its implications for students’ professional
socialization
My instructor interlocuters also revealed that as SCA students are variously taught about
the value of structured and universal versus unstructured and personal storytelling, they are
taught that their program is a cinematic storytelling powerhouse—bearing a badge of honor as
the “best film school in the world” (Instructor 5). Students are accordingly taught to adorn this
badge themselves—to embrace the status that comes with their program, to recognize how
valuable their education and professionalization within the program are, and to cultivate loyalty

50
to the program’s “family” or to the “Trojan mafia,” as doing so will purportedly guarantee their
post-graduation success.
Many instructors stated that SCA is the “best in the world” when it comes to teaching and
training the next generation of cinematic storytellers. As Instructor 6 claimed, SCA “has a great
reputation. People are drawn here because they want to be at the number one film school in the
world.” And what affords them this distinguished status? Throughout our interviews, several
instructors cited alum employment as evidence of the program’s universally renowned strength,
claiming that their teaching methods allow students to “get out of here and get a job”
(Screenwriting 500 lecture),

and that the majority of students find employment following
graduation. Further, as Instructor 5 claimed, beyond preparing students to “make it” in the film
and television industries after graduation, SCA prepares students to “lead” those industries; thus,
it is SCA’s capacity to both populate the film and television industries’ ranks of creators and to
steer the direction of those industries that sustains “our reputation [as] the best film school in the
world.”
Further, many instructors insisted upon the power of the school’s connections in shaping
those post-graduation employment rates. Some referred to the notable influence of the “Trojan
mafia,” a term denoting the “mighty network” of SCA students, alumni, and instructors (Candis,
2017). According to Instructor 1, “there is this sort of Trojan mafia, and it does sort of work” in
terms of providing students with a “legible pathway” to industry careers based on their affiliation
with USC. Other instructors described SCA’s network as a family and encouraged students to
take advantage of their connections to SCA’s cinematic kin. For example, one instructor claimed
that the SCA family is “real” and “powerful,” and will “have your back” in the industry
(fieldnote, Screenwriting 500 lecture). And according to some informants, those connections are

51
key for students’ future success. As Instructor 8 claimed, beyond craft skills, the most important
thing that students “get out of the USC School of Cinematic Arts” is their “relationships with
other people. Our students help each other…many people do progress based on friends they
made in school;” thus, the connections that students form at SCA are “as important as anything
they learn in the classroom.”
Instructors have also enacted this belief in SCA’s elite status through teaching in Asia,
Africa, and Europe. For example, Instructor 2 has developed a screenwriting program in China
and claims that “all the techniques I teach here apply to Chinese and American students. This is
how all stories work.” Similarly, Instructor 7, who has employed their pedagogy in Europe and
Africa, insists that when it comes to what they teach, “it’s not Hollywood, it’s just good
storytelling.” And according to Instructor 5, who has also taught screenwriting in Europe, “we
can teach screenwriting technique better than anybody on the planet.” These instructors thus
indicate that as “the best in the world” (Instructor 7), it is SCA screenwriting instructors’ duty to
share their universal storytelling strategies—their “keys to the kingdom” (Instructor 5)—with the
world. And students learning from these instructors—whether in Asia, Africa, Europe, or North
America—are thus being taught that, regardless of where they may fall on the structured and
universal versus unstructured and highly personal storytelling spectrum, aligning themselves
with SCA and its family, and adopting their storytelling approaches, will augment their future
success as screenwriters.
Discussion
Ultimately, I find that SCA screenwriting instructors’ principal priority is to
professionally socialize students as storytellers. However, instructors’ story-centric pedagogies
vary, ranging from approaches emphasizing the value of structured and universal stories, to

52
approaches prioritizing unstructured and highly specific/personal storytelling. The majority of
instructors work along this pedagogical spectrum, teaching students to focus on telling personal,
unstructured stories or applying practical, “universal,” and structural storytelling approaches, in
various ways. And the story-craft dialectic maps onto this pedagogical spectrum—instructors
who teach personal and unstructured storytelling focus on the power of “telling your story” (as
typified by Instructor 3), while instructors who teach universal and structured storytelling laud
the value of “refining your craft” as a storyteller (as typified by Instructor 2). Thus, as Instructor
8 affirmed, students are receiving both the story and craft success narratives over the course of
their time at SCA.
Some instructors, namely Instructor 2, strive to teach their students that successful
screenwriting necessarily uses universal techniques, elements, and approaches. To varying
degrees, Instructors 2, 5, and 7 insist that students must refine their craft as storytellers through
learning these “practical storytelling techniques,” which purportedly allow aspiring film and
television writers to tell their stories in the “right” way or to transform their personal experiences
into a “universal” narrative. Thus, when enrolled in courses with Instructors 2, 7, or 5, students
are socialized to develop their skills as craft-oriented storytellers capable of using techniques,
elements, and structural approaches (such as those outlined in the sequence paradigm) to either
shape (Instructors 2 and 5) or inform, though not monopolize (Instructor 7), the telling of their
story in the “real” or “right” way.
In comparison, other instructors challenge the notion that effective storytelling is
necessarily structured or universal. Instead, these instructors teach that successful filmic and
televisual stories are personal and shaped by one’s own experiences and creative impulses.
Specifically, Instructor 3 insists upon the power of what aspiring screenwriters “want to say” and

53
the “story they want to tell” using their unique, individual voices. Instructor 3, alongside
Instructor 6 and Instructor 1, thus teach their students to focus on telling their own stories in
ways that do not rigidly adhere to structural conventions (e.g., sequences). And while none of
these instructors outright deny the value of those conventions, they discourage students from
using them to guide the development of their work.
Meanwhile, situated in the middle of SCA’s pedagogical spectrum, Instructor 4’s
teaching priorities and practices are uniquely positioned in relation to those of their colleagues.
Like Instructors 6, 1, and 3, Instructor 4 encourages students to engage in personal storytelling—
to “write what you know; positing that early-career screenwriters should begin by drawing from
“personal ‘story material’” in their work. However, Instructor 4 also suggests that this personal
storytelling is not sustainable, and accordingly encourages young writers to learn to tell “any”
story, not just their own. Additionally, like Instructors 2, 5, and 7, Instructor 4 highlights the
value of craft skill-building for students, while emphasizing the need for students to learn skills
beyond those in the sequence paradigm, such as entrepreneurship and copyright laws.
Thus, as screenwriting students are taught and trained in SCA, they encounter a wide
array of pedagogical approaches—a reality that a previous chair of the program, Instructor 6,
recognizes and applauds. According to Instructor 6, the diversity of pedagogies within SCA—
with some instructors being “very structure-oriented” and others encouraging storytelling that is
shaped by students’ personal experiences and creative instincts—“is great because there's no one
way to do things…There is no one way, and there is no formula.” And as Instructor 6 and many
of their colleagues believe and teach, this variety of pedagogies—which ultimately expose
students to both the “refine your craft” and “tell your story success” narratives—is effective, as

54
SCA continues to be the “best film school in the world.”
As they pursue these distinctive priorities in their classrooms, SCA’s instructors provide
students with opportunities to develop professional skills and knowledge through both traditional
schooling mechanisms (e.g., lectures, reading written materials) and pre-professional work
experiences that emulate industry processes. For example, students are taught through writing,
and receiving and providing feedback on, scripts and screenplays, and through working on
student film crews and utilizing professional resources (e.g., Final Draft and other screenwriting
software). As the cinema school boasts on its website, it provides students with “the same state-
of-the-art technologies being used and developed across the entertainment industry,” as evinced
by the thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment I witnessed parading past Instructor 4’s window.
And as advertised in the Writing for Screen and Television Division’s promotional video, the
courses are designed to make students feel as though they are “actually in the writer’s room.”
Literature on organizational and professional socialization suggests that these two forms
of professionalization—education and pre-work skill-building opportunities—increase students’
capacity to survive and thrive in future work settings. As both Kothwa (2018) and Anakwe &
Greenhaus (2000) illustrate, the pre-entry stage of organizational socialization—the phase in
which aspiring professionals, like SCA screenwriting students, develop expectations and gather
information about the occupation and industries that they pursue—plays a significant role in
career aspirants’ future success in the workforce. Students who gain hands-on work experience
during this stage are more likely to transition seamlessly into their future professional roles
(Anakwe & Greenhaus, 2000). Further, prior related work experiences (PRE) positively facilitate
individuals’ adjustment to professional organizations through increasing role clarity and
decreasing role conflict—in other words, career aspirants who have the opportunity to engage in

55
PRE will more effectively understand and adapt to their respective position within a new
workplace (Kothwa, 2018). Thus, through providing opportunities to gain hands-on
professionalization experiences—both within and outside of the classroom—SCA facilitates
students’ adjustment and integration into their profession.
Further, these experiences contribute to students’ professional identity development. As
Hall (1977) posits, schools have become increasingly important spaces in which individuals
pursuing careers in the arts can form their professional identity. Indeed, scholars have
empirically demonstrated that professionalization experiences within higher-education spaces
powerfully contributed to aspiring creative laborers’ self-identification as professional—“the
more students are given an opportunity to function in a professional capacity, the more likely
they are to define themselves as professional” (Adler, 1979, p. 21). And through developing this
professional identity, alongside their skills and professional networks, aspiring creatives increase
their capacity to succeed in their careers (Mehta, 2015; Becker, 1982; Rosenblum, 1978).
Within SCA, students are encouraged to make their affiliation with USC and the cinema
school’s “family” a key component of their professional identity. As they face a formidable
career path paved with precarity, students are taught that embracing their connections to USC, to
“the best” film school, and to SCA’s cinematic kin will augment their ability to succeed. And as
famous alumni have demonstrated, this messaging sticks—as established industry professionals
have stated, they now “mostly hire from USC, or promote people who have gone to USC” (Hall,
2011). Developing and maintaining loyalty to the USC “family” is thus strongly encouraged in
the programs’ curricula and pedagogies, and operates as a mechanism maintaining the program’s
status in the industry.

56
Ultimately, SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television programs socialize students as
“professional storytellers” through teaching them to both “refine their craft” and “tell their
story.” As a result, graduates leave the program with knowledge of many approaches to attaining
a screenwriting career. Carrying a “toolbox” equipped with structural techniques, creative
instincts, pilots, personal story material, and “family” ties, it is up to students to determine which
tools will become the “keys” that unlock the “kingdom” of Hollywood for them.

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CHAPTER THREE: IF “STORY IS KING,” WHO CONSTITUTES ITS KINGDOM?
INTERROGATING THE SOVEREIGNTY OF SCA’S PEDAGOGIES
Introduction
“Story is king.” I pause my scrawling of fieldnotes to carefully capture and underline the
oft-repeated phrase, noting its resonance. Seated among a sea of film students in one of SCA’s
grand theater-style classrooms, conducting participant observation in my first screenwriting
course, I contemplate the instructor’s claims that learning “A-level, powerful storytelling” is
crucial for aspiring screenwriters’ professional development. Within this course (referred to
pseudonymously as Screenwriting 500), recognizing that story is “king” is framed as key to
unlocking aspiring screenwriters’ futures in the film and television industries. And according to
one of the dominant pedagogical paradigms in SCA’s screenwriting programs, stories attain this
royal status when they are universal.
The notion that successful storytelling is universal has been shared by writers across the
cultural industries. As author Jonah Sachs (2012) posits, “great stories are universal because at
their core, humans have more in common with each other than the pseudo-science of
demographic slicing has led us to believe” (p. 43). Similarly, drawing from Pixar Studio’s rules
for effectives storytelling, Peters (2018) posits that “great stories are universal. Great storytelling
is about…the human condition.” And as writer Allie Decker (2018) asserts in “The Ultimate
Guide to Storytelling,” stories constitute a “universal language that everyone—regardless of
dialect, hometown, or heritage—can understand.”
Writers have historically pointed to the hero’s journey—a three-act storytelling structure
developed by mythologist and educator Joseph Campbell in the 20
th
century—as evidence of a
universal story formula. According to Campbell (1949), all mythic stories follow the format of

58
the hero’s journey (also known as the monomyth), in which a character sets out on an expedition
to attain their need, encounters and overcomes conflict, and then returns home with their need
sufficiently met (p. 63). Campbell (1949) asserts that the heroic character embarking on this
journey “has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally
valid, normally human forms” (p. 18). The monomyth is thus imagined as a “universal hero
myth that speaks to us all,” as humans stripped of cultural and historical specificity (Leeming,
2010). As myriad contemporary writers have claimed, the monomyth reflects “one universal
mythology” (Cousineau, 2018, p. xix), “the ultimate narrative archetype, a singular story upon
which all narratives are based” (Mohr, 2019), and a formula that “unite[s] all the myths of the
world into a unified structure” (Davis, 2005, p. 21).
However, as critical race theorists, feminist scholars, and minoritized creatives reveal,
purportedly universal narratives have historically privileged Eurocentric experiences and
epistemologies (Chalquist, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2009; hooks, 2003). For example, according
to Morante (2015), the Western literary paradigm—particularly the hero’s journey—is
fundamentally "characterized by the hegemony of white, male ideals” (Morante, 2015, p. 49).
Additionally, as Laurel (2015) posits, describing her own experiences being pushed to tell
universal stories in a fiction writing MFA program, “the definition of ‘universal’ is owned by
those whose stories have already been told—and told with complexity. Writers who lie outside
of this boundary are pressured to adopt the same stories, the same language, used and approved
by others.”
Through this chapter, I draw from this literature as I analyze the pedagogical priorities
and practices in SCA’s screenwriting programs. First, I interrogate instructors’ messaging about
the universal nature of “great stories” and the universalizing effect of specific story structures

59
(e.g., sequences, the monomyth), and argue that this discourages the production of counterstories
and testimonios within and beyond SCA’s classrooms. Second, I reveal the linguistic politics at
work in SCA, and posit that through upholding linguicism in their teaching, screenwriting
instructors further discourage counterhegemonic storytelling. Third, I highlight missed
opportunities for teaching critical media literacy in SCA’s classrooms and discuss the detriments
that this poses for minoritized students and storytellers. Fourth, I reveal the imperial logics at
work in SCA instructors’ efforts to provide “the best” screenwriting pedagogies on a global
scale. Lastly, I argue that two instructors—Instructor 3 and Instructor 10—and a newly
formulated course—Screenwriting 300—model pedagogical priorities and practices that support
counterstorytelling and can pave a path of positive change within and beyond SCA.
Unlocking doors, denying entry: The promise and perfidy of universal storytelling
As discussed in Chapter Two, several screenwriting instructors in SCA teach students
that successful stories are universal in form and content; that “every story worth telling is rooted
in some sort of universal truth” and employs “universal storytelling techniques.” Thus, students
are taught to transform the specific into the universal—to take their voice and vision and turn it
into something that is translatable to all audiences by employing storytelling approaches that
“have been used since the dawn of time,” are “independent of genre, budget, and your voice”
(Screenwriting 500 syllabus), and “speak to the reality of what it means to be human” (Instructor
8).
From its early formations, critical race theory has challenged universalism and
highlighted the value and important of specificity (Ladson-Billings, 1998). Critical race theorists
have critiqued the classical liberal universalist paradigm and demonstrated the ways in which
purportedly universal standards (e.g., laws, policies) “do injustice to individuals whose

60
experience and situation differ from the norm” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, p. 58). As Delgado
& Stefancic (2001) reveal, “universally valid” perspectives or universally shared “truth[s]” are
not, in fact, universal—they are determined and (up)held by people with hegemonic power (e.g.,
white, cis men) (p. 80). CRT scholars have thus upheld counterstorytelling—which centers the
specific experiences and perspectives of minoritized people—as a powerful method for
challenging the injustices sustained by standards of universality (Gonzalez, 2019; Ladson-
Billings & Tate, 1995). As Collins (1991) asserts, for minoritized people—particularly women of
color—“partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard” (p. 446).
Counterstorytelling is thus arguably CRT’s most powerful, innovative mechanism of
critique (Harris, 2012) and “fearless affront” to oppressive and purportedly universal standards
(Caldwell, 1996, p. 1363). Within educational contexts, counterstories can serve as a “vehicle for
psychic self-preservation” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 56 – 57) through which students
negotiate their daily experiences with institutional oppression (Delgado Bernal, 2002; 1989).
Simultaneously, in adopting counterstorytelling pedagogies, educators can teach students about
dominant or “normative” narrative, and support minoritized students’ efforts to tell non-universal
stories rooted in their distinctive experiences and knowledge (Bissonnette & Glazier, 2016;
Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Delgado Bernal, 2002).
SCA instructors teaching on the structured, universal storytelling side of the
screenwriting programs’ pedagogical spectrum do encourage students to tell stories shaped by
their individual experiences and distinctive voices. However, in upholding the value—even
necessity—of universality, they suggest that there is a singular way to use those voices and tell
those stories. For example, Instructor 7 teaches their students “to tell their story, but to master the
skills to tell it right.” This notion that there is a “right” way to tell stories validates the belief that

61
minoritized screenwriters must adhere to a dominant framework in order to be rendered legible
and legitimate, thus discouraging the creation of counterstories and testimonios.
Some instructors even suggest that engaging in universal storytelling allows minoritized
writers to transcend exclusion and marginalization in the film and television industries.
Hollywood’s enduring history of racism and sexism indicates that, in reality, this is not the case
(Henderson, 2011; Springer, 1984); thus, this belief and messaging is harmful on multiple levels.
One, it suggests that it is bad storytelling—not systemic oppression—that is responsible for the
dearth of minoritized screenwriters in the film and television industries. Two, it fails to prepare,
and delegitimizes the experiences of, minoritized industry aspirants navigating discrimination
and marginalization in those industries. And three, it teaches students who are positioned to hold
greater power and privilege in Hollywood (e.g., students who are men, white, cisgender, and
heterosexual) to embrace color-evasiveness (Annamma, Jackson & Morrison, 2017) and gender-
evasiveness. Encouraging students to do so perpetuates existing biases, prejudices, and
inequitable power dynamics in cinema school classrooms and in the film and television
industries (Banks, 2019).
SCA’s universality-centered pedagogical paradigm thus poses considerable challenges
and harms for its minoritized storytellers. Through teaching students that there is a singular,
universalizing approach through which all stories can be successfully told and sold (e.g., the
sequence paradigm, the hero’s journey), instructors devalue modes of expression and
experiences that do not fit within mainstream (read: Eurocentric) narrative norms. While
propagating this belief may encourage students to employ accepted storytelling forms and thus
prepare them to productively participate in the current film and television industries, it also
discourages and disempowers students who challenge the sovereignty of those norms.

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Consistent cautioning against deviating from universal storytelling precludes the
possibility of students creating stories that are counterhegemonic in both content and form. For
example, using storytelling frameworks such as that of the hero’s journey, students are unlikely
to craft a screenplay that features multiple protagonists (e.g. multiple members of their
community). As Larson (1973) posits, reflecting on U.S. literary practices, “our concept of
universality rarely takes into consideration the experiential aspects of a culture” (p. 463); as an
example, the Western notion of the hero “is almost nonexistent in contemporary African
literature…rather, it is the group-felt experience that is all-important” (p. 470). Through
upholding universality as the marker of good or successful storytelling, SCA instructors thus risk
discouraging storytelling that is rooted in students’ cultural and experiential knowledge (i.e.,
counterstorytelling, testimoniando).
Additionally, this pedagogical approach creates learning environments in which
minoritized students who do engage in counterhegemonic storytelling are positioned to face
critiques from their majoritarian peers. Propagating the belief that stories must have content that
has “universal” appeal (aka appeals to a white, Western audience) and adheres to “classical” (aka
Eurocentric) narrative conventions teaches students to uphold harmful storytelling politics when
creating and critiquing media. I witnessed the latter during a course screening of Moonlight—a
critically acclaimed, coming-of-age film about a young, queer Black man in 1980’s Miami,
based on the lived experiences of writer Tarell Alvin McCraney. Following the screening,
several students sitting near me immediately began critiquing the quality of the film—claiming
that it was boring and unbearable to watch and suggesting that it lacked universal appeal.
Through framing universality—in content and form—as key for students aspiring to become

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“professional storytellers,” SCA’s instructors thus teach students to devalue the production of
cinematic counterstories within and beyond their classrooms.
“Perfect English” as professionalism: Linguicism in SCA’s screenwriting instruction
Instructors further uphold harmful notions of professionalism and discourage the creation
of counterhegemonic stories through enacting and encouraging linguicism—language-based
discrimination. For example, while taking Screenwriting 100 (the small screenwriting course in
which I began writing my very first screenplay), I received two pieces of instruction regarding
language. The first piece of advice was prompted by a question that I raised during the first
month of class: could I put non-English dialogue in my screenplay? While this is not something
for which I would typically ask permission, I was curious about the program’s linguistic politics
and about what messaging students might receive about producing multi-lingual work.
Additionally, I was preparing to develop a screenplay for the class with multiple Spanish-
speaking characters, and I wanted to ensure that I could honor my multi-lingual voice in my
coursework—that I could “tell my story” in both content and style.
The instructor ultimately recommended that I write all of my dialogue in English, and
that I use parentheticals to indicate that selected dialogue would be spoken in Spanish. I was not
dissuaded from creating Spanish-speaking characters; however, I was informed that it is “better
to write in English and then include a parenthetical indicating what language it should be spoken
in” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 100, 9/9/21), as the executives reading my work would need to be
able to understand me. Other instructors shared similar advice, claiming that screenwriting
students have to speak and write in “perfect” English in order to succeed in Hollywood.
Additionally, instructors insisted upon the importance of including subtitles in one’s
screenplays. I received this second piece of language instruction while getting feedback on my

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first act draft in Screenwriting 100. Specifically, the instructor informed me that for a scene
containing a significant amount of Spanish dialogue, I would need to provide English subtitles to
ensure that it would appeal to executives and future audiences. Another student who was writing
a screenplay with Japanese dialogue received similar feedback.
Thus, for the duration of the semester, my screenplay contained two directives—one in
the stage directions, and one placed throughout the dialogue as parentheticals: “The conversation
will be subtitled” and “(in Spanish).” Notably, while myself and another racially minoritized
woman were told to write all of our dialogue in English and provide English (vs. Spanish or
Japanese) subtitles, a white man sprinkled some Spanish words into his work (e.g., “gringo” and
“yo puedo ayuda”) without similar questioning, commentary, or critique.
While these language instructions may help students get their foot in the door of studios
that continue to be dominated by Anglo-American, English-speaking executives (Hunt &
Ramón, 2020), and contribute to the accessibility of their work, the impact that they may have on
minoritized writers and audiences merit careful consideration. Assuming that industry executives
and audiences will not understand or value substantive uses of non-English dialogue (vs.
sprinklings of simplistic terms and phrases, as modeled by a white peer) reflects the linguicism
that has historically pervaded Hollywood storytelling (Bleichenbacher, 2012). Through teaching
students to only use English in their writing, and to see “perfect English” as a marker of
professionalism, SCA’s instructors perpetuate that linguicism. In doing so, instructors risk
encouraging all students to uphold oppressive linguistic politics when creating and critiquing
screenplays; additionally, they discourage minoritized, multi-lingual students from telling their
stories in ways that honor their voices and from centering their communities when envisioning
the audiences for whom they are writing.

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Missed opportunities to cultivate critical media literacy
The detriments posed by this linguicism and the programs’ pedagogical emphasis on
universal storytelling are exacerbated by a lack of concern with critical media literacy (CML)
across screenwriting classrooms. Forwarded by education scholars Douglas Kellner and Jeff
Share in 2005, CML extends the traditional concept of literacy to new media and technologies,
describing our capacity to critically engage with them. Specifically, critical media literacy refers
to the ability to “critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information, and
power” (Kellner & Share, 2005, p. 2) and to “critically create new narratives, representations,
and structures” (Critical Media Project, 2022). Additionally, as a pedagogical project, critical
media literacy “questions representations of class, gender, race, sexuality and other forms of
identity and challenges media messages that reproduce oppression and discrimination. It
celebrates positive representations and beneficial aspects of media while challenging problems
and negative consequences, recognizing media are never neutral” (Share, Gambino & Hagan,
2022).
Instructors’ insistence that students should be able to tell “any” story—to create
characters that are “a different age or gender or background or nationality or anything else”—are
not regularly supplemented with critical questions about representation or conversations about
power. While some instructors (e.g., Instructor 8) encourage students to conduct research when
writing about communities to which they do not belong, critical thinking about one’s
positionality and representational practices appear to start and stop there.
While conducting my classroom-based participant observations, I witnessed myriad
missed opportunities for developing students’ critical media literacy in SCA’s screenwriting
classes. In particular, the Screenwriting 200 class that I participated in presented a tremendous

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amount of unmet potential to teach students about the relationship between systemic oppression
and cinematic storytelling. Screenwriting 200 was purportedly designed to cultivate students’
media analysis skills, teach students about issues of identity and power as they relate to
television writing, and explore television’s change-making capacities. As the syllabus claims, the
course aimed to teach students about television writers’ abilities to “express, explore, and
highlight a myriad [sic] societal issues—from civil rights such as race, gender, and identity, to
issues of war and peace, freedom, and attitude[s] towards foreign countries and peoples.”
Unfortunately, the course took a largely insubstantial and uncritical approach to engaging with
these issues, as students were not exposed to foundational knowledge about them, and were
actively discouraged from critically analyzing how such issues are represented in media
examples.
Specifically, the Screenwriting 200 course that I participated in was taught by Instructor
9—a straight white man
9
—who led every class session, discussing topics ranging from gender to
race to war (Screenwriting 200 syllabus). During our first class, Instructor 9 encouraged students
to consider the effects that their work may have on audiences, as they would “assume positions
of influence and power” as screenwriters (fieldnote, Screenwriting 200, 8/30/21); thus, Instructor
9 laid a basic foundation for teaching critical media literacy principles. Unfortunately, he did not
build from this foundation; instead he actively discouraged students from critically engaging
with the media that they consumed. When students critiqued representations of race, gender,
sexuality, and ability in the content screened during class, Instructor 9 urged them to judge
television shows—particularly older shows—with “a modicum of understanding…and kindness”

9
I did not ask my instructor informants to complete personal information questionnaires. Thus,
any demographic information that I provide is drawn from what instructors shared during
lectures and/or interviews, and is only referenced when relevant to my analyses.

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(fieldnote, Screenwriting 200, 10/4/21); to “open your heart, your mind, your eyes to what was
believed at a certain time” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 200, 9/13/21) and to assume that creators’
intentions are good, because “there’s an over-sensitivity to just about everything now” (fieldnote,
Screenwriting 200, 9/27/21).
For example, following a screening of a Law & Order: SVU episode, a student critiqued
the show’s depictions of race and policing. Instructor 9 responded by urging the class as a whole
to look at shows with the perspective from the time at which they were created—suggesting that
racialized, state-sanctioned violence was not a salient issue at the time that the show was
produced. Similarly, after viewing an episode of The Honeymooners, Instructor 9 cautioned
students that while the show “might be very offensive to some of you,” we should not judge
older media by today’s “standards” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 200, 10/4/21). This pedagogical
approach hinders all students’ abilities to cultivate and exercise critical media literacy.
Additionally, this approach actively discourages minoritized students from honoring their
affective responses, experiences, and knowledge; thus, invalidating and stifling potential
counterstorytelling and testimoniando in the classroom.
Additionally, instructors’ own lack of critical media literacy was evident in, and emerged
in harmful ways through, their pedagogy. For example, while participating in Screenwriting 200,
I was particularly struck by the limited and Othering language that Instructor 9 used to describe
several of the course’s central topics. For example, Instructor 9 frequently shied away from
stating the identities that he was discussing; as I noted during the class session on sexual
orientation, “he can’t seem to say the words lesbian, gay, queer, or even the acronym LGBTQ+.
He is only saying ‘not heterosexual’ when referencing queer characters and creators. Using the
term ‘prejudice’ instead of naming homophobia and transphobia. ‘Sensitivities’ instead of the

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hurt and frustration stemming from subordination” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 200, 9/23/21).
Further, Instructor 9 opted for using broad terms such as “minority” and “diverse” to describe
racialized characters and creatives (e.g., Mindy Kaling), in lieu of specifying their racial and
ethnic identities. And it was students—not the instructor—who modeled specificity in naming
race and racism (e.g., calling out racism and xenophobia in The Mindy Project).
Additionally, during our class session covering the topic of “people with disabilities”
(Screenwriting 200 syllabus), Instructor 9 proclaimed that “we all have a disability of some
kind,” listing anxiety, depression, skin color, and country of origin as examples. This extremely
harmful and dangerous framing perpetuates the stigmatization of disability and neurodivergence,
propagates racist and xenophobic logics, and discourages intersectional thinking about systemic
oppression. Additionally, this framing reflects the Screenwriting 200’s instructor ‘s race evasive
(Annamma, Jackson & Morrison, 2017) approach to discussing social change. For example, the
instructor frequently appealed to “human decency” when describing how and why to affect
social change, and claimed that “it doesn’t matter if you are white, black, brown, yellow, red,” all
“people who create stories” can create change through their work. Rather than cultivating a sense
of connection or camaraderie, this instructor’s language about, and framing of, socially
constructed identities and systems of oppression effectively Others minoritized students—
flattening and dismissing their experiences.
“We are the best in the world”: Imperial logics in SCA’s screenwriting instruction
Many instructors put their beliefs in the universality of successful storytelling, and in the
efficacy of their pedagogies, into practice through teaching abroad. For example, Instructor 7
claimed that “we”—SCA’s screenwriting programs—are “the best in the world;” thus, “we [have
taken] this pedagogy to Europe.” In addition to participating in this collective effort to share their

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screenwriting pedagogies with students in Europe, Instructor 7 shared that they have taught in
Africa and Asia, stating: “it’s not Hollywood, it’s just good storytelling.” According to Instructor
5, who has also taught screenwriting in Europe, “we can teach screenwriting technique better
than anybody on the planet.” Similarly, Instructor 2 cited their extensive experiences teaching in
various Asian countries, including China and Malaysia, as evidence of the universality of their
storytelling techniques. According to Instructor 2, “all the techniques I teach here apply to
Chinese and American students. This is how all stories work.” And Instructor 9, who also
teaches in Europe and Asia, emphasized the writing division’s pedagogical prowess and prestige,
pointing to the programs’ exclusivity as an indication of their elite status: “in terms of
percentages, it’s more difficult to get into the writing division at USC than it is to get into
Harvard law.”
The notion that SCA screenwriting instructors possess knowledge of how all stories
“work”—knowledge that only they can pass on to aspiring screenwriters—perpetuates the U.S.-
centered power dynamics of the world’s film and television industries (Tyrrell, 1999).
Instructors’ claims that their approach to storytelling is capable of transcending geographic and
cultural differences, and that this approach embodies “the best in the world,” ignores and
subordinates the local story structures and forms that may be used in the global contexts in which
they teach. And given that the purportedly “universal” story techniques and structures that they
teach have historically reflected white, Western narrative norms (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001;
Morante, 2015), instructors’ insistence that SCA’s approach to storytelling is the “right” way to
tell successful cinematic stories, and that this way must be shared with the world, reflects
cultural imperialist logics.

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Telling “a story only you can tell,” and seeing specificity as a superpower: Alternative
pedagogical possibilities in SCA
However, some instructors within SCA challenge the sovereignty of this approach, and
model alternative pedagogical practices. In particular, Instructor 3 and Instructor 10 reject the
universal storytelling paradigm, instead teaching students to see specificity as a “superpower” in
their writing (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300, 3/22/22). Additionally, these instructors center
minoritized storytellers’ voices, encourage the creation of counterhegemonic narratives, and
cultivate students’ critical media literacy in their classrooms; thus, fostering learning
environments that are supportive of counterstorytelling and testimoniando.
In their teaching, Instructors 3 and 10 reject the notion that good or successful cinematic
stories need to be universal. Instructor 3 “steer[s]” students away from applying their colleagues’
universal and structural story paradigms in their classrooms and teaches students to focus instead
on specificity in their storytelling. Specifically, Instructor 3 encourages students to tell stories
inspired by their distinctive experiences, and to exercise their individual creativity and “artistic
voices” in crafting those narratives; to write “a story they want to tell” in content and form.
According to Instructor 3, this pedagogical approach is driven by their recognition that “it's a
very tough world, so I honor people wanting to engage in that way, to express their experiences.”
Encouraging students to reject widely-held notions about universal stories, and to use
storytelling forms that are not the commercial norm, may disadvantage them when applying to
mainstream industry jobs. However, I argue that this pedagogical approach provides much
needed support for counterhegemonic storytelling within SCA’s screenwriting programs.
Instructor 3’s students are taught to create, and recognize the value of, stories that draw from
one’s distinctive experiences and perspectives, and that do not rigidly align with dominant

71
conceptions of good or successful narratives. This pedagogical approach thus supports the
creation of narratives with counterhegemonic content (e.g., counterstories, testimonios), and the
eventual creation of countercinema. Countercinema refers to films (and arguably, television
shows) that are counterhegemonic in form and style—that utilize “matters of expression and/or
formal strategies that may challenge those of dominant cinema” (Kuhn, 1982, p. 178). Through
teaching students to actively defy hegemonic storytelling forms (e.g., the sequence paradigm, the
hero’s journey), Instructor 3 plants the seeds for the future production of countercinema.
Thus, it is in this pedagogy that I identify the potential for SCA to enact changes within
and beyond its classrooms. Through adopting Instructor 3’s emphasis on specificity and
students’ distinctive storytelling instincts on a broader scale—ensuring that Instructor 3 is no
longer the “rare bird” or “odd man out” in using this approach—I believe that SCA’s
screenwriting programs can support the creation of counterhegemonic stories and support future
generations of minoritized storytellers.
Further, I believe that this pedagogical approach must be paired with that of Instructor
10—an SCA alum who recently returned to the school to teach Screenwriting 300. Screenwriting
300, an elective course offered for the first time in the Spring of 2022, explores the role that
screenwriters and their work can play in affecting social change. While this is not the only course
in SCA’s writing division to tackle these issues—with Screenwriting 200 as another example—I
believe that Screenwriting 300 models a crucial pedagogical approach that is not otherwise
utilized in the school’s screenwriting programs.
As a participant observer, I repeatedly saw in Screenwriting 300 what I hoped to see in
Screenwriting 200—a pedagogy that: a) encouraged and modeled critical engagement with one’s
power and positionality; b) centered minoritized creators’ voices in discussions about diversity,

72
equity, and inclusion; c) critiqued universality and emphasized the importance of specificity in
storytelling; and d) cultivated students’ critical media literacy.
Instructor 10 demonstrated their own critical media literacy through their course design
and content. During the first course session, Instructor 10 immediately shared their positionality
with the class—highlighting the various ways in which their identities (e.g., race, gender,
sexuality, ability) shape their privilege, power, experiences with oppression, and knowledge of
central course concepts (e.g., whiteness, queerness). This reflexivity clearly informed their
design of the course, as Instructor 10 paired traditional lectures and media screenings with
regular visits from guest speakers whose lived experiences and expertise Instructor 10 did not
have. For example, during the course sessions on race and ethnicity, Instructor 10 invited several
racially minoritized writers to share stories and insights about the industry, and to address
students’ questions about creating ethical representations of Black, Indigenous, and People of
Color characters in their work. This approach served in sharp contrast to that employed in
Screenwriting 200, in which Instructor 9 occasionally shared pieces of his positionality with the
class but ultimately led every lecture, despite their apparent discomfort and lack of lived
experience or knowledge on myriad topics (e.g., racism, homophobia, transphobia). Instructor 10
thus modeled a pedagogical approach that honors the need to center minoritized voices in
discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Additionally, this approach provided students
with a diversity of role models—which, as I reveal in Chapter 4, SCA’s students are calling for.
Further, like Instructor 3, Instructor 10—alongside several of their guest speakers—
challenged the widely held belief that successful stories are necessarily universal and encouraged
students to pursue specificity in their writing. For example, during the course session on writing
LGBTQIA+ characters, Guest Speaker 3—a queer, non-binary writer and SCA alum—claimed

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that “deconstructing the idea of universality is really important” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 300,
3/22/22). They encouraged students to resist calls to make their stories universal, claiming:
“don’t write for a large audience…Being specific is actually your superpower…specificity is
more important than palatability” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 300, 3/22/22). As examples, the
guest speaker cited Moonlight, which critics have argued “isn’t universal and that’s a good
thing,” its power comes from its specificity (Bastién, 2017), as well as Insecure, for which Issa
Rae “wasn’t trying to go for something that was universal. She went for something that was very
specific to her life and her experience” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 300, 3/22/22).
Further, in their Screenwriting 300 course, Instructor 10 challenged the belief propagated
by other SCA instructors that students should be able to tell “any” story and create any
characters, including those that are “a different age or gender or background or nationality or
anything else” (Instructor 8). Instructor 10 and their guest speakers called on students to
interrogate the idiom “write what you know” using a critical lens—to consider who gets to tell
their own stories, and what implications that has for writers with power and privilege. For
example, Guest Speaker 10—a Black woman writer and SCA alum—told the class to consider:
Who gets to write what?...For years I was not allowed to write my own
stories…When you sit down to write, the first thing you should ask yourself
is…Do I have the right to tell this story?...Did I grow up in this culture? Am I
from this culture?... If people from that culture haven’t told that story already, it’s
not your story to tell…because how you tell that story influences how people see
that culture (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22).

Guest Speaker 3 similarly encouraged students to consider their positionality and
personal experiences, and how that should impact their authorial choices. Guest Speaker 3
highlighted the importance of “the power dynamic of who is getting to tell [a] story,” and argued
that “the specify, the nuance, the depth” of the experiences portrayed in a piece of media “really

74
need to be colored by the person who has that lived experience” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 300,
3/22/22). For example, while cis writers can tell stories with trans characters, “trans people need
to be able to tell their own stories” (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 300, 3/22/2022). Instructor 10
echoed these claims, and acknowledged that while SCA is not going to tell its students that there
are stories they cannot or should not tell, screenwriting students do need to ask themselves:
“should you actually write [this]?” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22). And to help
students answer that question, Instructor 10 worked to cultivate their critical media literacy.
Cultivating students’ critical media literacy was clearly a foundational concern in the
formulation of Screenwriting 300. Through course materials, lectures, and guest speakers,
Instructor 10 emphasized the power that media creators hold, and called on students to take their
responsibility as storytellers seriously. As the course syllabus states:
The stories we choose to tell exposes [sic] audiences to all sorts of issues, worlds,
and characters. Sometimes these stories have a positive impact, inspiring
innovation, activism, and a shift in perspective. Yet, sometimes, these stories are
not representative or authentic to the character, world, or event. As creators, we
have the collective power to shift culture. The stories we choose to tell and the
flawed characters we choose to create are a responsibility (Screenwriting 300
syllabus).

Instructor 10 echoed these claims throughout each course session, teaching students that
“storytellers” have an “immense responsibility” because “we define how people are seen [and]
how issues are seen,” and have the potential to cause “a lot of harm” (fieldnote, Screenwriting
300 lecture, 1/18/22). Guest lecturers in Instructor 10’s course similarly discussed the power that
storytellers hold, and the importance of taking that power seriously. For example, Guest Speaker
3 encouraged students to “tell the stories you want to tell,” while recognizing that “there is
responsibility that comes with that,” and to thus think carefully and critically about their
representational practices (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 3/22/22). And according to

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Guest Speaker 10, a key issue with film schools is that “it is not impressed upon you how big of
a responsibility you have”—a responsibility that is “not to be taken lightly” (fieldnote,
Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22). Thus, according to Guest Speaker 10, SCA and other
cinema schools need to put more concerted effort into teaching students about storytelling ethics.
I believe that Instructor 10 modeled this effort through their Screenwriting 300 course,
which repeatedly engaged students in discussions about ethical and unethical storytelling
practices and provided them with strategies for producing thoughtful and authentic
representations in their work. Instructor 10 began the semester with class sessions covering
crucial information about the history of mediated storytelling through a critical, global,
intersectional lens. For example, during the second week of class, Instructor 10 discussed
Western bias, colonialism, and storytelling ethics—asking students to consider: “What do I need
to know about my own cultural bias before writing any story?,” “Is your mind colonized?”
(Screenwriting 300 syllabus), and “How do we subconsciously perpetuate colonization in our
writing?” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22). Subsequently, Instructor 10 reviewed
the histories of colonization and U.S. imperialism, and their relationships with white savior
narratives and stereotyping. As Instructor 10 claimed, understanding these histories and
relationships is important, as “you might be perpetuating [them] in a story because you don’t
know about [them]” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22). Other class sessions were
dedicated to discussions about axes of differentiation (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, ability, class)
and stereotypes, through which Instructor 10 and guest speakers cultivated students’ knowledge
about tropes and harmful representational practices propagated in mainstream storytelling.
Simultaneously, each of these discussions—through which Instructor 10 fostered
students’ foundational knowledge about systemic oppression, storytelling, and power—were

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supplemented with strategies for creating counterhegemonic narratives. Instructor 10 encouraged
students, and provided them with resources and opportunities, to conduct research when crafting
stories and characters—particularly when they are writing about identities and experiences that
are not their own. For example, Instructor 10 forwarded the concept of “the listening tour”—
seeking out and honoring the voices and perspectives of people whose lived experiences are
relevant to your narratives and characters—as a productive strategy. Instructor 10 also
encouraged students to think critically about who they speak to in their listening tour, cautioning:
“don’t use your marginalized friends for their knowledge. Don’t expect a queer person or person
of color to carry the mental burden of speaking for an entire community” and “don’t ask them to
perform mental and emotional labor” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22).
Relatedly, Instructor 10 encouraged students to work with a sensitivity reader—an
individual who is paid to read written material and identify potential misrepresentations,
stereotypes, and biases in that work. According to Instructor 10, “sensitivity readers are of
utmost importance…there are always going to be blind spots that you’re not aware of,” and
sensitivity readers can help you identify them (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22).
And as many students revealed during each class session, learning about these strategies was
helpful. For example, one student shared that they had begun reevaluating their approach to
writing a screenplay about an Indigenous community, and would be seeking out a sensitivity
reader and engaging in a listening tour to ensure that they were telling that story in an ethical
way (fieldnote, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 1/18/22).
Further aligning with the tenets of critical media literacy, Instructor 10 called on students
to affect change through their writing. As the Screenwriting 300 syllabus powerfully claims, the
course itself is “a call to action…to tell the stories you want to write and create the Hollywood

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you want to see.” And through cultivating students’ critical media literacy, Instructor 10
empowers students to enact those changes as “agent[s] pf change” and teaches them “how you
can make a difference at any level in the Entertainment Industry” (Screenwriting 300 syllabus).
Discussion
The narrative norms that many instructors uphold may help students get their foot in the
door of the exclusionary film and television industries; however, those norms ultimately pose
harms for minoritized storytellers within and beyond SCA’s classrooms. While the notion that
“great stories are universal” (Sachs, 2012) is widely embraced in the cultural industries, through
touting and teaching this in their classrooms, screenwriting instructors risk discouraging and
disempowering students who challenge universal standards through their storytelling. SCA’s
instructors variously encourage students to draw from their lived experiences in crafting their
stories, thus providing a basic foundation for counterstorytelling and testimoniando (González,
2020). However, through propagating the belief that good stories must be universal in content
and form, and teaching students to accomplish this using approaches that have historically
centered white, Western voices (Chalquist, 2015; Morante, 2015; Laurel, 2015), instructors
prevent minoritized students from building on that foundation—from finding substantive support
when creating counterstories and testimonios.
Simultaneously, by suggesting that there are universalizing approaches through which all
stories can be successfully told and sold (e.g., the sequence paradigm, the hero’s journey), and
that enable writers to transcend the entertainment industries’ exclusion and marginalization,
instructors leave minoritized students underprepared for the realities of those industries’ racist,
sexist, homophobic, and transphobic storytelling politics. And through teaching students to see
“perfect” English as the standard in screenwriting and as a marker of professionalism, instructors

78
uphold the film and television industries’ long-standing history of linguicism, delegitimize
diverse modes of expression, and discourage counterhegemonic storytelling among students.
The harms of this linguicism and universalism are heightened by the lack of critical
media literacy in SCA’s screenwriting courses. Through avoiding or actively discouraging
critical analyses of media examples in their classrooms, instructors contribute to the reproduction
of stereotypic content and inequitable power dynamics in the film and television industries
(Banks, 2019). Additionally, through teaching students to adopt color-evasive and gender-
evasive lenses, instructors delegitimize minoritized storytellers’ experiences with subordination,
and risk propagating racist and sexist attitudes among majoritarian storytellers.
Further, instructors’ insistence upon the sovereignty (“we are the best in the world”) of
their pedagogical practices, paired with their efforts to employ those pedagogies around the
world, reflect imperial logics. Instructors’ concerted celebration of the universality of their own
storytelling techniques risks the erasure of the local and cultural differences, specificity, and
story forms of minoritized communities on a global scale (Larson, 1973). Thus, as SCA
instructors continue to propagate universal storytelling standards, in both local pedagogy and
global practice, minoritized creatives are further relegated to the margins of cinematic
storytelling.
However, I find that two instructors challenge this pedagogical paradigm, and model
what a powerful reconfiguration of SCA’s screenwriting pedagogies could look like. Through
encouraging students to honor their experiences, voices, and unique “storytelling instincts” in
their writing, and actively discouraging students from relying on universal story forms, Instructor
3 employs a counterstorytelling pedagogy (Bissonnette & Glazier, 2016; Solórzano & Yosso,
2002; Delgado Bernal, 2002). And through teaching students to see specificity as a

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“superpower,” centering minoritized voices, and modeling and cultivating critical media literacy
in their classrooms, Instructor 10 enacts Banks’ (2019) calls to reimagine film school classrooms
“not as a mirror of the industry but rather as a living experiment in reshaping the media
industries’ ideas about equity” (p. 86).
Thus, I believe that in order to fulfill its responsibility to support minoritized storytellers
and its power to affect changes in the media industries, these instructors’ pedagogies should pave
the path forward for SCA. In particular, I believe that Screenwriting 300 should be permanently
integrated into the school’s screenwriting curricula and made into a required course. As one of
the students in the course remarked, anyone who wants to become a screenwriter needs to take
this class (fieldnotes, Screenwriting 300 lecture, 4/14/22). Additionally, other SCA instructors
would benefit from adopting the central components of Instructor 10’s pedagogical approach—
modeling critical thinking about one’s positionality, inviting a diversity of guest speakers into
their classrooms, interrogating the sovereignty of universal storytelling standards, and cultivating
students’ critical media literacy. Through embracing these pedagogical practices on a program-
wide scale, SCA has the potential to support the creation of counterhegemonic stories within and
beyond its classrooms, promote the future production of countercinema, and redefine the rules of
the screenwriting kingdom.

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CHAPTER FOUR: SCREENWRITING STUDENTS’ EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES
AND ENDEAVORS TO TRANSFORM HOLLYWOOD
Introduction
“It has been really nice to feel like I’m contributing to the shared mission among
me and some of my closest friends of [asking], ‘what stories haven’t we seen
yet?’ …[it] gives me hope that I’m working toward something—even in this crazy
world of us looking for jobs that don’t really exist—being able to contribute to
something in a small way by trying to change what the landscape of our industry
looks like, so that we get more stories made that are for us, by people like us.”
– Student 2

Describing the “best part” of writing her screenplays—defined as “coming-of-age”
narratives about young women—Student 2 simultaneously highlights her hopes and
apprehensions as a Latina film school graduate pursuing a television writing career during the
COVID-19 pandemic. As she reflected on the effects that she hopes her storytelling will have on
Hollywood’s “landscape”—to have more stories “that are for us, by people like us”—this
aspiring screenwriter contributed to a chorus of students who shared a desire to challenge and
change the narrative landscape of the U.S. film and television industries. Concurrently, these
hopes were juxtaposed with anxious anticipation of a future in the already precarious creative
industries (Curtin & Sanson, 2016; McRobbie, 2016), in which employment stability and
opportunities have further diminished as a result of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
(Gardner, 2020)—leaving cinema school students and graduates “looking for jobs that don’t
really exist.”
Through this chapter, I explore these hopes and apprehensions and their relationship to
SCA’s professional socialization practices and storytelling politics. Drawing from my in-depth
interviews with students in USC’s Writing for Screen and Television BFA and MFA programs, I
discuss how aspiring screenwriters are receiving, interpreting, and applying the story and craft

81
success narratives, and the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on those processes. I
affirm that, as indicated by my instructor informants, students in SCA’s screenwriting programs
are receiving both the “tell your story” and “refine your craft” narratives.
Several students argued that the former narrative is ultimately more important than the
latter, citing the confidence that this has instilled in them as writers. Meanwhile, other students
insisted that refining their craft is the most important thing that they can do at this stage in their
careers. And some interlocuters are interpreting instructors’ propagation of the story-craft
dialectic as an overarching success narrative that implores them to “refine your craft to tell your
story.” While these differing valuations of the story and craft success narratives are unsurprising
given the pedagogical spectrum at work in SCA, I posit that they reflect the risks posed by some
instructors’ messaging that there are “right” ways to tell a story. In particular, I argue that
students’ reception and application of a “refine your craft to tell your story” success narrative
discourages counterstorytelling and testimoniando within their classrooms, and exacerbates
career precarity for minoritized students.
Notably, despite heightened career precarity in the context of the pandemic, SCA’s
aspiring cinematic storytellers remained resolute in efforts to write counterstory and testimonio
screenplays, disrupt the film and television industries’ “status quo” (Banks, 2019), and contribute
to a “movement” of counterhegemonic storytelling. However, the dominant storytelling politics
in SCA’s screenwriting programs—which reflect what CRT and LatCrit scholars deem a “deficit
storytelling” model (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 23)—disempower these efforts.

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Student reception of the story and craft success narratives
Tell Your Story
Students confirmed that the “tell your story” narrative is a central component of their
educational and professionalization experiences at SCA. As my interlocuters discussed, many—
though, as I highlight in Chapter 1, not all—instructors “really want you to…tell your own
stories” (Student 1) and “very much want [our stories] to be personal” (Student 4). But what
makes a story personal and one’s “own”?
The interviews revealed that there are three distinctive ways in which students are
learning to make their stories personal—to “tell your story”—in SCA’s screenwriting programs:
through 1) style; 2) content; and 3) commerce. Specifically, students are learning to develop and
use their unique authorial voices in their storytelling (style), to create stories that are informed or
inspired by their personal experiences (content), and to emphasize their personal connections to
their work when pitching their stories to industry executives (commerce).
Style: According to my interlocuters, SCA’s screenwriting programs place tremendous
value on storytelling that is personal in style—storytelling that reflects a screenwriter’s unique
“voice.” As a result, instructors are often—if not “always”—encouraging students to “find your
own voice” as a writer (Students 9, 11) and to foster, “trust,” and “stick” to that voice as they
create their scripts and screenplays (Student 2). As Student 11 claimed, the “number one thing”
that they have learned in their program has been to “stick to your voice and bring what is
authentic to you...sticking true to your authenticity.” This notion of “authentic” storytelling was
echoed across the majority of informants, who shared that they have learned to “bring out my
own voice” (Student 9) and that “my voice has definitely gotten stronger” (Student 1) through
their program.

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Content: Students are also learning to engage in storytelling that is personal in content. In
particular, students reported receiving a common writing adage in their courses: “write what you
know.” As Student 1 claimed, in writing their scripts and screenplays, SCA students are
encouraged to think about “where you’re coming from…your background…they always say,
write what you know—that’s the cliché...but it definitely does help…as a screenwriter” because
your “life story” is “what you’re going to be the best at writing about...it’s about having that
unique narrative that you can bring that nobody else really has.” Similarly, according to Student
16, they have learned that “what makes a good story” is “when it becomes true to you and it's
yours...being honest and writing something that's specific to you.” Other informants echoed this
perspective, claiming that students in both the BFA and MFA programs are frequently
encouraged to craft narratives that contain personal content.
Commerce: Students also claimed that they are learning to engage in personal storytelling
from a strategic commercial standpoint. As various interlocuters described, students are taught to
identify and emphasize their personal connections to their narratives in order to market
themselves and their work. For example, Student 1 claimed that instructors encourage students to
think about their personal connections to their stories when preparing to pitch their scripts to
industry executives. Specifically, a “piece of advice that I’ve been told multiple times is that you
have to find a way to have your script connect to you...It’s always about what you can use to tie
yourself to their story when you’re pitching it...draw a parallel between yourself and [your]
narrative” (Student 1), even if that connection is manufactured after the story has been written.
Additionally, students are learning that engaging in personal storytelling is preparing them for
the current climate of the film and television industries. For example, Student 3 theorized that
SCA encourages students to follow the “tell your story” narrative so that they are prepared to

84
meet the current “moment of authenticity and voice being the main thing people are looking for.
So over the past four years of the program [sic], that’s been a huge thing that people have talked
about, especially when giving industry advice.” Similarly, Student 1 claimed that their program
“really wants you to find your own voice and tell your own stories. I have heard professors talk
about how that's like the best way to get people's attention right now in this industry.” Students
are accordingly learning that drawing from, or developing, personal connections to their
narratives will help them market themselves as writers in the contemporary film and television
industries
My student interlocuters thus confirmed that—as indicated by my instructor
interlocuters—the “tell your story” narrative is a prominent part of their professional
socialization, which I argue provides a foundation for counterhegemonic storytelling in their
classrooms. Indeed, students shared that—in noted contrast with Gutiérrez’s experiences—they
feel encouraged to find, foster, and use their “authentic” authorial voices, to create narratives that
are intimately informed by their personal experiences and perspectives (i.e., write what you
know), and to emphasize their personal connections to their narratives when pitching their work.
Refine Your Craft (to tell your story)
Simultaneously, reflecting the pedagogical spectrum that I discuss in Chapter 2, students
shared that their instructors pair the “tell your story” narrative with the “refine your craft”
narrative, claiming that “both [narratives] are taught” by (Student 3), and “I’ve heard both” from
(Student 6), instructors. Some interlocuters indicated that these narratives co-exist as separate
components of their professionalization, suggesting that overall, the programs teach students to
both “tell stories that are original to your perspective” and to “have a good craft” (Student 12).
However, other students indicated that they are learning to refine their craft skills in order to

85
successfully tell and sell personal narratives. Specifically, they are learning that through
“constantly refining our skills” as writers (Student 13) they can “amplify” their “authentic”
authorial voices (Student 2) and “write the stories you want” (Student 15)—that they must
“refine your craft to tell your story.” And according to students, within the context of SCA’s
screenwriting programs, refining one’s craft skills primarily involves learning story structure.
Students shared that throughout their respective programs (BFA or MFA), they are taught
how to structure their stories, learning a variety of foundational forms (e.g., the hero’s journey
10
,
Frank Daniel’s sequence paradigm
11
, Dan Harmon’s circle approach to story structure
12
) and
techniques (e.g., plant and payoff
13
, Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling
14
). As students remarked, “we

10
As discussed in Chapter 2, the hero’s journey is a three-act storytelling structure that follows
the transformation of a central character (the hero) as they embark on an adventure, face and
attain victory in a crisis, and return home changed by their journey (Campbell, 1949).
11
As discussed in Chapter 2, Frank Daniel’s sequence paradigm posits that successful films
consist of eight sequences (discrete narrative units). Each sequence contains a sub-goal and
tension that are tied to the larger goals and conflict in the film.
12
Harmon’s theory posits that stories commonly follow a clockwise pattern that can be mapped
onto a circle with eight equidistant points. According to Harmon (n.d.), this pattern is as follows:
“1) A character is in a zone of comfort; 2) But they want something; 3) They enter an unfamiliar
situation; 4) Adapt to it; 5) Get what they wanted; 6) Pay a heavy price for it; 7) They return to
their familiar situation; 8) Having changed.” Harmon (n.d.) argues that this circular pattern
captures the symmetry and rhythm of good storytelling: “the REAL structure of any good story
is simply circular – a descent into the unknown and eventual return.”
13
Developed by Anton Chekhov, plant and payoff is a technique through which a storyteller
(often subtly) introduces an object, characteristic, dialogue, or event (plant) that is later revealed
to have significance in the overall narrative (payoff). For example, as suggested by the concept
of Chekov’s gun, if a storyteller introduces a gun into their narrative, that gun must eventually go
off in the story.
14
In 2011, former Pixar Story Artist Emma Coats published “22 Story Rules” via Twitter. These
rules have since become widely referred to as “Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling” (Peter, 2018).
Unlike the hero’s journey, sequence paradigm, and Harmon’s story circle, the 22 Story Rules do
not present a structural approach; instead, they provide writers with recommendations for
developing compelling characters (e.g., “You admire a character for trying more than for their
successes” and “What is your character good at, comfortable with?”), and navigating the writing
process (e.g., “Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both,
but move on. Do better next time” and “No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and
move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later”).

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spend a lot of time learning about structure” (Student 16) and “the fundamentals” (Student 2) or
“basics” of screenwriting (Student 5). Additionally, students affirmed that while SCA’s
screenwriting programs propagate both the story and craft narratives “fairly equally,” several
instructors (e.g., Instructor 2, Instructor 5, Instructor 7) emphasize the latter.
For example, Student 5 claimed that while “we’re taught both of those things”—personal
storytelling and craft development—“I feel like [the former is] less pushed on us because people
tend to do that naturally, and [we’re] more taught the skills of how to write…we’re learning how
to craft a story.” In fact, according to Student 5, “the most important” thing that she has learned
through her program is how to structure a story—citing the hero’s journey and the sequence
paradigm as notable examples. Student 6 also claimed that “learning structure was really
important for me because that's what keeps me going when I have no other ideas…it gives you a
framework” for storytelling; additionally, she claimed that learning the sequence paradigm, in
particular, was “really helpful” for her professional development as a screenwriter.
Student 7 similarly argued that structuring techniques—particularly the sequence
paradigm—are critically important and “really useful” components of screenwriting students’
education at SCA. In particular, Student 7 described Screenwriting 500
15
—through which
students learn “the whole sequence thing” and a vast number of techniques that “successful films
use and have used”—as a “turning point in our education.” Drawing from their experiences in
this class, Student 7 described “the story behind the whole sequences concept:”
It was a technical thing…back when cinema was still like a very primitive thing,
the projectors could only run 400 feet long film reels, which last[ed] about 13
minutes or something like that. And then a guy would have to stop the projector,
change the reel, and get everything back on. So you would have that gap in which
people would talk and lose the immersion of [the] film… So back then a feature

15
Students in SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television MFA program are required to take
Screenwriting 500 during the second semester of their first year.

87
film would be eight sequences long that would be like 12 minutes each sequence.
So it started making a lot of sense to people who were writing films to try to think
of those sequences as sort of like chapters [that] made sense in themselves and
serve the purpose of the entire arc…there are these mini events that create
moments in the story in which [characters] are trying to do something in the short
term. So that that's what a sequence is, it’s what a character is trying to do in the
short term.

Student 7 claimed that while “of course, we learned those techniques in other classes,”
Screenwriting 500 “is the one that nails the whole structure thing right on the head. And it's
really useful.”
Other students similarly discussed the value of learning structure and storytelling
techniques, and claimed that their program’s emphasis on craft development is intended to serve
or work with personal storytelling. As Student 9 claimed, instructors insist that “you need to be
able to tell your stories in a way that makes sense to other people” through effectively refining
your craft (Student 9). Similarly, Student 15 argued that while SCA’s screenwriting instructors
“want us to write the stories that we want to tell,” students are “really here to learn craft;” thus,
while they are called to “write the stories you want,” they must learn to “craft them well” to
make them legible to audiences (Student 15). And citing his mentor (Instructor 1), Student 7
claimed that “the purpose…of the whole program is trying to help you tell your story better”
through refining those craft skills. Therefore, according to these interlocuters, the overall success
narrative that SCA’s screenwriting students are receiving is “refine your craft to tell your story.”
Student valuations and applications of the story and craft success narratives
However, students ultimately differed in their valuations and applications of the story and
craft success narratives. Some argued that personal storytelling is ultimately more important than
craft development. Specifically, they claimed that the “tell your story” narrative is inevitable,
that it is confidence-boosting for neophyte screenwriters—particularly those who are

88
minoritized, and that it is crucial for producing good work. Meanwhile, other informants
suggested that some instructors’ emphasis on personal storytelling is not universally applicable
and can lead to a lack of authenticity in students’ scripts. Additionally, some students suggested
that craft refinement is critical, and more important that personal storytelling, in the early stages
of screenwriters’—particularly minoritized screenwriters’—careers.
Stick to your voice or to structure?: Debating the efficacy of the story-craft dialectic
Several students asserted that prioritizing personal storytelling—particularly storytelling
that is personal in content—is inevitable for nascent screenwriters. As Student 17 stated:
“everyone starts writing about themselves.” For example, Student 5 shared that “obviously a lot
of people write characters that are, I'm including myself in this…like a version of yourself…I
feel like people tend to do that without needing to be taught it….I have a friend who only writes
coming of age [stories] for like 20 year-old’s because that's what he knows.” Similarly, Student
16 claimed that she has primarily written “multi-generational family drama[s]” and scripts rooted
in “my culture and my background…because that's kind of all I have experience with;” thus, she
found herself adhering to “that whole thing in any writing field where you write what you
know.”
Several informants also applauded their program’s efforts to teach them to engage in
storytelling that is personal in style and to thus “bring out my own voice” (Student 9). For
example, Student 2 insisted that while learning “how to tell a story in terms of the sequence
paradigm” and other structural approaches has been a critically important part of their education
and professionalization at SCA, the “number one thing” that she has learned has been to “stick to
your voice and bring what is authentic to you…sticking true to your authenticity” in your
storytelling (Student 2). Student 2 shared that she is grateful for instructors’ insistence on the

89
value of student’s unique voices, as it has made her feel like “I can be a writer now”—thus
highlighting the import of pedagogies like that employed by Instructor 3.
Other students similarly commended instructors’ emphasis on finding and sticking to
their unique authorial voices, noting that it is particularly valuable for minoritized writers. As
Student 15 claimed, instructors have motivated him and his fellow peers of color to recognize the
value of their voices as individuals who have “something that nobody else has as far as
experience,” and to thus “tell the type of stories [only] we can tell.” As an example, Student 15
described his desire to write and direct stories about the history and culture of his community,
sharing that “there’s so much there that hasn’t been mined” for cinematic stories, “and I think I’d
be the person to do it.” Such reflections affirm that the programs’ propagation of the “tell your
story” narrative provides foundational support for the creation of counterstories and testimonios
in SCA’s screenwriting classrooms.
Additionally, some informants suggested that creating narratives that are personal in
content and style make for better storytelling. As Student 17 remarked, while instructors
emphasize both personal storytelling and craft, she believes that the former is more important:
I don't think that the skill or the formula is where the success is. I think that the
story is where the success is, and the most successful person is not the one that
has a mastery of the form…that's not what resonates with people. What resonates
with people is the interesting story and the investment in the characters and that
journey that you take them on…[and when you write] something more true to
you, it comes out better.

Many students have accordingly focused on thinking about their personal connections to their
stories as they write them and as they prepare to pitch those stories to executives. As Student 5
claimed, “I wouldn't want to write a full length feature that didn't resonate with me in some
way.”

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And as students revealed, the ways in which their stories “resonate” with them varies.
According to Student 6, some see “writing what you know” as “you should actually physically
write about things that you know and understand” (e.g., writing about lived experiences), while
others interpret this as writing “in your comfort zone” when it comes to genre (e.g., if you see
yourself as a drama writer, stick with writing drama), or as writing about what you emotionally
know and understand (e.g., writing stories informed by your affective experiences, as compared
to writing about people, places, and situations that you know and/or have directly experienced).
For example, while she does not tell stories that are personal in content—with the exception of a
piece that was “inspired very loosely by my childhood”— Student 6’s work is informed or
inspired by her emotions. When asked what shapes her writing, Student 6 claimed that
“fundamentally it's whatever I'm feeling at the time;” her writing is “emotionally…about what I
understand;” it is affectively authentic.
In comparison, other students—particularly white and multi-racial students—insisted that
instructors’ emphasis on telling personal stories is not universally applicable and can lead to a
lack of authenticity. For example, Student 13 shared that professors’ consistent encouragement to
“tell [your] own personal story” and to think about “your personal ties to the story” has led her to
“make stuff up” when her personal ties are not “obviously there.” Similarly, Student 8 claimed
that professors continuously ask students about their connection to their stories, suggesting that
“you’re supposed to have some amazing answer, and it's going to bring it all back and just
connect everything to us. And whenever they ask that…I often pretend to be someone that I'm
not.” Thus, for some informants, instructors’ propagation of the tell your story narrative—
particularly as it relates to the content and commercialization of students’ stories—encourages
ersatz connections to their narratives. This unintended effect illustrates the nuances of the story

91
success narrative within the context of screenwriting education: for some students, it encourages
authenticity and confidence in one’s authorship; for others it promotes authorial apprehension
and artificiality.
The latter was further illustrated by other informants who suggested that they do not have
sufficient personal material from which to draw in their screenwriting. For example, Student 4
claimed that while she has been taught that “you always want to start from a place of personal
stuff,” she and her peers are “all 20ish years old, [so] it’s like, how many personal stories can
each of us draw from?”; to solely engage in personal storytelling would mean that they would
“start writing the same story over and over again.” Similarly, Student 6 asserted that:
people say ‘tell your story,’ but that's like one movie, you know? So I don't think I
agree with that…every time we've had someone come in… they were like, pitch
yourself. Like, ‘what are you, what's your shtick?’...And I was like, man, I am
boring. I'm from suburbia…I don't have a sob story….I'm not trying to diminish
anyone's experience because people have legitimate experiences that they should
write about, but I just don't think I have any experiences that necessarily are on
the same level of intensity or…emotion. And so I don't think that the write your
story thing is applicable to everyone.

Some students thus questioned the extent to which aspiring screenwriters can effectively apply
the tell your story narrative. As these interlocuters highlighted, this narrative is not universally
effective; it may have limited longevity (how many personal stories can one tell before they run
out of material?), and it has limited utility for writers who feel they have limited noteworthy
experiences. Notably, these students’ critiques of the story success narrative reflect those shared
by majoritarian students in my study on film and television production pedagogies (see
González, 2020). As in that work, some white and multiracial students in SCA’s screenwriting
programs suggest that following the “tell your story” narrative requires adversity—a “sob story.”
Such strife-based storytelling standards reflect those of the “‘minority story’” trope—“the notion

92
that an effective personal story can only take the form of a tragedy”—and thus risk marginalizing
minoritized storytellers striving to tell stories that celebrate their experiences and cultures
(González, 2020, p. 11).
Further, in addition to critiquing the authenticity and applicability of the tell your story
narrative, several students challenged the notion that one must tell personal stories and personal
stories alone, and that audiences value personal connections over craft quality. For example,
Student 7 claimed that while finding one’s voice as a storyteller is “crucial,” he does not think
that “you should only write the stories you are familiar with.” Specifically, he stated:
of course it’s always better if you have a large degree of familiarity with [your
story material]… Now, I don't think that is the same as saying that you cannot
write a story about a universe you are not familiar with. I think that's
insane…Imagine saying that to an actor, you know, like, ‘Hey…what's your
background?’ ‘Um, I don't know white and rich and my dad is a doctor.’ ‘Oh, you
should [only] try to do those parts.’… I mean, part of the fun of being an actor is
that…you can be not yourself or not a version of yourself. So I think as writers,
the same goes for us. Part of our job is to be able to transfer ourselves into these
characters that inhabit this world that we are creating and trying to make it sound
true because in the end, nothing is true. It's all fiction. So, you know, the whole
thing boils down to: how true does this ring? You might have insane familiarity
with a world and you were not able to put it on the page. And at the same time, a
person who has zero familiarity with it did a better job of putting it on the page.
And nobody's going to go 'oh, well I like the other story because it's more
authentic,’…people are going to want the story that rings true no matter who
wrote that…that said, I think…we should try to write stories that are not ours.

This interlocuter thus challenged the notion that authorial authenticity—telling stories to
which one has personal connections—carries inherent value in screenwriting. They echoed some
instructor informants’ arguments that screenwriters should be able to “write anybody who’s a
different age or gender or background or nationality” (Instructor 8), and should develop the craft
skills needed to tell “any” story (Instructor 4) because audiences value craft ability over

93
authenticity. I argue that through uncritically adopting and reiterating these claims, students
demonstrate the lack of, and need for, critical media literacy education in SCA.
Craft
Relatedly, several students propagated the belief that there is a “right” way to tell stories.
According to various informants, structure—in its many iterations, taught in “different ways” by
“different professors” (Student 3)—is the most important thing that is taught in SCA’s
screenwriting programs. As Student 1 claimed, “structure is very important…structure is
everything…Structure is probably bigger than character and bigger than story in the pantheon of
the ingredients of a successful script…[i]t’s the one way that you can tell an amateur writer from
an achieved writer.” Similarly, Student 7 shared that “the most valuable thing” they have learned
in their program is craft skills—particularly story structuring techniques—as these techniques
“demystify” the process of cinematic storytelling in a way that is “very useful” and immediately
applicable. For example, according to Student 7, learning to “think in terms of sequences”—
which can also be thought of as “bite-sized amounts of story” that contribute to the broader
narrative arc—makes the screenwriting process less daunting:
I think there's something about the inherent nature of screenwriting that
sometimes sounds a bit like magic, and that's terrifying…you're constantly
counting on intuition or inspiration to solve stuff. And when you come here, you
very quickly learn that that's kind of bullshit. There’s craft. Like you don’t wait
for inspiration to sit down at the piano to play music if you don’t know how to
play the fucking piano. So they teach you to play the piano. They go like, ‘this
does that, and that does this, and let’s practice this one technique by doing these
exercises.’

The storytelling techniques that SCA instructors teach thus help students see through the
“magic” of screenwriting and become cinematic maestros. And according to many of my
informants, this technical training is both effective—“I am ten times the writer I was when I got
here, for sure. There’s no denying that” (Student 7)—and necessary for nascent screenwriters. As

94
Student 8 remarked, “you gotta develop and refine your craft…You just have to always do
that…you have to always be refining how you write.” After all, as Student 17 quipped, “if you
don't know the skill, how can you properly execute a story?”
Additionally, beyond developing the capacity to tell a story, some informants indicated
that cultivating their craft skills is essential for telling their story. For example, Informant 16
claimed that “you are able to cultivate a vision when you feel more confident in your skills.” And
as Student 11 asserted, “if you don't know how to properly structure something, then there's no
point. You need to work on your craft” to “express” yourself. Other students similarly argued
that developing their craft skills as nascent screenwriters is crucial because it allows them to
“express our ideas in a skilled way” (Student 3) and “help[s] you tell your story better” (Student
13). As Student 7 argued, while “you cannot teach someone how to tell their story… you cannot
dig into someone's heart and extract something that is worth telling,” SCA’s screenwriting
instructors can “help you tell your story better” through teaching students about how to
effectively execute “craft and technique.”
Further, several informants claimed that their program encourages students to do this, to
prioritize craft development, because nascent screenwriters—particularly those telling
counterhegemonic stories—must learn how to make their storytelling legible to executives in the
film and television industries; thus, echoing claims shared by some instructors. As Student 10
claimed, while there are counterhegemonic stories that “need to be told and [that] are captivating,
it’s only going to get you so far. The people that are going to be reading your stuff are white,
straight males who are at the top. They make the decisions…they have to see themselves in that
script a little bit,” and following established story conventions can make that possible. Similarly,
according to Student 9, instructors insist that “you need to be able to tell your stories in a way

95
that makes sense to other people” through effectively refining your craft. And as Student 15
claimed, while students are encouraged to “write the stories you want,” they must also learn to
“craft them well” to make them accessible to audiences and executives alike. Accordingly, some
minoritized students indicated that they are “very wary of wandering from” the structural
approaches that they have learned through SCA, “as least in these early stages” of their careers
(Student 2). Thus, as I argue in Chapter 3, instructors’ insistence that there is a “right” way to tell
stories (e.g., sequences, Campbell’s three-act structure) risks teaching students, particularly
minoritized students, that they must adhere to a dominant framework in order to be rendered
legible and legitimate—ultimately discouraging the creation of stories that are counterhegemonic
in both content and form.
Successes and shortcomings in SCA’s professionalization practices
Successes
Students highlighted other ways—beyond propagating the tell your story and refine your
craft success narratives—in which SCA’s screenwriting programs are professionalizing them for
careers in the precarious creative industries. Informants discussed a variety of curricular and
extra-curricular opportunities that the programs have designed to support students’ professional
goals. For example, several students referenced the First Pitch program, which aims to connect
aspiring screenwriters with industry managers, agents, and producers, as well as the SCA job
board—an online platform listing internship and other industry employment opportunities for
students. Informants also discussed Industry 101
16
, a course created to teach students about legal,
corporate, and creative issues that they may encounter as screenwriters in the film and television
industries, and through which industry professionals “will come in and give students advice

16
Pseudonym.

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about what it's like to break out” of film school and into the industry (Student 1). Many students
spoke highly of these programs, claiming that they facilitate connection-building (Student 6) and
teach students professional norms and expectations (Student 9). In particular, Student 9 noted
that while the First Pitch program “has not had huge amounts of success in getting people
managers and representation,” it provides “very good practice” and has proven “really helpful in
preparing us to walk into general meetings and not look like absolute idiots.”
Students also applauded instructors’ efforts to emulate—and thus prepare students to
succeed in—industry spaces and practices in their classrooms. For example, Student 6 asserted
that while instructors can’t provide a “formula” for success, they do effectively mimic industry
environments in their classrooms “so that way we get comfortable in it” before they “send us out
to do it on our own.” Student 5 also commended the ways in which instructors replicated
professional practices within SCA, citing classes that “imitated a writer’s room” or taught
students to write spec scripts as notable examples. And as informants shared, instructors have
explicitly articulated the intention behind these pedagogical approaches: to “make sure that our
students get jobs after school” (Student 6).
Additionally, many students communicated confidence in their ability to “break into” and
succeed in the industries based on their affiliation with “the best” film school and screenwriting
program. As Student 4 claimed, being in USC puts students “in a really good position to break
in” to the film and television industries, given the school’s reputation and instructors’
connections to the industry. Other students similarly cited the hopefulness and confidence that
SCA’s reputation as the “best screenwriting school in the world” (Student 7) and industry
connections have instilled in them and their perceptions of their potential post-graduation
success. For example, Student 7 claimed that “I get the feeling that we get out of USC with a

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little wind on our back” and “USC has a great exit program. I mean, they're famous for that, and
so I’m hopeful” about their future screenwriting career. For other students, that perception of the
“wind on our back” was more than a feeling—it was explicitly articulated by instructors who
claimed that “our program is the best one to go to because we’re going to set you up the best for
getting a job as a writer” (Student 6).
Additionally, students discussed the purported power of the “SCA mafia,” echoing their
instructors’ messaging about SCA being “the best in the world” and possessing a powerful—
perhaps even formidable—network. According to Student 1, repeating a historical Hollywood
adage, “connections are everything. People talk about the SCA mafia. It definitely helps to know
USC graduates. If somebody is a USC graduate in the company, that's an automatic in with
them.” And as Student 5 suggested, SCA has both “taught me the importance of connections”
and provided her with opportunities to develop them: “the connections that USC has given me, I
feel, are going to help me more than the curriculum…USC is really good at connecting us with
internships…they’re really good at guiding you along the path that you’re supposed to take” into
the industry via cultivating connections.
Thus, in addition to teaching students to cultivate their authorial voices and craft skills,
SCA’s screenwriting programs professionalize students via pipeline programs and courses (e.g.,
First Pitch, the Industry 101 seminar), pedagogical spaces and practices that emulate industry
conditions, and connection-building opportunities. According to some of my interlocuters, these
curricular and co-curricular opportunities positively and productively support students’ pursuit of
their professional goals.

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Shortcomings
However, other students expressed frustration with what they ultimately saw as a lack of
effective professionalization efforts or opportunities in their programs. While some students
acknowledged that “at the end of the day,” the professional advice that instructors can give
students is ultimately limited because "there is no formula for breaking into the industry”
(Student 4), others suggested that the program can do much more to support its students’ survival
and success in the precarious creative industries. As Student 7 claimed, “I think they could do
way more...I feel like they're definitely making us better writers. Of course, that's undeniable.
[But] I don't think they're necessarily preparing us to be the most professional versions of
ourselves that we can be.” In particular, students suggested that their programs should provide
more industry seminars, and should provide these courses earlier in their curricula. Specifically,
while instructors “connect us to all these professionals” through the Industry 101 course, which
is offered in their final year, they “should get started on that earlier” (Student 6), and provide
“more industry classes and things on how to get a job and how to make sure that you’re in a good
spot after graduation and that you’re not unemployed” (Student 13)—an issue of noted concern
for international students hoping to remain in the U.S. after graduation (Student 11).
Additionally, several students expressed frustration with what they saw as a lack of
concern for, or sensitivity to, the diversity of students and of their career goals, claiming that the
programs largely treat them as a monolithic group for whom a single professionalization
approach is applicable. For example, when asked what the program has taught him about how to
succeed in Hollywood or other media industries, Student 8 responded “therein we turn to the
problem where most of our teachers were white guys. And so a lot of their stories of how they
got into the industries are things that you just cannot do nowadays.” Student 8 suggested that the

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professional advice he has received from instructors has largely been outdated, and does not
reflect the conditions of the current industry—particularly for minoritized industry aspirants.
Similarly, Student 3 shared that guest speakers in her courses were predominantly:

white people who had stumbled into the industry...who [were] like, ‘I didn’t even
know I wanted to do film, but I somehow wound up with an assistant job, and
honestly the whole industry is just about being nice to people’...and it’s like, yes
we know that obviously being nice is a good thing, but what people see as nice
from you is going to be different from what people see as nice for people of color.
And also its not useful for me as someone who has spent the past four years
working very hard to break in to hear you talk about how you just happened to
find a job. I really would rather hear advice from someone who has put the same
amount of work into it...I would have loved to hear from someone who would be
like, ‘yeah, I spent four years trying really hard and I still didn’t get a job because
that’s not how it works.’

Thus, while SCA prides itself on its “famous exit programs” (Student 7), alumni and students—
particularly minoritized alumni and students—reveal that more work must be done to ensure that
they are better prepared and inspired to break into and navigate the exclusive industries that lie
ahead of them. As creative career aspirants, film students will face myriad challenges, including
financial and employment insecurity and exploitative labor practices (Jones & DeFillippi, 1996;
Mayer, 2011; McRobbie, 2016)—challenges that disproportionately affect minoritized creators
(Christian, 2018; Hunt et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2018). Thus, expanding SCA’s efforts to support
those creators is pertinent.
Additionally, Student 2 claimed that while her cohort was comprised of some students
who were interested in pursuing post-graduation jobs other than “the usual writer’s PA jobs,” her
program “wasn’t necessarily sensitive to those folks” and was not “open to other possibilities and
avenues for what the students truly wanted after graduation.” As a result, “a lot of students felt
like they were left in the dust or felt like now it’s all entirely on them to look for work, when we
could have gotten more support in a tangible way from the division.” Thus, Student 2 suggested

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that “the division could do a better job in terms of reminding us that there are opportunities that
aren’t just, go get the writers PA job...they could be a little bit more sensitive in terms of the
goals of the students, rather than projecting the one-size-fits-all scenario on us.” And according
to many students, this need for greater sensitivity to students’ needs and goals has been both
exacerbated and made more evident within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Keep your chin up”: Shifting professionalization opportunities and career precarity for
“the COVID class”
Throughout our interviews, students reflected on the impact that the COVID-19
pandemic has had on their educational and professionalization experiences. Some informants
suggested that the transition to virtual learning has been relatively smooth for screenwriting
students—particularly compared to their peers in other SCA programs. For example, Student 5
claimed that holding classes via Zoom “isn't that bad for screenwriting…table reads are pretty
much the same, you're just not in the same room.” Additionally, she noted that her educational
experiences were not significantly impacted compared to her peers in the film and television
production program, who were “going through it because [learning production is] like impossible
over Zoom.”
However, other students claimed that the pandemic has altered their capacity to develop
their craft skills and to tell personal stories. For example, informants expressed disappointment
over the sudden lack of in-person and hands-on craft development opportunities caused by the
transition to virtual learning in the Spring 2020 semester. As Student 4 claimed, “a big part of
being in film school is being able to be on campus and to be involved in everything that is
happening,” such as crewing on peers’ films or working face-to-face in writers’ rooms—
opportunities that were not available to them during the first year of the pandemic. Students also

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discussed personal storytelling concerns caused by the switch to online courses. For example,
Student 14 claimed that “students share really personal things in the writers’ room and that's not
as secure over the Internet or from home.” Informants thus highlighted some difficulties in
applying the story and craft narratives in the context of the pandemic.
The majority of students’ concerns centered upon their uncertain futures in the already
precarious creative industries—communicated chiefly via critiques of the programs’ responses to
the new “circumstances” in Hollywood (Student 2). Students, particularly those belonging to the
graduating cohort of 2020—aka “the COVID class” (Student 1)—expressed anxieties around the
industry changes affected by the pandemic. As informants described, “people aren’t hiring” in
the “current circumstances of the pandemic” (Student 15) and “there's a lot of layoffs and
furloughs right now” (Student 1). Additionally, as Student 12 noted, the pandemic has altered the
“traditional” career route of attaining an assistant position in a writers’ room—“there’s no more
assistant positions because they don’t need an assistant to go get stuff or keep notes” because
meetings are all online, rendering students’ careers paths an ambiguous “mess.”
As a result, some students have altered their career plans—at least for the time being. For
example, Student 6 shared that during their final year they were “nervous, to be honest, because
graduation was swiftly approaching and I didn’t see a job in my future, and I still don’t have one.
And every sort of connection that I did manage to get was like, ‘everything’s on hold.’”
However, they revealed that they eventually “shifted my mindset,” noting that while they are still
worried about their future in screenwriting, they plan to spend “a year or a year and a half…just
doing other things and making money” while “keeping feelers out for what I actually want to do”
(Student 6). According to Student 6, they have come to accept that working alternative jobs, such
as nannying and waiting tables, after they graduate “is not the end of the world,” and will simply

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be a means of “biding my time” until screenwriting jobs become available again. However, other
students remained anxiously steadfast in their pursuit of a screenwriting career, and called on
SCA to better support those efforts.
In the midst of the industry-wide “mess” affected by the pandemic, some informants
defended the screenwriting programs’ professionalization approaches, stating that
“circumstances aside, they do a pretty good job. They’re trying to do the best that they can to get
us meetings and representation. I can’t really blame the school for the fact that we are now in
some pretty fucking bad circumstances…they did the best they could [preparing us] for how the
business worked before COVID” (Student 9). Similarly, when asked about their perspective on
SCA’s professionalization practices, Student 7 claimed that “I'm not nearly as disappointed at
some things as my cohort would say, especially during the pandemic…we've been going through
a lot. But the program is amazing. There's no denying that. I would take it again 10 times.”
However, other students claimed that while “there was no way” for faculty to prepare for
the changes caused by the pandemic, “they weren’t sensitive to the changing circumstances” in
some of their pedagogical and professionalization practices (Student 2). For example, students
critiqued instructors’ continued propagation of pre-pandemic advice: “even during the pandemic
when we were online, [instructors] were still [telling us], ‘you should be looking for the next
job’” (Student 2). Additionally, students cited a required course designed to prepare them for
entertainment industry careers as a particular source of frustration during the pandemic, as
“nobody had any advice to give” and guest speakers consistently said that “we don't really know
what to say, but keep your chin up and struggle through it” (Student 1). Student 15 echoed this
disappointment, claiming that the seminar’s instructor told them that “you’re probably going to
be unemployed for a while. Most of what we’re talking about probably isn’t useful, but let’s keep

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going anyway”—a decision that they found unhelpful and disconcerting. Students suggested that
instructors’ and industry professionals’ insistence that students “keep your chin up” only
heightened their anxiety about their futures of “looking for jobs that don’t really exist.”
“Now is our time:” Minoritized students’ storytelling aspirations and motivations
Still, in the midst of experiencing anxieties about attaining careers in the film and
television industries, many students—particularly minoritized students—articulated hopeful
anticipation about their potential to transform those industries. Many informants suggested that
the current socio-cultural and political moment appears more open to diverse stories and
minoritized storytellers; thus, “now is our time to step into that space and take that opportunity”
(Student 2). These students passionately shared their desire to craft counterstory and testimonio
screenplays that will bring visibility to themselves, to their communities, and to others rendered
marginal in the history of Hollywood storytelling, and to thus affect changes in and through the
film and television industries.
For example, Student 10—a Mexican undergraduate student—claimed that he was
inspired to pursue a career in television writing after noticing that a prominent media
conglomerate that he interned for “would pick the same writers year after year”—chiefly, white
men—who would try and fail “to tell stories that had to do with people of color…just trying to
check a box.” According to Student 10, he felt called to intervene in this process through
becoming a screenwriter: “I want to change that. I want to write the stuff that they are trying to
write for me. They’re trying to write my voice and for other Latinos and minorities…Let me go
out there and change that and do it the right way.” Similarly, Student 17 described visibility as
her main priority in her storytelling, claiming: “I don't really care much about like, if it's a
comedy, if it's a drama...[for me] it's representation first...bringing attention to people that don't

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get enough.” Thus, some students’ career goals are guided by a central commitment to
counterhegemonic storytelling—to challenging narrative norms (e.g., mis- and under-
representation) and centering the voices and experiences of minoritized communities.
Other students also described a desire to intervene in hegemonic discourses and
portrayals through producing stories that subvert majoritarian narratives. For example, Student 2
shared that she and Student 3—a biracial Black undergraduate student pursuing a career in
television writing—are both concerned with asking, “what stories can we tell in genres that we
love and grew up with, but never saw ourselves in?” Similarly, reflecting on his experiences
watching Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc, Student 8—an Afro-Latino graduate student—
shared that he was inspired to write “a story reversing Indiana Jones. It's about all these
minorities, all of these Jewish and Muslim people working together to get back an artifact that
the United States stole” to show audiences that “it’s kind of fucked up that Indiana Jones steals
all these things from all these diverse minorities and puts them in museums.” These efforts to tell
“nonmajoritarian” stories that “talk back” to dominant narratives (hooks, 1989) embody
powerful examples of counterstorytelling and testimoniando.
Additionally, according to Student 8, his storytelling is driven by a desire to shape
minoritized audiences’ self-discovery. For example, he described his experiences watching
Avatar: The Last Airbender, which influenced his understanding of his identity when he was
younger, and shared that he wants to write stories with the potential for similar impact; to write
stories “where someone takes something out of it and that something helps them figure
something out about themselves” (Student 8). As powerfully illustrated by this informant, he—
among other screenwriting students at SCA—shared a desire to create screenplays that portray

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their experiences in their own voices, challenge Eurocentric stories, and provide minoritized
audiences with meaningful opportunities to explore and embrace their identities.
Some students even communicated a sense of obligation to affecting this type of change.
For example, Student 2 claimed that “if you don’t see the story that you want to tell on screen
that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, but it’s our job to make it possible and [to] fill that void.”
Similarly, Student 16 remarked that “right now, especially at our age, this is the time to start
really breaking our understanding of what other people have set for us” and to avoid “being
complicit in a machine that's going to make similar stories;” in lieu of feeding “the machine” as
Instructor 4 advocates, minoritized students expressed a desire to reprogram it. Further, as
Student 10 suggested, “I have to do more for people of color and Latinos” through changing the
types of stories being told about them. Thus, as Student 2 claimed, she feels as though she is
contributing to a “shared mission” among her and her minoritized peers of writing stories that
“we [haven’t] seen yet” and thus “trying to change what the landscape of our industry looks like,
so that we get more stories made that are for us, by people like us”—efforts that may contribute
to a broader counterhegemonic “storytelling movement” (Student 16).
“Casual sexism” and “backwards tropes:” SCA’s storytelling politics
However, many students also reported difficulties in finding support for these types of
stories, particularly from white men professors and peers who “wouldn’t seek to understand”
them (Student 2). This lack of support reflects a “deficit storytelling” model, which devalues
nonmajoritarian narratives, treats minoritized people as illegitimate storytellers, and thus stifles
or silences counterstorytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

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For example, Student 2 shared stories about an instructor who had a history of being
unsupportive of women students
17
. According to Student 2, this instructor posed consistent
challenges to her counterhegemonic storytelling, claiming: “the story’s not working, while
simultaneously giving no solutions as to how to make it better…[and] essentially telling me that
I wasn’t qualified to make it better.” Other students who took a course with this professor
similarly described him as “blatantly sexist in his notes” (Student 9) and as having “bad
relationships with women [students]” and their storytelling (Student 3), resulting in women
students in his class “getting shat on” in their feedback sessions (Student 3). More specifically,
Student 3 described her and her peers’ struggles telling stories with women protagonists in this
instructor’s class, noting that “my teen comedy with largely female characters was just not
clicking for him.”
Further, Student 3 cited an incident that was re-articulated by other informants, in which
this professor told a woman of color—who was writing a “beautifully layered” screenplay about
a “group of women who all have inherited abilities that are culturally relevant to their
backgrounds…in this predominantly white institution…all told through this really nuanced
exploration of grief”—that “‘you don’t know how to write this…you don’t have the emotional
capacity to write this.’” Additionally, Student 3 claimed that the majority of the notes that this
instructor provided encouraged the student to use a harmful writing practice seen throughout the
history of Hollywood films: using sexual assault “to explain the origins of a powerful female
character” or “to superficially grant female characters strength or complexity” (Tiven, 2016). As
Student 3 shared, nearly “every note he gave her was like...‘Why don’t you have the whole
family have all been through sexual trauma?’” Ultimately, Student 3 theorized that this instructor

17
This instructor no longer works at SCA, and was not one of my instructor informants.

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“couldn’t conceive of the traumas” the characters in her peer’s screenplay were experiencing and
thus “did not know how to gives notes on the script or help her improve it. And so he projected
that on her.” Unfortunately, as this student claimed, this experience “ruined” her peer’s
relationship to the script and led her to abandon the story entirely—a devastating display of the
dangers posed by the deficit storytelling model (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).
Student 8 also cited experiences with instructors that led him to abandon stories he was
writing that contained characters and content often rendered marginal in mainstream U.S. media.
For example, Student 8 reported receiving ignorant and unhelpful feedback on scripts with trans
characters from his cis men professors. Thus, as Student 8 powerfully claimed, “it slowly
became more and more clear that the fact that most of the teachers at SCA were white and [cis
men] limited the amount of stories that I felt comfortable telling.” White women and a white
non-binary student also described challenges that they and their peers have faced in writing
stories that “pushed the envelope” through featuring diverse characters and content. For example,
Student 12 revealed that while they think that “a lot of the professors are trying to be better”
about supporting students’ counter-hegemonic stories, harmful storytelling politics still manifest
in their pedagogies and feedback. Specifically, Student 12 described witnessing one peer, in
particular—whose stories are focused on the experiences of at-risk youth of color—being
“pushed” by professors to instead write stories “about gangs or things that Black writers are
often delegated to” in the industry in a devastating display of racist storytelling politics.
Additionally, a Black alum shared via the @black_at_usc Instagram page that “a long-time
screenwriting professor told the whole class that he believed white people deserved possessing
stolen artifacts from other cultures, because white people will do better jobs of displaying and

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telling other people’s history, than they will” (July 5, 2020)—a white supremacist ideology
which disempowers students writing stories like Student 8 (“reversing Indiana Jones”).
Further, as revealed through many other powerful stories shared via the @black_at_usc
Instagram page, screenwriting instructors have repeatedly failed to understand, or support, Black
students’ stories. For example, a student shared that “as a screenwriting freshman I turned in a
scene and my white professor told me that ‘people don’t talk like this.’ It was a dialogue I pulled
from a real life conversation” (Anonymous Student, June 27, 2020). Additionally, another
student revealed that that they had a writing professor who “encouraged the class to write from
personal experiences, [but] she always suggested that I was ‘too close to my story’ and that my
narratives were unrealistic despite them happening straight from my life...I left that class feeling
completely defeated and incompetent” (June 26, 2020). These powerful testimonies highlight the
limitations of the screenwriting programs’ rudimentary counterstorytelling foundation. While all
students may be encouraged to “tell your story,” the linguicism and subordinating storytelling
politics pervading their classrooms ultimately limit which students are supported in applying this
success narrative.
Further, students highlighted instructors’ inabilities to understand or support stories with
queer and multiply marginalized characters. For example, Student 12 discussed the difficulties
they faced when attempting to write about asexual or bisexual characters in their work.
According to Student 12, instructors told them that creating queer characters was “making them
too complicated,” and saying things “like this character is already Hispanic, why does she have
to be ace too?’” Student 6—a white BFA student—similarly described the challenges that her
cohort faced in their efforts to “pus[h] the envelope in the sense that we all wanted to see more
diverse stuff”—particularly around LGBTQ+ representation as “a lot of people in my cohort are

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LGBT”—but having to confront instructors’ lack of knowledge about or resistance to this type of
storytelling. Similarly, an alum described an SCA instructor who “made the class share their
interests in pursuing the entertainment industry. When a POC said she wanted to work towards
increasing representation, he AGGRESSIVEY called her out claiming that this isn’t a legitimate
issue because there are already POC on TV and that he was tired of hearing about this
‘nonsense’” (Anonymous Alum, July 8, 2020, via @black_at_usc). This challenging and outright
critiquing of students’ efforts to create counternarratives and countercinema reflects long-
standing pedagogical practices in U.S. educational institutions that sustain a “marginalizing
status quo” (Bissonette & Glazier, 2015, p. 685).
And as informants revealed, their peers are also contributing to this “status quo.” For
example, an SCA alum stated that a “white MFA writing student at SCA told me ‘Scandal’ was
an unrealistic TV show because there aren’t any articulate, well-dress Black women. I wish SCA
Alum @ShondaRhimes could’ve heard him” (July 7, 2020); thus, reiterating the racist and sexist
storytelling politics modeled by their instructors. Similarly, Student 1—a white BFA student—
described instances of “casual sexism” and “backwards tropes” in his peers’ writing, and noted
that instructors have actively encouraged students to use stereotypic material in their
screenplays—“nudg[ing] a writer’s work further into that sketchy territory.” I witnessed this in
many of the classes that I observed; in Screenwriting 100, in particular, students were not
discouraged, or were actively encouraged, to utilize stereotypes when writing about unhoused
characters, women characters, queer characters, neurodivergent characters (highlighted in
Chapter 6), and racially minoritized characters.
According to my informants, this has created learning environments in which students are
afraid to challenge their peers’ replication of stereotypes; for example, “if a white classmate put

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in something that was questionable, you wouldn’t feel supported in terms of calling them out for
a microaggression” (Student 2). Thus, students who did not encounter sexist, racist, homophobic,
and transphobic storytelling politics in their classes considered themselves “lucky.” For example,
Student 7 shared that “I’ve been very, very lucky…I have talked to people in my cohort that had
very opposite experiences than I've had, but I've been really, really lucky both with my teachers
and with the people that were with me in the classes…they've always been very supportive [of
my stories]…But I've been really, really lucky with all that.” Such claims speak to the
perceptible and pervasive nature of these subordinating storytelling politics in SCA’s
screenwriting programs.
Supporting a movement of counterhegemonic storytelling and harnessing SCA’s power to
change Hollywood
In light of the critiques that they shared, my interlocuters proffered several steps that
SCA’s screenwriting programs can take to better support minoritized students and their efforts to
cultivate a counterhegemonic storytelling movement. Specifically, students called on SCA to
diversify their instructors and guest speakers, to provide students with sufficient time to conduct
the research necessary to produce ethical representations, and to hold more critical conversations
about hegemonic and counter-hegemonic storytelling in their classrooms.
Diversify Instructors and Guest Speakers
Several students attributed their programs’ dominant storytelling politics to the diversity
(or lack thereof) of the programs’ faculty; “there’s something missing from the fact that most of
the teachers here share the same POV” (Student 8), as the majority are “old white men” (Student
2). Student 10 echoed these concerns about the lack of diversity among the program’s
instructors, and highlighted the impact that this has their classroom practices and curricula.

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According to Student 10, students have to “push” and “fight” faculty to understand diverse
content and to showcase diverse stories in their classrooms, as many of them only “offer what
they know, what they’ve seen” and therefore provide “slim pickings” of content showcasing
minoritized creators’ stories in their curricular canons. Additionally, students asserted that their
programs must bring more minoritized guest speakers into their classrooms; to “have more
diversity in panel guests” in addition to hiring “more diversity of professors” (Student 3).
According to Student 2, the programs’ decision to primarily feature white men as guest speakers
was not “encouraging for the folks in my class who were like me…I feel like they could do a
better job of bringing folks in who are more representative of the student body,” to help
minoritized students say “‘Oh, I feel more confident in becoming a writer because I see someone
who’s like me who’s doing it.’”
Students thus argued that in order for SCA’s screenwriting programs to change their
dominant storytelling politics and to support a counterhegemonic storytelling movement, they
must diversify their instructors and guest speakers. When asked how their programs could
improve generally, and could better support minoritized students specifically, informants argued
that “having more diverse faculty would be helpful” (Student 12) and “the more teachers that we
can have of diverse backgrounds and experiences the better” (Student 17). Why? As Student 8
powerfully claimed, SCA must “hire more diverse teachers. Hire more black teachers, hire more
female teachers, hire more queer teachers, hire more teachers with disabilities. If you're going to
tell us to tell our life story, to tell our unique POV, hire teachers with unique points of view.
Practice what you preach.” And as Student 16 stated, “the problem with the courses being taught
by mostly white men, is that...they'll say that they want you to honestly tell your story. And

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you're like, I don't know if I want to nurture a story like this with someone who has no shared
experience.”
Cultivating educational environments that support minoritized students and
counterhegemonic storytelling thus requires both eliminating racist, sexist, homophobic, and
transphobic story politics and providing minoritized students with spaces in which diverse and
shared experiences and points of view are the norm versus the exception. Students’ calls for
these changes were echoed by some instructors, such as Instructor 8, who claimed that SCA’s
screenwriting programs:
need more women on the faculty and they need more ethnic diversity on the
faculty. And that's not just to, you know, fulfill some requirement, but because
every teacher brings perspective…no matter how open you want to be or imagine
you are to other people's lives and stories, there's nothing compared to ‘this
happened to me’ or ‘yeah, I get it.’… I've had students who've had difficulty with
faculty, primarily, sometimes white men who, really are I would say not
encouraging or not able to fully understand what a woman of color, for example,
is trying to tell. Even with all the best emotional, theoretical intentions. And I
think everybody on the faculty is well intended…But the lack of perspectives
from women and people of color I think has been an issue, especially in the full-
time faculty.

These recommendations echo extant film school literature, in which film instructors and
scholars have highlighted the need for film school faculty, and the filmmakers canonized in their
curricula, to reflect the increasingly diverse populations of film students (Banks, 2019; Kearney,
2018). My informants also extended these recommendations through arguing that in their efforts
to diversify their faculty, SCA must consider candidates’ storytelling politics. As Student 3
insisted—citing instances in which her scripts about people of color have received
“microaggressive” feedback from “quote-unquote diverse faculty”—this “diversity has to go
beyond identity politics…they can’t just be like, ‘hire a person of color, done!’ They have to, in
the interview process, actually make sure that this is a professor who is going to be supporting

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people’s ideas.” This insight was echoed by Student 12, who claimed that while “having more
diverse faculty would be helpful,” the program must be careful to select instructors who do not
stifle or silence minoritized storytellers, or uncritically encourage stereotypic storytelling. Thus,
SCA would benefit from hiring instructors who employ a counterstorytelling pedagogy—
instructors who directly challenge the deficit storytelling model and actively encourage
minoritized students to tell “nonmajoritarian” stories rooted in their lived experiences and
cultural knowledge (Bissonnette & Glazier, 2016; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Delgado Bernal,
2002).
Provide Time to Produce Ethical and “Authentic” Representations
Informants also argued that SCA can support more ethical and “authentic”
representations in students’ work through providing them with sufficient time to conduct
research. According to some informants, students telling stories about communities to which
they do not belong have been encouraged to gain the knowledge necessary to ethically represent
them. Specifically, for students who are not engaging in personal storytelling, instructors have
inverted the common writing adage of “write what you know” to “know what you write.” For
example, Student 1 claimed that while “the traditional advice has been to write what you know,”
some professors (such as Instructor 8) have taught him to “know what you write”—to conduct “a
ton of research” in order to make a story “as authentic as possible” when it is “not my life story.”
Similarly, Student 17 claimed that “I've had teachers kind of widen that [idea of writing what
you know] and be like, it doesn't necessarily have to be something that you directly experienced,
but it can still be like a situation that you're familiar with...No one's expecting you to be a master,
but just like having enough authority over it”—authority attained through developing sufficient
understanding of who and what they are representing in their work.

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Indeed, according to Student 7, the best approach to telling stories that are not your own
is to “honor” them through research; “I might not be the person to which this happened, but I
should research a lot. I should give this script to people who, you know, lived through it and
listen to their notes and incorporate their notes.” Such perspectives were echoed by Instructor 8,
who argued that writers should be able to create characters who are “a different age or gender or
background or nationality or anything else, as long as you write those with respect…you've done
your homework and you're writing them with respect.” Specifically, in their own classrooms,
Instructor 8 encourages students to conduct research about communities and experiences with
which they are not familiar (citing writing elderly characters as an example).
However, many informants described the challenges that the programs’ pacing and
structure pose for students looking to apply this advice. For example, Student 17 claimed that: “I
think it can be helpful sometimes to look outside yourself” when writing stories, “but I think that
requires the willingness to research and talk to people that are closer to that experience than you
are, which I don't think we have the time to do in the program...there's a quick turnaround [for
assignments], so I just don't find myself with the time that I wish I had to research because I
don't want to write about underrepresented communities that I know nothing about
insensitively.” Such claims affirm the value of—and the need for the screenwriting programs to
more widely adopt—Instructor 10’s pedagogical approach: providing students with time,
resources, and strategies (e.g., listening tours, sensitivity readers) to produce ethical
representations in their work.
Teach Students to Decolonize Their Stories
Additionally, students argued that SCA’s screenwriting instructors need to center
conversations about counterhegemonic storytelling in their classrooms. As Student 16

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powerfully described, she wants professors to teach students about how to “avoid repeating the
same storytelling methods and mechanisms” used in Hollywood, and in “Western storytelling”
more broadly. Further, Student 16 claimed:
They always want you to write your own story, but a lot of times when you come
from a marginalized background and you start thinking about it a little bit more...
it’s like, are you just offering up some kind of trauma porn?...I think audiences are
tired of seeing the same stories being told on screen from the same perspective,
but I don't trust that the industry really wants you to write your own story because
they feel it's good for representation. I think they just want the financial benefit...
these conversations need to be happening in the classroom with the people who
are teaching us...that's the only way we're going to transcend into a different
movement of storytelling.
Thus, she and other informants called for their instructors to engage in conversations about
“decolonizing your storytelling” in their classrooms, because “if we're supposed to be this new
generation of storytellers...we need to work on that” (Student 16). Two instructor informants
(Instructor 10, Instructor 8) also discussed the importance of these conversations, describing their
efforts to challenge students’ use of stereotyping in their work and to make them aware of the
“foundation of exploitation” in Western storytelling.
However, when asked if discussions about storytelling politics come up in their
screenwriting classes, Student 17 claimed that while they “com[e] up naturally,” they are “not
part of the syllabus.” Thus, as I argue in Chapter 3, providing students with materials to inform,
and a curricular structure to support, these discussions—such as through incorporating these
issues into syllabi—on a program-wide level thus appears crucial. Indeed, CRT scholars posit
that cultivating equitable and inclusive learning environments which support counterstorytelling
requires curricula that teaches students about the dominant narratives (Bissonette & Glazier,
2015) and inequities pervading cultural institutions (Bonilla-Silva, 2018).

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And as several informants powerfully described, critiquing and pushing for concrete
changes like these within SCA’s screenwriting programs is crucial given the school’s power,
proximity to Hollywood, and prestige. According to Student 6, “when you go into something and
you have high expectations or you've been told to have high expectations…if everyone has said
that this is an amazing program, let's break down why they think it's an amazing program” and
how it could be made better.
Discussion
Overall, my student interlocuters affirmed that the “tell your story” and “refine your
craft” success narratives are both propagated in the Writing for Screen and Television programs’
professional socialization practices. Students are taught that screenwriters’ personal connections
to a narrative are important in both creating compelling stories and marketing themselves as
storytellers. Accordingly, they are encouraged to create stories that are personal in style—
reflecting their “authentic” writerly voice or “vision,” in content—writing narratives that are
informed by their personal experiences and perspectives (i.e., write what you know), and from a
commercial standpoint—emphasizing their personal connections to their narratives when
pitching their work. Simultaneously, students are taught to refine their craft skills as they prepare
to pursue careers in the film and television industries.
Some students expressed an appreciation and preference for the “tell your story”
narrative, citing the confidence that this has instilled in them as writers. Others revealed that they
are resistant to this approach, suggesting that it has limited applicability and can ultimately lead
to inauthentic discourses around authorship; these students emphasized the value of craft
development, insisting that their capacity to develop story structuring skills will make or break
their professional careers, and that they must “refine your craft to tell your story.” These

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differing valuations of the story and craft success narratives are unsurprising given the range of
pedagogical approaches employed by the screenwriting programs’ instructors. However, I argue
that they also highlight the harms that the standards on the universal/structured side of that
pedagogical spectrum pose for minoritized students. Through teaching students to see
“universalizing” techniques (e.g., the sequence paradigm, the hero’s journey) as the “right” or
“proper” means for telling a story, the screenwriting programs risk disempowering and silencing
students who challenge those conventions in their work.
Simultaneously, the pandemic has impacted students’ perceptions of the efficacy of both
of these professionalization approaches, leaving them—particularly “the COVID class” of 2020
graduates—all the more uncertain about their futures in the already precarious film and
television industries. And yet, admist this increased uncertainty and anxiety around their career
prospects, many students also expressed hope about their ability to transform the film and
television industries’ narrative norms. Minoritized informants, in particular, described a desire—
even a sense of duty—to bring visibility to themselves, to their communities, and to others
rendered marginal in the history of Hollywood storytelling through counterstorytelling and
testimoniando. However, these students also reported facing challenges when attempting to tell
counterhegemonic stories—namely, a deficit storytelling model and instructors who have
actively encouraged or failed to discourage the use of stereotypes in students’ work.
Students thus proffered a series of changes that SCA’s administrators and instructors
could implement to better support minoritized students and their growing “movement” of
counterstorytelling, such as hiring more minoritized instructors and inviting more minoritized
guest speakers into their classrooms, providing students with opportunities to conduct the
research necessary to create ethical representations in their work, and engaging students in

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conversations about decolonizing their storytelling. I believe that my informants’ commitment to
contributing to a counterhegemonic storytelling movement heightens the impetus for USC’s
Writing for Screen and Television programs, as well as other screenwriting programs, to heed
these recommendations. As students themselves poignantly argued, how better to take advantage
of its power and prestige as “the best” industry pipeline than to support students’ efforts to “get
more stories made that are for us, by people like us”?

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CHAPTER FIVE: POSTERS AND EXHIBITS “ENDORSING VALUES
DETRIMENTAL TO MY EXISTENCE” - EXAMINING SCA’S BUILT
ENVIRONMENTS
Introduction
In September of 2019, a two-person protest at the University of Southern California
quickly captured the attention of local and national news outlets (e.g., Pearce, 2019; Ross, 2019;
Bell & Wheat, 2019), as well as conservative platforms—including Breitbart and
WeLoveTrump.com (Ciccota, 2019; kaley, 2019). Stationed at the grand, northwest entrance to
USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, two students stood in silent demonstration, gripping a large,
red banner (Figure 4) inscribed with their incisive message: “SCA must remove the John Wayne
exhibit. Wayne is a blatant racist. He promotes the genocide of Indigenous American peoples.
By keeping Wayne’s legacy alive, SCA is endorsing white supremacy” (Albanese, 2019).

According to the student protestors, their message emerged in response to a recently
resurfaced interview in which Wayne—a historically acclaimed Hollywood actor and USC
alum—espoused white supremacist ideologies (Bell & Wheat, 2019). Specifically, in this
interview, Wayne (1971) asserted that “we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn
Figure 4: Protest banner displayed at SCA entrance.
Photo Credit: Student 18.

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everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are
educated to a point of responsibility...[and] I don't feel we did anything wrong in taking this great
country away from the Indians...There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and
the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves” (p. 7).
18
The student protestors
claimed that SCA’s then seven-year-old exhibit honoring Wayne
19
—which included a statue of
the actor and various pieces of his memorabilia (notably, a pair of his famed cowboy boots and
his director’s chair), as well as film posters and awards—memorializes this legacy of colonialism
and white supremacy (Navarro, 2019; Haring, 2019).
The students’ protest, which quickly gained traction online and responses from SCA’s
Council for Diversity and Inclusion, highlights the need for critical interrogations of the material
and epistemic legacies of colonialism (Andersen, 2018) in cinema schools’ educational
environments. As sites of Western education, contemporary U.S. film schools are inevitably
rooted in a history of “imperialist domination” (Carnoy, 1974, p. 3). And as increasingly popular
sites for the training of Hollywood aspirants (Banks, 2019), cinema schools—and the racist,
sexist, homophobic, and transphobic imagery that may be canonized in their built
environments—merit critical consideration. As the leader of the protest powerfully stated, the
exhibit makes them “viscerally uncomfortable...The idea of it standing in my school makes me
feel as though SCA is endorsing values detrimental to my existence” (Albanese, 2019).
This chapter thus considers how the iconography displayed throughout SCA may visually
reproduce and reify colonial imagery and ideologies. Specifically, I ask: How does the
iconography in SCA’s learning environments reproduce colonial ideologies? What decolonial

18
This quote is presented to critically contextualize this work. It is not intended to reproduce the
violence inflicted by Wayne’s white supremacist rhetoric.
19
SCA’s John Wayne exhibit was established in 2012.

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possibilities do students protesting the John Wayne exhibit envision within SCA? And how, if at
all, do SCA’s archival, exhibition, and administrative logics support these possibilities?
To answer these questions, I first draw from my fieldwork and from my in-depth
interview with Student 18
20, 21
to examine the development of their protest and the school’s
responses to it. I reveal that despite removing the Wayne exhibit in 2020, SCA’s archival and
institutional logics discourage and disempower decolonial efforts—particularly among
Indigenous students. Additionally, I argue that Student 18’s protest provided a critical and
presently unmet opportunity for SCA to interrogate and decolonize the iconography throughout
its broader built environment. Beyond its exhibits, the school boasts a collection of film and
television posters that line the hallways and stairways of each of its seven central buildings. As
with the Wayne exhibit, I argue that the iconography in these posters merit critical analysis.
Despite ongoing calls by media and education scholars to “decolonize the (media)
curriculum!” (Mirzoeff & Halberstam, 2018, p. 122) and to remove colonial iconography from
educational settings (Lonetree, 2012; Mbembe, 2015), decolonial interventions in cinema
schools’ learning environments appear undertheorized in cinema scholarship. Therefore, through
conducting a critical race content analysis (Pérez Huber, Camargo González & Solórzano, 2020)
of the film and television posters displayed in SCA, and examining the school’s discourses
surrounding this curated collection of texts, I underscore the ways in which the oppressive
narratives sustained in the Wayne exhibit are further perpetuated by the iconography lining
SCA’s walls.

20
During our interview, Student 18 shared that they use they/them pronouns.
21
While I recognize that Student 18 does not represent the voices of all of those involved in this
decolonial project, I believe that their perspective as the leader of the protest is of particular
import for this project.

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Critical Race Theory and Decoloniality
Various scholars (e.g., Brayboy, 2005; Meghji, 2020; Moodie, 2017) have argued that
Critical Race Theory (CRT) has a limited capacity to examine the distinctive experiences of
Indigenous peoples in the United States. However, they have also argued and demonstrated that
when modified according to, or paired with, decolonial thought, CRT can better explore and
honor those experiences. For example, Indigenous education scholar Bryan Brayboy has
developed a new branch of CRT, deemed Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit), to capture the
nuanced racialization and resistance of Indigenous peoples. While TribalCrit, like CRT,
examines racism and adjoining systems of oppression, and emphasizes the epistemological
power and import of storytelling, the two frameworks hold some key differences. As Brayboy
(2005) asserts, the first difference can be found in their foundational tenets: CRT focuses on the
endemic nature of racism in the U.S., while TribalCrit focuses on the endemic and enduring
nature of colonization—defined as “European American thought, knowledge, and power
structures” (p. 430)—in the U.S.
Additionally, TribalCrit posits that U.S. policies regarding Indigenous communities, in
particular, are driven by white supremacy, settler colonialism, and cultural imperialism, and that
Indigenous peoples thus exist in a “liminal” political and social space that uniquely shapes their
racialization and oppression (Brayboy, 2005, p. 432). Further, this framework argues that
Indigenous peoples survive and resist this oppression, disrupt dominant epistemologies, and
strive to “forge tribal sovereignty, tribal autonomy, self-determination, and self-identification,”
through knowledge production and storytelling (Brayboy, 2005, p. 429). Brayboy (2005) thus
calls on researchers—particularly education researchers—to employ TribalCrit to attend to the

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enduring effects of colonization and the nuanced experiences of Indigenous peoples, and to
center Indigenous ways of knowing in their classrooms and in their research.
Meanwhile, other scholars—particularly those in Latin America—have developed and
utilized the concept of coloniality to interrogate the legacies of colonialism embedded in the
power structures of the modern world (Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2007; Lugones, 2007). Coined
by Quijano (2000), the term “coloniality” refers to the colonial matrix of power formed through,
but distinct from, the historical processes of colonialism—the direct imperial rule and
sociocultural domination imposed through European conquest since the 16th-century (Quijano,
2007; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014). The colonial matrix of power, comprised of Western
epistemes, is predicated upon the belief that European colonizers are superior to the peoples they
have colonized (Castro-Gomez, 2007). As Mignolo claims, coloniality recognizes that these
colonial logics are not a relic or “episode” of the past; in reality, they are “well and alive” in the
modern capitalist world order (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014, p. 197). The crises marking the
present world system are not produced by efforts to maintain direct political control through
colonialism, but through the fight for control of coloniality (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014).
According to Quijano (2007), coloniality is characterized and constituted by two central
phenomena: the “modernity/rationality” paradigm and the “coloniality of power.” It is through
these phenomena that coloniality serves as the “most general form of domination in the world
today” (Quijano, 2007, p. 170). Modernity/rationality embodies a universalized knowledge
paradigm that lauds individualism and capitalism and situates Europeans as rational subjects and
those outside of the West as mere objects of knowledge (Quijano, 2007). Through this
modernity/rationality project and the colonization of the Americas, capitalism came into being as
a global, modern/colonial system (Quijano, 2000).

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Further, Quijano (2000) and other decolonial scholars (e.g., Lugones, 2007) assert that
the modern capitalist world order operates around the “the coloniality of power,” which is
grounded and sustained in the social classifications of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.
Specifically, Quijano (2007) posits that Eurocentered colonialism produced the codifications of
“races” and “ethnies,” which were imposed upon the colonized, and persist to this day in global
structures and logics of exploitation and colonial domination (p. 169). These categories are not
“natural;” rather, they are intersubjective constructs constituting a “racist model of universal
social classification” (Quijano, 2000, p. 540). This model serves to colonize the imagination of
the dominated and naturalize European or Western domination (Quijano, 2007). Lugones (2007)
extends this theorizing to assert that coloniality/modernity is also sustained by contemporary
classifications of gender and sexuality. Specifically, Lugones (2007) reveals that gender and
sexuality taxonomies are colonial constructs that are violently exercised to (re)produce a
“worldwide system of power” through domination and destruction (p. 188). These frameworks
for social organization shape structures of labor and cultural production in the colonial/modern
capitalist world-system (Lugones, 2007). And as Mignolo (2017) asserts, these frameworks—
and the white supremacist, heteropatriarchal structures that they buttress—impose “colonial
wounds” (p. 40).
Coloniality and Cultural Production
Cultural products and production processes—particularly those of the arts and
intellectualism—emerge as acutely powerful mechanisms through which colonizers have
historically inflicted those wounds and enacted control over “the dominated” (Quijano, 2007, p.
169). Specifically, Eurocentric images and their production are made to bear legitimacy and
significance, and thus set the norms and standards for cultural (re)production (Gaztambide-

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Fernández, 2014; Quijano, 2007; Bourdieu, 1986). By imposing their own “systems of images,
symbols, modes of signification,” rulers effectively engage in cultural colonization—
“imped[ing] the cultural production of the dominated” and thus exerting social and cultural
control (Quijano, 2007, p. 169). Colonial powers therefore successfully produce a singular global
cultural order shaped by their dominion, histories, and cultural products. As Quijano (2000)
artfully asserts, colonizers craft a “Eurocentric mirror” through which images of the subordinated
are “always, necessarily, distorted” (p. 574).
For example, Lugones (2007) reveals how this Eurocentric mirror and distorted imagery
of those situated as “Other” manifests in representations of gender, sexuality, and race. Lugones
(2007) asserts that Indigenous, Asian, Black, and Latina women have historically been
subject(ed) to harmful imperialist imagery, including images that characterize nonwhite women
as sexually deviant. Specifically, Lugones (2007) claims that colonizers have depicted Black
women as sexually aggressive, Indigenous women as sexually submissive, and Asian women as
either emasculating or hyperfeminine. Additionally, via the Eurocentric mirror, men of color
have been characterized as aggressive and threatening, and Asian men, in particular, have been
perceived as either “effeminate” or “hypermasculine” (Espiritu, 1997, p. 135).
Film has gained considerable attention in decolonial scholarship as a medium in and
through which such stereotypes are (re)produced. For example, Crenshaw’s (1997)
representational intersectionality studies reveal that imperial images pervade U.S. film and
television: Black women are hypersexualized and portrayed as unruly and aggressive, Asian
women are depicted as passive and objects of desire, and Latina women are displayed as
promiscuous, “loud,” and “unscrupulous” (p. 253). Meanwhile, Black men are primarily depicted
as violent or criminal (Crenshaw, 1997; hooks, 2006; Maxwell & Buck, 1992). Thus, as hooks

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(2006) asserts, film and television reproduce images that perpetuate a “politics of representation
informed by colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy” (p. 212). In this chapter, I examine
how those politics of representation are propagated in the learning environments that aspiring
film and television writers frequent in SCA.
Critical Race Content Analysis
Specifically, I utilize critical race content analysis—a newly formulated methodological
framework for examining portrayals of race, gender, class, and other colonial constructs in
cultural artifacts. Lindsay Pérez Huber, Lorena Camargo Gonzalez, Daniel G. Solórzano—
critical race theorists in education—forwarded this framework in 2020 to critically analyze
representations in children’s literature. According to Pérez Huber, Camargo Gonzalez &
Solórzano (2020), pairing CRT with a Critical Content Analysis—which has provided productive
strategies for examining issues of representation and power in prior scholarship—allows scholars
to “focus and delve deeper into the complex and nuanced ways race, class, gender, immigration
status, language, sexuality, (and other oppressed social locations) are implicitly and explicitly
represented” in texts and images (p. 13). Specifically, through this framework, scholars are
called to analyze how minoritized characters are represented, to assess the accuracy and
authenticity of those representations, and to identify, expose, and challenge any white
supremacist, patriarchal, and colonial ideologies that are propagated in a (set of) text(s).
While developed specifically to examine depictions of race in children’s literature, I
believe that this framework provides a productive approach for analyzing representations of race
and gender in film and television posters. Prior studies on depictions of race and gender in film
and television posters (e.g., Aley & Hahn, 2020; Dehchenari, Abdullah, Bee Eng & Omar, 2015;
Ghaznavi, Grasso & Taylor, 2017) have not drawn from or centered CRT or coloniality in their

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analyses. I thus pair Pérez Huber et al.’s (2020) framework with that of decolonial thought to
assess how race and gender—as colonial constructs—are reproduced in the posters lining SCA’s
halls. While there are distinct differences between CRT and decolonial thought—such as the
former’s focus on contemporary manifestations of racism “outside of its colonial foundations”
and the latter’s focus on coloniality—they ultimately possess a powerful “theoretical synergy”
(Meghji, 2020, p. 2–3). Through pairing CRT and decoloniality, scholars can ground analyses of
contemporary mechanisms of oppression in crucial, historical knowledge of the “long-standing
patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism” (Meghji, 2020, p. 4). Therefore, I
combine the frameworks of CRT and (de)coloniality in this chapter to examine how the
iconography displayed throughout SCA perpetuates the colonial matrix of power, and to attend
to the distinctive experiences of Indigenous peoples navigating those learning environments.
“Examining Yesterday’s Culture Through [Eurocentric] Eyes”
Analyses of my interview with Student 18 and of institutional responses to their protest
reveal that while SCA has addressed calls to decolonize their built environment, their efforts
have disempowered minoritized students and stunted the school’s capacity to engage in
decolonial reconfigurations of its built environment. Specifically, SCA’s planning and execution
of events surrounding the protest, and ultimate decision-making process about changing the
Wayne exhibit, ignore and exclude the voices of Indigenous filmmakers and students—
particularly Student 18, while placing the power to re-craft the narrative surrounding Wayne’s
exhibit in white, Western hands.
In their initial response to Student 18’s protest, the School of Cinematic Arts held a
student forum. According to an SCA administrator involved in this response—referred to
pseudonymously as Administrator 1, the forum—which was only open to SCA students—was

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created with the goal of “allow[ing] Cinematic Arts students to voice their concerns about the
exhibit and debate John Wayne’s legacy while the administration asked them to draft
recommendations for the display that features the controversial Hollywood icon” (Brennan,
2019). According to Administrator 1, the forum generated several suggestions that SCA would
take under consideration or immediately enact. For example, “one suggestion to include the
controversial 1971 Playboy interview in the exhibit will be implemented immediately as a long-
term plan for the exhibit as discussed” (Brennan, 2019). Indeed, as Administrator 1 claimed, a
copy of Wayne’s Playboy interview was added to the exhibit on October 16, 2019. However, as
Student 18 highlighted, the interview was simply printed out (in a low-quality format) and posted
without any context or critique (per Brennan, 2019)—thus suggesting that for SCA, this was
simply a quick fix.
Subsequently, on December 4
th
, SCA’s Diversity and Inclusion Council held an event
titled “Examining Yesterday's Culture Through Today's Eyes,” during which local museum
professionals engaged in a panel discussion about, and Administrator 1 announced SCA’s plans
for, the future of the Wayne exhibit. Unlike the initial student forum, this event was open to all
USC students, as well as faculty, staff, and the public. SCA even created a digital flyer
advertising the event (Figure 5).

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As the flyer indicates, the panelists participating in the event included Selma Holo, the
director of the USC Fisher Museum of Art, George Davis, the executive director of the
California African American Museum, and Walter Richard West Jr., the president of the Autry
Museum of the American West. Throughout the panel, Holo, Davis, West, and Administrator 1
acknowledged that archives and exhibits do not serve as neutral spaces, and framed curatorial
transparency as an appropriate alternative to altogether removing harmful cultural artifacts. For
example, Holo claimed that “there’s no such thing as an innocent museum,” thus, curators must
engage in critical communication about their exhibition practices—to say, “it’s unjust, it’s
colonializing, it’s whatever it is.’” West similarly highlighted the importance of contextual
transparency, and framed critique—even controversy—as an inevitable and important
component of exhibits; West claimed that exhibits should serve as “gathering places for
conversation, debate, consideration, even controversy. [As] safe places for unsafe ideas.”
Notably, this concern with safety did not appear to extend to people frequenting those spaces
Figure 5: Digital flyer advertising the Examining
Yesterday's Culture Through Today's Eyes Event.
Photo Credit: USC Cinematic Arts.

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(e.g., students). Protecting ideas and attending to the “issue of transparency” (Administrator 1)—
of providing contextual information about exhibited texts and creators, and emphasizing that
exhibits do not reflect “the voice of God”—was thus framed as the solution for controversial
exhibits.
Following the panel, Administrator 1 asserted that this was the approach that SCA would
be taking in regards to the John Wayne exhibit. Specifically, Administrator 1 shared that the
Wayne exhibit would be kept in place, but recontextualized to “tell a more complicated and
inclusive story of the American West” (Du, 2019). Over the course of one year, two cinematic
arts librarians—pseudonymously called Librarian 1 and Librarian 2—were to conduct archival
research on revisionist texts and non-U.S. western productions, which they would then
incorporate into the space. Additionally, Administrator 1 claimed that they would recontextualize
the exhibit in a way that does not “shy away from the controversy surrounding the Wayne
legacy,” and include artifacts from "the protest that happened at SCA this semester” as “part of
our institutional history.”
However, the interview with Student 18 revealed that for those who had been involved in
the protest, these changes were dissatisfying and strategically disempowering. As Student 18
shared, “I'm not really happy with all of their decisions” because they firmly believe that
“someone who is Native should be in charge of this...if it's in the hands of someone who's white,
it's not going to be told right.” Specifically, Student 18 claimed that the proposed changes
embodied an attempt to “fit us [Indigenous peoples] into this exhibit,” reflecting larger exhibition
and curricular patterns in the school in which narratives are told “from the lens of the oppressor
and never from the lens of the oppressed.” Thus, as Student 18 posited, the school’s decision to

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place the exhibit changes into the hands of two non-Indigenous archivists risked retelling
Wayne’s narrative from a colonial standpoint.
Further, the “Examining Yesterday's Culture Through Today's Eyes” (EYCTE) event
itself demonstrated a lack of concern with students’ voices, particularly that of the student who
catalyzed its purpose in the first place. This event was hosted at the same time as an SCA forum
designed for students to express their concerns about SCA’s culture and climate. Unlike that
forum, the EYCTE event reflected the power dynamics inherent in the exhibit’s reconfiguration:
the event, like the plans for the Wayne exhibit, situated SCA faculty and staff and industry
professionals as powerful decision-makers, and positioned students—particularly Indigenous
students—as passive audiences, rather than stakeholders.
Moreover, despite playing a catalyzing role in the discussions surrounding the Wayne
exhibit, Student 18’s voice was relegated to the sidelines of those discussions and subsequent
institutional responses. Student 18 was discouraged from attending the initial student forum that
SCA hosted in October after their protest began: for “the first meeting. I wasn't even allowed to
go in at first cause I'm not an SCA student
22
...I had to talk to them and I was like, I'm the reason
you're even having this.” Student 18 also revealed that they were not included in the institution’s
conversations leading up to SCA’s decision to keep and “contextualize” the exhibit—not even in
the school’s reported decision to include Student 18’s protest banner in the changed exhibit.
Additionally, the school’s timeline for recontextualizing and reconfiguring the exhibit
was particularly disempowering for Student 18 and other protestors. As Student 18 asserted,
“they put me in this tricky situation, which I think is intentional [sic], where I can't say anything

22
Student 18 was formerly a student in the School of Cinematic Arts. They left SCA prior to
September 2019.

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on it for a year... I don't even know how to fight it, because...I'd have to wait a whole year before
I can even speak on it.” In an attempt to voice their opinion on SCA’s decision following the
December 4
th
event, Student 18 drafted a lengthy letter to Administrator 1, detailing their
dissatisfaction with the school’s decision. However, at the time of our interview weeks later,
Student 18 was still awaiting a response. Thus, SCA made clear that while the exhibit was
reconfigured over the next year, power and control over the new narratives and artifacts in the
space would not, and could not, lie in the hands of Indigenous students like Student 18, or
Indigenous filmmakers and archivists.
Recontextualizing as Retraumatizing, and Reclaiming Space
Further, Student 18 highlighted the dangers of SCA’s plan for recontextualization, as it
risked rearticulating distressing—even traumatic—narratives about Indigenous communities. For
example, during their public panel discussion, Administrator 1 claimed that one of the cases in
the reimagined Wayne exhibit would “depict graphic histories of forced relocations of Native
Americans to provide a counter-narrative to the classical Western mythology.” However, Student
18 pointed to the detriments that this approach entails, claiming, “I don't want to see graphic
histories of all of our deaths...there’s no way that this can exist without it [sic] being a traumatic
experience.” Thus, in their letter to Administrator 1, Student 18 suggested that if the school were
to move forward with their proposed plans for a “recontextualized John Wayne exhibit,” they
would risk reproducing harmful colonial narratives. Additionally, Holo’s claims during the
event—that exhibits should be “safe places for unsafe idea”—prompts a crucial question: safe
for whom? As Student 18 clearly indicated, the Wayne exhibit—in both its original and
reimagined state—was not a safe space for Indigenous students.

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Student 18 thus proffered an alternative approach through which SCA could truly
decolonize the exhibit: shifting the narrative to one that celebrates Indigenous peoples, rather
than solely situating them in a story that favors the standpoint of colonizers. Specifically, Student
18 claimed that the history represented by the current Wayne exhibit “is an unfortunate part of
our history, [but] this is not who we are and doesn't define us. We're resilient people with rich
and beautiful culture and histories, not traumatic characters in this colonial story.” Thus, Student
18 called for a shift in storytelling power, inviting SCA to center Native voices in a reimagined
exhibit that celebrates “Native cinematic sovereignty, which could include John Wayne as an
example of terrible representation,” rather than “trying to fit Natives into the current John Wayne
exhibit.”
Additionally, through encouraging Native communities to reclaim their storytelling
power within the exhibit, Student 18 accordingly called them to reclaim space—a practice that
they modeled in their own protest. According to Student 18, their decision to create the bright
red, fifteen-foot poster was driven by a desire to “make sure that it was interrupting the space.”
Therefore, as Student 18 highlighted, in order to productively decolonize educational spaces,
schools like SCA must rethink their archival and administrative logics to allow and actively
encourage minoritized communities to reclaim spaces and engage in counterstorytelling.
Students have to be loud, until the silencing sets in: On calling for change in SCA
Student 18’s vision for the future of the Wayne exhibit aligns with the perspectives of
decolonial scholars, who have argued that educational institutions must reconfigure their
archives and exhibits into “tools of resistance” and empowerment for minoritized students
(Senier, 2014). Additionally, Student 18 echoed scholars’ calls for Indigenous peoples to “‘share
authority’” in the reconfiguration of those spaces (Lonetree, 2012, p. 2). Decolonizing built

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environments cannot simply involve incorporating, representing, or recognizing colonized
people and their history through fitting them into the dominant narratives of archives and
exhibits; institutions must give Indigenous communities a central role in telling the stories of
their histories and cultures (Ghaddar & Casswell, 2019, Lonetree, 2012).
However, SCA failed to value and enact this vision. Indigenous artists and students’
voices, particularly that of Student 18, were excluded from the decolonial reimagining of the
Wayne exhibit. And while the school eventually removed the exhibit, SCA decentered Student
18 and other Indigenous peoples in that decision. While Student 18 attempted to convince SCA
to remove the exhibit by the end of the Fall 2019 semester, it was not until the summer of 2020
that SCA made the decision to do so. And based on administrators’ public statements on the
matter, this decision appeared to be motivated by institution-serving posturing, not by honoring
its Indigenous students’ calls for change. According to Administrator 1, the eventual decision to
remove the Wayne exhibit stemmed from “conversations about systemic racism in our cultural
institutions along with the recent global, civil uprising by the Black Lives Matter Movement
[which] require that we consider the role our School can play as a change maker in promoting
antiracist cultural values and experience” (Rapada & Yamamoto, 2020). Removing the Wayne
exhibit was subsequently framed as a step that SCA was taking to “reinforce our anti-racist
agenda” and “mode[l] the best behavior” (Rapada & Yamamoto, 2020) in response to the surge
in global support for the Movement for Black Lives in 2020.
Thus, I argue that SCA’s decision was ultimately performative, and reflects harmful
institutional logics. SCA repeatedly dismissed students protestors’ concerns and calls for change,
until selectively implementing those changes became valuable for the institution’s image. In
response to their efforts, Student 18 and their co-protestor faced threats from white supremacists

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and harassment online—with people calling them spoiled and spineless, and telling them to
“fuck off” and “get a life” (Brennan, 2019); meanwhile, SCA positioned itself to receive praise
for the outcome of those efforts.
Further, the school ultimately disregarded Student 18’s decolonial vision in its entirety.
They removed the exhibit and installed…nothing. Three years later, all that can be found in the
place once occupied by Wayne’s memorabilia is blank space and barren walls. SCA didn’t
reconfigure the exhibit into a site centering Indigenous voices, celebrating Indigenous
storytelling, or empowering Indigenous students. Rather than implementing Student 18’s
suggestions to decolonize the space occupied by the Wayne exhibit, SCA further perpetuated the
erasure of Indigenous voices in its learning environments.
And as Student 18 discussed, this is by no means an isolated incident. SCA has a history
of stifling student efforts to challenge figures canonized on their campus. For example, in 2017,
over 4,000 students called on SCA (via a petition) to change the name of what was then the
“Bryan Singer Division of Critical Studies” in light of numerous sexual assault allegations
against Singer. However, it was not until Singer himself later requested the removal of his name
that SCA renamed the division. According to a statement made by SCA:
Bryan Singer has requested that the USC School of Cinematic Arts suspend the
use of his name on the Division of Cinema & Media Studies until the allegations
against him are resolved. The School means a great deal to Bryan, and while he
intends to defend himself vigorously against these claims, he does not want the
pending litigation to have any negative impact on his alma mater.

The school’s decision to disregard the student petition, and to instead take action per the request
of a man who has “been trailed by accusations of sexual misconduct for 20 years” (French &
Potter, 2019), speaks to the oppressive logics at work in SCA. SCA’s statement—which clearly

136
reflects efforts to preserve their relationship with Singer—makes the truth of the petition’s
claims all the more evident. As the petition stated:
By continuing to associate Mr. Singer’s name with our university, USC is openly
supporting a man who has been publicly accused of reprehensible sexual
misconduct. As USC students and alumni, we hold ourselves to a standard of
respect, and the SCA administration’s actions are not representative of that
standard.

Further, SCA’s actions highlight the extent to which they value minoritized students’ voices.
While in the context of their work, screenwriting students are encouraged to utilize their voices,
students’ efforts to use those voices to call for change in SCA are disregarded or disempowered.
As one of the student protestors claimed, referencing the Wayne Exhibit and the Bryan Singer
Division of Critical Studies as examples, “in a perfect world, I would take it all down. But USC
just wouldn’t do that on their own. Students have to be loud and get media outlets involved for
anything to get done. They’re too persuaded by money rather than direct care for the students”
(Brennan, 2019). As their responses to the Wayne exhibit protests demonstrate, when it comes to
making critical changes and acting on critiques in SCA, students’ voices are not considered
sufficient.
Canonizing Colonial Wounds: Interrogating the Imagery in SCA’s Film and TV Posters
SCA’s resistance to decolonizing the Wayne exhibit merits critical concern given the
ways in which its broader learning environments canonize colonial iconography. Through my
critical race content analysis, I found that the film and television posters lining SCA’s halls reify
coloniality through their depictions of race, gender, and heterosexualism. Across the posters that
I sampled, racially minoritized women and men
23
were subjected to underrepresentation—

23
In conducting this analysis, I deviate from the convention of coding film and television
characters according to their “apparent” race, ethnicity, and gender (e.g., Smith et al., 2018, p.

137
constituting a small portion of visible characters—and misrepresentation—frequently portrayed
in a manner reflecting stereotypes identified by critical race and decolonial scholars (e.g.,
Lugones, 2007; Crenshaw, 1997; hooks, 2006).
Black women were rendered nearly invisible, appearing in only 2.9% of sampled posters.
When posters did feature Black women, they were primarily portrayed in a manner suggesting
that they are “sexually aggressive” (Lugones, 2007, p. 204) and hypersexual subjects (Crenshaw,
1997). For example, in the theatrical release poster for the 2012 film, Think Like a Man (Figure
6), characters Candace (played by Regina Hall) and Mya (played by Meagen Good) are seen
intensely eyeing, and gripping onto the clothing of, their men counterparts (Michael, played by
Terrence J, and Zeke, played by Romany Malco), who bear concerned expressions on their faces.
The character Kristen (played by Gabrielle Union) also intensely eyes her concerned-looking
counterpart (Jeremy, played by Jerry Ferrera) and leans against him in a manner suggesting that
she is invading his personal space. Similarly, in the poster for season six of the television series,
Shameless (Figure 7), Veronica Fisher (played by Shanola Hampton) is seen wearing revealing
clothing and grabbing onto a man character—gripping the leg of Frank Gallagher (played by
William H. Macy). Veronica is the only person depicted touching another character; the other
characters in the poster hold weapons and victuals, or touch their own clothing and bodies. Thus,
while Veronica is not the only woman who is sexualized in this poster, and is not the only
character who is depicted as aggressive, her distinctive depiction suggests that she is sexually
aggressive. Simultaneously, Veronica is the only character in the poster who is not standing or
kneeling; instead, she sits at Frank’s feet, propagating a message of inferiority.

37). Instead, I code my sample using publicly available demographic information about the
actors appearing in each poster.

138

.

Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander (AAAPI) women were also
underrepresented—appearing in 2.9% of posters—and frequently portrayed in stereotypical
ways. For example, the poster for the 1946 noir thriller, Temptation (Figure 8), which features
acclaimed Asian actress Merle Oberon, depicts a scantily clad Ruby (played by Oberon) above
three white men donning suits (Nigel, played by George Brent, Mahoud, played by Charles
Korvin, and Meyer, played by Paul Lukas). Ruby’s strategic placement in relation to the words
“Temptation! You can’t resist it” and to Nigel and Baroudi’s gaze indicates that she is the source
of temptation and a subject of white men’s affection; thus reflecting the tendency to depict
AAAPI women as the “love interests for White men” (Brooks & Hébert, 2006, p. 302). In the
poster for the 2002 action-adventure thriller, The Scorpion King (Figure 9), Cassandra (played
by Kelly Hu) is also scantily clad and is shown alongside three men characters in varying levels
of dress; like Ruby’s character in Temptation, Cassandra is the subject of multiple men
characters’ affection. Additionally, Cassandra is portrayed as “inherently, exotically sexual”
(Yamamoto, 2000) and simultaneously powerful and “passive” (Brooks & Hébert, 2006, p.
Figure 7: Poster for Shameless (Season 6).
Photo captured by author.

Figure 6: Poster for Think like A Man.
Photo captured by author

139
302)—possessing strengths as a sorceress while ultimately being overpowered by men
characters.

Across the entire sample, only two Latina woman were represented, and both were
depicted in stereotypical ways. Jessica Alba, a white Latina of Mexican ancestry, appears as
Invisible Woman in the poster for Fantastic Four (Figure 10). Wearing a tight black bodysuit
that emphasizes her butt and breasts, Alba is flanked by three men characters (Human Torch,
The Thing, and Mr. Fantastic) who—while also wearing variations of tight black clothing—are
not sexualized to the same extent (e.g., none of their buttocks are accentuated, let alone visible).
Meanwhile, Meagan Good, an Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican ancestry, is portrayed as a feisty
temptress—attempting to pull a resistant man character towards her and showing a substantial
amount of bare skin compared to her fully-dressed man counterpart in the poster for Think Like a
Man (Figure 11). These depictions reflect stereotypes long assigned to Latinas in U.S.
storytelling: “‘sexual temptresses’” and “‘fiery spitfires’” (Talbott, 2012).
Figure 8: Poster for Temptation.
Photo captured by author.
Figure 9: Poster for The Scorpion King.
Photo captured by author.

140

.
No Indigenous or Native American women were represented across 102 film and
television posters, reifying a history of significant underrepresentation in U.S. film and television
(Hunt & Ramón, 2020). And as myriad scholars, filmmakers, and USC students have
demonstrated and discussed, this erasure of Indigenous peoples on screen has dangerous effects;
“if we’re not seen and heard, then we don’t matter. It dehumanizes us” (Romero, cited in
Fathima, 2019).
In comparison, white women were depicted more frequently than all Black, AAPI,
Latina, and Indigenous women combined, appearing in 63.7% of sampled posters. Additionally,
while not subjected to racial stereotyping, white women were frequently depicted using
heteropatriarchal tropes—depicted as the desirous objects of the heteromasculine gaze—as
evinced in the posters for BUtterfield 8 (Figure 12), Le Couple Invisible (Figure 13), or a
helpless figure in need of saving—as demonstrated by the poster for The Gauntlet (Figure 14).
Figure 10: Poster for Fantastic Four.
Photo captured by author.
Figure 11: Poster for Think like A Man.
Photo captured by author

141

Black men experienced marginally more frequent representation (5.9%) compared to
Black women; however, they were also subjected to racial stereotypes. Across the sampled
posters (with the exception of Think Like a Man), Black men were primarily depicted as
threatening or “violent” (Crenshaw, 1997, p. 256; hooks, 2006), as exhibited by the words
framing their faces in each poster. For example, Idi Amin (played by Forest Whitaker) is shown
staring, unsmiling, at the camera, with the word “murderous” below his face in the poster for The
Last King of Scotland (Figure 15). Similarly, a scowling Mathayus (played by Dwayne Johnson)
and Balthazar (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) appear next to the word “warrior” in The
Scorpion King (Figure 16). Meanwhile, while the film itself critiques systemic racism and has
been praised for its authentic portrayals of Black life in Los Angeles (Louis Gates, 1994),
Menace II Society’s poster (Figure 17), which positions Caine Lawson (played by Tyrin Turner),
O-Dog (played by Larenz Tate), and other Black men characters in relation to the word
“menace,” may—on the surface—further contribute to the racial stereotypes propagated by the
small number of posters depicting Black men, given the lack of critical media literacy education
in SCA.
Figure 12: Poster for BUtterfield 8.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 13: Poster for Le Couple Invisible.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 14: Poster for The Gauntlet.
Photo captured by author.

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Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander men were depicted as (in)frequently as
Asian women (2.9%). Some of those depictions reproduced stereotypes, namely, that of AAPI
men being dangerous, threatening, and hypermasculine (Johnson, 2004; Espiritu, 1997). For
example, in the poster for The Ugly American (Figure 18), Eiji Okada—the late Japanese actor
playing the role of Deong—angrily eyes his friend-turned-enemy in the film, Harrison MacWhite
(played by Marlon Brando). While both men stand scowling with clenched fists, their differing
attire (Deong is shirtless, exposing a muscular physique; Harrison wears a white button-down
shirt and black tie) and weaponry (Deong holds a lit stick of dynamite; Harrison, merely his
fists), and their positioning above an image of a weapon-wielding “mob” of Southeast Asian men
(Englund, 1963), propagates the stereotype that AAPI men pose a danger and threat to white,
Western men. This stereotype is similarly seen in the poster for The Scorpion King (Figure 19),
in which Samoan actor Dwayne Johnson (playing Mathayus)—much like Eiji Okada—stands
shirtless with one fist clenched and the other wielding a weapon.
Figure 15: Poster for The Last King of Scotland
Photo captured by author.

Figure 16: Poster for The Scorpion King.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 17: Poster for Menace II Society.
Photo captured by author.

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While posters connoting potential, stereotypic connections to Latin American stories and
characters also appeared in the sample, such as The Spanish Main (Figure 20) and Holiday in
Mexico (Figure 21), no Latine men were represented in the sample. This essentialization and
erasure reflects the enduring “epidemic of invisibility” and stereotyping facing Latinos in U.S.
film (Case, Mercado & Hernandez, 2021). Additionally, no Indigenous or Native American men
were depicted across the entire sample, further perpetuating the erasure and subsequent
dehumanization of Indigenous and Native American people in and through U.S. film and
television (Fathima, 2019).

Figure 18: Poster for The Ugly American.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 19: Poster for The Scorpion King.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 20: Poster for The Spanish Main.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 21: Poster for Holiday in Mexico.
Photo captured by author.

144
In sharp contrast, white men characters appeared in the majority of sampled posters
(87.3%) and were visually portrayed as dominant subjects. Specifically, white men were
frequently depicted as powerful agents overpowering or rescuing women (e.g., The Invaders,
Figure 22; King Solomon’s Mines, Figure 23) and physically dominating the space of the posters
(e.g., Appaloosa, Figure 24; 24, Figure 25). Additionally, as Figures 19 and 20 demonstrate,
across the entire sample, only heterosexual relationships are visually depicted.

Thus, I find that the posters displayed throughout SCA’s learning environments
reproduce the racist and heterosexist representational patterns outlined by critical race and
decolonial media scholars (e.g., Brooks & Hébert, 2006; hooks, 2006; Crenshaw; 1997). The
depictions of racially minoritized women and men in this iconography sustain the coloniality of
power—situating those subordinated by colonially constructed categories of race and gender as
invisible, unimportant, or inferior Others. And as examinations of the archival practices guiding
the display of these posters reveal, this colonial imagery is uncritically canonized within the
school.
According to an intra-institutional article published by USC Cinematic Arts (2012),
SCA’s collection of publicly displayed posters was curated by the librarians who were originally
Figure 22: Poster for
The Invaders.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 23: Poster for King
Solomon’s Mines.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 24: Poster for
Appaloosa.
Photo captured by author.

Figure 25: Poster for 24.
Photo captured by author.

145
given responsibility for reconfiguring the Wayne exhibit. Librarian 1 and Librarian 2 purportedly
selected the posters in SCA’s halls from among thousands of posters donated by alumni and non-
alumni filmmakers. And as Librarian 1 and Librarian 2’s descriptions of the collection reveal,
they view the posters’ exhibition as akin to “‘the highest standards that you’d find in a museum’”
(USC Cinematic Arts, 2012). The librarians assert that it is through this museum-esque display
that audiences are exposed to “the” history of film. As Librarian 1 claimed of the posters, “they
bring history to life;’” similarly, Librarian 2 lauds “what these posters [sic] represent in the
history of film’” (USC Cinematic Arts, 2012). Thus, according to SCA’s curatorial and
exhibition logics, “more than just decoration...these posters help to keep film history alive” (USC
Cinematic Arts, 2012).
Viewing Librarian 1 and Librarian 2’s claims in relation to the content of the posters
highlights the danger that SCA’s archival and exhibition logics pose. The librarians’ framing of
the posters as representative of and sustaining the history of film reinforces and canonizes a
singular cinematic narrative. And as my critical race content analysis revealed, it is primarily
films centering white men and women and propagating stereotypic imagery that are included in
this history—that are canonized and “kept alive” through this collection. Thus, like the John
Wayne exhibit, SCA’s poster collection sustains a colonial narrative of film history—a narrative
that, as examinations of the school’s response to the Wayne exhibit protest reveal, SCA appears
unwilling or unable to comprehensively change.
Discussion
Examining the dominant archival, administrative, and exhibition logics within SCA
reveals that the school’s built environment is shaped by colonial ideologies. Despite the
Diversity and Inclusion Council’s quick response to the Wayne exhibit protest during the Fall

146
2019 semester, their approach to working with Student 18 and to changing the Wayne exhibit
highlight the limitations that these logics pose for effective decolonial re-imaginings of SCA’s
educational environment as a whole. As Student 18 highlighted, SCA’s initial decision to place
responsibility for reshaping the Wayne exhibit in the hands of two non-Indigenous archivists,
who planned to “fit” Native peoples into the exhibit, risked the retelling of a narrative of violent
Western sovereignty and Indigenous subordination.
Further, SCA’s discouragement and disempowerment of Student 18 —particularly
through the persistent exclusion of their voice from discussions surrounding the exhibit’s
decolonial possibilities—is particularly disconcerting, and speaks to the need for larger
decolonial efforts throughout the school. And given the harassment and threats that Student 18
and their fellow protestor faced in response to their efforts, I find SCA’s decision to de-center
their voices in the process of reimagining and ultimately removing the exhibit all the more
perturbing, and reflective of an institutional disinterest in engaging in true decolonial efforts
(Ghaddar & Casswell, 2019; Muldoon, 2019; Bissonnette & Glazier, 2016; Mignolo, 2007).
However, Student 18’s proffered decolonial project offers some possibilities for
productively reimagining the future of the iconography in SCA’s larger educational environment.
Student 18 calls for engaging in decolonial praxis that not only explicitly acknowledges Wayne’s
history of touting white supremacist ideologies, but that de-centers his story—relegating it to the
margins of a central story of Native cinematic culture, sovereignty, and resilience. As Student 18
claimed, the goal of their protest was never to erase history, but to re-center Native peoples in it.
Thus, Student 18 calls for a radical reconfiguration of the exhibit that does not simply
incorporate and acknowledge the history of the colonized in the oppressor’s traumatic narrative;

147
rather, an exhibit that gives Indigenous communities opportunities to reclaim space and
storytelling power.
As with the Wayne exhibit, this decolonial imaginary has implications for other elements
of the school’s built environment. My critical race content analysis of the film and television
posters lining the halls of SCA reveal that the iconography in the school’s larger educational
environment reflects the colonial images persistently portrayed in U.S. media, particularly those
related to the constructs of race and gender (Crenshaw, 1997; hooks, 2006; Brooks & Hébert,
2006). These artifacts, like those in the Wayne exhibit, (re)produce and reify the colonial matrix
of power (Lugones, 2007; Quijano, 2007), and threaten to “normalize particular states of
humiliation based on white supremacist presuppositions” among its students (Mbembe, 2015, p.
6). However, through following Student 18’s decolonial imaginary, SCA has the potential to
reconfigure its archives and exhibits into “tools of resistance” and empowerment for
subordinated storytellers (Senier, 2014)—refraining from “endorsing values detrimental to my
existence” (Student 18, cited in Albanese, 2019), and actively creating an educational
environment in which its minoritized students can claim, “I belong here” (Mbembe, 2015, p.6).

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CHAPTER SIX: SÍ DE AQUÍ, SÍ DE ALLÁ
Introduction
Critical race theorists and women of color feminists have persistently and powerfully
challenged hetero-masculinist ideals of objectivity in scholarship—calling on researchers to
recognize, “own,” and articulate their subjectivities and positions within extant systems of power
when “forwarding knowledge claims” (Collins, 1991, p. 446). Engaging in this reflexive practice
is upheld as a key means of enacting the “feminist principles of self-reflection and transparency”
(O’Keefe, 2017, p. 11), and of reducing hierarchical power dynamics in the inquiry and
knowledge production process. To accomplish this, researchers can discuss their positionality—
how they are situated within broader systems of power—in their work (Nencel, 2014), and
reflect on why they are conducting that work (Rakow, 2011). Indebted to the foundation that
these scholars have laid to make such practices widely accepted, I reflect on my subjectivities,
my relationship to my interlocuters and site of study, and my reasons for pursuing this project.
Specifically, in this chapter, I contend with my positionality—first articulating my
understanding of it in academic prose, before presenting a Chicana feminist testimonio in the
form of a short screenplay. In the latter, I use the craft skills I have developed through
participating in screenwriting courses to trace some key moments in my personal and
professional journeys, lay bare my subjectivities, and render visible injustices that I have
witnessed. I believe that this research not only benefits from, but actively demands, this multi-
modal approach.
Positionality Statement
I am an able-bodied, queer, cis woman, white Chicana, and a researcher pursuing a
doctoral degree in a wealthy university in Los Angeles. Through my position within extant

149
power structures, I benefit from myriad privileges stemming from the very systems that I
critique, and that oppress or empower my informants in differing ways. Additionally, while I
have spent five years engaging with students, instructors, administrators, learning environments,
and events in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, I am in many ways an outsider in this space—I
am not a screenwriter, screenwriting student, or screenwriting instructor. This outsider status has
granted me some distinctive power in my site of study, as I have listened to students’ and
instructors’ stories and made decisions about how they are represented in this work—a privilege
that stems from my position as a researcher.
Simultaneously, as Villenas (1996) asserts, not all ethnographers carry the same power or
privilege in their research role(s) and relationships with their interlocuters. As Villenas (1996)
argues, Chicanas cannot entirely “move from marginalization to new positions of privilege
associated with university affiliation, as if switching from one seat to another on the bus. We do
not suddenly become powerful in our new identities and roles as university researchers. We do
not leave one to get to the other” (p. 726). Indeed, I have—like Villenas (1996)—experienced
harms and heartaches, silencing and subordination, and at times allowed the fear of losing my
credibility as a scholar or access to my research site to lead me to hide my subjectivities and
connections to my work, and to thus “betray” my anger, orgullo, and voice (p. 719). I offer a
testimonio screenplay with the hope of honoring that which I have stuffed away or silenced.

190
CHAPTER SEVEN: PLANTING STORIES THAT WON’T “DIE ON THE VINE”
REIMAGINING STORYTELLING POLITICS AND PEDAGOGIES IN
SCREENWRITING EDUCATION
Introduction
“‘The future of cinema is…unapologetically and brazenly inclusive’ (Effie T. Brown).
The future of cinema is…telling silenced stories’ (Nia Long)” (fieldnote, AMPAS Museum visit,
4/15/22). As I admire the aptly named Future of Cinema installation at the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Museum, I quickly jot down quotes that appear on a screen
before me. Displayed in the final section of the museum’s 2022 Stories of Cinema exhibition—a
multi-modal collection of artifacts memorializing key moments, peoples, and works in the
history of motion pictures—these and other quotes remind visitors that the story of film is not yet
finished, and invite them to shape that story as audiences and creators. Indeed, as the exhibition’s
curators stated: “we hope [these] thoughts and insights will be carried beyond the museum walls
and inspire those taking part in the future of cinema” (fieldnote, AMPAS Museum visit,
4/15/22). In developing this dissertation, I have come to steadfastly believe that USC’s School of
Cinematic Arts (SCA) is indeed taking part in that future, and that it can play a significant role in
fostering the type of future envisioned by Brown and Long.
As media instructors and scholars have made clear, film schools are “uniquely
positioned” to affect changes in the film and television industries; in particular, they have the
power to disrupt the industries’ “status quo” of excluding and silencing minoritized storytellers
(Banks, 2019, p. 75). Given its status as the “best” or “number one film school” (Acham, cited in
Hovsepyan, 2018), and its intensive industry ties, I believe that SCA has a marked—and
presently unmet—responsibility to use that power. However, several of the school’s

191
screenwriting students and faculty are illuminating the path forward, pointing to actionable steps
that SCA can take to affect changes within and beyond its classrooms. Through this chapter, I
draw from my interlocuters’ insights, my own observations, and existing media literature to
forward strategies that SCA and other cinema schools can use to foster “‘unapologetically and
brazenly inclusive’” storytelling. In closing, I utilize the concept of the match cut to highlight
why such strategies matter.
Presence vs. Empowerment: Pushing Beyond Benchmarks and Reconceptualizing
“Inclusion”
Efforts to promote equity and inclusion in and through film schools can start with—but
must involve more than—diversifying student populations. Implementing diversity benchmarks
or “inclusion goals,” as advocated by Smith et al. (2017), certainly embodies an actionable step
that film and television industry pipelines can take to promote minoritized storytellers’ access to
the resources and opportunities that film schools offer. Additionally, per Kearney’s (2018)
recommendation, schools and industry organizations can follow the lead of The George Lucas
Family Foundation
24
, the Creative Artists Agency (CAA)
25
, and the Women in Film
Foundation
26
, and create more scholarships for women, students of color, and low-income
students, as cost has proven to be a significant barrier or deterrent for minoritized creatives
looking to pursue a film school education (Kearney, 2018; Springer, 1984). Indeed, students in
SCA have cited costs—not only for tuition, but for participating in upper-division and thesis

24
Since 2016, The George Lucas Family Foundation has provided an “Endowed Student Support Fund for
Diversity” to Black and Latinx students enrolled in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
25
In 2020, this acclaimed talent agency launched the CAA Scholars Initiative, through which minoritized students
entering a college, university, or trade-school receive a multi-year scholarship and mentorship from media
professionals.
26
The Women in Film Foundation’s Scholarship Program provides financial support to women pursuing
undergraduate and graduate degrees in film and television.

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classes—as a “huge barrier in my educational development” (Anonymous Alum, July 15, 2020).
Addressing these inequities and providing tangible financial support for students thus appears
crucial.
However, these access-oriented steps are insufficient on their own. Setting inclusion
targets and offering financial support in film schools can help a greater number of minoritized
individuals “get their foot in the door,” and refutes already unfounded claims that industry
executives cannot hire more minoritized creators because “so few exist” (Kearney, 2018, p. 215).
But improving minoritized students’ access to film education will not resolve the systemic issues
shaping the conditions in which they are training and working. Just as increasing the diversity of
Hollywood’s workforce will not change the industry’s exclusionary, exploitative, and
discriminatory practices (Friedman et al., 2016; Henderson, 2011; Smith, Choueiti, & Pieper,
2019), increasing the diversity of film schools’ student populations will not resolve issues of
marginalization and subordination in these sites. As my interviews and observations make clear,
structural factors and storytelling politics within film schools will continue to disempower
minoritized students and impede the production of counterhegemonic stories if they are not
addressed and changed. Diversity benchmarks thus embody a band-aid when used in isolation;
they must be one of many steps to affecting meaningful changes in and through cinema schools.
Specifically, I argue that within SCA, implementing such benchmarks must be paired
with efforts to: revisit story and craft standards that disempower counterhegemonic storytelling,
provide students with many minoritized role models (e.g., faculty, guest speakers), dismantle
oppressive storytelling politics, cultivate students’ and instructors’ critical media literacy,
reconfigure built environments to center minoritized students’ voices, safety, and sense of
belonging, and offer students diverse professionalization opportunities.

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Building a Strong Counterstorytelling Foundation: Revisiting the Story and Craft Success
Narratives
Through communicating the “tell your story” success narrative to all students, SCA’s
screenwriting programs provide a basic foundation for counterhegemonic storytelling in their
classrooms. Indeed, in sharp contrast with Gutiérrez’s experiences, minoritized students reported
feeling encouraged to tell “their” stories—stories that are shaped by their lived experiences,
cultures, and communities—and even seeing this as key for their professional success. However,
in order to support students’ efforts to build from this foundation—to cultivate the counterstory
and testimonio seeds that the story success narrative has planted—the Writing for Screen and
Television Division needs to revisit a craft standard propagated in one of their central
pedagogical paradigms: universality.
Instructors teaching along the structured storytelling side of the programs’ pedagogical
spectrum variously encourage students to give precedence to the “refine your craft” over the “tell
your story” success narrative, and teach them that strong craft skills and stories adhere to
universal or commercial standards. Developing students’ craft knowledge and skills (e.g.,
structure, formatting, copyright)—teaching them the “nuts and bolts” of screenwriting—is
undeniably important for their professional success. As Instructor 8 claimed, in the contemporary
film and television industries “you're supposed to come in prepared, which is why film school is
so important.” However, the present standards of universality propagated in the programs “do
injustice” to students “whose experience and situation differ from the norm” (Delgado &
Stefancic, 2001, p. 58)—relegating their means of sharing those experiences to the margins.
Additionally, they create learning environments in which minoritized students who do create
stories that are “theirs” in style and content are positioned to face critiques from their peers.

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Given the import of peer networks in students’ future success (Banks, 2019; Mehta, 2017), these
standards of universality may require minoritized students to make a choice: use their distinctive
authorial voices to tell their stories, or preserve their relationships with the majoritarian members
of the “Trojan mafia.”
Thus, I posit that if SCA’s screenwriting division is to take advantage of its power to
challenge the industries’ “status quo,” it must support minoritized students striving to create, and
teach majoritarian students to value, stories that challenge universal standards. Providing
students with opportunities to deviate from commercially accepted screenwriting approaches
may pose risks for them as industry aspirants. However, I encourage SCA’s screenwriting
instructors to consider how they might prepare students to not only meet but lead the “current
moment of authenticity” that they see in the film and television industries; to reconsider what
“authenticity” looks like in both content and form (e.g., structure, narrative style, language), and
to reconfigure what types of authenticity are valued and accepted. To accomplish this, instructors
might start by expanding their definition of what constitutes “the best” or successful storytelling
beyond that which is universal, and encouraging students to see specificity—like Instructor 3 and
Instructor 10—as a “superpower.”
Relatedly, I implore instructors to address and combat the latent linguicism in their
pedagogies. Through upholding English as the sole storytelling standard and marker of
professionalism, instructors discourage the creation and circulation of stories that are
counterhegemonic in both content and form. To truly fulfill their purported commitment to
students’ unique “voices,” screenwriting instructors must value and celebrate multilingualism in
their classrooms. Additionally, keeping in mind the key role that students’ majoritarian peers can
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embodies an important step forward. And through actively defying those norms in their
classrooms (e.g., canonizing multi-lingual works, supporting students’ diverse linguistic
decisions), instructors can empower minoritized industry aspirants to fulfill the promise of
counterstorytelling—forwarding a “fearless affront” to exclusionary and oppressive standards
(Caldwell, 1996).
“Practice What You Preach:” Diversify the Pedagogues
Further, many interlocuters called on SCA’s screenwriting programs to diversify their
instructors and guest speakers—to, as Student 8 powerfully asserted, “practice what you
preach”—“if you're going to tell us to tell our life story, to tell our unique POV, hire teachers
with unique points of view.” As both students and instructors expressed, SCA must do more than
simply encourage its current screenwriting faculty to “seek to understand” minoritized students’
stories. While majoritarian faculty (e.g., white, cis men) can certainly respect and honor those
stories, their capacity to fully understand the experiences shaping them (e.g., racialization,
immigration) is limited by their position in extant power structures. Indeed, as Instructor 8
acknowledged, “every teacher brings perspective…no matter how open you want to be or
imagine you are to other people's lives and stories, there's nothing compared to ‘this happened to
me’ … I've had students who've had difficulty with faculty—primarily, sometimes white men—
who really are…not able to fully understand what a woman of color, for example, is trying to
tell.” Minoritized screenwriting students deserve learning environments in which their lived
experiences and cultural knowledge are shared by the people reading and shaping their
screenplays. Thus, I encourage SCA to heed my interlocuters’ calls, hire more minoritized
instructors, and bring in a greater diversity of guest speakers.

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Extant film school scholarship empirically demonstrates the importance of such efforts.
For example, in their seminal study on Northwestern’s film production program, Citron & Seiter
(1981) revealed that the school’s “lack of visible [women] role models” discouraged or outright
dissuaded women from pursuing or completing their film degree in the program (p. 61). Writing
two decades later, Orwin & Carageorge (2001)—instructors in the Rochester Institute of
Technology’s School of Film and Animation—encouraged film instructors to invite established
women filmmakers to serve as guest speakers in their courses. Orwin & Carageorge (2001)
suggested that doing so would not only “provide encouragement and validation to the women in
the department,” but also “encourage the men [students] to see women as successful in the field”
(p. 48).
Other film instructors and scholars have similarly highlighted the need for film schools to
diversity the role models that students encounter in their classrooms, particularly in light of the
increasing enrollment of racially minoritized students in film schools (Hawkins, 2007). For
example, Kearney (2018) extends Citron & Seiter’s (1981) work by highlighting the need for
film schools to provide students with non-white women role models in their classrooms.
Drawing from interviews and surveys with women film students in both high school and college,
Kearney (2018) asserts that undergraduate women—particularly undergraduate women of
color—are often “‘vulnerable and most in need of reassurances about their creative capabilities’”
during their first two years in film school (p. 221). According to Kearney (2018), being exposed
to role models who share their identities and experiences is a “crucial step” in cultivating
minoritized students’ confidence in their skills and capacity to succeed in the historically “white
male industry” of Hollywood (p. 219). Indeed, Kearney (2018) found that concerns and waning
confidence around “breaking into” and “making it” in the film and television industries were

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“exponentially compounded for women of color” in her study (p. 219); thus, heightening the
need for film schools to provide role models with whom women of color students specifically
can identify, find inspiration, and cultivate their confidence.
My interlocuters echoed these claims, arguing that SCA’s screenwriting programs need to
bring “folks in who are more representative of the student body”—as doing so will help
minoritized students “feel more confident in becoming a writer because I see someone who’s like
me who’s doing it” (Student 2). In heeding these calls for change, SCA could follow the example
set by Instructor 10, who provided a greater diversity of guest speakers in one course
(Screenwriting 300) than I saw in all of the other courses that I observed combined. While the
subject of Instructor 10’s course certainly demanded this diversity, they honored this demand and
“practice[d] what they preach[ed].” Thus, I believe that Instructor 10’s approach can—and
must—be used as a model for other screenwriting courses in SCA.
Empower Educators and Students to Challenge Subordinating Storytelling Politics
In addition to diversifying their pedagogues, I believe that SCA must address the
storytelling politics in its screenwriting programs. Many of the programs’ minoritized students
shared a “mission” of changing the film and television industries’ “landscape” through crafting
counterhegemonic stories. However, as my interlocuters highlighted, the prevailing storytelling
politics in SCA—which dismiss, devalue, or delegitimize minoritized writers and their work—
are hindering these efforts.
According to many of the students that I spoke with, screenwriting instructors have
propagated sexist and racist beliefs about students’ authorial abilities, upheld gendered and
racialized assumptions about genre and content, and treated women of color crafting
counterhegemonic narratives as unskilled or unqualified storytellers. For example, women

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students have faced men instructors who “completely did not understand what I’m trying to do”
(Student 6), demonstrated “blatan[t] sexis[m]” in reading their work (Student 9), and questioned
their capacity to create counterhegemonic content or write in traditionally masculine genres (e.g.,
Sci-Fi, action). Students of color have faced racist assumptions about the content they are
“capable” of creating (e.g., narratives about gangs, per Student 12). And women of color have
been treated as utterly unqualified to craft narratives—particularly those based on their own
experiences; they have been told, for example, that they “‘don’t know how to write” and “don’t
have the emotional capacity to write’” stories about their own experiences (e.g., women of color
navigating a predominantly white institution, per Student 3).
These storytelling politics reflect those documented in other film school scholarship (e.g.,
Kearney, 2018; Springer, 1984; Orwin & Carageorge, 2001). For example, Kearney (2018)
revealed that cinema school instructors in her site of study frequently “dismissed female-
authored or female-centered stories” in their classrooms. Similarly, Orwin & Carageorge (2001)
found that women film students’ personal stories were often questioned and challenged by their
men peers and faculty, who “[did] not understand” and expressed discomfort when engaging
with screenplays in which women students drew from their personal experiences (p. 48). And
through interviews with former film students in Los Angeles, Springer (1984) highlights how
this sexism converges with racism to shape Black women’s distinctive storytelling experiences in
film schools. As Springer’s (1984) informants shared, when they attempted to create films about
their lives as Black women, instructors informed them that “the things I was proposing weren't
valuable.”
As my own informants illustrated, these oppressive storytelling politics continue to be
propagated in Los Angeles film schools nearly four decades later. SCA screenwriting students

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sharing work that centers women and racially minoritized characters, as well as queer characters
and trans characters, have been subjected to questioning and critique (e.g., “‘this character is
already Hispanic, why does she have to be ace too?,’” Student 12), and encouraged to employ
stereotypes and “backwards tropes” (e.g., using sexual assault as a plot device). As a result,
minoritized students have been disempowered—abandoning their efforts to create counterstory
and testimonio screenplays and to challenge harmful representations in their peers’ work (“you
wouldn’t feel supported in terms of calling them out for a microaggression,” Student 2). Notably,
the few students who did not face these harmful storytelling politics considered themselves
“lucky” (Student 7).
Efforts to interrogate and intervene in the screenwriting programs’ storytelling politics
thus appear to be a particularly critical step in supporting minoritized storytellers and disrupting
the film and television industries’ “status quo.” To accomplish this, I proffer two preliminary
steps that the screenwriting division can take: 1) commit to developing instructors’ and students’
critical media literacy; and 2) decolonize SCA’s built environments.
Cultivate Critical Media Literacy
I believe that the harms posed by the screenwriting programs’ present storytelling politics
are heightened by the lack of critical media literacy (CML) in SCA’s classrooms. As a
pedagogical practice, critical media literacy involves teaching students about the relationship
between media and power, and showing them how to use that knowledge to think critically about
the media that they create and consume (Kellner & Share, 2005). I implore SCA’s screenwriting
programs to adopt this powerful pedagogy, and to thus empower both students and instructors to
challenge and change the programs’ present storytelling politics.

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Some students directly called for CML in the Writing for Screen and Television Division,
asking instructors to discuss issues of representation, power, and hegemonic narrative norms in
their classrooms. As Student 16 claimed, they want to learn how to “avoid repeating the same
storytelling methods and mechanisms” used in “Western storytelling,” and how to “decolonize[e]
your storytelling”—knowledge that they deemed crucial for “this new generation of storytellers.”
Alumni similarly argued that SCA must put more concerted effort into teaching students about
ethical storytelling practices. I concur with these calls, and offer some preliminary steps forward.
A few instructor informants have laid a basic foundation for CML in their classrooms
through highlighting the power that media creators hold—teaching students that as future
screenwriters they will “assume positions of influence and power” (fieldnote, Screenwriting 200,
8/30/21). However, instructors also need to provide students with resources about (e.g., lectures,
readings, screenings), and structured opportunities to discuss, issues of power and oppression as
they relate to media representation generally and screenwriting specifically. To accomplish this,
SCA instructors might adopt the approaches modeled by Instructor 10. Through Screenwriting
300, Instructor 10 provided students with foundational knowledge about the relationship between
systemic oppression and storytelling, encouraged students to reflect on their positionality and
personal experiences, and offered them opportunities to think critically about media content and
about their own authorial choices. Through teaching students to recognize their responsibility
and power as storytellers and to consider how they are operating within broader systems of
power, screenwriting instructors can empower their students to make thoughtful decisions about
what stories they tell (e.g., “should I tell this story?”) and how they tell them (e.g., “am I
reproducing stereotypes in this work?”).

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Of important note, I am not advocating that screenwriting instructors ban content or
restrict which stories students can tell in their classrooms. As Proctor et al. (2010) argue,
establishing rigid rules around what stories students can tell and how they tell them represents a
missed opportunity for developing students’ critical media literacy; it “ensure[s] that our future
producers remain as uncritical in their production of such depictions as our current makers” (p.
3). Instead, as Green (2013) claims, film schools must teach students to reflect on the values
communicated through their work. Specifically, Green (2013) urges screenwriting instructors to
teach students about common representational strategies (e.g., stereotypes) and encourage them
to consider what they are expressing through their stories, how they are expressing it, and if they
can tell their stories in different ways (e.g., are they unnecessarily relying on harmful tropes
when developing their characters?).
As Green (2013) observed, many screenwriting students experience anxieties around
producing ethical representations in their screenplays—anxieties that are likely magnified in the
present sociocultural moment. Green (2013) claims that screenwriting instructors have a
responsibility to help students address these anxieties and “navigate the treacherous terrain of
representation” (p. 30) through providing them with the knowledge and skills necessary to decide
for themselves what stories they will tell and what representational strategies they will use (an
important alternative to “banning” content in classrooms). In fact, Green (2013) argues that
developing students’ critical media literacy is “at least as important as teaching them the nuts and
bolts of story structure” (p. 41).
Therefore, I believe that SCA’s screenwriting programs should consider making critical
media literacy a central and explicit part of their curricula. In practice, this could involve making
Screenwriting 300 a required course (a recommendation that was shared by students during the

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class) and establishing a critical media literacy learning objective in other core courses.
Additionally, as some of my interlocuters suggested, to support students’ efforts to produce
ethical representations in their work, the programs could reconsider their assignment timelines.
While the present timelines may mimic—and thus prepare students to meet—industry standards,
they make it difficult for students to follow the “know what you write” narrative—to conduct “a
ton of research” in order to make ethical storytelling choices (Student 1). Several students thus
called on SCA to offer them sufficient time to conduct that research and make those choices;
they acknowledged that revisiting deadlines may not mirror industry standards, but ultimately
advocated for the importance of having time and space to gain this knowledge and skillset while
in film school.
Additionally, the programs can augment this process through providing students with
resources and strategies for conducting research and producing thoughtful and authentic
representations in their work. Instructor 10 modeled this in Screenwriting 300 through proffering
several strategies, such as embarking on a listening tour and working with sensitivity readers.
Other resources that SCA’s screenwriting instructors might offer their students include the
Center for Scholars and Storytellers’ Authentically Inclusive Representation tip sheets and
Dannenbaum, Hodge, & Mayer’s (2003) Embedded Values Questionnaire.
The Center for Scholars and Storytellers—a UCLA-based organization founded in
2018—forwards actionable steps that media makers can take to create “authentic and inclusive
content” (Higgenbotham et al., 2020). Like Instructor 10, the center’s researchers suggest that
creators who do not share the same cultural backgrounds as their characters should seek out
individuals with relevant cultural competence to serve as consultants (i.e., sensitivity readers).
Additionally, the center has produced publicly available tip sheets with strategies for producing

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authentic and inclusive representations of minoritized communities in media. These strategies
include: developing knowledge of—and avoiding or actively challenging—stereotypes, creating
“counter-stereotypical, multi-dimensional” minoritized characters, and “recogniz[ing] and
challeng[ing] your potential bias as a content creator” (Higgenbotham et al., 2020, p. 1–2).
Similarly, through their book, Creative Filmmaking from the Inside Out, Dannenbaum et
al. (2003) encourage filmmakers to consider the values that they are communicating in and
through their work. According to Dannenbaum et al. (2003), as filmmakers construct their
characters, their “less conscious minds may be traveling down convenient and well-worn paths
of assumptions, generalization and stereotypes as our story and characters become clothed in a
multitude of unexamined value-laden details” (p. 189). Thus, the authors encourage developing
filmmakers to reflect on their own work and consider what values may be “embedded” in their
creative choices (p. 147).
To guide this practice, Dannenbaum et al. (2003) forward an Embedded Values
Questionnaire through which creators can reflect on their characters’ gender, racial and ethnic
identities, age, ability, socioeconomic status and class, sexual orientation, power, profession(s),
relationships, and belief system(s). For example, the questionnaire poses questions such as: “Is
money a problem or source of problems, taken for granted, a worthy goal, a sign of decadence?,”
and “Is physical or mental difference or disability represented, and if so, how?” (Dannenbaum et
al., 2003, p. 190–191). Additionally, Dannenbaum et al. (2003) encourage filmmakers to
consider potential connections between their own values and those represented in their films,
suggesting that through engaging in this critical, introspective practice, filmmakers can “deepen
the intentionality and authenticity of your own creative choices” (p. 189). I believe that SCA’s
screenwriting programs would benefit from incorporating such resources into their curricula.

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Further, as the Screenwriting 200 course that I observed made clear, instructors’ own
critical media literacy is imperative for developing that of students, and for changing the
programs’ storytelling politics. While Instructor 9 modeled some critical reflections on their
positionality, their lack of knowledge about systemic oppression and its relationship to mediated
storytelling ultimately led to the reproduction of harmful ideologies in a class designed to
challenge them. Additionally, I believe that this contributed to Instructor 9’s disempowering
responses to students’ critical analyses of media examples (e.g., “there’s an over-sensitivity to
just about everything now”). Fostering instructors’ critical media literacy thus appears to be a
crucial investment for SCA—one that will empower both educators and students to disrupt the
screenwriting programs’ present storytelling politics.
Moreover, as Proctor et al. (2010) and Banks (2019) discuss, minoritized film school
faculty often face disproportionate burdens in creating curricular and pedagogical changes in
their programs. Compared to their majoritarian colleagues, women and racially minoritized
instructors are more often expected to address and intervene in manifestations of sexism and
racism in their classrooms, and are more likely to encounter resistance from students when doing
so (Banks, 2019; Proctor et al., 2010). Fostering instructors’ knowledge of the power imbalances
pervading both education and entertainment can empower them to change their workspaces more
equitably and collectively. Additionally, in applying this knowledge, I encourage SCA’s
screenwriting instructors to consider how their power and privilege may shape their efforts to
provide “the best” screenwriting education on a global scale, and to think critically about their
pedagogical practices in other countries.

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Dismantle the Built Environment’s Eurocentric Mirror
Further, I believe that efforts to center critical media literacy in SCA’s screenwriting
classrooms must be paired with reconfigurations of the school’s broader learning environments.
As student protests of the John Wayne exhibit have made clear, the iconography canonized in the
cinema school upholds the coloniality of power. And like the Wayne exhibit, the film posters
lining SCA’s walls (across classrooms and halls) have created a “Eurocentric mirror” (Quijano,
2000, p. 574) reflecting racist and sexist imagery that inflicts “colonial wounds” (Mignolo, 2017,
p. 40). Echoing the students who bravely called on SCA to address those harms, I believe that the
school has a responsibility to decolonize its learning environments, and to center minoritized
students’ experiences, shift storytelling power, and reconceptualize inclusivity when doing so.
Drawing from the example of the Wayne exhibit protests, I implore SCA to center
minoritized students’ voices, safety, and sense of belonging in examining and reconfiguring its
learning environments. While the school provided some students with opportunities to share their
perspectives on the Wayne exhibit, others (e.g., Student 18) were silenced and disempowered;
meanwhile, critical conversations and decision-making processes were closely guarded and
controlled by instructors and administrators. If SCA is to take seriously its role “as a change
maker in promoting antiracist cultural values and experiences” (Rapada & Yamamoto, 2020), it
must disrupt its history of stifling student activism and empower minoritized students to shape—
even lead—decolonial reconfigurations of its learning environments.
As individuals who are unavoidably exposed to, and have been harmed by, the
iconography in the school’s educational spaces, minoritized students and their experiences need
be centered in such efforts. Indigenous and Black students have critiqued iconography and
pedagogical practices within SCA that propagate white supremacist ideologies, describing the

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ways in which they are “endorsing values detrimental to my existence” (Student 18) and
indicating a lack of knowledge or “care about [my] existence” (Anonymous Alum, July 11,
2020). I call on SCA to take powerful student testimonies like these seriously, and to actively
work with students to cultivate their sense of belonging and safety in its built environments.
Further, I echo students and scholars’ calls to shift storytelling power within SCA. In its
efforts to maintain control over the Wayne exhibit’s narrative, the school ultimately devised
changes that posed further harms to minoritized students and repeated long-standing patterns of
telling narratives “from the lens of the oppressor and never from the lens of the oppressed”
(Student 18). And ultimately, in removing the Wayne exhibit and leaving nothing but blank walls
and empty space in its wake, SCA squandered a critical opportunity to include Indigenous
peoples in its cinematic canon. Thus, I urge the school to take up the decolonial possibilities
proffered by Student 18: create spaces that center Indigenous voices, “honor Native cinematic
sovereignty,” and empower Indigenous students to tell their own stories. Similarly, SCA must
meet decolonial scholars’ calls to “‘share authority’” (Lonetree, 2012, p. 2)—to ensure that
students, scholars, instructors, and creators who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color play
a central role in presenting the stories of their histories and cultures (Ghaddar & Casswell, 2019)
in the reconfiguration of the school’s expansive educational spaces.
Relatedly, I believe that SCA should expand the history of film and television that they
display in those spaces to include more minoritized storytellers and counterhegemonic works.
While by no means offering a faultless model, the Academy Museum’s Stories of Cinema
exhibition exemplifies some strategies that might productively inform SCA’s path forward,
namely through: centering minoritized creators in their canon, challenging the notion of a

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singular story of cinema history, and contextualizing and critiquing the iconography that it
displays.
In creating the Stories of Cinema exhibition, the museum has highlighted and honored the
multiplicity of Hollywood history through developing a “radically inclusive” and decidedly
shifting canon (Recker, 2022). During my visit in April of 2022, the central exhibits that I
engaged with honored the work and impact of many minoritized filmmakers, such as Patricia
Cardoso, Spike Lee, Oscar Micheaux, Bruce Lee, and Chris Eyre. Simultaneously, given the
museum’s efforts to “illuminat[e] the many histories of cinema,” the exhibition is designed to
“‘change over time, showcasing different movies, artist, eras, genres, and technologies’”
(fieldnote, AMPAS Museum visit, 4/15/22). While I recognize that regularly changing the
iconography in SCA’s learning environments is likely unfeasible, I encourage the school to
follow the museum’s example of rejecting a singular and Eurocentric narrative of film history.
Additionally, I urge SCA to emulate the museum’s approach to contextualizing artifacts.
As I observed during my visit, in tracing the histories of cinema and presenting the works of
acclaimed filmmakers in the Stories of Cinema exhibition, the museum provided contextual
information in a variety of forms (e.g., captions, quotes, curatorial analyses, timelines, video
clips, audio clips). And through this information, the museum offered—and encouraged—
celebratory commentary and critiques. In addition to highlighting the significant and positive
impact of the canonized creators and their works, the exhibition’s curators addressed and actively
critiqued harmful representational practices reproduced or challenged through those works. As
the curators explicitly stated, the exhibition was designed to both “contextualize and challenge
dominant narratives around cinema’” (fieldnote, AMPAS Museum visit, 4/15/22). I believe that

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through adopting a similar approach, SCA can provide its instructors and students with
productive, alternative ways to engage with the iconography that lines its walls.
However, the museum’s approach is by no means a perfect model. For example, as critics
have highlighted, the museum failed to include Jewish filmmakers in the Stories of Cinema
exhibition, an erasure that industry figures and scholars alike have described as “egregious” and
“ahistorical” (Baum, 2022; Recker, 2022). The museum has responded to these critiques by
acknowledging the harms of this erasure and working to address it in a forthcoming exhibit
named “Hollywoodland.” Thus, I encourage SCA to critically consider how the museum’s
present and future strategies (e.g., does it meaningfully address critiques of the Stories of
Cinema exhibition through its Hollywoodland exhibition) may inform reconfigurations of the
school’s built environment.
Offer a Diversity of Professionalization Practices
Lastly, I encourage SCA’s screenwriting programs to expand their professionalization
practices. Students praised many of the programs’ approaches to training students as
“professional storytellers,” such as the First Pitch program, the Industry 101 seminar, and
courses that emulate industry environments. I encourage SCA to continue providing those
professionalization opportunities, while also diversifying them to better prepare all students for
the precarious creative industries.
As several of my interlocuters insisted, SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television
Division should consider the diversity of its industry aspirants and their career goals, and avoid
treating them as a monolithic group for whom a single professionalization approach is
applicable. Specifically, students called on the screenwriting programs to move away from a
“one-size-fits-all” approach to professionalization and to expose students to a range of

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perspectives on how to “make it” via a diversity of guest speakers (i.e., guest speakers who are
more than just “white people who had stumbled into the industry,” Student 3). Additionally,
students argued that the programs should provide more tangible support for students deviating
from “traditional” career paths (e.g., a writer’s PA job in Hollywood) and be “open to other
possibilities and avenues” (e.g., working outside of the legacy industries).
The need for such changes has been heightened by shifts in contemporary media
production, distribution, and consumption practices. Traditional moviegoing in physical theaters
is no longer a popular activity among youths or adults (trends seen before, but certainly
exacerbated by, the COVID-19 pandemic) (Rideout & Robb, 2019). Consumers are increasingly
turning to streaming services and platforms such as Netflix and Hulu, which have become sites
of “a lot of opportunity” (Instructor 8) for aspiring screenwriters generally, and for minoritized
storytellers specifically (Mullen, 2020; Smith et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2017; Umstead, 2019).
As Christian (2018) discusses in his work, Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise
of Web Television, many minoritized creatives have moved away from legacy production
structures and found success following non-traditional avenues. Thus, developing a diversity of
professionalization approaches that support students’ pursuit of those new paths appears crucial.
Additionally, drawing from the recommendations of other media scholars, SCA should
consider incorporating creative collaboration lessons into its curricula. According to Banks
(2019), instructors looking to meaningfully prepare students as professionals must be explicit
and strategic about teaching them how to collaborate. Banks (2019) cites a former SCA
instructor who observed students “enter with expectations of creative control only to realize that
much of what they needed to learn was mastering teamwork: ‘Many of them come to a film
program focused on the role of a director as the controlling creative voice and struggle to find

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ways to have creative influence in any other crew position’” (p. 78). And as Banks (2019)
claims, students’ difficulties moving away from such auteur-esque inclinations and engaging in
teamwork are often heightened when they are assigned to collaborate with peers from different
backgrounds.
Banks (2019) accordingly calls on instructors to recognize that creative collaboration is a
“learned” rather than “innate” skill for their students, as well as a key site in which biases may
manifest and be reproduced (p. 78). Banks (2019) claims that instructors thus have a
responsibility to not only foster their students’ collaboration skills through their courses, but to
teach them to disrupt their implicit biases, which can hinder creative collaboration processes and
reproduce the industries’ inequities. In practice, taking up this responsibility can involve
establishing and modeling classroom guidelines around respectful collaboration practices,
committing class time to engaging students in teamwork and conflict resolution skill-building
exercises, and encouraging students’ self-reflection on, and facilitating collective classroom
conversations about, implicit biases (Banks, 2019). Additionally, these strategies should be
paired with critical media literacy pedagogies. Preparing SCA students to navigate the “hills and
valleys of the story-making process” must involve education in the power, privilege, and
oppression which variously punctuate that process for a diversity of industry aspirants, and
discussions about how students can “counter the industry’s status quo” (Banks, 2019, p. 74) in
and through their creative collaborations.

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Conclusion: The Match Cut
Just as young eyes shut and aged eyes open,
and a match gives way to sunrise,
so too do film students become storytellers.

Just as a helicopter blade turns to that of a fan,
and a capitol emerges from a cathedral,
so too can transformation spread from school to studio.

As I developed the skills needed to put the metaphorical pen to paper and create my first
screenplay, I was struck by the concept of the match cut. The match cut is a transition between
two scenes in which the subject, action, or sound in the transitional shots match. For example, in
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), a scene that ends with a close-up
shot of adolescent Elizabeth Swann’s eyes cuts to a close-up shot of adult Elizabeth Swann’s
eyes—seamlessly depicting the passage of time in this story. As another example, in Apocalypse
Now (1979), the sight and sound of a military helicopter’s whirring blade slowly transitions into
that of a ceiling fan above a veteran suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The
match cut is thus intended to provide a smooth transition, and draw a symbolic connection,
between two scenes.
In addition to seeing this as a compelling storytelling tool that I have incorporated into
my own screenplays, I believe that this concept captures the connections that my interlocuters
envision between USC’s Writing for Screen and Television Division and the world of
professional screenwriting. Students and instructors alike appear to see the division as a scene
whose current actions (professional socialization) closely mirror those of the following scene
(professional screenwriting), and thus allow for a seamless transition from one to the other—a
cut from student to storyteller. Simultaneously, some students and instructors believe that both
scenes need to change, and suggest that reconfiguring the composition of the first scene (film

212
schools) may create changes in the second (film and television industries)—a cut from classroom
to counterhegemonic storytelling movement.
Cutting from Student to Successful Storyteller
In mirroring key elements of the film and television industries in their classrooms, film
instructors strive to create a seamless transition between school and studio. As my interlocuters
revealed, instructors’ pedagogical approaches are fundamentally shaped and defined by the
professional spaces in which they have worked, and to which their students aspire; thus, they
propagate industry rhetoric and emulate industry practices in their classrooms. As in
entertainment industry discourses, SCA’s screenwriting instructors forward the making of film
and television as synonymous with storytelling, and accordingly strive to prepare students to
participate in the “business of storytelling” as “professional storytellers.” Additionally, these
instructors propagate both the “tell your story” and “refine your craft” success narratives
articulated by other industry professionals in their classrooms. While instructors’ emphases on
these narratives differ, they are all fundamentally concerned with preparing students as
professionals. As Instructor 5 claimed, in reference to the story and craft narratives, “with those
two foundations underneath our writers' feet, they can do more than just do well in…school.
They can do more than just say sell a script or get a job on a shoot. They can have a career.” And
as other instructors made clear, they are fundamentally concerned with training “good
storytellers,” not “good students.”
To accomplish this, instructors emulate industry practices in their classrooms. Some
make students feel as though they are “actually in the writer’s room” or in the process of
(re)writing a feature film. Others emulate the “demands of the [industry] machine” (e.g.,
workload, deadlines), as this is purportedly “the best preparation I could give them for the

213
business.” These pedagogical practices are fundamentally—and according to some instructors,
necessarily—informed by their own professional experiences; instructors are drawing from
“what you learn as a professional,” so that "everything I tell the students is based on what's real
in the industry.” Thus, in mirroring industry practices, film instructors imagine creating an
effortless transition between school and industry.
Many students shared this vision, discussing the clear connection they see between SCA
and the world of professional screenwriting. Students applauded instructors’ efforts to emulate—
and thus prepare students to succeed in—industry spaces and practices in their classrooms, citing
the story and craft success narratives and classes that “imitated a writer’s room” as clear
examples. And students indicated that such efforts have made them confident in their ability to
“be a writer” and “break into” the professional world of screenwriting work. Thus, I believe that
the concept of the match cut captures the type of transition that my interlocuters envision film
schools—particularly SCA—can facilitate: a seamless cut between two different, yet closely
related, scenes of professional storytelling.
Cutting from Classroom to Counterhegemonic Storytelling Movement
However, some interlocuters also highlighted the potential—and the need—for both
scenes to change; to use that same transitional power to create a new narrative in which a status
quo change in film schools cuts to a status quo change in the entertainment industries. Many
students—particularly minoritized students—are striving to catalyze this change, sharing a
“mission” of transforming “what the landscape of our industry looks like, so that we get more
stories made that are for us, by people like us” (Student 2). Students passionately described their
efforts to craft counterstory and testimonio screenplays and contribute to a counterhegemonic
storytelling “movement.”

214
And students called on SCA to support these efforts, arguing that reconfiguring the
programs’ professional socialization practices is “the only way we're going to transcend into a
different movement of storytelling” (Student 16). Thus, they share in Banks’ (2019) vision of
film school classrooms acting “not as a mirror of the industry but rather as a living experiment in
reshaping the media industries’ ideas about equity and access” (p. 86). And according to my
interlocuters, with its power, prestige, and proximity to the film and television industries, SCA is
uniquely positioned to use its match cut connection to do so.
I believe that students’ visions of creating a counterhegemonic storytelling movement
and transforming the media industries’ “landscape” paints a picture of hope for the future.
Despite heightened career precarity in the context of the pandemic, these aspiring cinematic
storytellers have remained resolute in their efforts to bring visibility to themselves, to their
communities, and to others rendered marginal in the history of Hollywood storytelling through
counterstorytelling and testimoniando; I argue that such efforts amplify the impetus for SCA to
heed these students’ calls for change.
As my interlocuters revealed, racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic storytelling
politics in the screenwriting programs have directly and indirectly hindered students’ capacities
to develop and support counterhegemonic narratives. Students have thus insisted that the
programs make concerted efforts to challenge and change those storytelling politics through
providing all students with opportunities to develop critical media literacy and diversifying the
role models and professionalization practices in their classrooms—to “practice what they
preach” when it comes to celebrating unique authorial voices.
I echo these suggestions, imploring SCA’s Writing for Screen and Television Division to
diversify its pedagogues, cultivate students’ and instructors’ critical media literacy, and provide

215
students with diverse professionalization opportunities that meet their various ambitions and
visions for the industries’ futures. Additionally, I posit that if SCA is to truly take advantage of
its match cut connection to the media industries, it must revisit the story and craft standards that
disempower counterhegemonic storytelling within its classrooms, and challenge and change the
oppressive storytelling politics pervading its learning environments.
While such efforts might disrupt the metaphorical match cut—creating a less seamless
transition between school and studio as students strive to reprogram versus feed “the machine”
(Student 16)—I share in my interlocuters’ and other media scholars’ belief that “‘this is a
moment for media educators,’” including myself, “‘to accelerate transformation’” in and through
their classrooms (fieldnote, University Film and Video Association conference, 7/27/22). And I
argue that through heeding their students’ calls for change, SCA’s screenwriting programs can
ensure that their minoritized students’ powerful stories do not “die on the vine,” empower them
to “create the Hollywood you want to see” (Screenwriting 200 syllabus), and move from a place
with “very little movement in storytelling” (cited in Silva, 2018) to a counterhegemonic
storytelling movement.

216
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APPENDIX A: INSTRUCTOR INFORMANTS

Pseudonym Notes
Instructor 1 Former division chair
Instructor 2 Instructor of Screenwriting 500
Instructor 3
Instructor 4
Instructor 5
Instructor 6 Former division chair
Instructor 7
Instructor 8 Instructor of Screenwriting 400
Instructor 9 Instructor of Screenwriting 200
Instructor 10 Instructor of Screenwriting 300

238
APPENDIX B: GUEST SPEAKERS

Pseudonym Course Race & Ethnicity
27
Pronouns Notes
Speaker 1 Screenwriting 400 white he/him SCA instructor
Speaker 2 Screenwriting 100 white he/him SCA instructor
Speaker 3 Screenwriting 200 Chinese American they/them SCA alum
Speaker 4 Screenwriting 200 Black she/her SCA alum
Speaker 5 Screenwriting 200 Chinese she/her SCA alum
Speaker 6 Screenwriting 200 Middle Eastern he/him
Speaker 7 Screenwriting 200 Indigenous she/her UCLA film school alum
Speaker 8 Screenwriting 200 Filipina she/her
Speaker 9 Screenwriting 200 Chicana she/her
Speaker 10 Screenwriting 200 West African she/her SCA alum
Speaker 11 Screenwriting 200 white she/her
Speaker 12 Screenwriting 200 Black she/her
Speaker 13 Screenwriting 200 white he/him
Speaker 14 Screenwriting 200 Latina she/her
Speaker 15 Screenwriting 200 Black she/her
Speaker 16 Screenwriting 200 Multi-racial she/her UCLA film school alum
Speaker 17 Screenwriting 200 Hispanic he/him UCLA film school alum
Speaker 18 Screenwriting 200 Latina she/her
Speaker 19 Screenwriting 200 white she/her

27
Racial and ethnic identities and pronouns were either directly defined by guest speakers during
their visit or determined based on publicly available information online (e.g., their professional
websites, social media pages, etc.).

239
APPENDIX C: STUDENT INFORMANTS

Pseudonym Program Enrollment
Duration
Race & Ethnicity
28
Gender
19

Student 1 BFA 8 semesters white Male
Student 2 BFA 8 semesters Latina Female
Student 3 BFA 8 semesters Black/biracial Cis woman
Student 4 BFA 6 semesters Asian/white Female
Student 5 BFA 4 semesters Multiracial Female
Student 6 BFA 8 semesters white Female
Student 7 MFA 2 semesters Brazilian
29
Male
Student 8 MFA 4 semesters Latino, Black Male
Student 9 MFA 4 semesters Caucasian Cis woman
Student 10 MFA 2 semesters Latino/Mexican Male
Student 11 MFA 2 semesters Latino Male
Student 12 MFA 4 semesters white, Jewish Female, non-binary
Student 13 BFA 7 semesters white Female
Student 14 BFA 2 semesters white Male
Student 15 MFA 3 semesters Black/Haitian Male
Student 16 BFA 4 semesters Southasian Female
Student 17 BFA 5 semesters Cuban-Iranian-American Female
Student 18 BFA 4 semesters
30
Indigenous Mexican Two-spirit

28
Racial, ethnic, and gender identities were all directly defined by informants. While, the
majority of student responses conflated sex with gender identity, I present informants’ answers
as they were written.
29
In the race and ethnicity section of their personal information questionnaire, Student 7 also
shared the following: “I have a problem with the term Latinx, I think if throws a lot of very
different cultures into the same category and ultimately ends up producing a shallow notion of
them).”
30
Student 18 transferred out of SCA before their junior year.

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Asset Metadata

Creator González, Olivia Anne (author)

Core Title MATCH CUT: the making of professional screenwriters and a (counter)storytelling movement in film school

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/22/2024

Defense Date 05/17/2022

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