Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coonskin (film)

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 17:04, 10 June 2007.

[edit] Coonskin (film)

Self-nomination. The main thing that should be remembered is that this isn't a particularly well-known film (though it should be), and so it was difficult to find appropriate references, but I think I did very well with the material I was able to work with. Aside from the possibility that the lead might require some changes, I think that the quality of this article is high enough for it to have a featured article nomination. It's currently listed at Requests for copy-editing, so if there are any issues with the prose or writing that you feel are troublesome, go ahead and support the article's nomination anyway, as these issues should be fixed during the course of the FAC. (Ibaranoff24 14:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC))

• Nominate and Support. (Ibaranoff24 14:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC))
• Weak oppose, prose is not very good:
  • "the film encountered extreme controversy before its original theatrical release when the film was protested by members of the Congress of Racial Equality, who strongly criticized the material as being racist, although none of the group's members had seen the film." - "the film" appears too many times; "the film was protested by" is not smooth-reading, is redundant with "who strongly criticised the material", and thus should be removed; "the material" is a bit awkward and I'd prefer replacing it with "the content".
  • "but it was not success" - grammar.
  • "The film stayed in obscurity for several years, eventually developing a cult following" - shouldn't there be a "but" before "eventually", since lingering in obscurity is in opposing contrast to developing a cult following? If you add that in, change "developing" to "developed".

I will check again later; these are what I found by briefly skimming the article. Resurgent insurgent 03:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support looks okay now. Resurgent insurgent 13:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
• I did some work on the things you mentioned. Are there any other issues that need to be taken care of? (Ibaranoff24 07:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC))

• Support Weak Oppose for now — I have a few concerns:
  • The lead employs vernacular expressions that may not be clear to a non-American reader. For example, it would be clearer if "black culture" were written as African American culture. Or at least the usage of the word "black" should be clarified. Just a suggestion.
  • I think the first sentence should be re-written to eliminate the slash. For example it could say that the film mixes live-action sequences with animation, &c. It should also disambiguate the first use of "black". (I.e. to clarify that it is a reference to a human racial identity group rather than to an actual American black bear. Or am I misunderstanding? I was basing it on the wikilink of the word black.)
  • The "Synopsis" section is one enormously long paragraph. Some selected paragraph breaks would make the text more readable. You may also want to consider using {{spoiler}} and {{endspoiler}} to wrap the synopsis, per Wikipedia:Spoiler.
  • Would it be possible for the synopsis to state the animals that portray the different characters? There is some of this in the image caption, but I think it would be helpful in the synopsis body as well. Was there any particular symbolism in the animal characters chosen?
  • Statements like "isn't all that it's made out to be," "They turn the tables", "drug-crazed shoot-out", "botches", "winding up", "broad daylight" and "darky", all seem to be using vernacular forms. They could potentially be unclear to some non-American readers.

Otherwise it looks pretty good. It's perhaps overly reliant upon quotes, but I can see the need. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 22:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment — RJHall, I tried to work on some of the things you brought up. Let me go through my changes per each of your concerns:

1. Rewrote per your suggestion.
2. Rewrote. Though the original sentence did have "black" wikilink to "African American" (it previously read as [[African American|black]]), I changed it anyway.
   • The problem was that I initially read "black bear" as the particular species, rather than an anthropomorphism. Thus I didn't mentally propagate the word "black" to the other creatures in the list. Thanks. — RJH (talk)
3. I added the spoiler tags, though I suspect that these may be removed again, since there has been a lot of discussion over whether or not these templates should be used, and while I oppose the decision not to use spoiler tags, I haven't made any fuss about them being removed from articles I am a regular contributor to, because I want these to be of the highest quality possible, considering I often work on films that might not be as well known as others.
4. The choice of animals was meant to in recognition of a series of famous African folk tales - most well-known as being a part of the Uncle Remus storybooks and being adapted by Walt Disney in the feature Song of the South. There's some wikilinks in the article to Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, Uncle Remus and Song of the South that should inform readers about these stories. I think that adding a statement saying "oh, by the way, these were based on these old stories" would be a bit redundant, since it explains in the development section that it was pitched as an adaptation of those stories for adult audiences.
5. I changed some of those terms. I kept what I felt was necessary to the article. (Ibaranoff24 05:29, 5 June 2007 (UTC))

   Thank you for addressing my concerns. — RJH (talk) 15:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Question, don't these articles (and others) have titles or authors? How is a person to find them without more identifying info?
  • (June 8, 1975) Los Angeles Times.
  • (January 15, 1975) Variety.
  • (May 9, 1975) The Hollywood Reporter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Sorry, no, I don't. I was working from Karl F. Cohen's book. Cohen didn't give any article titles or authors. (Ibaranoff24 04:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC))
      • Then I think the correct way to cite them is by naming the newspaper article as cited in the book, since that was your actual source. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
        • Done. (Ibaranoff24 15:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC))
          • Much better; everything looks structurally sound now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.