A Theory, of Film

What is Film Theory, you ask?

Here's a step-by-step, easy to follow guide, with example essay:

When you watch a film and a character goes to the bathroom, all you ever see is an image of their face and upper body.
(Always start at the beginning of an argument, don't start with your conclusion. You're not the Orson Wells of film theory.)

This is because culturally, it has been considered lewd to depict close-ups of an anus actually pooping, while visual replacement (of "anus" with "constipated face") is more akin to literary "metaphor".
(Indicate some strange inconsistency in human behavior to get the ball rolling, and use words like "culturally," or "in contemporary culture".)

As Mulvey postulated in "The Nature of the Gaze," working closely with psychoanalytic Freudian film theories, we viewers identify ourselves with the characters we see on screen, and demand "identification of the ego with the object on the screen."
(Be sure to mention some film theorists you have been reading about in class and let someone reading know that you know what they said. Remember, to the professor these people aren't just theorists, they're friends.)

When we go to the bathroom, we think not of steady breathing, clenching sphincters, sitting over a whole in the woods, or any number of other images we could attach to "pooping," we imagine ourselves in those same medium shots we have seen John Travolta, Brad Pitt, and any numbers of screen idols in hundreds of times.
(Connect the dots for everyone and come up with a few examples, however vague they may be.)

Thus, we have become accustomed to the presentation of certain images in cinema becoming the "symbols" with which we construct a mental self-image analogous with that of the on-screen image depicting specific daily activities.
(Conclude with something deep, intellectual and convolutedly worded, or more likely, restate some famous theorist's ideas in a "contemporary" way.)

Humans are very impressionable, and drawn to order.
(Go for the gold.)

It only makes sense that continued exposure to cinematic images create the "signs" by which we create our world.
(Restate anything you said in the last paragraph. Also, any opportunity you get, use the words "signs," "signified," or "signifier." No one will ever give you a solid definition of what they actually are, so use them liberally and with panache.)

In conclusion, there should be more shots of anuses pooping than are currently in contemporary cinema.
(Make your point absolutely clear.)