Referencing Is The Devil

Doing assignments for university is already kind of a bummer because...well, work. But for the most part I think i'm pretty good at it, i think this because well...my lecturers tell me the ideas and detail that i discuss for my assignments are pretty good. But what holds back my grades are two major things, one is that i'm too informal in my assignments, which i totally get, it's just that that's how i want to write, it's how i like to write so sometimes I will write like that without even realising, even when double-checking i somehow miss a bunch of phrases and words that are informal, understandable, but what I hate above everything else is referencing. Back at 6th form college, using proper terminology and theories was enough, but now at university you have to give the specific text book and author and page and as much detail in your resources as humanly possible. The problem is, I really don't do a whole ton of research before writing up some of these assignments, I will use my own notes, but I don't think that counts as referencing. Here's an example, i wrote up a 2,500 word essay discussing the film Bambi (Even I was amazed at how much i could think up to talk about) and within this essay i only have two resources to reference, the film Bambi and Kristin Thompson's four act structure as discussed in Film Art: An Introduction. Now the fact that that's my only real reference probably doesn't look too good on me, but thing is, why should it matter if I reference it!? Surely the important part is me knowing what the four act structure is and how it applies to what i'm talking about, i don't think which specific text book i got it from should matter!

My theory on Bambi and how it does or does not apply the four act structure should be what you judge my work on, besides you're the lecturer, you know who came up with that structure, you know what it is. If anything shouldn't it be better to not have references? I thought university was about independent learning (which also doesn't make sense seeing as i'm paying for it) so why am i being judged on citing other people's work rather than my own ideas or interpretations of these films?

I mean before it didn't bother me that much because this was at most 15% of my grade assignment, but the course that i'm writing up this Bambi essay for gave me a 39% on my previous assignment (which is a fail). Despite the fact that they made the same complaints that my lecturers talked about in my other assignments except i still got between 60-70% on those. Now you may be saying I should be aiming hire than those type of grades, and i am, except i don't understand why i'm being judged by how much of my work i'm basing off of other people's work, they spent the first 18 years of my education to not copy other people!

-Danny