Final Presentation

For my proposed project, I decided to try and personify the mental and emotional transition between childhood and adulthood.  I based my ideas on the development stage of puberty, or at least, on the idea of a transitory period between childhood and adult.  Just as boys and girls go through a physical change during puberty, I believe there's a similar transitory period that children go through in relation to their childhood beliefs.  Children transition from childish idealism to adult realism (and sometimes cynicism), and I feel the easiest way to do that is in the following children's book (or collection of animated shorts, not sure yet):

Hayden and Chelsea are two 11-year-olds who enjoy reading stories of the past, and they constantly imagine what it would be like to live in the past, fulfilling the roles of the characters in the stories they read. Suddenly, a magical genie named Bob (name subject to change) appears and grants them their wishes, transporting them into their stories and showing them the not-so-pleasant realities of the occupations and masculine/feminine icons that they adore so much.

The purpose of the story (or series of shorts) is to contrast the idealistic way that children view certain occupations and icons with the uglier reality of what these roles entailed.  I've included the roles that would be deconstructed, as well as facts that contradict how these roles are viewed with children:

Childhood Icons:

Traditionally Male Icons:
- Astronaut

- Cowboy

Myths/Misconceptions:
- Astronaut: Basic requirements for being an Astronaut include, according to NASA's own website:
1. Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematics. An advanced degree is desirable. Quality of academic preparation is important.

2. At least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. Flight test experience is highly desirable.

3. Ability to pass a NASA space physical which is similar to a military or civilian flight physical and includes the following specific standards:

• Distant visual acuity: 20/100 or better uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 each eye.
• Blood pressure: 140/90 measured in a sitting position.
• Height between 62 and 75 inches

Not to mention that Astronauts have to continually work out in space, or else their bodies will decrease in bone and muscle mass as they slowly whither away.  Not to mention all of the different ways that an astronaut can die horrifically in space. Space wants you dead.

- Cowboy: technically, although it's associated with being a purely American creation, the Mexican Vaqueros predate the American Cowboy, and created a lot of what we think of as cowboy culture.  Also, traditional hats were not worn by old time cowboys, who instead preferred to wear flatter-brimmed Stetson hats or bowler hats. Also, gun use, especially the traditional six shooter gun, wasn't as prominent as Hollywood films make us believe, and the guns were extremely inaccurate, with only a range of about 50 feet.

Traditionally Female Icons:
- Ballerina/Dancer

- Princess

Myths/Misconceptions:
- Ballerinas: trained for years, starting as children, physically and emotionally grueling, very low salaries, unstable job security.  Also, may ballerinas sustain injuries, especially in the ankles and tendons, and many have to stop dancing in their 20s or 30s, depending on their health.
- Princess: this would have more to do with the fact that many princesses were forced to marry princes of other nations in order to secure relations between country. A description of court life and daily struggles of royal politics might work in this section as well.



Now, the final product doesn't necessarily need to be structured this way.  Hayden and Chelsea don't need to be interested in only these icons, and it might be interesting to mess with gender perceptions and have them switch interests. It's not necessary for the story to be divided into strict gender lines. It's just been presented this was for convenience's sake.

This format of education involving the debunking of commonly-held myths has been utilized by the TV show Adam Ruins Everything, where the titular Adam appears to random people in order to "ruin" normal conceptions on topics such as politics, video games, and entertainment.  Similarly, these books (or short, animated films) would attempt something similar for traditional children's icons and heroes.

The original Adam Ruins Everything, as a structural prototype

Now, there is one big challenge inherent in this project: tone. Even now as I describe it, it's unclear to me if the final product would end up being a piece of children's media commenting on challenging childhood assumptions as we grow up, or adult media commenting on the transitory period of childhood.  The material could go either way, depending on how it's written. Personally, since shows like Adam Ruins Everything already exist, I think it would be interesting to aim for something that's tonally more childlike, or at least, something that children and young adults could read/experience.

With all of that said, I feel that having media that addresses this difficult transitory period in a child's life would be beneficial to both adults and children.  It could serve as a way to show children that learning the truth or hard reality of an idealized fantasy isn't necessarily a bad thing and that it's a natural part of growing up.  It also serves as a way to remind adults of the idealism of our youth and the difficult transition into adult ideas and emotions.  And in this way, I feel like this project would be beneficial to all, and serve as a means of education and possibly enlightenment.

The Iron Giant

Speed Racer

          Disclaimer: I did not enjoy watching Speed Racer. This is the only film that we’ve watched in this class that I did not enjoy in some way.  I found it to be overly long with poor editing, acting, and production design.  Also, I’ve never wanted to hurt a child character more than Spritle Racer and that stupid monkey.

Don't look so surprised, you knew it was coming.

          Every single joke they made (and it was clear that the filmmakers found these characters to be the hilarious comedy relief of the film) fell flat on its face.  True, these jokes weren’t aimed at a 24 year old man who is probably dead inside, but I had a hard time believing that even a kid would find the humor funny.  Another disclaimer: I never watched the show as a kid.  I have no idea if the characterization, production design, plot, and even editing are all a reference to the original show’s animation style and design.  So there are my biases and flaws, completely exposed, as I feel like I can’t analyze the film honestly without those being on the table.

          That being said, there were some interesting attempts in the film to criticize not only our current society, but film making as well.  The film’s plot revolves around Speed Racer discovering the truth about the Grand Prix race: it’s been fixed for the last 50 years.  At this point, the film becomes overtly anti-capitalist, or at the very least, semi-Marxist, in that it promoted the importance of equal opportunity and the corrupting evil of capitalism and industry.  It is not truly Marxist, however, in that the film still promotes the value and importance of self-interest, self-promotion, and individual accomplishments and talents, things that Marxism does not value quite as highly.  Indeed, the film rejects capitalist and Marxist principals and aligns itself more with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and some of the principals of Objectivism, which seek to raise up and reward those who are truly exceptional, such as Speed Racer.  Howard Roarke (protagonist of The Fountainhead), just like Speed Racer, is exceptional in his field of Architecture, and his refusal to conform to the majority eventually puts him ahead of the competition, just like Speed Racer’s refusal to accept bribes from Mr. Royalton and his insistence on racing honestly.

So basically this, but with cars and rainbow-colored racetracks.

          In another way, the poor CGI backgrounds and settings are a way of telegraphing to its audience that the film is not realistic in any way.  The world presented on the screen is not meant to be a realistic depiction of the real world, but an obviously artificial one.  Based on their previous films, the Wachowski siblings have shown that they can make realistic looking worlds using computer imagery, so the choice to make the world of Speed Racer look plastic, inauthentic, and cartoony was probably an intentional one.  This may have simply been an homage to the original Japanese anime, or a commentary on the artificiality of cinema. By intentionally creating a cinematic world that is fake looking and unrealistic, the audience is not sucked into the world that is on the screen, and by being removed from the story, the audience can better focus on the parable and messages being displayed without getting too immersed in the fiction. 

          Even though I hated the film, it was still an interesting exercise to analyze a film I despise for deeper meaning and thought.  Even bad movies have something of value that can be gleamed from it.  At the very least, the film remains committed and consistent to some of its more off-putting choices, such as the weird editing and cartoony, fake CGI backgrounds, and these weird choices do give the film a unique look and feel. So hats off to the Wachowskis for making an Objectivist fable that criticizes our current society as well as the artificiality of Hollywood filmmaking, even if their final effort made me want to vomit all the colors of the rainbow.

You know, to match the color palate of the film

To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas tells the tale of Jack Skellington, the leader of the residents of Halloween Town, who comes in contact with a similar yet completely foreign city: Christmas Town.  In attempting to understand their foreign culture and customs, Jack decides that the citizens of Halloween Town should bring the joys of Christmas to everyone in the world instead, leading to disastrous results.  By analyzing the film’s appeal to nostalgia in both content and form, the film’s themes of the dangers of cultural appropriation and

The film becomes a metaphor for cultural appropriation, and the dangers of appropriating elements of another culture without properly contextualizing it or fully understanding its role or purpose within the foreign culture.  When Jack and his Halloween friends attempt to recreate Christmas through their distorted, creepy lens, it leads to disaster.  All of the

     

      The film’s stop-motion animation is also a callback to a more nostalgic era of animation history.  Films such as the Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  By the 1990s, stop-motion films had all but been abandoned in Hollywood.  Jack attempts to analyze several iconic Christmas elements and ions.  He dissects a teddy bear, dissolves a Christmas ornament in chemicals, cuts a paper snowflake in the shape of a spider, crushes mistletoe under a microscope while attempting to study it, and draws complicated Christmas equations on his chalkboard.  He attempts to understand the emotional with the logical and analytical, and this is where his

Whale Rider

Whale Rider is an interesting film.  It's beautifully shot, well acted (especially by its star, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was nominated for an Oscar) and a wonderful story about change, tradition, and community.

The most obvious example of deconstruction and de-centering in the film is the binary gender roles that are central to the film's conflict.  Paikea, having been born a female, cannot inherit the role of chief, even though it is her right as one of the original Paikea's descendants.  This conflict allows us to think about the role that gender plays in our own lives.  Does it make sense for opportunities and advancements to be denied to someone because of their gender? Is it okay to go against obvious signs of destiny and tradition simply because it goes against your idea of what a leader should be? The film argues no, and even shows that Paikea has a connection to her ancestors and even whales, which the original Paikea famously rode on (hence the, uh, title).

Nobly pictured here.

Paikea does everything that tradition says she shouldn't do.  She fights with a taiaha.  She rides whales.  She gives amazing speeches.  Her every step contradicts and fights against the patriarchal standard, and by the end of the film, her actions are finally recognized by her grandfather Koro.  By isolating the role of gender in terms of leadership, the film is able to boldly state that gender should not be an issue when it comes to who gets to rule, and challenges the traditional patriarchal construct of not only her culture, but all cultures as well.

It's interesting to note that while the film in many ways subverts tradition and fights against the patriarchal society presented in the film, in many ways, it also upholds these same ideals.  Having Paikea fight to be the leader of the tribe is seen as progressive (and in terms of the culture and story being presented, it is), but traditional concepts such as "right to rule" and leadership through birthright are not questioned.  Paikea's ability to rule the tribe is never brought up on issues of age, credentials, or experience, only on her gender being the only obstacle.  The film never truly challenges the concepts of destiny or predestination (and honestly, that's not the film's purpose, but I digress) True, the chief does train and teach the other boys of the tribe to see who will become the next chief, but the conclusion of the movie suggests that he was doing this in spite of all the evidence that Paikea should be the chief.  He was, in actuality, fighting against tradition and his ancestors by not having the firstborn descendant of their first chief, Paikea, become the chief of the tribe, even if she is a female. So the film does a really good job of analyzing and evaluating gender biases that are present in culture and society, but other biases and traditional ideas are upheld.  This suggests to me that traditions are not changed all at once in a radical revolution, but slowly over time.  Progress does not happen in a day.  In reality, it is by both looking into the past for strength and inspiration that we can truly change the future, one steep at a time.

I'm just gonna leave this here. Try not to cry too hard.

Play

Last week, I had the opportunity to revisit many childhood games and apply principles on the importance of play in a child's development.  After playing through several games, these are my extremely scientific findings:

Game 1: Operation

Poor man; having surgery without anesthetic.

Operation terrified me as a child.  It was like I was defusing a bomb rather than playing a game.  I was completely underwhelmed when I revisited it.  Maybe it's just that my fine motor skills have improved since childhood, but the game was super easy.  Too easy.  Ray and I never even came close to hitting the edge.  In fact, my current theory is that the game publishers have made the game easier, widening the holes and making the pieces easier to grab.  When I was younger, many of the holes were in the shape of the piece you were trying to remove, and they were much smaller.  The chance of you striking the metal edge with the clamp was much greater, and therefore the risk of losing was higher.  This led me to think: what are the benefits and risks of making games easier for children? The benefits seem obvious: if it's easier to play, then it's easier to win, which results in fewer tantrums and upset feelings.  However, by lowering the risk, you also lower the reward.  If it's easy to win and everyone can win, then there's no real satisfaction in winning at all.  I don't know which is better for a child, since these are more adult thoughts on winning and losing.  Young children probably don't think about this ramification, and they enjoy winning regardless of the difficulty of the task.  I don't know which is better; all I'm saying is that the game was much more memorable for me when the risk of accidentally killing your patient was much higher, increasing both my fear and my enjoyment.

In hindsight, it's a good thing I never went into medicine.

Game 2: Battleship

Aww, look how cute they are, annihilating each other's military fleets.

Battleship was fun, and still is.  I played with Ray, and we were neck and neck for most of the game, with me barely scraping a victory. Battleship was always one of my favorite games to play (next to Clue) because there was strategy involved rather than physical skill, and I was always better with strategy than I was with my physical prowess.  That's also why I liked chess.  Strategy can be learned and improved through study and practice (like most things, I realize, but I preferred studying to working out) and I always liked playing games where my odds of winning were higher (this will prove hypocritical when you read my next entry; maybe I only like games that I win. Huh).  What impressed me this time was how much of Battleship involves learning to read your opponent.  The rules are simple: you place your ships, you call out random coordinates, they tell you if you missed, hit, or sank a ship.  But I realized that seeing your opponent's reactions when you call coordinates is just as important as the coordinates you call.  After the game was over, Ray showed me how many of my guesses were really close to her ships.  I realized that most of the time when I called coordinates close to her ships, she would hesitate longer before responding.  If I had paid more attention to her in the game, I might have seen her accidentally giving away this information with her responses and body language.  Instead, I focused on a grid strategy that I half recalled from my childhood, attempting to shrink the field into more manageable squares.  In focusing solely on strategy, I forgot about other important factors in the gameplay.  These are important skills for a kid to learn.  When they play with others, they learn to read body language, tone of voice, and other nonverbal social cues.  They learn what is appropriate and what is not.  By interacting with others through playing games, kids learn skills that they can apply in social situations at school, church, on dates, etc.  So even though it seems frivolous, it's still vital that kids play games with each other so that they can learn to understand nonverbal communication and further develop into adults.

Game 3:Mario Kart

I couldn't think of a caption, but it felt wrong not to give it one. So here ya go.

While playing Mario Kart on the Wii, I was reminded of why I didn't like playing competitive video games as a child (or for that matter, sports in general).  I was never very good at operating the Wiimote, so I did very poorly in every race.  Every time I lost, I was mocked, insulted, and put down. Just the usual kid stuff, really.  It reminded me of why I hated playing these kinds of video games. I never (or rarely) won Smash Bros as a kid, or Halo, or Call of Duty, or anything similar.  I remember one particular day when my cousin and I played Halo, and I didn't win a single match, no matter what the weapons or setting were.  Part of the reason for this is that I didn't grow up with an Xbox or Playstation, so I never practiced and got better. I also didn't care for 1st person shooters as a kid.  But I think the main reason I didn't like playing these games was because almost without exception, I would be mocked every time I lost.  Every. Single. Time.  That's a slight exaggeration, but I'm not kidding when I say that I lost a lot and that I got mocked for losing a lot.  It wasn't enough for the winning player/team to win the game; it was more important for them to make sure the other side felt bad about losing.  Now, a lot of this commentary may seem bitter, and it's probably biased by my past experience and nostalgic lens, but I'm glad I had these experiences.  They influenced the way that I see the world now.  I still like to play games, and I still love to win, but it's not that big of a deal when I lose.  Why does it matter if one person is better than another in some dumb game?  And in a larger sense, in life.  Everyone is going to be talented in some areas and not others, and I personally think it's more important to praise the talent rather than to mock those without.  But I think it was also an important lesson to learn as a child.  Most of the world functions on ranking and judging people, trying to ascertain who is the best and who deserves the best.  There's job competition and romantic competition, and competition in almost every aspect of life, and there's no better way to learn this lesson as a kid than by playing games with other kids. Kids need to learn how to lose, how to win, and how to react to others who win and lose.

So in conclusion, kids play games to learn more about each other, more about themselves, and how to develop skills that they'll need in everyday life.  Plus, games are just fun, and one should never underestimate the importance of fun.





Final random note: my favorite toy to play with as a kid was string. Just regular shoelaces.

No, seriously.

I could play with those bad boys for hours.  This probably had more to do with my Tourette's syndrome than anything else (hard to explain; the string just felt right), but I would twitch that string around in my fingers and come up with all kinds of stories. So play is different for everyone.

I Am The Cheese

The cheese stands alone, 

The cheese stands alone,

Heigh-ho, the merry-o,

The cheese stands alone

            In Robert Cormier’s I Am The Cheese, teen protagonist Adam Farmer attempts to bike across state lines in order to give a present to his father, all while a doctor attempts to understand more about Adam’s troubling childhood.  The story mixes three different forms of documentation to tell its story: transcripts of interviews recorded on tape, third person omnipotent narration, and first person present tense narration.  Each one of these forms of documentation helps to illuminate a different aspect of documentation and how it affects how a story is told and interpreted, while also helping the novel portray its themes of personal identity, loneliness, and the relative nature of truth.   

The first form of documentation, the transcripts, help give the novel a framework that pushes the plot along while also providing commentary on the passionless nature of absolute truth.  The tape transcripts that appear sporadically throughout the novel (documenting conversations between “T” and “A”) are impersonal, only stating what is spoken and by whom, as well as marking the lengths of silence in between answers and responses.  As we learn by the end of the novel, Brint the interviewer is not a doctor, but an agent working for the Witness Reestablishment Project who is investigating the deaths of Adam’s parents and the possible guilt of a fellow agent known as Mr. Grey.  To Brint, Adam is nothing more than a means to an end, the only living witness who can prove whether Mr. Grey did in fact betray Adam’s family to the mob.  He cares little for Adam’s overall well-being, so long as he can extract the information that he needs.  The ending of the novel proves as much when the final transcript reveals the exact purpose of Brint’s interrogation, as well as his recommendation to terminate Adam, due to his failure to provide any new information for three years in a row.  While this form of documentation is technically the most truthful, since it describes with a hundred percent certainty what is said and what occurs, it lacks the heart and interesting detail of the other types of narration.  It’s also, ironically, the most dishonest, since Brint withholds his true identity as a government worker from Adam, as well as his true motivations behind the interrogation.  In his paranoia, Adam calls Brint out for this on several occasions, claiming that Brint is fishing for information or that he already knows everything that Adam is telling him.  This claim is validated by the end of the novel.  In summary, although the tape transcripts are technically the most accurate and objective means of describing what happens in the story, their clinical, cold nature conceals truth and does not, in fact, document the whole story in a fulfilling way.

In contrast to this, the more traditional third person narration helps to fill in the narrative gaps that the transcript leaves, and helps to portray Adam’s desires, inner thoughts, and eventual loneliness and despair. We learn more about Adam through this more conventional narrative documentation.  We learn of his love for Amy Hertz.  We learn of his desire to become a writer.  Most importantly, we learn that Adam Farmer is, in fact, Paul Demonte, and that due to his father’s position as a witness against organized crime, the family was relocated and renamed when Adam was very small.  It is in this element that the story’s theme of loneliness, loss of personal identity, and truth become the clearest.  Once Adam learns of his old life, he feels as if Paul Demonte is dead, which represents his feelings of his old life dying and being reborn in a new identity.  Adam begins to sympathize with his parents, especially his Mother, and he grows to understand their strange behavior and their fear of the unknown, or as Adam’s mother describes it, the “Never-knows.” Ironically, when Adam learns the truth of his past, it does not set him free, but causes him to becomes more guarded and sheltered.  In Adam’s case, ignorance truly was bliss, and learning the truth has created a new set of problems for him.  He can never reveal his true past to anyone, not even his girlfriend Amy, lest he bring his family to danger.  His only connection to his past life is his parents, and this leaves Adam feeling isolated from his friends and neighbors.  Once his parents are killed, his only connection to reality is shattered, leaving him truly alone in the world.  By utilizing a more traditional third person omnipotent perspective to tell this part of the story, Cormier effectively portrays Adam’s transition into loneliness, as well as the crippling and isolating effects of truth.

The most interesting of the three forms of documentation is the first-person present tense perspective.  During this narration, Adam describes his delusional bike trip from Monument, Massachusetts to Rutterburg, Vermont, where he encounters bullies, mean dogs, and helpful strangers.  In the final chapter of the novel, we learn the truth of this first-person perspective: that everything Adam described was a delusion inside his head as he rides his bike around the Mental Institution in Rutterburg.  Even though this narrative is the most objectively false, since none of the events described by Adam occur in the real world exactly as he says, there is a lot of truth that can be gleamed from it.  To Adam, it is the truth.  It has become his reality, his way of giving his life purpose and meaning after the deaths of his parents left him alone in the world.  His delusion becomes the only way that he has to cope with all of his anxieties, fears, and childhood traumas. He does encounter all of the people in the story, even if their true identities are those of other mental patients or doctors or nurses.  Through this, we learn a lot about who Adam is as a person, how he confronts problems and stressful situations, and how his past experiences have negatively affected him.  By experimenting with three different forms of documentation, some more objective and others more truthful, Cormier presents an intriguing narrative featuring an unstable, unreliable narrator and expounds on the nature of personal identity, loneliness, and the nature of truth.

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

          

           In The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, the titular character must team up with his archenemy Plankton in order to discover who stole the Krabby Patty Secret Formula and bring order and peace back to the town of Bikini Bottom. By combining live-action elements with traditional 2D and 3D animation, playing with narrative conventions, and subverting audience expectations, the film is able to comment on its simple theme of the importance of teamwork, as well as convey more complex meanings such as questioning authority and authorship, and the traditional notion of good and evil in children’s media.

In order to understand the film in context, it is important to look at how Spongebob as a TV show and film series has dabbled in experimentation in the past.  The TV show, as well as the previous movie, have a tradition of experimenting with animation, as well as live-action narrative conventions.  In the episode “Frankendoodle”, an artist drawing in a boat drops his pencil into the ocean, where it is found by Spongebob and Patrick. They use the pencil to create their own doodles that unexpectedly come to life, acknowledging implicitly that their universe occurs within the confines and restrictions (or even freedoms) of an animated cartoon.  This is further acknowledged when one of Spongebob’s doodles uses the pencil to erase parts of the “real” world, including Spongebob himself.  Similarly, in the first Spongebob movie, the film combines animated and live-action elements in the third act when actor/lifeguard David Hasselhoff suddenly appears to take them back to their hometown of Bikini Bottom. To summarize, the show has never been shy about experimenting both with narrative conventions and animation techniques, both playing with the expectations of the audience and the medium of animation.

By combining 3D animation with live-action, the film crosses into new territory.  In the past, episodes of the show have utilized live action. In particular, the episode “Pressure” had the characters go on dry land, where they’re represented as silly puppets operated on poles.  However, the show has ultimately stayed away from utilizing 3D animation.  The film becomes experimental merely by combining live-action elements with 3D animation.  By experimenting with a combination of 3D animation and live-action, the film opens the door for further experimentation both on the show and future children’s media.

The film experiments with audience expectations by establishing patterns familiar to the show’s audience and using their familiarity with these patterns in order to trick them.  In the first film, the entire narrative is presented as a film that is being watched by pirates. On the show, certain episodes are introduced by “Patchy the Pirate”, a bumbling pirate host.  In essence, the target audience has been trained to see pirates as funny side characters that don’t influence the overall plot. Furthermore, most modern audience members are not trained to see a narrator as anything but an unbiased, impartial third party dictating the story. There are examples of media that experiments with this notion, such as Into the Woods, Dave the Barbarian, and George of the Jungle, where the narrator either takes a more active role in telling the story or interacts directly with the characters, who are aware that their story is being dictated by an invisible third party.  However, this film further plays with this narrative construct by having the narrator become the real antagonist of the story.  In context of the film’s previous history, where pirates are seen as wacky yet ultimately harmless narrators or mere observers of the story being told, this film subverts expectations by presenting the pirate Burger Beard as the traditional narrator, only to pull the rug from under the audience and have him abuse his position as the omnipotent narrator in order to steal the krabby patty formula and make a profit for himself at the expense of the characters.  Not only is he playing an active role in the film’s narrative, but he plays the antagonist role, a role normally reserved for series villain Plankton, who served as the first film’s primary antagonist.  By establishing familiar patterns and then subverting them, the film is able to provide an interesting antagonist that defies convention and helps the film to portray its overall message.

All of the experimentation with narrative conventions and 2D/3D animation help the film to portray its themes of the importance of teamwork, as well as the more complex ideas on authorship and good vs. evil narratives.  In order for Spongebob to save the town, he must team up with Plankton, a character who has a long history of working against the protagonist.  Indeed, by working with the go-to villain in order to save the town, the film is able to portray its moralistic message about the importance of teamwork and its power to overcome normal prejudices. This is especially true in the climax, where the heroes only prevail once Plankton joins the battle and works with Spongebob. This seems simple enough, but having the protagonist team up with a traditional villain is not a trope that the audience is accustomed to seeing, especially for children’s media.  Indeed, children’s media is often full of one dimensional villains with no redeeming quality, so it’s a breath of fresh air when a piece of media can portray a traditionally evil character as having redeeming qualities who is capable of working towards the greater good rather than simple self-interest.  Furthermore, by establishing the traditional narrator as the primary antagonist, the film sends a message to its audience to be suspicious (or at least skeptical) of who tells the story, and that it’s important not to take a story at face value without analyzing the source.  By experimenting with both traditional narrative conventions as well as with animation techniques, the film teaches messages both simple and complex about the importance of teamwork and the importance of questioning authorship and our own internal prejudices.      

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

When I first saw “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T”, I was 7 years old. My grandparents owned a copy of it at their cabin in Pine Valley, Utah. And I watched it. A lot. It reinforced my childhood beliefs that the piano is the greatest instrument and that all other instruments should be locked away in a dungeon. It spawned an interest in conjoined twins, and a sadness when I learned that people could not be joined by the beard.  It instilled in me a love for elaborate, crazy musical numbers whose absence would not affect the plot in any meaningful way. Now, some of that is a little facetious, but I truly loved how imaginative the film was.  It didn’t matter that the plot made little sense. It didn’t matter that the acting ranged from extremely wooden (Mr. Zabladowski) to insanely over the top (Dr. T).  What mattered was the creativity of the designs, the situations, and the over the top character choices.  I loved, and still love, the crazy art design that was like a literal representation of a Dr. Seuss book. Even the main kid looks like the default boy character from multiple Seuss stories. 

Casting call for the role just had this drawing.

And boy, did they find him.

If we’re going to analyze the film on a technical level, it fails in both its editing and directing. Continuity is thrown out the window for parts of it, and the editing is jarring and off-putting all throughout the film. But in a way, that just adds to the charm of the film, and it definitely adds to the surreal dreamlike quality of the film. If our dreams are chaotic, nonsensical, and jarring, then the film’s editing style merely reflects that.

As we read in class, Freud said “Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? It would be wrong to think he does not take that world seriously; on the contrary, he takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it.” To the protagonist, it IS all serious business. This isn’t playtime; for Bart, the stakes are extremely high, which only adds to the surreal, dreamlike nature of the film. It also emphasizes an important aspect of childhood, which is that most things that matter to a child are often overlooked or ignored by adults. The adults in the film have an incredibly hard time listening to Bart and his problems/concerns, and this rings true for any child that wonders why parents won’t listen seriously to their concerns about monsters in the closet or how mean your brother is being. 

After we screened the film in class, Ben asked me if I knew, even as a kid, that this movie was weird. I said yes, of course. Even as a child I could tell this movie was crazier than most. But on further reflection, that's exactly why I loved it. It showed me that a film doesn't have to make sense to be enjoyable. Like Willy Wonka and Disney, Dr. T showed me the joys of pure, unbridled, nonsensical imagination.

Plus, now I can never think of Captain Hook the same way again.

God Bless the Child

INsert commentary here.

Time Bandits

Time Bandits: the boy (insert name later), while curious and inquisitive about history, had never explored for himself.  It was also abundantly clear that he wasn’t getting the attention that he needed from his parents, so the adventure also represented a much-needed escape from his neglectful family life.  Even though I laughed at the “Napoleon is short” jokes, it represents.  This represents the problem that adventure stories often run into. In attempting to portray another culture, or even simply to understand another culture, stereotypes and false information are often used instead of facts or empathy.  This can be seen in Tintin’s adventures, where he travels to dlkfjdlfkjkd and meets a culture very different from his own, which often isn’t portrayed in the nicest light. 

However, Time Bandits is able to escape these admittedly minor failings once it gets into more fantastical territory.  Their travels bring them to the middle of the ocean, where they meet an ogre and his wife who attempt to eat them, a giant with a boat attached to his head, and a vast desert. 

Death of parents.  As an adult, this seems to be the most shocking part of the movie. The parents, obsessed with their gadgets, save a microwave, which has a burned piece of pure evil stuck inside. They touch it, ignoring the warnings of djfkldjfe, and are obliterated.  In logical terms, this doesn’t bode well for young dklfjlkjf. His home has just been burned down and now he has no parents. He’ll become a ward of the state, an orphan, destined to either roam from foster home to foster home or be stuck in an orphanage until he’s 18. 

Also, the decision to make the heroes of the story ‘little people’ has to do with the child protagonist.  Gilliam thought that having grown men take jfkljekfje on an adventure would

Ultimately, djfkldjfkle is better off from his experience

The Graveyard Book

In The Graveyard Book, a toddler enters a graveyard right after a mysterious man kills his entire family, and ends up being adopted by the ghosts of the graveyard, who take him in as their honorary son and give him the name of Nobody. As he matures, he has encounters with ghouls, witches, "The Sleer" and the murderous man Jack.  Similar to other novels for children, such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book, The Graveyard Book teaches children the complexities of morality, growing up, and the inevitability and ultimately the acceptance of death.

The most obvious moral conflict in the story occurs near the end.  When the man Jack returns with other men to kill Bod, Bod takes action to protect himself, his old childhood friend Scarlett, and his home. He admits that, while he didn’t kill the Jacks, he did what it took to protect himself and his home, including tricking a Jack into falling down a hole, throwing two through a “Ghoul Gate” and using Scarlett as bait in order to trick the man Jack into becoming the master of "The Sleer" for eternity.  In Bod’s mind, he hasn’t broken any laws or done anything morally wrong, and all of his actions were in defense of his home. His friend Scarlett, however, doesn’t see things that way.  She is horrified that Bod would injure and even kill others in order to protect himself.  In her mind, murder and all acts associated with it are always wrong, no matter the circumstances, and Bod is just as evil as the men who tried to murder him.  In relation to morality, they both have created/developed their own moral codes that they adhere to. Bod's moral code seems to fall under the ideals of Consequentialism, which states that the morality of an action should be judged solely on its consequences, whereas Scarlett's moral code falls under the polar opposite ideology of Deontology, which deals more with moral intentions and a devotion to duty. In summary, Bod justifies that his actions were necessary to protect himself and his home, and that the consequence (saving himself and his home) justified his actions, whereas Scarlett is unable, or unwilling, to look past the immorality of Bod's manipulations and inadvertently violent ways.  Furthermore, his guardian Silas, who admits to being neither alive nor dead, has killed dozens, if not hundreds, of members of the Jack of all Trades society in order to protect Bod. He also admits, at the end of the novel, to having committed acts even worse than the man Jack, although he does not elaborate. This shows an interesting aspect about morality in relation to people: people can change, good people can do bad things, and bad people can be redeemed/do good deeds.  These are complex ideas for a child to comprehend, since most children believe for a long time that their view of the world is the only correct one, and that the world is easily categorized, falling into black and white sections that are distinct.

                In many ways, The Graveyard Book resembles a similar structure in teaching morality as Pinocchio (or, more obviously, The Jungle Book). Gaiman offers a debt to Kipling in the afterward of the novel, which even the title of the book alludes to.  Still, the connections are many and obvious.  The structure of both books revolves around an infant being taken care of by an unusual source (ghosts and animals) growing up and learning the rules of his home, making mistakes, meeting different characters, and going on different, loosely connected adventures, all of which are tied together by the constant threat of a dangerous enemy who wants to kill them.  Bod makes a choice, usually a bad one or a dangerous one, it backfires, and he has to be rescued by a parental figure, usually Silas, but also the witch on occasion.  This is similar to the moral structure of Pinocchio, which normally involves Pinocchio being misled, making a poor choice, and having to be saved by an outside figure, having learned an important lesson in the end.

The graveyard location of the novel raises interesting questions about the role of death in our own lives, Bod is raised by ghosts and other worldly creatures from a young age, so he never developed a fear for death, the afterlife, and the unknown.  Death is simply a natural part of life for him.  By normalizing death and the stigmas that surround it, The Graveyard Book teaches children one of the hardest things for most humans to accept: death is natural, inescapable, and a part of life. 

                There’s also a hint of self-fulfilling prophecy in the plot. Man Jack attacks Bod and his family because an ancient Egyptian prophecy stated that a boy would be born who would live between the living and the dead, and he would be the end of the Jack of all Trades. This never would have happened if Jack hadn’t killed Bod’s family, which caused Bod to go into the graveyard and, out of pity, taken in by the ghosts.  This would bring on the wrath of Silas, who made it his mission to exterminate the society of the Jack-of-all-Trades.  In a way, through their murderous and selfish actions, they brought on their own demise.

It’s also interesting to note that when Bod was given the chance to attend public school, he was not able to stand by and watch the older kids extort the younger kids for money. This wasn’t taught to him. In actuality, it was forbidden by Silas to draw attention to himself in any way, for fear that the Man Jack would find him.  His decision to help came in contrast from his mentor’s advice, which raises an important question: how much of morality is taught, and how much of it is innate? Bod never had much contact with real live people, save for Scarlett, so there wasn’t much of an opportunity for him to learn normal childhood communication with the living, such as sharing, fair play, and standing up to others. Yet when he was confronted with the first instance of true injustice and inequality in his entire life, he chose to act, without and without consent from his guardian. This raises an interesting question about morality and the innate good and evil that resides in us all.

                There’s also an old, familiar message in The Graveyard Book: don’t talk to strangers.  The ghouls who kidnap Bod early in the book lie to him by omitting their true identity and calling themselves “emperor of china” and other sorts of things (though, to their credit, those are the names and titles that they chose for themselves). Also, Man Jack returns, calling himself Mr. J. Frost and befriending Scarlett and her mother.  The message is simple: nice things can be deceptive, strangers can deceive, always be on your guard.  This moral bears similarity to the moral from “Red Riding Hood” and similar fairy tales.  Evil can be deceptive, and, to quote Red Riding Hood from the musical Into the Woods, “Nice is different than good.”

   In the novel, once Bod reaches 15, he is finally ready to leave the graveyard and travel the world for himself..  According to modern laws, he would still be a few years away from being legal enough to drink alcohol, buy cigarettes, or even drive a car.  However, ignoring his literal age, the ending comes off more symbolic when thinking about the transition from childhood to adulthood.  He loses his ability to see and talk to ghosts, but it’s implied that he’ll be able to take care of himself and travel the world.  Just like how during the transition from childhood, we lose our innocence, naivete, and childlike wonder, replacing it with the ability to work for ourselves, provide and care for others, and knowledge. 

In the end, The Graveyard Book teaches multiple lessons about morality for children to learn. First, death is a natural part of life that should not be feared. Second, be wary of strangers and use good judgement. Third, while some aspects of morality and justice are innate, everyone will interpret them differently, so what is most important is to decide for ourselves what is wrong and what is right.

Here Comes Science: Making Learning Fun

I love learning. I think it stems from my own childhood, where I got really into reading and watching educational films (including School House Rock). I would get annual editions of Guiness World Records and Ripley's Believe It or Not and read them religiously.  I still remember the crazy, outlandish things that I read in those books.  For example, did you know that the record for most naked people to ride a roller coaster was 32 (and is now over 100)? I learned that as a little boy, and I was immediately jealous that they had a world record, and also grossed out that this was a record that someone thought to invent.

Record attempt not pictured here. Here's a platypus instead.

I believe that most children can remember something passionate that they loved learning about as a child. The desire to learn and discover seems to be, at least in my experience, innate in humans, like we're born with this craving to know things.  This concept is interesting because it kind of clashes with Locke's philosophy that we discussed in class. We learned about Locke's principle of the "Tabula Rasa" or the blank slate, and how children are born essentially pure and innocent, and the rest of their lives is filled in by what they learn and how they react to it.  I believe in Locke's concept in many ways. I don't believe that children are born evil or with their personalities hardwired into them.  I believe that a lot of that comes later.  But I do believe that in relation to knowledge, we are all born as blank slates, and that knowledge needs to be filled in gradually overtime, hopefully in a way that will make sense to us and in a way that we'll enjoy.  And that is why I loved Here Comes Science. Science and Math are the subjects that most students would argue are the most difficult to understand (based on my very scientific survey, involving a random sample of me, myself, and I).  But TMBG knows that songs make everything easier to learn.  So they took some basic scientific concepts and applied them to music, making them infinitely more enjoyable than just reading a textbook.

I also love that they were humble and self-aware enough to re-record their song "Why Does the Sun Shine" and include the correct, updated information.  And in a way, their willingness to do this encapsulates, better than any other song on the album, what makes science so great. We're always learning new information, scientists are constantly performing new tests and experiments, and the world is constantly reevaluating its view.  Thousands of years ago, Earth was the center of the universe.  Two hundred years ago, nobody knew that microscopic germs were why people got sick.  And a hundred years ago, the sun WAS a mass of incandescent gas.  The concept of plasma wasn't discovered until 1879 by Sir William Crookes, and it wasn't even identified as Plasma until 1928. So for a long while, most people held this incorrect belief about the sun, and it was taught as fact to children in school. It's quite reasonable that TMBG would make this mistake, since this is probably what they were taught in school.

Just another example of educational videos getting facts wrong 

(not to mention poor Pluto)

So kudos to them for addressing their error and, inadvertently, pointing out that science's ability to change and adapt based on new information is one of the things that makes science so great.

They Might Be Giants accomplishes what should be the goal for any great teacher: they make learning fun. They make learning catchy. They make learning interesting.  I wish I'd had this album when I was a kid. It's the kind of thing that lil' Steven would have loved.  Sesame Street tried a similar approach to their teaching style, with flying colors, catchy songs, and crazy characters. This is why they've stuck around for so long.  Even the much calmer Mister Rogers used songs and puppets in his show in order to teach kids. Because the best teachers know the truth: learning can, and should be, fun.





Also for fun: Here's The Simpson's version of I'm Just a Bill. Go crazy.

Pinocchio

Pinocchio is the stuff of nightmares.  And that's a good thing.  It's much harder to be an effective morality tale if the audience is not scared out of their minds.  And this is especially true for Pinocchio.  

Forget Cronenberg, this is Body Horror that sticks with ya 'til you die.

In fairy tales, wolves are supposed to be scary. Right and wrong are supposed to be transparent and easy to see.  As Bettleheim said, "the figures in fairy tales are not ambivalent--not good and bad at the same time, as we all are in reality...A person is either good or bad, nothing in between."  And the easiest way to differentiate right and wrong in a fairy tale is to show the drastic, terrifying consequences of making a poor decision. And boy does Pinocchio deliver on that.

In many ways, the wolves of traditional fairy tales are found all throughout Pinocchio's story.  True, there is no actual wolf (although Honest John the Fox comes as close as anyone to physically occupying that rule) but the archetype is there all the same.  Stromboli, Honest John, Gideon, and The Coachman all occupy this role.  They all deceive Pinocchio with enticing offers, and are eventually revealed to be the destructive monsters that they really are.

There is, however, one major difference in the way that the wolf archetype is used in traditional fairy tales and how it's used in Pinocchio.  Normally the wolf either succeeds in his goal to destroy the protagonist (as it is in early versions of Little Red Riding Hood) or he is outsmarted/killed by the protagonist or a protector (such as in, um, other versions of Red Riding Hood). However, NONE of the villains in the film are punished in any traditional way.  Not a single one.  Honest John and Gideon receive no karmic punishment for either of their kidnappings of Pinocchio.  On the contrary, they seem to receive a decent amount of money for both attempts.  Stromboli also receives no punishment.  He makes a large sum from Pinocchio's performance, pays Pinocchio with counterfeit money, then holds him against his will for future shows. (although you can argue that his losing Pinocchio and failing at his kidnapping plot was sufficient punishment for the story).  Worst of all is the Coachman, who not only kidnaps dozens of boys, but manipulates them into turning into jackasses and then sells them into forced labor.  And then he's never seen again.  Not only that, but we never see the boys/donkeys again.

I'm fascinated by this idea, mostly because it seems like Disney films normally do a tremendous job with karmic justice.  Maleficent is stabbed with a sword after turning into a dragon in Sleeping Beauty.  The Wicked Stepmother in Snow White falls off a cliff (and is struck by lightning).  Scar in The Lion King is thrown off a cliff and devoured by hyenas. Ursula in The Little Mermaid is stabbed with a boat (and is also struck by lightning).  

Disney sure knows how to kill a bad guy.  

Not doing so in Pinocchio provides a very interesting contrast.  Ultimately, the film's main purpose is not to punish evil, but to demonstrate its negative effects to Pinocchio, and by extension, the audience.  We learn that it's wrong to lie.  We learn that it's wrong to skip school.  We learn that there are consequences for smoking, drinking, and destruction.  And in some ways, the film's refusal to punish the wolves reflects some of the harsher realities of life.  Rich men get richer, even at the expense of others.  People can sometimes get away with committing crimes.  So by showing the audience the terrifying consequences of doing bad things, the film is able to provide a strong moral lesson for children, and by abstaining from punishing the villains, the film provides a deeper (albeit possibly unintentional) meaning about the harshness of life that can be appreciated by adults revisiting the film.

...also, Jiminy Cricket sucks at his job. Just putting that out there. It's important everyone knows.

Note: I'm just gonna leave this video from Cracked that over-analyzes Pinocchio in the funniest way. Warning: some language.

Son of Rambow:

In Son of Rambow, we find a sweet, quirky example of a film that deals with the transitional nature of childhood, as well as providing commentary on what media is appropriate for children, how children view media, and the impact that it has on childhood development.

In the film, we are given examples of two polar opposites in response to raising children: Lee Carter, who is raised with little to no supervision, and Will Proudfoot, who is raised with too much.  After viewing material that is far too mature for his age (First Blood), Will becomes obsessed and wants to star in a Rambo-esque film of his own.  This would seem to validate the idea that there are dangers in letting children watch mature content, and that viewing violent media that is inappropriate for their age will damage a child's psyche.  However, it's also important to remember that Will recently had lost his father, and this plays just as important a role on his development as the violent film does.  Without a strong masculine figure in his life, Will turned to the closest source he could find: John Rambo.  Also, his obsession with Rambo did produce positive results in his life.  He reached out, made friends, and found a common interest in film making that united them all together.  In fact, I argue that the violent climax happened not simply because of their dangerous obsession with a violent action flick, but because Will and Lee Carter were not working together on the project.  True, Will almost drowned earlier in the film when he was working with Lee Carter on the project, but that was due to a lack of communication rather than mere recklessness (Will never told Lee that he couldn’t swim).  Also, I believe that danger is an inescapable element of childhood, and children (to some extent) need to learn how to make their own mistakes and solve their own problems. 

Later in the film, Mary, Will’s mother, reminisces on a childhood event where she fell in love with a song, bought the record, and had her record player destroyed in order to protect her from the evils of pop music.  This reminds me of a similar story in my own childhood, where my cousins were forbidden to see any of the Harry Potter films, or read the books.  At the time, I was 10 years old, and I had already read all of the books and I had already seen the film, so I didn’t understand what the big fuss was about.  It was only later that I learned that my cousins weren’t the only ones who believed that Harry Potter was of the devil.  This isn’t anything new, as parents have always rallied against things that will supposedly corrupt their children, like heavy metal music or video games.  These things seem laughable to me now, but I’m not a parent, and soon one day I’ll be in the position of having to decide what material is appropriate for my own children.  What we think of as appropriate for children is always changing, and we need to be able to make media choices on a case by case basis.

In summary, every child grows differently, and parents need to find that difficult balance between too much supervision and not enough.  Even this is oversimplified, as some children may need more boundaries and restrictions, while others need more freedom and choice.  However, the film shows that by coming together as friends and being willing to communicate and work on problems, we can create great memories and overcome the difficulties of life.