Horton Hears an Unironic Who

Took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who last week. I had my expectations. It had Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell, Will Arnett, and Seth Rogan as voice artists. Of course they would wind up being crazy, I mean, look what Jim Carrey did to the Grinch. Plus, animated films today have slipped into the morass of post-modern hipster ironicism. The pop culture references, the playing with story conventions with winking grins. Even my children's beloved Veggie Tales ended their latest movie with a musical number performed by all of the characters from the film (a spoof on the B-52s "Rock Lobster"). When the Veggie's succumb, all is lost.

Well, maybe not all. Horton was a straight-forward film that was quite faithful to the original material (some padding was needed to create a feature length movie) and was refreshingly old-fashioned. No big musical number. No pop culture references. No parody. It was wonderful and effective. I gave in completely to the film's charms. My only complaint was with Morton, who seemed to be an awkward plot device, but not intrusive enough to disrupt my enjoyment much. My children responded well to it, and it has been successful at the box office, so I hope there is a trend towards less ironic children's fare.

It was interesting to read viewer comments of the movie on IMDB and see that while many people enjoyed the film, several complained of it being boring, not funny, stupid, and slow. They had Grinch expectations, and they were sorely disappointed. But, what I found more interesting was that they said that their children were similarly disappointed. I felt a bit sad for children unwilling to accept a straightforward Dr. Suess film that relies more on story than design (though the animation was lovely) and an over-the-top central performance a la the aforementioned Grinch and Cat in the Hat.

In talking with students who have seen the film, they are fairly non-commmital. It was fine, they say. It was not exactly the most entertaining film. Mehh. And that is acceptable. They are not the target audience. But when children reject this film, which box office would suggest is not the case for a majority of children, then the idea of childhood may be slipping away. My sons have 4-6 year old friends who watch movies like Revenge of the Sith and Transformers. Post-modern animated films are the gateway drug to PG-13 movies for young children. My only hope is that Pixar and Horton-type movies will exist long enough that my kids will not have to sacrifice their childhood to the twin gods or irony and parody.

I tried to discuss this idea briefly to my students, but living in a post-modern world, they could not understand what was unique or compelling about Horton. Most movies made for mass consumption, by design, have little impact or lasting memory for many of my students. Horton was just another that they forgot about in the theatre parking lot. They couldn't see the difference. I don't know if this exploration of structuralism and postmodernism is something I would try to tackle in my film classes. It is an argument for a different generation.

Luck of the Irish Imitators

St. Patrick's Day. A school tradition. From the time we are small children, we are taught that we wear green on St. Patrick's Day. I dressed my kids in green today. Didn't want them to feel left out. The holiday can have a different bent to it in the high school, I discovered. Students still dress in green - "That's what you are supposed to do!" - but thay can also spend the day perpetuating easy classifications of the Irish culture. I saw many t-shirts in the school today. I tried to find images for them online and could only find things that were close.

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I gave up on dressing in green a few years ago, when I realized that I could use my lack of green as a starting point for a discussion as to why the students dress in green on the 17th. To the best of my knowledge, I have no Irish blood in me. I come from Eastern European stock. I would tell

my students that my ancestors would be disappointed if I pretended to be Irish for a day. Once we observe and celebrate Bohemian immigrants, I will dress up. Some students are from Irish backgrounds, and I congratulate them. Some are not and try to argue that St. Patrick's Day is not simply an Irish holiday. But it is a day when we can bring up our cultural backgrounds and discuss why some are celebrated and some are not in this melting pot of a nation.

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But beyond denying our true heritage, we can also discuss how these holidays and observances take complex cultures and simplify them. Restaurants offer Mexican food specials on Cinco de Mayo, but do not promote ideas about what the holiday or the culture are really about. Things can get more difficult on St. Patrick's Day. March 17th can tie those of Irish descent to drunken, lecherous behavior (see: Kiss me, I'm drunk). I saw many shirts promoting ale, drinking, pub crawling, and partying. Any student would want to embrace the Irish nationality on this day if it means that they can claim to be part of a heritage that is all about rebellious, reckless behavior. But what about their understanding of Irish folk beyond the slogans?

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Media such as t-shirts and buttons do not allow the depth needed to communicate an entire nation or culture. So, in finding something witty or memorable, what damage are we doing to the complex item we are ignoring. We can discuss that as a class, and did get to discuss it on a small scale today.

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If I had my choice, I would market t-shirts with quotes from Samuel Beckett:

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

You're on earth. There's no cure for that

You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail
better.

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Though Beckett was Irish, these could be used to on a holiday to celebrate the artistic/creative culture. We will call it Happy Day. I think I will start on the holiday and the t-shirts once I finish this post. Happy Happy Day, everyone! Let's bury ourselves up to our necks.

Yearning for the 20th Century

While I don’t know how to tie this in with an actual lesson in my classroom, I did read something this morning that caught my attention because it concerns issues we have been reading about in Amy’s class. In an article on Slate.com today, Daniel Gross wrote about how America, once seen as a role model for business, management, and finance, is currently being viewed in a less than favorable global light.

As I read, I could not help but wonder if the issues Gross raises are a result of our educational model not meeting the needs of a new marketplace. He writes:

The United States invented the concept and practice of running large, complex systems. Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line was the gold standard in global manufacturing for decades. Contemporary American institutions stand for excellence in managing everything from supply chains (Wal-Mart) to delivery services (Federal Express and UPS).

Americans' ability to manage complex systems has been the ultimate competitive advantage. It has allowed the United States to enjoy high growth and low inflation—a record we haven't hesitated to lord over our foreign friends.

[Now,] Americans abroad are constantly taunted by perceived failings of American management. Doubtful of the ability of provincial American executives, with their limited language skills, to negotiate today's global business environment, the boards of massive U.S. firms like Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Alcoa, and insurer AIG have hired foreign-born CEOs. On a recent 60 Minutes, Carl Icahn complained to Lesley Stahl about the incompetence of American management. "I see our country going off a cliff, and I feel bad about it."

Are we stuck in the industrial model that once brought us glory, and are unwilling to accept a technological model that will leave use woefully behind the rest of the world? It was one of those things that put the importance of media literacy to the fore for me. Again.

Spitz Take

So, this weekend, my media experiences have all been tied somehow to Eliot Spitzer. Whether it was NPR (Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me prided itself on making Spitzer comments for the entire hour) or Saturday Night Live, there were plenty of people willing to make comic hay out of the disgrace of the former New York governor. Having seen the painful images of Spitzer's shellshocked wife by his side at his press conferences made it a bit more difficult for me to laugh along with the media. There was a real family that had to deal with this. My students may have heard the news and not seen the pain of his wife, so they may have laughed along. Or not. I was experiencing media outlets my students may not have (NPR and a 30+ year old sketch comedy show). I am sure that whatever comedic media outlets students chose to explore, however, made jokes about prostitution, infidelity, power, and sex.

Then I opened up the Deseret News this morning. In the Opinion section tof the newspaper, there were two editorials focusing specifically on the influence of sex on our society. They tied the Spitzer news with other news stories that were released this week (25% of adolescent girls have tested positive for an STD and others) and determined that we exist in a sex-saturated society. Just the fact that Spitzer's story surfaced in so many media outlets seems to give validity to the editorials' stances. The problem is that students may not have seen the press conference, but they heard the jokes. The human connection is missing. It would have been missing for me if Spitzer had allowed his wife to grieve privately and not bring her out in front of the cameras for whatever purpose.

Is the fact that we use these current events as punchlines lessening the impact of the news? Are we more accepting of sex in our society because sit-coms, where innuendo abounds, blurs with "real news" and making fun of real news? In a world where media is becoming omnipresent, creators of media need a steady stream of material, and making comedy out of sexual situations and news stories, regardless of the emotions or people behind them, is an easy path. Just compare the sketches occurring early in a SNL telecast, mostly current event, celebrity, or sexually-oriented humor, and those that show up later in the broadcast where the "original" material dwells and has little quality or impact.

I could pull lots of educational ideas from this, but I don't know how students would respond to it. We could examine hard news broadcasts of events and humorous references to it later on late night talk shows, etc. There are several activities that would could do in monitoring sexually-based humor in a media text, but that would not work in my current school environment. I don't know what concerns me most - students only hearing snide humor slants of current events or being raised as a generation where sex=funny. I don't know if it is getting worse, 1980s teen films had a lot of sexual content, but was is different is the pervasiveness of media. In the 1980s, students could avoid those films. It is harder to avoid today. Spitzer, and jokes about him, are everywhere.

Smells Like Teen Rebellion

So, as an assignment for class, Amy wanted us to visit mtv.com and watch any of the top videos from 2007 and explain how we could use that video as a text in a media class, especially to focus on gender representations. So I went to watch videos, and as the My Chemical Romance video for "Teenagers" started, I could not focus on gender representations. I sat thinking, "Dimly lit, curtain draped school stage, dancing cheerleaders, a passive audience the erupts into a frenzy and storms the performing space of the band. Smells like an homage, or lack or originality."

As I searched for the Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video to make sure the similarities between the two texts was not just the result of an idle imagination, I thought that a more interesting way for me to include this video in a class is as a comparison. Both videos use similar motifs and the songs lyrically discuss teenage isolation, celebrates being misunderstood, and has an underlying anger and drive. The songs and videos were made for different generations (todays teens were in diapers or in utero when Nirvana's video appeared) and I think an interesting activity would be to explore how each video envisions teen rebellion.

We can start with the cheerleaders. In both videos, we see shots of suggetive dancing, but the sexuality is counteracted by the appearance of the girls. Anarchy symbols, stringy hair and tattoos on the Nirvana crew, gas masks for My Chemical Romance. The student audience in Nirvana's video was made up of hair thrashing, flannel-clad slackers. The audience in the "Teenagers" video are students that look like those that could be seen in mainstream magazine clothing advertisements. The band and music spoke for itself in the 1990s; today, heavy-handed moments like images of mushroom clouds and batons used as machine guns leadenly drive home the message. The lighting in Nirvana's videos obscures the action, Kurt Cobain's face is not really seen. The lighting in My Chemical Romance's world is less extreme, the face of the lead singer is a selling point of the appeal of the band. It seems that rebellion has been mainstreamed in the last 15 years.

But is that just me? I think it would be interesting to show the two videos to see if the students noticed the differences and similarities I did. Why is the 2007 video cast, directed, and designed the way it is? Which is more effective in appealing to teen audiences today? Which is more effective in embracing rebellion? What was My Chemical Romance hoping to achieve by taking Nirvana's ideas? What did they add to it? Where are they less successful?

I fear that today's audiences may look at Nirvana's work and squirm at the thought of sweaty, smelly grungers slamming into and crawling on top of each other. They would rather share a stage with My Chemical Romance, I expect. What has changed? The teen or the spirit?

Oh, and we could examine the gender representations.

Race Boundaries?

In discussing race in a media class, this photo may be a place to start. I noticed it first in Entertainment Weekly, where the article challenged readers to guess who is playing the character in the center of this photo, a production still from the Ben Stiller's new film Tropic Thunder. The actor is Robert Downey, Jr. and the film is a Hollywood satire.

Students know Ben Stiller and Jack Black and are familiar with their respective comedic approaches. The question to pose: is the fact that Robert Downey, Jr. is a white actor playing a character who has been cast in a role written for a black actor, so he decides to "play it black" worth noting or discussing? Hollywood used to embrace casting white actors in a variety of ethnic roles, but that approach was frowned on for a time, at least in terms of ethnicity. Should there be rules and should the rules apply to just ethnic backgrounds, or also to gender, sexuality, religion?

A quote from Downey in EW: "If it's done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago. If you don't do it right, we're going to hell." What is the protocol that youth audiences accept in terms of actors playing beyond their own cultures? Jim Emerson's blog, Scanners, explores the history of this practice in the media:

OK, we've also seen a black actor playing a racist white man who turns black overnight (Godfrey Cambridge in Melvin Van Peebles' 1970 "Watermelon Man"); a white male actor playing a white female actor (Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie"); a white female American actor playing a male Chinese-Australian "dwarf" (Linda Hunt, "The Year of Living Dangerously"); a black male actor playing various white, female, Chinese and other characters (Eddie Murphy, "Coming to America," "Norbit"); a white woman playing a white male pre-op transsexual passing as a white woman (Felicity Huffman, "Transamerica"); a straight white woman playing a gay white female-impersonator (Julie Andrews, "Victor/Victoria"); a German-Japanese-Venezuelan male actor playing a Kenyan-white male American senator and presidential candidate (Fred Armisen on "Saturday Night Live" as Barack Obama)

While watching an episode of Law & Order, I noticed that at one point the character played by Ice-T is classified as a black man by one individual and as a white man by another. The character played by Adam Beach is called a Mexican, which he laughs off. Our race, ethnicity, and culture define us, but should they also limit us? Another posting on the Scanners blog reprints an empassioned letter from Nicholas Rizzo who examines why he responded so powerfully to the film No Country for Old Men. As a part of the letter he suggests that the Mexican drug runners function as "stark stereotypes" whereas the character played by Javier Bardem was complex and compelling. He throws off a parenthetical aside that struck me powerfully as I contemplated these issues:

I sometimes wonder if our society views multi-racial people as the most beautiful because, if we cannot determine which racial group they belong to, no racial stereotypes are attached and then we see their beauty purely and unencumbered.

Do we classify? Should we classify? How should "colorblind casting" look? How true do we need to be? Which boundaries can be crossed as actors?

So, let's look at the photo and see how the students respond. The hope is that they will come up with as powerful and as conflicting of views that I have stumbled on over the past week. It is the complexity of this issue that intrigues me. I just don't hope that they do not expect any easy answers from me.

Men and Women and Hot Breakfast Bars

This week, as we were discussing gender representations in media, I came across a story about a new advertsing campaign by Holiday Inn Express. The article was on Slate.com. It was in the site's Ad Report Card section. I enjoy hitting this section every few weeks because my television viewing could be classified as sparse, and the television I do see on a regular basis (local news and syndicated shows) often do not have the big national ads on them.

Plus, I enjoy the writing in the ad report card section. It has helped me to understand the choices made in putting together an ad campaign, its desired affect, and its actual affect, according to Seth Stevens.

In the article found here, Stevens discusses how men are represented and how they may respond to the new Hot Breakfast Bar ads. More interesting, however, is the ad in the same campaign that features women as the central characters. Both ads are the same length, with the same message on the same set. The differences come in the characters, the storyline, and the humor. I believe that this could be a great curricular support for gender representations in a media literacy unit. The portrayals are not overtly sexual, so students can examine gender representations beyond the common ones in ads targeting teens and young adults. Students could be asked to express the central idea of each, the target audience, and how the message is presented.

This posting in Slate also made mention of the SportCenter ads. These ads, abundant on YouTube, could also be examined in a classroom environment to determine why they appeal to men, their target audience. I don't think that my wife ever really appreciated them, and she probably rolled her eyes when I would stop mid-conversation to watch whenever I happened to catch one. Just thinking about them now brings a smile to my XY chromosome face.

It was handy having both ads in the same article, and handy that this article was posted on a week when we focused on gender in Amy's class. But, I also encourage regular reading of this feature for those teachers who teach media. It is very readable and can bring lots of ideas about how advertising can be analyzed for its form, content, and effectiveness. Enjoy a future with Seth Stevens.

As a post script, I, too, grinned at the "Cinnamon roll? That's something you send your sister!" line. (Insert SportCenter theme here).