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).

Media and Community

Over the past couple of weeks, I have tried to explain why my one year as a film major ended with a transfer to theatre education. This weekend, had anyone been by my side, they would have had an understanding beyond my stated excuse, "All we did in the film program was sit in silence in the dark, watch movies, and write papers."

My production at the high school, Cyrano de Bergerac, opened on Friday night. It has not been an easy production. It was a very large cast (30+), which has it own difficulties (managing schedules and needs of 30+ people), but it is also a difficult show for high school actors - the language, the swordplay, the elevated emotions. My schedule did not help my stress in pulling it all together, and I figured that if I could just get it behind me, I would be happy. I believed that the cast had done a good job, but I might have been too close to it. And, how many people in our community would be interested in a 19th Century French play? I didn't know what to expect.

But then we opened. We had a larger than expected house on Friday, especially considering we conflicted with state girl's basketball. The actors took hold of the show and ran. And the audience was right with them. I sat and watched what these teenage actors did to capture the grand emotions of Romanticism and a crowd of children, teens, and adults was rapt with what would happen next. It was a show that I had never seen in rehearsal. Everyone in that auditorium contributed to a successful production. It was even better on Saturday night. And I realized that it is the vitality of theatre that won me. In the end, maybe 700 will have seen the show. It will only exist for those two hours each night, and then in the memories of those involved. But the memory will be there because they all contributed.

I remember plays I saw as a child in Montana (my Gram took me to West Side Story, my mom to King Lear), and they stay with me more than films of my childhood. Bazin equated film with embalming. Theatre does not embalm, it resurrects a text. I have not had a media experience as visceral as any theatre experience, and I don't know if I can.

On YouTube, you can track views, you can post and read comments, you can parody or respond with your own work, but still it does not have the community that I have experienced in theatre. Media can be collaborative, but mediation places a distance between creator and audience. As I sat with a smile on my face, watching my students understand the text better than they ever had before because of the audience's reactions (Wait, that is funny! Whoa, this moment really is heartbreaking.), I could see whay these students devoted so many hours to it, why over a hundred students auditioned to be in it. Film started by replicating theatrical conventions, but soon found its own language. Theatrical conventions cannot survive on film. It does not work. In the reading for Sharon's class there are theorists who discuss how media are losing their individual identifiers and becoming more alike. But new media is not like this weekend with hundreds of people breathing the same air and sharing a story.

So, I am happy, and I hope my students are, too. We have one night to go, which hopefully will be as great as what they have already done. We can talk about community, and phenomonology, and interaction with media, but untimately it pales to theatre. Maybe not forever, and not for eveyone, but at least for me now. I can use this comparison in my theatre classes to talk about how new media is trying to capture the communal theatrical experience and see if students have had media experiences like unto theatre. It will be interesting to see if their perceptions are similar to mine, or having been raised on new media, if they view those experiences as more communal than theatre for them. If they feel that the experience is similar or greater to being in a live production or the audience of one, I will be sad, but it will link new media and theatre more in my mind, where a rift now exists.

Saving Ebert's Hide

I am a film teacher who rarely goes to the movies. This can be tricky because my students all assume that if I teach film, I need to have seen everything. But my schedule does not really allow me to see films in the theatre. I manage to get a little caught up on DVD in the summer, but end up seeing only a small fraction of new films each year. Instead, I read about film. I have a list of Web sites and magazines I read on a weekly basis to have knowledge about pretty much any film in current release. At least then I can talk intelligently about films when my students bring them up in class. For me, I read enough other people’s opinion’s to understand the film and filmmaker, but belatedly form any opinion of my own when and if I happen to see the film.

My students are the opposite. They see film all the time and rarely read anything, other than celebrity tabloid press, about films. Their opinion is all that matters. I do an informal survey in my classes about if they every read any critical responses to film. Most major newspapers and magazines have film reviewers on staff, I state, is this just wasted money? The answer appears to be yes. I have maybe one, seldom two students in a class who read any critical response to film. The film critic, they say, is dying.

This didn’t concern me much. My students are of another generation. It is all about them. They are not film geeks, like me, who lap up the words of Roger Ebert with delight (his nearly year-long hiatus due to health problems was a black time for me). So, my focus in the class has been to explore the opinions of the students. I tell them, their opinion is what matters. For the first paper of the semester, I require them to find a professional, critical review of the film they are writing on and comment on their opinion of the reviewer’s opinion. This has never been very successful. Often, they find rambling musings on a blog somewhere that usually support the student’s views, or that just have a plot synopsis and do not explore the film critically at all. I shrug when I read their papers. “It is about the student’s opinions,” I tell myself.

This semester was different. Frustrated by the quality of the reviews students include with their papers, and suspecting that they only skim the review anyway and say, in the most general terms, I agree/disagree with this reviewer, I showed the students what film criticism could be. I hooked the projector up to my computer and pulled up some professional reviews that we examined as a class. I looked at Ebert’s review of Cloverfield. He was direct in stating what worked and didn’t for him in the film, and since his critique was so pointed, the students could respond to what he was saying. His views fell pretty much in line with the majority of the class, which surprised them. Hearing parents and other adults talk about the film had led the students to think that adults “just didn’t get it.” Ebert didn’t mind the “queasy-cam” style of shooting the film, and thought it supported how the story was being told. Students talked about the plusses and minuses of the hand-held style. Ebert discounted complaints that too many questions about the monster were left unanswered. Students on both sides of the issue stated their feelings. All of a sudden, movie critics were not old, stuffy people who slammed everything good. They were people who loved movies and got to share their opinions with others for a paycheck. And sometimes, according to the students, the critics were right.

For the evaluation papers turned in by this new group, the students explored the opinions of others to a degree that they hadn’t in papers before. They sometimes quoted multiple reviewers. In comparing their views with others, the students become more solidified on the impact that a film had (or did not have) on them. One student quoted the Entertainment Weekly cover story that dealt with Juno and discussed how the character was more than the center of the film, but a real model to female teens. They started looking at a film through someone else’s eyes. I usually get my students there by the end of the semester, and it is mostly as a result of listening to their classmates discuss film. With the reviews, they crossed geographic, gender, economic, and generational lines. They came closer to seeing films the way I do on a weekly basis. If only I could come closer to seeing films, so I could add my response to the mix, like my newbie film students are doing right now. I will be adding Ebert, et al, to more of my lessons and watch the students open their eyes. Maybe I can still save the professional film reviewer.

Daddy's Little Girl

It was Valentine’s Day this week. My two sons love the holiday. My two-year-old daughter is not quite sure what it is all about. The boys brought home bags of valentine’s from school and sat on the floor reading their cards, laughing at the puns, sharing and comparing. Isabel watched and grabbed a valentine from their pile and carried it around until it was crumpled and mangled.

Now, my kids are not as pop culture savvy as many of their peers. They looked blankly at several of the valentines not knowing who was on the card. They know who SpongeBob is but don’t realize that he lives in a pineapple under the sea. They can name Spiderman though they have never seen him in action. They have a strong connection with Scooby Doo and are well-versed in the original 1970s episodes, and I am okay with that. Isabel is even less knowledgable, but she knew what she wanted. The valentine she carried around all day? Bratz.

Now, I have no idea what Bratz are or what they do. I just know that they have big, make-up coated eyes and dress in a way that puts them just past Betty Boop on the skank scale. Isabel had no context for the character. I imagine she was just responding to the color, the design, and layout of the card. But that is where consumerism starts, isn’t it? I smiled when she kept asking for her Disney Princess pajamas when she had no idea who those girls were on her tummy. But it wasn’t until the Bratz card that I really considered how those characters were ingratiating themselves with my children. It seems like a tough time to be growing up as a media seeped girl. I read an article in Entertainment Weekly (see my next post) about the popularity of Juno, and one person suggested that Juno’s success was partially driven by the fact that teen girls now have a cultural icon on the same plane as Holden Caufield. She acts on her own terms. But isn’t that how they are marketing Bratz and the Disney Princesses? I will be honest with you, I would be just fine if my daughter decided that she wanted to get some turtle necks and some square glasses and be like Velma when she grows up. Velma is smart. She is independent. She has her own slang (“Jinkies!”). And, she is all but ignored by Fred. What more could a father want?

My daughter is not media literate. She cannot see past the packaging to discern the contents. I need to work on that. I cannot just examine these issues in my classroom. But this event made me really consider the mindset of my students. They were two-year-olds influenced by forces they could not understand. Where do they stand now?

A Night in the Car

On Wednesday night, I was driving home from Provo. I had attended class that evening and while I was taking a midterm, a blizzard was burying nothern Utah County. My wife suggested that I spend the night in Orem, but I had started north and the roads were clear and traffic light. That is until I got to Lehi. The final ten miles of my commute took just over three hours. Hundreds of cars sitting in idle. I had turned on the radio to get a traffic report as I headed home, but KSL had chosen to not disrupt the BYU basketball game broadcast to tell listeners that, well, that hundreds of acres of highways and freeways had been jammed with immobile vehicles. I longed for news and was frustrated by not having instantaneous access to it. I called my wife, but was wary of using the phone and "driving" even though I was not moving. Finally, about 9:45 PM, after having spent an hour not moving and being a couple of hours away from home, KSL started a live broadcast fielding calls and text messages from those in the same boat as I, some who had been stuck since 5 PM. Listening did not move me any faster (my shaky knowledge of Lehi surface streets and frontage roads helped a bit there), but it did pass time, and it bonded me to all of those in my same predicament. I marveled that there were no calls or texts of anger, rage, or frustration. There was acceptance. There was humor. There was a desire to pass information and encouragement to others. By having a media outlet, I presume, tension was dispelled. I felt the same way. I wasn't something that was happening to me anymore. It was happening to us. I am glad I could vent occassionally to my wife, but at 10:30, when I encouraged her to go to bed, I was left with the miles and miles of strangers. And with the texts and voices of those strangers.

While teaching on Thursday, I talked to a couple of students who were stuck in that massive jam coming back from state wrestling and club volleyball. They were not a part of KSL's demographic and did not join that same community I did. They did have phones and called and texted friends. For about 30 minutes, I was beside a UTA bus. Those on the bus did not commune face to face. They sat solemn and frustrated. If they had a mediated means to deal with it, perhaps they would have been in a better mind set.

This is a great example of the power of media for those students who were stuck as I was. I don't think that those who did not experience it would understand the power of sharing the experience through the radio that night. It is a great example I can use, and try to find moments when my students had similar experiences.

My favorite moment on the radio was when the announcer kept repeatedly admonishing listeners who were in their homes to not leave their homes and contribute to the traffic mess. I could not help but wonder, "Who leaves their homes at 11:00 PM on a snowy Wednesday night just for the hell of it?"

The Wisdom of a Penguin

When I was in junior high, I discovered and cherished the Bloom County comic strip created by Berkeley Breathed. I have never really analyzed what it was about the residents of this strip that so excited me, but the look, the humor, and the characters were so different than anything else on the comics page. That strip is back in the Opus format, and several of the Bloom County characters have been resurrected. But, it ususally does not have the same impact on me that it did in years past.

I was quite struck with last Sunday's comic, however. Opus is visited by his mother - a continual wish of the penguin - who tries to dissuade him of his fears of the "dulling of humanity" in the face of text messaging. I have had the fears of Opus, and the end of the strip, included in this post, made be laugh and frown simultaneously. Media can connect us in so many ways, but it also can separate us. What is the crucial element of humanity? Is it our ideas, whether expressed in a face to face format or in a mediated form, or is it physical connection?

In my theatre class last semester, I mentioned that they could communicate information via text message, but it was not the best way to convey emotion and intent. I used this to lead off my voice and diction unit as a way of showing how important vocal work is and how flat verbal communication would be like without variation in tone, pich, volume, or rate. This approach was something I had never done before, and I forgot about it shortly after the lesson was done. However, I was reminded of it months later when a student said that every time she texts, she thinks about how she would say what she is sending, and looks at the characters on the screen and knows they will not convey the whole message. It was one of those moments where you pat yourself on the back because you have an idea that stuck. And it was a moment of human connection that, if she had emailed me, would not have been as powerful. I don't want to denegrate technology, just perhaps remind students of what technology can bring, but also what it can leave behind. A tone of voice. A hug from a mother. Maybe in understanding this, the students too will laugh and frown.

The Joy of Hearteache

As a theatre teacher, I use very few filmic resources in my theatre classroom. Perhaps it is because I also teach film, so I see the glaring differences between how both arts present stories, and therefore in my viewpoint, films do not meet my theatre educational objectives. The only film I use consistently is a DVD of the Broadway production of Into the Woods in order to examine design elements.

Now, however, I have found a film that brings with it a whole new problem. I could use it everywhere in my theatre classroom. I am in the middle of a directing unit in my advanced class, and I tried to find clips from my extensive library of filmed theatrical texts (yes, we do have a rather large library, though most go unused) to show to the class to demonstrate the idea of a director's concept. I have a 4 DVD collection of Beckett's works that are quite well done, but the Beckett texts are a bit dense, so students unfamiliar with them struggle with determining how a director's concept supports or does not support the likes of Rockabye. What to do?

Well, I pulled out a DVD sent to me as a Christmas card from the BYU TMA department. On the disc was an adaptation of a Chekhov short story, Heartache. The film was brief and very theatrical. Because students could see the piece as a whole, and the text had depth but was easy to understand on a single viewing, it was a success. Students discussed the affect of the production (I avoided calling it a film), and the unities and disunities in it. We discussed using a Brechtian approach on a Realist text. We talked about the structure of the script. They discussed the emotional impact of the piece and how the elements of staging, design, and performance influenced that impact. We talked about director's concepts.

Now that I have found a filmic text that works wonderfully in my theatre class, the problem is finding the best place to use it. This student-produced short film could be used in a directing unit, as I demonstrated. Or, it could be used in a performance unit, examining the approach of the actors in the use of voice and body to communicate the story and subtext. Or, I could use it in a playwriting unit by looking at the source short story and them comparing the story in its script form (What works or does not in this transition to "stage"? What would they have done differently in adapting the script?) Or, I could use it in teaching about modern theatre movements, specifically Epic Theatre. It's short, sweet, and versatile. Who could ask for anything more, other than knowing how to best use it?

My Community: A Photo Essay

The following pictures show aspects of an educational theatre program that I, as a teacher, am very familiar with. Students are not seen much because I did not want to disrupt the rehearsal process. Here is our space, our resources, and our work that, over the course of six weeks, will result in a staging of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.

Roadside Salvation

On Interstate 15 somewhere between Provo and Salt Lake City, there is a billboard that rotates signage and messages encouraging people to "Visit Historic Temple Square." The image changes evey few months, but always the intent is the same. Of course, Temple Square is the number one tourist attraction in Utah, so a billboard promoting the site seems appropriate. I pass the billboard several times a week. I know it is an LDS tourist billboard. However, last week, the image and message had me contemplating the true intent of the advertising.

The billboard currently has a picture showing only the six spires of the Salt Lake Temple on a blue background. It is a unique photo in that it is missing the bulk of the temple structure and no other elements of Historic Temple Square. Six spires, pointing to heaven. That's all. The slogan is, "Escape the World." I had to consider if the location and message of this billboard was the most effective for capturing the tourists. It can capture those traveling by car from the south, but it is also hitting the locals who commute everyday (or a couple of times a week). Also, its admonition to visit Historic Temple Square is very small and located at the bottom, away from the spires where our eyes are drawn. I just know it is a Visit Historic Temple Square billboard because that is what is always on that post right before passing into Salt Lake County. What it really needs to capture outsiders is a cool rhyme, like the Rigby, Idaho billboard that proclaims "Free Taters for Out-of-Staters."

The billboard seems to be a message to LDS folks living in Utah to visit the temple. To escape the commute, the tedium, the pressures of the world and find peace in the temple. It is fine that the LDS Church advertises salvation in this way and at this location, but perhaps they should replace the tagline with one that reads, "Visit the Temple Nearest You."

How to Make Another Hemisphere Matter

As I was reading the paper this morning, I came across this photo taken by Karel Prinsloo of the Associated Press. The caption explained how ethnic clashes in Kenya have claimed more than 650 people this month. Names of opposition forces were given, but the names meant nothing to me. In any other case, I am ashamed to say, it is a photo I would have let me eyes travel over without stopping. My understanding of Kenyan politics is such that a photo of the conflict would not have any context for me. But that was not the case today. The photo was riveting. So, of course, the question is what in the photo captured me. It is well composed, full of emotion, and immediate, yes. But I think that what captured me most was the GAP logo on the central figure's sweatshirt. The prominent, global brand blazoned on the picture of ethnic violence made it more palpable for some reason.

For my students, the war ravaged buildings, the outrage and aggression, and the use of a machette to threaten seem to be things that they have seen only in film and therefore have no sense of reality to them. That sweatshirt, though. That they, and I , can understand.

The Why

Obviously, the picture to the right is not me. I am not quite that distinguished or intelligent-looking. The picture is a representation of what this space could be. This blog was created to fulfill an assignment for a class in my pursuit of a Masters degree in Media Literacy Education. The purpose is to explore my reactions to various media that I participate in, view, or experience. And a turn of the century Russian is the perfect symbol of that, right?

Right. Anton Chekhov is the epitome of an artist and a compassionate human. His works treat their subjects in a loving manner, and explore what it truly means to be human. How we speak of how good we can be, of our dreams and ambitions, but can get sidetracked in living up to those expectations. How we can be surprised or disappointed at every turn, and how art can cause us to be shocked, touched, amused, and intellectually-engaged, sometimes all at the same time.

Chekhov never lost his understanding of what drove him as a writer. Perhaps his most famous quote is, "I hate falseness and coercion in all their forms . . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrariness reign not merely in merchants' houses and police stations: I see them in science, in literature, among the young. That is why I have no particular passion for either policemen or butchers or scientists or writers or the young. I consider brand-names and labels a prejudice. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom, freedom from force and falseness in whatever form they express themselves. That's the platform I'd subscribe to if I were a great artist."

Okay, so it is a bit of hero worship. So, I named my firstborn son Anton. But in carrying this hero worship to this blog, I hope to also denounce falseness and coersion, and to extoll that which celebrates human intelligence, talent, inspiration, and love. Perhaps by doing that, I can lead my students to approach media the same way in their lives.