Documentary Films

I don't know that I have favorite documentary, and I have been out of the documentary loop in recent years, so I haven't seen many newer films, but I do enjoy films like Spellbound and mockumentaries like Best in Show. One piece that we show to students is called Young @ Heart. This is a very sweet and funny film about an elderly rock choir/band, which wouldn't necessarily be thought of as appealing to teenagers, yet they really seem to enjoy it. At first glance, this documentary seems to be targeted toward a middle age to older audience, but it turns out to be perfect for all ages and we use it to introduce our ethnography paper. If there is time, we also show the film, Trekkies, with is about Star Trek fans. It works well for this assignment because even though the first instinct may be to laugh at many of these people, after watching the film, we see that many of the core values of Star Trek are very good, such as respect and acceptance for all people (or beings). This movie really lets kids look at reasons why people do things (like dress up in Star Trek ...or professional sports team... uniforms) and they eventually can come to the conclusion that all people have their quirks and passions and, even though this one may be nerdy or weird, that it is ok to accept them as, even if you can't understand them.

Watching the News

For this week, I participated in something that I don't do very often, and that is to watch the local news. I get basically all of my news from listening to the radio, specifically MPR. I listen to the news on the radio when I wake up and when I drive to and from work- probably totaling about an hour a day. I feel like I am fairly well informed because they have in depth coverage on local, national and international topics. Everyday I usually also glance briefly at the Star Tribune which is delivered to my desk at school every morning. This is often very very brief- front page headline and maybe flipping through each section to see if anything catches my attention (at which point I might stop to skim an article, but probably not). I do not listen to any radio station other than MPR and an occasional field trip to The Current. In fact, I only have two buttons programed on my car stereo (#1= MPR, #2=Current). I don't really take the time to watch television in general, but I also sometimes turn on CNN as background/unwind noise. Basically, I am not a very typical media user (in my perception).

But back to the local news from this morning...

I watched the WCCO morning news.
I was surprised at the amount of diversity I noticed, in the anchors and the stories. The anchors were an African American woman and a white man. Right away in the first story was about a man that was rescued from a burning car (as Rick mentioned, very visual: shots of the car and the guy in the hospital). I tried to notice the discourse of the reporting on a black man being rescued by two white state patrolmen, and I didn't notice any "othering." The reporters just said, "A man was pulled from his burning SUV," and then in the interview, the officer simply refered to the man and his friend as, "Two gentlemen." It seemed that they just gave a few brief facts about injury status and whatnot and that was it. This, and everything in the broadcast was very quick and I found myself struggling to keep up with everything. They then went on to report a killing in a small town and to talk about the Foot Hood "shooting rampage." In this story, they did refer to the shooter and his strange behavior and made sure to mention, "His Muslim faith," but then stressed that, "Authorities insist that he is not a terriorist." So, even though his faith didn't seem to have anything to do with the story, it was still linked to terroristm and identified (which probably wouldn't happen if he had been of the dominant Christian faith).

Advertising Analysis

Bonus ad: this ad was created for a contest that Grainbelt puts on every year, and this particular ad took 2nd place a few years ago. I wouldn't call this ad a spoof, because it could actually be a commercial for beer and I could see this on TV if our society would allow it (maybe Logo or Bravo would show it). It is playing off of the typical beer ad theme of using sex and the promise of hooking up in a bar after drinking said company's alcohol, with a little twist.

Grainbelt Ad

Gopher fan ethnography

Drizzling rain was heavy in the cold October air, just as it had been for the past two days. Before the rain, came a wave of snow that left four inches piled on the wet ground. For the dozens of Minnesota Golden Gopher fans that had driven 16 hours to watch their team take on the Penn State Nittany Lions, this was only a minor inconvenience. This was a group a die hard fans that had watched the Gophers take on, and mostly lose to, many great football teams across the country, and most of them weren't about to let a little rain and cold ruin their day. Even the fact that their team is never very good and were facing a far superior squad didn't dampen their spirits, for these were former and present members of the University of Minnesota Marching Band.

I observed many rituals that morning, mostly happening before the game even started. Many hours before the noon start of the game, in fact. "One word, tailgaiting. I love tailgating, even in the rain," proclaimed on proud Gopher fan. These die-hard fans started as early as 7am to get a parking spot and set up the entertainment they would use to kill the next five hours before the game started. It seems that the games they played were well know by most people that were out and about in the tailgaiting lot: beanbag toss, ladder golf, and beer darts to name a few. Some of the members of this group of about 40-50 people were experienced veterns on Gopher road trips, while for others, this was their first time.

Voice Thread Assignment

Here is my voice thread.

One clip, many perspectives

My roommate had the movie Flashdance on this weekend, so it was fresh in my mind and I thought it had some interesting Feminist and Marxist perspectives (as well as the historical aspect of the 80's...). This is a fairly famous scene (and maybe a little scandalous), but even though it is a short clip, it is very easy to notice certain things about class and gender.






The Feminist lens is fairly obvious here. The main character, Alex (a name that is played with in the film to create confusion as she works a traditionally male day job as a welder) is a dancer at a club full of men. The woman, and more importantly, her body is on display for the entertainment and objectification of the men who are paying to patronize this bar. The angles and shots set up a gaze that is from the point of view mostly of the two men watching her and the other patrons of the bar. The only close-ups of her deal with sexualized parts of her body, her legs and ass, or her very feminine silhouette.
Using a Marxist lens I also notice that the male lead in this scene, and Alex's love interest in the rest of the movie, is labeled at the end to be her boss. Throughout the film, he uses his money and political power to his advantage. This scene in particular positions him higher than her because he is a patron of the bar, while she is the worker. Also, his right hand man is willing to compromise her privacy and simply give up her social security number just because the boss thinks she is good looking. The power that he gains from his wealth, though, is more evident throughout the film as he is seen with the best seats at the opera or driving an expensive car and getting a prime parking space compared to the workers at his Pittsburgh steel mill. He is even the one to get Alex an audition at a prestigious dance school that she has been wanting to get into her entire life, but just didn't know how to get in. She casually mentions the school to him and next thing you know, she has an audition. It is very obvious in this movie that if you have money, you have power.

Teaching Film Activity

One simple activity that I use to introduce film techniques, which was mentioned in class, is to have students draw their own storyboards. I do this in conjunction with our reading of Oedipus Rex, but it could really be done with any novel or story that you are studying. When we are finished reading, we do a short unit on graphic novels where we discuss some of the different terms associated specifically with a graphic novel. Then we move into some film terms that overlap (such as shot length or angle) and have the students practice identifying these by looking through comic books- an activity that many students enjoy. After talking about angles and techniques for making an interesting comic book storyboard, the students are asked to choose a scene from Oedipus and make there own depiction of the scene using a graphic novel format. This leads directly into a film study unit where we can then begin to add more things to notice such as sound and lighting.