Our final projects are due tomorrow, and we're supposed to write a summary as our last official blog post. So here it is: for my project, I created a website called "Educational Resources for Studying Disabilities in the Media."
The web address is https://sites.google.com/site/disabilitymediastudies/
My intent was to make something that could be a resource for people teaching disability studies, or media studies, or anything in between. It's sort of a fancy annotated bibliography, in that in that I've listed a whole bunch of websites, movies, tv shows, books, and articles that might be relevant to educators, with occasional comments or suggestions about possible class activities. I linked to several existing resources on this topic on the main page, and I also included brief introductions to the concepts of disability studies, media studies, and neurodiversity; but the bulk of the site is devoted to media representations of different areas of disability. I fully acknowledge that organizing the site in that way is problematic, because it defines people in terms of disability labels (buying into the "medical model" in some ways). However, I feel that for pragmatic purposes it is the most straightforward way to initiate the site. I am completely open to the idea of rearranging it at some point in the future. Indeed, I hope that I can keep the site active, adding to it, changing it, reorganizing it as I discover new things or get suggestions from users. (I don't know if there will actually be any users, but I can always hope!) In this way I see the site as a work in progress.
In addition to presenting the site to my classmates tomorrow, I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to share it on Friday with the U of M's Interdisciplinary Graduate Group on Disability Studies, which is currently working to develop a Disability Studies graduate minor. I expect I will get lots of useful feedback from both of these audiences, so the site should get off to a dynamic start right away!
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Film Adaptations
This week's assignment is to talk about how we would integrate media adaptations into our teaching. If I were teaching a class where this type of thing was appropriate, I can imagine a couple fun projects.
#1 Shakespeare.
Shakespeare offers rich opportunities for this kind of thing because so many versions of various plays have been created. We did the classic Romeo & Juliet vs. West Side Story thing way back when I was in ninth grade. A couple similar things would be to have students watch either the Laurence Olivier or Ian McKellen version of Richard III and then watch Al Pacino's Looking for Richard. The latter is a sort of meditation on the play, including scenes from it as well as interviews with the actors about the play itself, its history, and what's involved in performing it. The students could then discuss how Looking for Richard serves as an adaptation of the play and/or as a commentary about it, and to what degree they benefited from having seen the whole play before watching Looking.
Another fun Shakespeare adaptation is a version of Macbeth called Scotland, PA, which satirically transposes the story to a fast food restaurant in 1970s Pennsylvania. Students could watch the 1948 Orson Welles version, followed by Scotland, PA. This would give them an opportunity to discuss adaptations that change the tone of the original: is it a "faithful" adaptation if it's now a comedy? Where is the line between adaptation and parody? Students could then come up with their own original take on the story: instead of a fast food restaurant in the '70s, where else could the story of Macbeth be made to work? What themes - as well as characters and plot points - are intrinsic to the story that make it so "universal"? (This type of exercise could be done with any work that's had this kind of makeover, such as Emma → Clueless, or Taming of the Shrew → 10 Things I Hate About You (or Kiss Me Kate, for that matter), though arguably the tone of those examples is not significantly altered from originals to adaptations.)
#2 Book ≠ Movie.
I find it interesting that, while I enjoy some movies because they are such faithful adaptations of their source material, I enjoy others despite (or because?) they are distinctly different from whatever book they're based on. For example, the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is notorious for its dedicated in its attention to detail. In contrast, this year's Where the Wild Things Are is equally famous for being a 101-minute movie based on a book that's only 48 pages long (and mostly pictures). Other examples of adaptations that turned out quite different from their source books while still being arguably "good" are Wicked (the musical is based on the book) and Jurassic Park (movie based on book). Watching and reading these pairs of works will give students the opportunity to discuss (similar to the first activity) what makes a "good" adaptation; and what themes, characters, plot points were kept or changed from one version to the other and (perhaps most importantly) why. They could also do an activity where they have to adapt a book they have read into a less-than-two-hour movie: what elements do they think would be crucial to keep? What would they change? Would they rather do a page-to-screen transfer a la Harry Potter or a more abstract interpretation like Wild Things, and why?
#1 Shakespeare.
Shakespeare offers rich opportunities for this kind of thing because so many versions of various plays have been created. We did the classic Romeo & Juliet vs. West Side Story thing way back when I was in ninth grade. A couple similar things would be to have students watch either the Laurence Olivier or Ian McKellen version of Richard III and then watch Al Pacino's Looking for Richard. The latter is a sort of meditation on the play, including scenes from it as well as interviews with the actors about the play itself, its history, and what's involved in performing it. The students could then discuss how Looking for Richard serves as an adaptation of the play and/or as a commentary about it, and to what degree they benefited from having seen the whole play before watching Looking.
Another fun Shakespeare adaptation is a version of Macbeth called Scotland, PA, which satirically transposes the story to a fast food restaurant in 1970s Pennsylvania. Students could watch the 1948 Orson Welles version, followed by Scotland, PA. This would give them an opportunity to discuss adaptations that change the tone of the original: is it a "faithful" adaptation if it's now a comedy? Where is the line between adaptation and parody? Students could then come up with their own original take on the story: instead of a fast food restaurant in the '70s, where else could the story of Macbeth be made to work? What themes - as well as characters and plot points - are intrinsic to the story that make it so "universal"? (This type of exercise could be done with any work that's had this kind of makeover, such as Emma → Clueless, or Taming of the Shrew → 10 Things I Hate About You (or Kiss Me Kate, for that matter), though arguably the tone of those examples is not significantly altered from originals to adaptations.)
#2 Book ≠ Movie.
I find it interesting that, while I enjoy some movies because they are such faithful adaptations of their source material, I enjoy others despite (or because?) they are distinctly different from whatever book they're based on. For example, the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is notorious for its dedicated in its attention to detail. In contrast, this year's Where the Wild Things Are is equally famous for being a 101-minute movie based on a book that's only 48 pages long (and mostly pictures). Other examples of adaptations that turned out quite different from their source books while still being arguably "good" are Wicked (the musical is based on the book) and Jurassic Park (movie based on book). Watching and reading these pairs of works will give students the opportunity to discuss (similar to the first activity) what makes a "good" adaptation; and what themes, characters, plot points were kept or changed from one version to the other and (perhaps most importantly) why. They could also do an activity where they have to adapt a book they have read into a less-than-two-hour movie: what elements do they think would be crucial to keep? What would they change? Would they rather do a page-to-screen transfer a la Harry Potter or a more abstract interpretation like Wild Things, and why?
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Disaster Movie Addendum
A friend just forwarded this link to a hilarious montage of destruction called "Hollywood vs. New York." I like the way it uses the soundtrack for dramatic pacing and extra touches of humor.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Documentary analysis
The assignment for the week of Nov 19 was to analyze a documentary. I was away at a conference, which is why I'm just doing the assignment now.
I decided to watch the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, directed by Alex Gibney and written by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (based on their book). I've been wanting to see this movie for a while, so our assignment provided a good excuse. The movie tells the story of the rise and fall of Enron, once the seventh-largest company in the US, which declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001.
The film was awarded Best Documentary Feature at the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards and was nominated for an Oscar as well. I can see why: it is lively and engaging, and is structured as a compelling story with plenty of greed, tragedy, hubris, and even strippers.
One of the stylistic things that I think worked both for and against this movie is its use of supporting visuals. For example, when an interviewee talks about how Enron was gambling away all of its money, the film shows footage of dice rolling, or a roulette wheel spinning. This was mostly a harmless technique that prevented the movie from becoming just a string of talking heads, but I thought it was taken a little too far with extensive video of BMX bike racing (played over a discussion of how Jeff Skilling liked to take colleagues on adventure vacations); and quite explicit images of strippers accompanying the explanation of how Enron Energy Services CEO Lou Pai enjoyed strip clubs and eventually divorced his wife to marry his stripper girlfriend. I personally thought the story was plenty sordid without having to actually watch several minutes of topless pole dancing, but perhaps the filmmaker took the idea of "making finance sexy" a little too literally...
One of the main things that struck me while watching this was that, as much of a punchline as Enron became, and as much as everyone came to understand about the rampant greed and fraud and permissiveness that allowed it to do what it did, nevertheless two years after this movie came out we had our gigantic financial system collapse based on some of the very same issues. As Sherron Watkins put it (she was a vice president at Enron who was arguably the main whistleblower for the case), "It's all about the rationalization that you're not doing anything wrong." That kind of rationalization was rampant throughout the mortgage industry (and the investment industries precariously based on it) leading up to the fall of 2008, including deregulation, short-sightedness, manufactured demand, black-box accounting, and any number of other parallels with the energy industry at the time of Enron. And yet, apparently, nobody in a position to do anything about it actually learned from Enron. I guess they figured (if they thought about it at all) it was somehow an isolated case. And the people who did want to learn from it weren't the ones in a position to make any widespread changes.
It's all pretty disheartening, unfortunately.
Back to analyzing the movie: overall I think the filmmakers did an excellent job of interweaving interviews, news footage, archival photos, and limited narration to piece together the story of how everything that happened, happened. They make no pretense of being "even-handed": they show footage of people like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling giving congressional depositions, but they do not interview them separately for the film and it is clear that from the perspective of the film, they are mostly lying. I think this approach makes perfect sense, though, since by the time the movie came out there had already been various criminal convictions for fraud, conspiracy, etc., so bending over backwards to represent more of their side of the story would have seemed disingenuous.
I thought some of the most interesting material was about the corporate culture of Enron, how it was extremely aggressive and competitive (at least for a while, they had a policy of firing the "worst" 10-15% of their employees per year, just to foster a competitive atmosphere). The other really foundational thing that most amazed me was the concept of mark-to-market accounting, wherein (if I understood correctly) the company could base its financial statements on the profit it expected to make on some idea or endeavor, and completely disregard any actual performance. On the one hand this is astonishing to me, and on the other, it again reminds me of the recent mortgage crisis, partly based as it was on things like No Income No Asset mortgages...
Overall I would definitely recommend the movie, as an educational and enlightening view of how Wall Street can work, and as a reminder that our country's current situation is absolutely nothing new. By the end, I came to realize that the title is meant at least half-ironically: while Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, et al. were indeed very smart, and knew it, and people like Lou Pai got away with hundreds of millions of dollars, this "smartness" led to the perpetration of elaborate frauds and the ruination of thousands of people's pensions, savings, careers, and even lives. The movie is bookended with discussions of Enron executive Cliff Baxter, who committed suicide in January 2002.
-----------------------------------------------------------
We're also supposed to develop a short activity for students about documentaries. I would encourage students to choose some recent event at their school and propose two different documentaries about it, told from two different perspectives. For example, a change in lunch prices could be portrayed entirely from the perspective of disgruntled students (a protest against unfair charges), from the perspective of harried lunch workers (a protest against unfair student complaints), from the perspective of heroic administrators (a positive story on how the school is working to raise more money for its programs), or a more complex fact-finding news story (with various perspectives given essentially equal weight, and pro and con opinions voiced by each demographic). By considering how they would structure each "version" of their documentary, students would get a sense of how storytelling and editing play a role in documentary filmmaking, and how as filmmakers they have choices to make about what kind of story they are going to tell.
I decided to watch the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, directed by Alex Gibney and written by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (based on their book). I've been wanting to see this movie for a while, so our assignment provided a good excuse. The movie tells the story of the rise and fall of Enron, once the seventh-largest company in the US, which declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001.
The film was awarded Best Documentary Feature at the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards and was nominated for an Oscar as well. I can see why: it is lively and engaging, and is structured as a compelling story with plenty of greed, tragedy, hubris, and even strippers.One of the stylistic things that I think worked both for and against this movie is its use of supporting visuals. For example, when an interviewee talks about how Enron was gambling away all of its money, the film shows footage of dice rolling, or a roulette wheel spinning. This was mostly a harmless technique that prevented the movie from becoming just a string of talking heads, but I thought it was taken a little too far with extensive video of BMX bike racing (played over a discussion of how Jeff Skilling liked to take colleagues on adventure vacations); and quite explicit images of strippers accompanying the explanation of how Enron Energy Services CEO Lou Pai enjoyed strip clubs and eventually divorced his wife to marry his stripper girlfriend. I personally thought the story was plenty sordid without having to actually watch several minutes of topless pole dancing, but perhaps the filmmaker took the idea of "making finance sexy" a little too literally...
One of the main things that struck me while watching this was that, as much of a punchline as Enron became, and as much as everyone came to understand about the rampant greed and fraud and permissiveness that allowed it to do what it did, nevertheless two years after this movie came out we had our gigantic financial system collapse based on some of the very same issues. As Sherron Watkins put it (she was a vice president at Enron who was arguably the main whistleblower for the case), "It's all about the rationalization that you're not doing anything wrong." That kind of rationalization was rampant throughout the mortgage industry (and the investment industries precariously based on it) leading up to the fall of 2008, including deregulation, short-sightedness, manufactured demand, black-box accounting, and any number of other parallels with the energy industry at the time of Enron. And yet, apparently, nobody in a position to do anything about it actually learned from Enron. I guess they figured (if they thought about it at all) it was somehow an isolated case. And the people who did want to learn from it weren't the ones in a position to make any widespread changes.
It's all pretty disheartening, unfortunately.
Back to analyzing the movie: overall I think the filmmakers did an excellent job of interweaving interviews, news footage, archival photos, and limited narration to piece together the story of how everything that happened, happened. They make no pretense of being "even-handed": they show footage of people like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling giving congressional depositions, but they do not interview them separately for the film and it is clear that from the perspective of the film, they are mostly lying. I think this approach makes perfect sense, though, since by the time the movie came out there had already been various criminal convictions for fraud, conspiracy, etc., so bending over backwards to represent more of their side of the story would have seemed disingenuous.
I thought some of the most interesting material was about the corporate culture of Enron, how it was extremely aggressive and competitive (at least for a while, they had a policy of firing the "worst" 10-15% of their employees per year, just to foster a competitive atmosphere). The other really foundational thing that most amazed me was the concept of mark-to-market accounting, wherein (if I understood correctly) the company could base its financial statements on the profit it expected to make on some idea or endeavor, and completely disregard any actual performance. On the one hand this is astonishing to me, and on the other, it again reminds me of the recent mortgage crisis, partly based as it was on things like No Income No Asset mortgages...
Overall I would definitely recommend the movie, as an educational and enlightening view of how Wall Street can work, and as a reminder that our country's current situation is absolutely nothing new. By the end, I came to realize that the title is meant at least half-ironically: while Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, et al. were indeed very smart, and knew it, and people like Lou Pai got away with hundreds of millions of dollars, this "smartness" led to the perpetration of elaborate frauds and the ruination of thousands of people's pensions, savings, careers, and even lives. The movie is bookended with discussions of Enron executive Cliff Baxter, who committed suicide in January 2002.
-----------------------------------------------------------
We're also supposed to develop a short activity for students about documentaries. I would encourage students to choose some recent event at their school and propose two different documentaries about it, told from two different perspectives. For example, a change in lunch prices could be portrayed entirely from the perspective of disgruntled students (a protest against unfair charges), from the perspective of harried lunch workers (a protest against unfair student complaints), from the perspective of heroic administrators (a positive story on how the school is working to raise more money for its programs), or a more complex fact-finding news story (with various perspectives given essentially equal weight, and pro and con opinions voiced by each demographic). By considering how they would structure each "version" of their documentary, students would get a sense of how storytelling and editing play a role in documentary filmmaking, and how as filmmakers they have choices to make about what kind of story they are going to tell.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Advertising Analysis
Our assignment this week had several parts: first we were to pick a specific type of advertising to analyze; then we were to create our own example of that type of ad (either a true example or a parody); and finally we were to develop a class activity for teaching about a TV or magazine ad.
Part 1: Analysis
I decided that it would be fun to analyze movie one-sheets (advertising posters), but I quickly realized that I had to drastically narrow the topic in order to do anything coherent. So, having been annoyed by recent advertising for the movie 2012, I decided to look specifically at one-sheets advertising end-of-the-world disaster movies. Here's my VoiceThread analysis:
Part 2: Example
Of course I had to do a parody here. I used GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program), which looks to be much more powerful than I have time for at the moment, but served my purpose anyway. I made a poster for a movie, trying to include several of the elements I discussed in my VoiceThread: blue color scheme, vertical compositional elements, a tag line, and familiar landmarks being destroyed. And Sir John Gielgud was just the least likely action star I could think of at the moment...
Part 3: Activity
For this activity I would have students choose some product that they like: a video game system, a type of food or drink, a clothing brand, etc. I would have them search for as many ads as they could find in a short time (10-15 minutes), including any medium. Once they have a collection of ads for their product, I would tell the students to analyze the messages of the ads. For example: Who seems to be the target audience for the ads? What values are the ads portraying? What do the ads promise to people who buy the product? Finally, I would have students think about why they like this product, and what relationship (if any) their liking has to the product's advertising campaign. Does analyzing the underlying messages of the advertisement change their opinion of the product at all?
Part 1: Analysis
I decided that it would be fun to analyze movie one-sheets (advertising posters), but I quickly realized that I had to drastically narrow the topic in order to do anything coherent. So, having been annoyed by recent advertising for the movie 2012, I decided to look specifically at one-sheets advertising end-of-the-world disaster movies. Here's my VoiceThread analysis:
Part 2: Example
Of course I had to do a parody here. I used GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program), which looks to be much more powerful than I have time for at the moment, but served my purpose anyway. I made a poster for a movie, trying to include several of the elements I discussed in my VoiceThread: blue color scheme, vertical compositional elements, a tag line, and familiar landmarks being destroyed. And Sir John Gielgud was just the least likely action star I could think of at the moment...
Part 3: Activity
For this activity I would have students choose some product that they like: a video game system, a type of food or drink, a clothing brand, etc. I would have them search for as many ads as they could find in a short time (10-15 minutes), including any medium. Once they have a collection of ads for their product, I would tell the students to analyze the messages of the ads. For example: Who seems to be the target audience for the ads? What values are the ads portraying? What do the ads promise to people who buy the product? Finally, I would have students think about why they like this product, and what relationship (if any) their liking has to the product's advertising campaign. Does analyzing the underlying messages of the advertisement change their opinion of the product at all?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Genre Analysis: Horror
This week's assignment was to work in pairs putting together a presentation about one genre. My partner and I chose to talk about horror films: here's our presentation. The assignment was to discuss themes, typical roles, settings, value assumptions, etc. We came up with a number of sub-categories within the horror genre, including teenage slasher, horror-comedy, and torture porn... It was interesting to think about some of the recurring themes and values that crop up across these movies; for example, the good-verus-evil dichotomy, and the idea that the characters somehow cause their own problems...
The other part of our assignment was to develop an activity to teach about an example of a film or TV genre. Here are the instructions for my suggested activity:
Pick a genre that you do not usually like or watch for your analysis. Interview some of your fellow students and read online reviews to find out what fans of this genre like about it, common themes, etc. Based on this information, choose two examples of the genre to watch (two different films or episodes of two different TV shows) and write a review that includes discussions of the following topics (your review may be submitted in writing or as a video blog):
- why you do not or did not like this genre.
- why fans of this genre do like it.
- common themes found in this genre, including typical characters, settings, values, etc.
- how the two examples you watched were or were not representative of the genre, including brief synopses.
- whether watching examples of the genre did or did not change your opinions about it, and why.
The other part of our assignment was to develop an activity to teach about an example of a film or TV genre. Here are the instructions for my suggested activity:
Pick a genre that you do not usually like or watch for your analysis. Interview some of your fellow students and read online reviews to find out what fans of this genre like about it, common themes, etc. Based on this information, choose two examples of the genre to watch (two different films or episodes of two different TV shows) and write a review that includes discussions of the following topics (your review may be submitted in writing or as a video blog):
- why you do not or did not like this genre.
- why fans of this genre do like it.
- common themes found in this genre, including typical characters, settings, values, etc.
- how the two examples you watched were or were not representative of the genre, including brief synopses.
- whether watching examples of the genre did or did not change your opinions about it, and why.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Activity for teaching film
Our assignment this week was to create a short activity for teaching film. There's a class wiki where students in previous semesters have posted their ideas; it also has a bunch of useful external links, such as a New York Magazine article on becoming screen literate. So, here's my contribution:
Activity for Teaching Film: What makes a good movie?
Instructions for student groups: Pick a year and find out the five films that earned the most at the box office that year, as well as the films that were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. For example, in 2008 the top five earning films were The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hancock, and WALL-E. The five Best Picture nominees were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire.
Discuss the similarities and differences among these films. Features to discuss include budget, use of special effects, cast, director, genre, length, marketing (both for the original release and for the Oscar competition), and any other factors you can think of. If you choose a year that is not very recent, discuss which of the films you have seen or heard of – does either award nomination or box office success seem to predict longevity? What criteria do you think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are using to select nominees? What criteria do you think determine the financial success of a film? Why do you think various criteria do and don’t overlap in the two categories? What are your personal criteria for a “good” movie?
Activity for Teaching Film: What makes a good movie?
Instructions for student groups: Pick a year and find out the five films that earned the most at the box office that year, as well as the films that were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. For example, in 2008 the top five earning films were The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hancock, and WALL-E. The five Best Picture nominees were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire.
Discuss the similarities and differences among these films. Features to discuss include budget, use of special effects, cast, director, genre, length, marketing (both for the original release and for the Oscar competition), and any other factors you can think of. If you choose a year that is not very recent, discuss which of the films you have seen or heard of – does either award nomination or box office success seem to predict longevity? What criteria do you think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are using to select nominees? What criteria do you think determine the financial success of a film? Why do you think various criteria do and don’t overlap in the two categories? What are your personal criteria for a “good” movie?
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