Speed Racer Response - Rigged

When I examine the moral integrity of artwork, I must also give considerable effort into mirroring the views of that artwork with the method of its creator, particularly when considering art that questions or criticizes extant power structures. The Wachowskis deal often with themes of government control, social and philosophical identity, best described as in the spirit of anarchy. While on the surface a diatribe of consumerism and the power of money over fairness, the Wachowski's Speed Racer through its stylized action and marketing strategy achieves in essence the opposite desired effect.

First off, the movie's lofty goals to adapt an anime for a family market while lambasting garish commercialism is undercut by its myopic production design and editing. Hoping to place itself in a universal narrative space unencumbered by objective spatial placement, the film frequently relies on linear camera movement (either through parallax or whip-pans) to transitioning between character and space. Only achievable through egregious use of green screen and computer-generated special effects, it calls into the question where Warner Bros. and their enormous post-production team would fit in to the efficient Racer family business. Children learn best by example and all sense of moral direction--hell, even all sense of racing direction--is lost between one millisecond-long hallucinatory edit and the next. Many viewers also found the epileptic over-editing irksome, proving that bespectacled macro-budget blockbusters are not always a sure fire way to win layparents and their kids.

When it bombed over the summer, Warner Bros. were sure to recoup their loss through merchandising, which I find curiously hypocritical. Not unlike Arnold Royalton's nefarious plot ensure that he will always win in the end, number six with a bullet American mega-corporation is using bright, attention-grabbing knick-knackery to bring kids back to the theatre again and again, of course only attainable through astronomically wide integration. In the words of Royalton himself, Warner Bros. embraces what racing (at least in the filmmaking sector) is all about: "it has nothing to do with cars or drivers, all that matters is power and the unassailable might of money." Somewhere on the back burner, Warner Bros. knew that they would win; it had already been decided.

Though quite unique and extraordinary for its post-productive play with space and identity, Speed Racer begs the question of how redemptive a studio can be without tipping its own scales. Where industrious creativity abound, so also does hypocrisy in this magnanimous CGI movie that attempts to criticize the types of huge corporations that rig the game, ultimately swaying children with bioluminescent lures instead of genuine persuasion.

The Days of Thy Youth - Hook Response

A certain Bible scripture is etched into my mind on the constant. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment" (Eccl. 11:9). This phrase, "days of youth" is used in a diversity of Biblical subtexts, with a negative connotation and a positive spin. In this case, the days of youth are a period of self-discovery, but within other verses the days of the youth are referred to regretfully: "she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt" (Ezek. 23:19). I've come to reconcile the contradiction in these two verses as stemming from the prophetic perspective, when the former represents the importance of finding self during one's younger years, while the former condemns untimely returning to life without authority or responsibility reserved for children.

Steven Spielberg's film Hook, I think offered me a unique spin on that idea. Nostalgia can be great source of inspiration but it can also cause crippling regret. Robin Williams' character Peter, who is ostensibly the titular Peter Pan, once returned to an all-consuming occupation, when he has no time to think for himself or his family. His plight seems to be the exact inverse of the harlot in Ezekiel's passage. Peter Pan is not a grown man seeking respite in the juvenile, he is a youth in arrested development, seeking escape with a structured lifestyle. Peter, who has grown to value foresight and security over passion and spontaneity, bans nostalgia away from his mind to such incredible destructive extremes, he has even forgot the type of person he was. Ultimately, through rescuing his family from the villainous Captain Hook, he learns how to properly retain his spontaneous, adventurous spirit as a fully-mature, responsible father.

The Lost Boys have become a symbol for disenfranchised youth: orphans, victims of abuse, misguided, rebellious, and free-spirited teenagers, and the light of Peter Pan's transformation, they too learn to grow up. Once stagnant and decaying for decades of mere reflection on the salad days of Peter's Pan's youthful prosperity, the Lost Boys are forced to adapt to present dangers. As Peter understands his purpose as an adult through reliving his youth, his old, young friends understand their place as kids through learning to prepare for the future. In this regard, Hook seems to play out more for adults than it does for children, the bulk of its heavy existential themes going undetected in a theme park-like fantasy world.

As I reflect on my own days of youth, I can't help but feel that they were squandered worrying about my place in the future. Now, I am experience the complete flip-side of that as a near the edge of my academic pursuits, longing for a simpler time when I could take more dramatic risks. Nostalgia may be a safe method of escape, even a tool to gain perspective on the present. Habitual nostalgism may leave one debilitated, with arms outstretched backward or forward to brighter days.

Choose Your Own Absurdity - Space and Beyond Reading

Space and Beyond was my selection for a choose-your-own-adventure novel, a decision that I began to regret in retrospect because the further I read into it, the more I grew a dislike for its very unplayful imagination. For a book which seems to get its intrigue from the endless possibilities of the final frontier is from front to back a bucket of cliche platitudes and half-baked pseudo-scientific philosophies. Like many choose your own adventure books, it features me, as a space voyager grown to the age of adulthood within a matter of hours due to interstellar gravitation. I am presented with my first choice to follow after my father and visit his home planet doomed to destruction, or my mother's troubled planet, but this is only the first of many diverse choices leading to -- given the setting -- infinite possibilities. Here in the lies the main problem with the narrative: the scope of the possibilities completely spoils the results. The inability to properly and summarily express the interesting nuances of each pocket of the universe and present them in a cause-and-effect narrative way that children would understand makes the story fall flat and uninteresting.

Among the final results of this book is a choice to travel to an unknown period in time is this vague, heady sort of hippie-esque bromide: "When you arrive on Mars, you are invisible and can travel through space, through solid matter, and even into the thoughts of people. What is the cause of revolt on Mars? Who knows. Greed? Famine? Envy? Jealousy? Maybe just an instinctive need to battle, a basic drive to test and fight for the sheer sense of fighting. It's too complex. Everyone has a different answer." The incessant level of questioning to the reader seems to pass off all responsibility of the author to incite our imaginations; it isn't playful. If the nature of play is a call-and-return, then R.A. Montgomery has gone post-play, expecting the reader to fill in every blank, and every plot-hole. Or perhaps, like too many other choose-your-own-adventure authors, he's not expecting the reader to read at all.

The Brobdingnagian scale of the narrative lends no literary justice to the setting and conflict, and particularly its relation to the reader. The use of second-person storytelling rarely gives proper respect to the presentation of facts to the spectator. Too rarely forgotten is the nature of storytelling, which requires an engagement with the storyteller, but since the opinion's of the author are reserved, or inserted into the spectator's conscience, we lose all sense of personal cognition. It's like listening to someone cascade blame upon you, saying "you did this, you do this!" and being complicit in the events that take place. As we soar deeper into the beyond, our relation to previous events, places and people are made completely meaningless. For instance, between a choice of joining ground combat or air combat with an alien force, you accelerate through an epilogue into existential crisis. "You think to yourself, is this any kind of life, forever destroying things? Maybe you will quit. The end." Children gain knowledge and motivate themselves for linear scholastic endeavors with circular or unstructured playtime, but without any relation to reality, there is no perspective to reel themselves in and out of real life and fictional adventure.

If any fault is to be had with this narrative, it is the intense workload with which Montgomery had tasked himself in 2005. He wrote some 15 books during this period, and at practically 70 years old. Less than a month was spent on developing these stories, so it's no surprise that this particular stories was published practically the way it was written in stream of consciousness absurdity.

Whale Rider Response - Queens without Kings

Whale Rider is a gripping film that not only showcases a beautiful third-world culture with incredible reverence and integrity, it also boldly bears the message that all have the strength to lead, regardless of gender. Diversity is an important concept to see in the media, because it opens the mind to new paradigms, and the heart to more friends. This concept is especially important in children's media, because the earlier the awakening to a world of different-minded people, the more amicable children are likely to be to others.

The story follows a girl named Pai, who believes herself to be the heir of the tribal chief. Her grandfather is upset with her because she embarrasses him by parading as if she had authority, but of course, she is a girl, and cannot rule. Pai is smart and recalcitrant, and she refuses to back down from his reluctance and abuse. Her marginalization in the community as a weakened girl with delusional fantasies helps highlight a very simple and easily relatable problem which children have likely felt being both the bully and the bullied. Her eminent leadership is not apparent to the audience either which causes the audience to question the legitimacy of her claims. I can recall from personal experience a situation contrived much like in the narrative, when a much more self-centered Andy would tell a competitor for Student Activities President that she was a girl and could never win against me. On the flip side, I could recall a time when I was told by peers that I couldn't commiserate with them because I was just a rich kid, when I never had been.

In the film, we dance on the polarity of prejudice and diversity. The notion that women are not qualified to lead a nation is based entirely in prejudice and tradition, and the error of the island ways is so gruelingly apparent, it makes us question the inequity of the real world around us. It also demands a great deal of mature attention and compassion from children who have the mental capacity to carry the essentialism that diversity is good and rules are meant to broken, because it's not overwrought or cheesy by clearly marking the error of Koro's traditions with Pai's innate righthood. The director, much like Kristin Adnerson would remark towards our Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, "hers is a narrative infused with disbelief, irony and rage both at those who perpetuate fundamentalism." Diverse perspectives is also the antidote to prejudice.

Whale Rider is an exemplary film in showing diversity. Not only does the film present a fair depiction of the struggles of women in Maori civilization, it is done so by a Maori woman with a personal knowledge of said struggles. This makes the film that much more valuable to young viewers because it is poignant, heart-opening, and authentic.

Games Response - Play Teams

One interesting aspect of play that I've been keen to and that I got to see in action last Tuesday is the concept of play invitation. When I get older, I realized that my approach to inviting others to play with me got so much more timid. Children are generally more open to try new things, most likely because they have solipsistic tendencies until their brains unlock the ability understand philosophical realism, where everyone knows, does, and thinks different things. These, I suppose, I can consider concrete roadblocks to social interaction. All other tendencies that can be learned and un-learned I would call psychological roadblocks. With no attempt to deny that infinite variance of others, I will attempt to identify two psychological roadblocks of my own that have crept into my social engagement.

The first would probably be my tendency to harshly criticize, and the projected fear that I would be equally severely criticized. I would even venture to say that the most serious obstacle in showcasing my art is the fear that I might cause myself to be ridiculed in public. The optimist in me would point out that I usually fare well in theater, music, movies, and public speaking; I therefore could not confidently call it "stage fright." "Backstage fright" would be more accurate. That would encapsulate my anxiousness before debut and after curtain call. I do this knowing full well that beneath their obligatory applause may rest a feeling of disgust, embarrassment, or confusion. Known just as well is my own predisposition to hate, and my 25-year battle trying not to see the bad in everything.

The other boils down to laziness. For me, doing nothing is something to do. Even talking to someone in my own little corner of the world would be doing something. I like to keep to myself often, reflecting on my own thoughts unencumbered by tiresome dissent. I frequently withdraw from sharing media with friends for fear that its admired qualities will spread, and I no longer have exclusive rights to something that makes me feel innately superior.

These are both crushing obstacles to creative collaboration. As children, our innocence, and the fact that we have no financial risk, means we can explore ideas with friends for fun, and without the temptation to get all entrepreneurial. At least, for leisure, I hit those psychological roadblocks. As I do look forward to having children one day, I hope to prevent these roadblocks from building themselves. The constant pressure from my parents to "keep up appearances," and to "honor the family name," hindered my confidence to embrace my most creative tendencies. I believe that children with developed talents and unstructured playtime excel, and I would never wish to deprive that of my children.

Film Analysis - Jumanji

I actually never saw Jumanji as a kid. I first saw it some two years ago at one of the first Family Home Evenings I had when moving to Provo. Full of some heavy subject matter within the first 30 minutes, loss of a friend, death of parents, economic devastation, it really sends the mind racing. I thought it was rather scary for a children's movie, but imaginative nonetheless, expounding on some difficult themes like grief and denial after the loss/death of a close friend, and the error in avoiding "dangerous" past-times. I couldn't help but think of the film as a hardly-cautionary tale of Ouija boards.

In a small town in New Hampshire, Alan Parrish and his best friend Sarah Whittle escape the embarrassment of getting their friend laid off from the Parrish factory by playing a mysterious game that they excavated from god-knows when. When Alan is sucked into the game, Sarah runs away, leaving Alan stuck inside for 26 years. A new set of children discover the game when dealing with much more sever grief, and release Alan. Together they finish the game, surviving the raucous ordeal of wild, jungle-dwelling predators, and eventually undoing all of the horrors that occurred to them when they were younger.

Sadly underplayed is Sarah's denial over the disappearance of her greatest childhood friend. The game explicitly states to the player, "Do not play unless you intend to finish," but her fear over the power of the game pushes her away, even to the extent of helping her friend. A profound apology over her friend - and her own - lost youth brings them back together. Jumanji almost act a symbol for the grieving process itself, and the damage of stagnation in the first stage: denial and isolation. The invitation of the game itself as a "way to leave the world behind," is so poetically deceptive. It acts a specter of evil promising transcendent imagination, but only offering debilitating escapism.

The intrigue of the game can be likened to my own experience fooling around with Ouija boards as teenager. While I never found anything particularly extraordinary with my experience playing with the board, the mechanics of Jumanji resemble the mystery of Ouija, such as the way it "moves on its own, " and plays out riddles according the roller's personal situation. At least in Ouija, this is purely circumstantial, because the player simply draws from his own anxieties to mislead other players. In Jumanji, its riddles, the most difficult of which is the re-appearance of Alan's deceased father to hunt and kill him, aim to prey on the fears and stunted growth of the protagonists. Jumanji deceptively imagines a cruel, merciless world as the idiomatic "jungle out there," despite the endearing friendships that get us through it.

It's sort of a shame that I didn't see this movie when I was younger. Ouijas never really did me wrong, but it certainly spooked a lot of my friends, an experience which may have been rich in imaginative lies, but unkind to the health of my own friends. I suppose maybe we don't need board games to love our time with friends. We just need our own minds, and our own imagination.

Book Analysis - Sideways Stories from Wayside School

I loved reading anthologies as a child, and particularly those written by Louis Sachar. He had such a unique and child-like view of education, and I think connected with me especially because my own elementary education was a stiflingly uncreative experience. I learned imagination from suppression during my 2nd-5th grade years. I attended Bradoaks Elementary, a school all the way across town from my own because my mother believed it to be a much better school than the one a block away from our house. The test scores were better. I had no friends there, and my principal forbade playing on the grass, talking at lunch-time, and Pokemon Cards. But the test scores, c'mon! I think I figured out, when I talked to my other friends from other schools that my education was different, if not backwards, maybe a little sideways.

One aspect of the book that invites a positive sort of experimentation is the perspective in which its vignettes are presented. Each chapter is told through the eyes of a student in the class, and in such a uniquely different way They each have their own strange backgrounds, and their own peculiar views about life because of their education. In one chapter for instance, Bebe draws 378 pictures because she is proud of how fast she can draw. Here teacher tells her that its quality, not quantity that matters when it comes to art. She remarks that when she goes home to work on her new art project, she probably won't be started on it. The humor in the sketch - apparent to me at the time - was that the teacher's advice is not even a completely correct view of art. Of course being prolific is an admirable quality of an artist. It ultimately teaches - through experimentation and a non-binary assessment of art - that art is a synthesis of quality and quantity, presumably because quantity improves quality through practice.

Another story involving Paul and his habit of pulling Lesli's pigtails, examines punishment with a though-provoking idea. Paul, after being told he would get two warnings before getting sent home realizes he would pull each pigtail with impunity. Seemingly justifying Paul's violent tendencies, his nefarious plot to torment Leslie with two tugs a day forever is cut dramatically short when Leslie fakes getting her hair pulled so Paul would go home. This experimentation show to children that punishment doesn't always come through authority but by natural consequences, in this case, people not liking him. In the book's sequel Wayside School Is Falling Down, a certain narrative subverts our expectations in a fun way. Calvin, excited about getting a tattoo for his birthday, can't decide what to get, and for the whole chapter we are held in suspense. At the end, we learned he got a tattoo of a potato. The ending is so abrupt, so trite, and so matter-of-fact, it hilariously begs the question of both "why get a tattoo?" and "what difference does it make?"

These absurdities greatly inspire children to do things themselves. At times didactic, these narratives encourage children to consider the experiences and beliefs of others, and to challenge the world that surrounds them. For me, I figured out how to balance academia and skepticism, because my elementary school leadership was so infuriatingly authoritarian. I don't think I would be half as recalcitrant or imaginative had my childhood education not been so abundantly inspired by literature instead of adults.

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T Response - Childsploitation

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T is fascinating because it appears to condemn paternalism in theme, but relies on the fine-tuned performance of children doing the bidding of adults to convey it. Notable for being the only full-length screenplay written by beloved children's poet Dr. Seuss, it is about a boy named Bart who is forced to take piano lessons from an unpleasant and overly-entrepreneurial piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker. The boy seems to express no genuine interest for playing the piano, but because of Terwilliker's predatory and fascistic personality, his mother would never be able to detect it. I personally loved this movie because I saw it as a post-modern allegory for parental consignment and wage slavery.

Perhaps I connected with this movie as many middle class children did because my parents felt that learning piano was in my best interest. Though, I never asked to try it, and my intrigue towards the instrument was merely percussive ennui. The consequent listlessness also inhibited me from accurately expressing my true interests, and I was taken away to equally boring piano lessons. So, I understand Bart's plight. But Bart's plight is a universal one, for even in his fantasies and nightmares, Dr. Terwilliker, who can be likened to monolithic enterprises who offer basic living amenities for their cooperation. He torments Bart with industry and authoritarianism, for his own personal gain and ego; Bart is learning about wage slavery.

Youthinks me overdramatic, and perhaps I am, but either way, this story is also about growing up, and figuring out your own interests. Without my mother coercing me into learning piano, I likely would have never discovered the fun in composing music. Piano certainly wasn't my instrument, but it paved the way for me to learn other instruments, and gave a pathway for me to pursue my favorite hobby as a child, poetry (since we all know that no one ever makes a living as a poet). Imagination begins by planting ideas, and it's parents that plant those seeds because children do not know how. Issues arise however, when parents will nurture those talents and hobbies for the child. The child will even connect with these pursuits in their subconscious, vociferating in their sleep, acting on awakened impulses, as does Nemo in his adventures in Slumberland.

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T is a finely crafted movie about the pursuit of adolescent. It is unkind to authority, but encourages a mutual discussion between passionate children and compassionate parents. Happy children are busy children, especially those who use their youth for self-discovering hobbies.

God Bless the Child Response - The Shadow of the Olive Tree

Watching this film at home, I reflected often on my own experience being evicted, and struggling to maintain my school enrollment with a morsel of dignity. Although I was grown enough to fend for myself, my now-wife and I scrambled with busy school and work schedules to find a home willing to accept us despite all of the blacklists we have been placed on since our eviction. Not long after being expelled from our houses on short notice, I was laid off from my job, and my car stopped working. Amy and I felt helpless and debilitated by the one institution that we thought was there for us to redeem us when we fell. In our darkest hour, I would write:

Expectant mothers on the street cast from the synagogue,
Jobless fathers on their knees, repentance cumbersome
Their laws breed lifelong rats, these godless bureaucrats
I hope they know responsibility; where is the Honor in that!?

My wife would write in this time of trouble as well:

The windshield weeps in the shadow of the olive tree
And while we wander in search of refuge
The raindrops appear as His blood.

Though written separately, the pain apparent in these bleeding, angst-ridden notebooks was that of faith in crisis. Though we loved our families, and though we loved our friends, and though we came to accept their hypocrisies as a beautiful profundity in the realm of religion, we could not reconcile our belief in divine inspiration - or even mercy - with the draconian methods the Church and its programs took to deprive us of our lifelines despite the reason for our punishment being substantiated by mere rumor. Surely, God will convey our innocence to the right people, we prayed. God save us. But our prayers were unanswered. We were forced to evacuate the premises in three days, with no place to go.

At the time of our eviction, it was the middle of winter semester and the height of the return-missionary influx, and we couldn't find anything. We squatted our first night in Amy's cousin's empty apartment before his roommates had moved in. Although we were not sick or in extreme poverty, we were given no help or support by Amy's staunchly Mormon family. We had nothing but each other, and good friends. I don't believe it would be right of me to suggest that God abandoned us, but from this experience, I've come to understand an idea that resembles deism: laissez faire divinity. God Bless the Child would have us believe that siblings are there to care for each other. I would have to agree with this sentiment, emphasizing its eternal significance. As spiritual brothers and sisters, it is our duty to care for one another, even when God - or he who is meant to represent him - is not dependable.

Film Analysis - High School (1968)

Once again, as a student at the cusp of college graduation, I often compare what I remembering knowing from high school on what I learned in supplementary courses, and I can't say that it has been all that much scholastically. The majority of what I learned in school was based in my own capability. How much work can I handle? How long can I put this off? What is the best way to structure my problems so that I can sort them out in a timely manner? I would probably argue that the finals years in high school were formative in a similar way. The monotony of a daily routine was educative if not for the social exercise that it gave me. Frederick Wiseman's 1968 documentary High School, one of the first in cinema verite style, is the right kind of exercise.

Slow-moving and uneventful, this documentary chronicles the typical process of the high school year: class time, break time, and social flow. We watch teachers speaking low to their students, and students returning verbal blows or acquiescing to their power. To some it may appear that this is condemning abuse of power, but I think it simply portrays a condition in its organic environment, seeking not to choose sides. One of the most crucial questions to ask about cinema verite is whether the presence of a camera will change the natural course of events. In this case, I would defend High School as one that did not change the course of events just because a camera was present. Students and teachers alike, without trying to gain or give attention to the documentarian, are behaving normally.

An interesting angle to approach children's education than taking the same scientific approach that the camera's lens does. It is present on scene just as our own vessels occupy reality as a looming and betimes intimidating figure suspended in a moment in which broken and injured souls are projected in all of their virtues, beliefs, and hypocrisies. From the flawed and limited perspective of a 90-degree window into reality, we must draw intimate conclusions about our social atmosphere, those in front and those behind, those above us, and those below. Wiseman's window into 1960's high school life bears the similitude of an authority staff member at the school. Some might say that the camera's presence examines and scrutinizes them and affects their behavior therefore; however, I would argue that the camera is no different in this setting than another person in a throng of people.

Book Analysis - The Catcher in the Rye

As a student at the cusp of graduation, feeling all of the angst that builds somewhere in the abdomen before freefall, I can say that I deeply relate to Holden Caulfield as a character. Allow me to clarify, however. I feel that Holden is the embodiment of a student of ill character, but at times, and with the same level of hyperbole he is known for, I fit and even aspire to his level of cringitude. Though better judgment implores me to refrain, Holden is the personified embodiment of our most lost selves, prone to argue, complain, and quit when the going gets too tough.

As trivial as we might make adolescent problems out to be, they are of monumental importance to adolescents. To us, the brand of jeans that one wears to school is hardly a concern. Nor is the tidy nature of our living space. But for Holden, whose primary guiding emotion in all that he does is disgust, how he looks around Sally Hayes, and whether Ackley cuts his "goddam crumby nails over the table" is of extreme importance. Holden's insistence on self-reliance and his capacity to lie signals a problem as overseers of children and teenagers whether they have their own best interests in mind. Holden's confident diction would prove that he probably is a good liar, and I must admit that when I first read this book in high school, I believed most of what he said; however, as a man approaching middle age, I can testify of the same insecurities that bring most of the bullshit that Holden says into a glaringly self-cynical light.

The book has been criticized by many different school boards and frequently gets rejected in public classrooms because of its use of profanity and seemingly promoting rebellion. Without the proper supervision of an adult mining into subtext and context, a student would be liable to get this impression, because the narrator is a peer. Nevertheless, with the aid of a teacher with adult insight and a seasoned ear for deception, students would be well-equipped to see the book as it really is: a satire on angst.

As often as Holden likes to pretend like an adult, he also falsely flaunts his lack of direction as a badge of honor. While aimlessly traveling on public transit, he ogles an older women during which he offers this pitiful insight, presumably to an older actually sexually-active male: "Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm over-sexed or anything, although I am quite sexy." It's lines like that that, when pointed out to youth, are flagrant examples of poseurism.

The novel is a wonderful example of adult media about children. It plays out very well, as the type of children's media that ought not go unsupervised for fear that the rich and sardonic thematic material might be mistaken for being of a serious nature. It truly s a shame that this book is lambasted by administrations who judge it on its adult substance, when in fact it presents bounteous lessons that would be mostly helpful to youth in their youth.

Here Comes Science Response - They Might Be Poison

My political opinions don't occupy the left-right political spectrum. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the worldwide proliferation of internet resources, such a narrowly-scoped view of modern politics has become increasingly obsolete and irrelevant. What was once a deeply important question in civics has now evolved to a centralist vs. decentralist issue. My personal beliefs can generally be summated to decentralist, more specifically, anarchism. So, you can imagine my alarm when I subjected myself to witness the music video album from They Might Be Giants' and their bleeding leftist agenda to indoctrinate children. While their videos are educational and visually engaging that nominally inspire children to be creative, it ultimately stifles or limits creativity through imitation and paternalistic liberalism.

The series had a strong start: "Science Is Real" places its viewer in an objective reality where what can be immediately sensed is real and unchangeable. It explains the fundamentals of science, while implicitly explaining the complex dichotomy in life in which we can choose personal pathways, but must adapt to unchangeable circumstances. Elementally, this is an important neutral zone between discussions in civics explained simply enough for toddlers to understand. "My Brother the Ape," and "Meet the Elements" are incredibly inventive songs, fully of irony, and simply explain important scientific truths (notable because it indelibly ignores creationist notions) but unfortunately, songwriter John Flansburgh digresses as time goes along. "Electric Car" is the most egregious of all offenses. Not only is it repetitive, and leads the discussion nowhere, it promotes expensive consumerism. One might argue that it condemns useless gas emissions and destruction of the environment; however, children are hardly divested of the resources to make a lasting difference for environment - I would argue that they never will, regardless of how old they are. It also fails to explain in enough detail the benefits of berating parents into buying one. Reserve to two isolated lines, "On verdant green/no diesel, no steam, no gasoline," "Electric Car" serves no practical use than to subliminally insert leftist capitalistic ventures into children's skulls.

Such repetition stifles creativity in children. Though songs like "Put It to the Test" inspire inquisitiveness, and positively encourages children to treat life like a scientific method, it restrains the breadth of their experimentation with songs like "Here Comes Science," whose order in the tracklist baffles me. It seems to have been a fitting place for the first or last track, but its penultimate placement in painfully self-promoting, as if to assert dominance of a child's learning time. When I heard, I heard nothing but They Might Be Giants implanting their role as babysitter and educator in the household, an educator that insists upon bludgeoning children with dull melodies and disputatious democratism.

Naturally, this is the type of low-budget material Disney has been aching to sell in the shelves in lieu of children's music. Between T-Squad and Kidz Bop Volume 370, Hollywood Records really struggled to connect with contemporary households, eventually settling on the quinoa-inhaling pseudo-hippies to turn over some bills for their uncreative children. Spare me the agony of another "educational" song from They Might be Giants, who hasn't done a good thing since it wrote music for Homestar Runner. With self-promoting narcissism and over political poison, Here Comes Science has not only angered me, but successfully warned me against buying records from from Walt Disney Records post-2000.

Pinocchio Response - A Morbid Tale of Paternalism

A secular viewpoint as well as a moral viewpoint is always important when examining the merits of children's media. Media itself demands a mediator, and this mediator must accept the duty to examine the merits of a certain story with intense skepticism. A positive message about an underdog rising to fame and glory can potential be a harmful message to ill-equipped dreamers with systemically social, physical, and financial disadvantages, as it is harmful to those who merely believe and act to others as disadvantaged as the character they connect with in a movie. I turn my attention especially to movies for children, because children are impressionable, and often don't recognize subliminal messaging when they see it. The story of Pinocchio as one told for children is replete with paternalistic ideologies regarding the creating myth, agency and accountability, censorship, and subservience.

Pinocchio tells a dreary tale about a boy, carved physically as a wooden puppet by a lonely clockmaker, and spiritually embodied by a magical fairy traveling on icy stellar bodies falling through Earth's atmosphere. The duality of his nature lead him into troubling circumstances, being lead by a perfect stranger vagabond who solemnly imposes himself as a "conscience," an employer looking to exploit and eventually yoke to bondage, a totalitarian radical who hypnotizes boys with the promises of pleasure, and a monstrous metaphor for parental guilt. More than a story for kids to warn them of stranger danger and disobedience, it plays out as a cautionary tale for parents: know their secrets, pull their strings, or you will lose them forever. In fact, the most compelling focus point of the story is not so much how Pinocchio became a real boy, but how Jiminy earned the right to control Pinocchio's thoughts and actions. 

The film very slickly passes to the audience that Jiminy the Cricket is a legitimate conscience, despite the much more intuitive notion that Pinocchio as a body of wood with intelligent human characteristics (talking, walking, judgments of character) was born with a conscience, and the ability to make decisions for himself. For the most part the legend of Pinocchio condemns the imposition of evil strangers on youth, yet fails to acknowledge the fact that Jiminy cricket is a stranger. Or perhaps it is the exuberant lifestyle of the rich or the reckless that appalls Walt Disney Animation Studios. The most apparent criticism in Pinocchio as Keith Booker asserts in his book "Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films," the pleasures of the working class, of vaudeville, or of pool halls and amusement parks, led to a life as a beast of burden," and to convey the "middle-class virtues of deferred gratification, self-denial, thrift, and perseverance, naturalized as the experience of the most average American." 

For some reason, we have been conditioned to believe that Disney has the best interest of youth in mind and that animated allegory is suited for children, almost as intrusive as the insect that snuck through the crack under your door and is sleeping in your little boy's bedroom. If there is anything apparent in Pinocchio, it is the message of graduating from one set of ideals to the next continually. It is important to question your guiding system of influence, whether it be your whimsically-minded father, your greedy boss, your jackass best friend, your own selfish pleasures, or a gargantuan media enterprise.

Son of Rambow Reponse - What Am a Childrens?

As we approach the realm of children's media, off we must madly go again into the circling realm of semantical discussion. "What is a child?" they ask. Present in this question are a fistful of compelling concepts: maturity, corruptability, and accountability. Examples abound on both sides of the spectrum, in which children percieved to be plagued by mature, violent content, act out in violence against others, yet a preponderance of youth can go outwardly unaffected by graphic imagery or heavy thematic material. Most importantly, lack of parental guidance in selection of media,  a child's ability to comprehend the intensity, horror, or morals the media presents, and psychological development can affect the potency of such imagery. In the light-hearted mood of Garth Jennings's indie sleeper hit Son of Rambow, we get to look at this question through the eyes of a fictionalized youth remaking - or swede'ing - the bloody 80s blockbuster, Rambo: First Blood.

After an arrangement with the Lee Carter, the school bully, Will Proudfoot, a sheltered boy from a fundamentalist Christian family, agrees to act as a stunt man in a movie to enter an amateur film festival. The movie in question is First Blood, a movie which hardly is for children's eyes, let alone his precious virgin eyes. His parents and his community reject media depictions entirely as heathen, and all attempts to view it stem from the devil's temptations. So, for Will, his watching of First Blood - likely over and over - was about as horrifying as it was magical. He ascends in scale from 0-100 with a great deal of difficulty along the way, as he must pursue his short-term goal in secret from friends, authorities, and his own family.

As Will and Lee continue in a loose friendship/acquaintance they run into trouble with popular school kids and staff, usually resorting to violence, a language which Lee and Will they have gained a great deal of credence from abusive paternal relationships, and media choices, respectively. The continued level of abuse apparent in the Carter family can be deduced not to come from media depictions of violence, but from parental neglect. Realizing the sad state of affairs of their own parental neglect, Will's family leaves the strict Christian sect, so that she can mitigate his participation with media.

I would suggest that childhood is an objective state that may appear consciously in adults as a recollection period. Children are greatly susceptible to graphic depictions of language, sex, and violence, particularly if it the depictions do not lay out consequences. In most cases, I would suggest that PG-13 violence does greater harm to 13 year olds than R-rated violence, because PG-13 conveniently leaves out the gory details of firing machine guns into large crowds. R-rated content is wasted on the old because it depicts ideas they yet understood, when it could be greatly effectual to children who would wish to avoid such perils.