Week 11

Critique

“The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it--I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.”  --Hayao Miyazaki

In a textbook example of missing the point completely, the first time Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) made it to the U.S, it was in the form of 95-minute New World Pictures edit called Warriors of the Wind. Rather infamous now, the re-cut watered down the film’s environmentalist themes and turned the Ohmu into the chief antagonists, sealing the deal with a VHS cover featuring three male warriors (nonexistent in the film) in a Star Wars-esque pose, with Nausicaä relegated to the background, in order to market it for children. In western media animation was, and to some extent still is, largely seen as a “for-kids-only” medium. For that matter, children’s films generally weren’t seen as a platform for discussing serious issues—at least not with much depth or subtlety. In his films, Miyazaki strives for a higher standard, to challenge his audience and responsibilize them, including children.

The film was the United Sates’ first exposure to Miyazaki and his thematic interests of pacifism, feminism, environmentalism, among others, that he would further develop throughout his career. We are introduced to a strong female hero, and she isn’t the girl Rambo, though she proves herself more than capable. She resolves conflict with charity, compassion, and understanding. The world in Nausicaä is a stunning, ominous apocalyptic landscape, but cackling overlords and mindless killing machines are absent. The villains of the film are that of greed, ignorance and fear. Though minor conflicts are set up and resolved, ultimately the film isn’t man vs. nature, or even man vs. man, but man vs. man’s nature.

Another important note is that the insects are actually frightening, and definitely more so to kids. In most media there is a constantly-reinforced association of beauty with goodness, and ugliness with evil. It’s a powerful notion that even though we as an audience might sympathize with the creatures much sooner than many characters do, there is still something of a gut-level instinct to fear them, possibly even hate them, because of their appearance. Even at a young age, children don’t have to be told that the insects are bad—they make that assumption. Few children’s films are willing to place the burden of responsibility—not just on it’s characters, but audience as well—to come to admire something when our instincts might tell us to shoot it, or to run far, far away.

There is a temptation in films that deal with heavy topics topics to corporealize the enemy. Set him up in act one so we knock him down in act three, and we go home happy and contented because hey, we beat racism, or hunger, or the evil U.S. Marines that want to destroy the sacred trees. This temptation is especially strong in children’s films. While on an individual basis, there might not be anything inherently damaging about that plot, when all kid’s films seem to be self-congratulatory, it becomes a problem. Miyazaki has become possibly the greatest animated filmmaker ever because he inspires, but he doesn’t reward his audience for watching a movie. There is an undeniable urge to change something about the world, and maybe—if children can’t wake up and create world peace tomorrow or the next day—to change something about themselves, and the way they view the world.

**And just so this isn't a complete "let's bash western media" kind of blog entry, here's an awesome (and bold) MGM Christmas cartoon from 1939.

Experimentation

Some of the most common advice given to enterprising artists are statements like “Don’t censor yourself,” “just let your ideas flow freely,” “silence your inner-critic.” It’s a pretty widely-accepted idea that in art, at least in its early stages, avoiding placing limits on yourself is often an important part of the creative process. In George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine (1968), this theme of freedom and anti-conformism might come secondary to other quintessentially Woodstock-era philosophies like the power of peace, love and music. But it’s the idea in which form seems to perfectly accompany message and purpose. Yellow Submarine teaches kids about embracing uniqueness and being unafraid of experimentation, not just in story, but in aesthetic.

John Lennon wrote “I Am the Walrus” as an absurd mix of unrelated and unfinished ideas—taken from some of his own poetry, a nursery rhyme, a Lewis Carol reference, and a dash of nonsense lyrics—partly in the attempt to frustrate critics who liked to over-analyze the Beatles’ music. The song isn’t featured in the Yellow Submarine, but the philosophy certainly is. There is a strong element of spontaneity, a kind of stream-of-consciousness, controlled chaos that runs through the length of the film, not unlike how the Beatles themselves created much of their music. With episodes like The Sea of Time, and the Sea of Holes, the story resembles a child’s dream, and trying to explain it out loud as having some kind of logical structure throughout probably proves just as fruitless and frustrating. In that aspect it reminds me of Time Bandits (1981), a film I wrote an analysis for early in the semester.

Speaking of Terry Gilliam, Yellow Submarine’s avant-garde animation must have at least partly inspired some of the work he would do on Do Not Adjust Your Set and his work with the Pythons just a short time later. The animation is unique, often beautiful, sometimes disorienting, and definitely psychedelic. It isn’t quite like anything that came before, combining the decade’s colorful graphic art with cutout animation and surreal imagery. The thrown-together feel adds to the impression that it’s a film seemingly unburdened by self-censorship.

In many ways—and this isn’t a criticism—Yellow Submarine feels like a film was created in a brainstorming process and then just left there. That’s not true; it’s actually a fully realized,  strangely beautiful, enjoyable film. But the sense of controlled chaos is fitting for a children’s animation sprung from the Summer of Love, and all the philosophies we associate with the era. It’s a story about freedom to enjoy music, art, and life without succumbing to the bummers that are the blue meanies. And unlike a lot of other works that tell kids to “just be yourself” or “just enjoy life” it seems justified in giving that advice, because it’s very creation seems loyal to the same idea.

Unit 2 Film Analysis

The Little Fugitive

Ray Ashley’s The Little Fugitive (1953) is a independent film that documents the adventures of a young man after he decides to run away from home, to the farthest place he knows—Coney Island. It’s a fictional story, but it’s naturalistic, documentary-style approach was unusual for its time. It clearly drew from the Italian Neo-Realist movement in its pacing, scope, and aesthetics, and likewise would prove influential on the French New Wave that would come a few years later. Ray Ashley’s unique, realistic approach to a simple story leads the audience to identify much more intimately with a character and in the process, to access forgotten truths from their own childhoods

Lennie and Joey Norton are brothers living in the suburbs, forced to spend the weekend without their mother around. To get rid of him, Lennie and his friends trick Joey into thinking that he has killed his older brother and the police will soon be after him. With six dollars, Joey hops a train and flees to Coney Island. There Joey plans to live out the rest of his days riding horses and drinking soda. Meanwhile Lennie soon realizes his mistake and tries to locate Joey.

The first impression the film makes is its marked realism. It was shot handheld on a 35 mm camera, creating an almost home-movie feel. Richie Andrusco and Richard Brewster, who play Joey and Lennie respectively, were first-time actors. Their performances are so convincing it seems likely that Ashley often just left the camera roll and let the boys be themselves. Moments play out quietly and cuts are few. Even with the occasional plot conveniences, the film feels honest. There’s a genuine quality that, without feeling overly saccharine, creates a sense of nostalgia whether the viewer experienced the 50’s firsthand or not.

Like the best films that attempt to give realistic portrayals of childhood, it doesn’t diminish or belittle the problems that the boys experience. It’s relatively lighthearted; there are no life-altering tragedies on display, but it’s successful in showing the wonder as well as anxiety of a child trying to get by in an adult world. What’s impressive is that both wonder and anxiety seem to be on equal display—as they probably would be in a kid’s mind. Part of Joey knows he has to provide for himself somehow, to earn money so that he can eat, and part of him just wants to ride the carousel and spend money on horsey rides. It’s a truth that resonates with the viewer and effortlessly recalls memories of childhood, leading to greater identification with the characters.

The Little Fugitive doesn’t shy away from taking its time. It doesn’t hurtle toward plot points. For the most part it is content to simply observe moments in their beauty and honest simplicity. It allows for easy identification, whether for adult audiences in the 50’s, separated from Joey by age, or for a young viewer today separated by generations. To understand these characters and their world, one doesn’t need to have been a six-year-old in 1953; any more, say, than one needs to have been a teenager in 1976 to understand Dazed and Confused, or a young Iranian girl to understand The White Balloon. The Little Fugitive, and the uncommon films like it, serve   as a gateway of sorts, not only to another time and place, but within the viewers, encouraging them to recall and reconnect with a more childlike self.

Unit 3 Film Analysis

Big 

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11

“The natural man is an enemy to God… unless he … becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”  Mosiah 3:7

12-year-old Josh Baskin wishes to be “big” and wakes up the next day day in the body of a 30-year-old man. Penny Marshall’s Big (1988) is an accelerated coming-of-age story, operating at a place where childhood and adulthood meet, an intersection of the innocent and the corrupted, the imaginative and the restricted, the carefree and the world-weary. Naturally, nostalgia is an important theme and in part, the sentiment the film tries to call forth from its audience (at least, in those beyond the age of 12). As a fantasy/comedy film, Big is unapologetically idealistic, but it doesn’t treat childhood as inherently superior to any other time of life. Rather, Big is about how childlike ideals are both accessible and fundamental for anyone, of any age.

Feeling restricted by his parents and invisible to the girl he likes, Josh Baskin thinks being “bigger”—maybe subconsciously, not so much in stature as in status and respect—will be the solution to all his pubescent woes. Once his wish is fulfilled however, Josh has to deal with a reality that is qual parts hilarious (for the audience, anyway) and heartbreaking. Josh’s mother naturally panics at the strange, seemingly insane man, and before he can explain himself fully, Josh runs for the hills. After enlisting the help of his best friend Billy, Josh settles in a run-down New York apartment and decides to try living a normal, adult life until they can straighten everything out.

A common trope of the kid’s fantasy genre, namely, parents always remaining out of the loop, is put to interesting use here. The fantastic scenario is too much for Josh’s mother to accept. But Billy, after using a special song only the two of them know to test the truth, quickly comes to terms with the fact that his best friend has turned into Tom Hanks.  So from Act I, a child’s mentality—in this case, his best friend’s—proves Josh’s salvation.

Using his computer skills, Josh gets a data-entry job at a toy company—hardly different from fighting ice wizards in text-based game, right? But it’s not long before Josh has a fortuitous encounter with Mr. MacMillan the CEO, which is when the film starts getting really interesting. MacMillan is just the first of many characters Josh meets at the company, with romantic interest Susan and (one-sided) rival Paul to follow. Each of these characters is missing something fundamental for their happiness, each is looking in the wrong places, and each has to access their inner-kid to get it. Josh is the catalyst to make that happen, and though the overarching story remains about him, just as interesting is the progression of the others as Josh acts as a sort of mystical, accidentally benevolent stranger, passing briefly through their lives and (at least in MacMillan and Susan’s case) changing them in the process.

MacMillan is jaded after a lifetime of meetings and consumer reports, and after a few hours with Josh in the toy store, promotes him to Vice President in charge of research and development. Through Josh, MacMillan is reminded that the toys he has dedicated his life to are much more than statistics—they are things he can actually play with. Susan is similarly  dissatisfied but thinks she can find some kind of fulfillment with sex. She comes home with the oblivious Josh to his recently-upgraded toy paradise of an apartment, and an initially awkward encounter gives way for an innocently sweet one. After being coerced into jumping on the trampoline, she waits expectantly in bed for Josh—only to realize that when Josh had asked to be on top, he meant the top bunk. Her bewilderment gradually gives way to a smile, and she falls asleep, realizing she might be beginning to gain something more permanent than temporary satisfaction (while she and Josh eventually do begin a sexual relationship, the bizarre implications of that are a can of worms better saved for a different kind discussion).

Paul meanwhile, is resistant to change. He invites Josh to a game of paddleball in an attempt to upstage him, and in a hilarious role-reversal, ends up looking like the more childish of the two, erupting in a "give me the ball!” tantrum. This is where the film makes the distinction between being childlike and childish. It’s not childhood, per say, that saves these characters—Billy wants to take advantage of Josh’s age to buy “beers and dirty magazines,” and might not have had the same effect on MacMillan and Susan as Josh did. It’s Josh’s imagination, altruism, and uncomplicated philosophy on life that is needed. The “take-home message” of Big isn’t just nostalgia. It’s that staying faithful to your inner-kid is an essential part of staying fulfilled in a crazy adult world.

Unit 3 Book Analysis

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, final lines

After the success of his children’s novel Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Mark Twain was soon at work on a sequel. But the novel starting taking on a much more serious tone than he anticipated, and Twain set it aside for a number of years. In the 1880’s, the initial optimism of Reconstruction began to fade and the South entered a time of social unrest. It might have been the increasing weight of racial oppression, with the Jim Crow laws looming just five years away, that motivated Twain to finish and publish Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. In it, the titular Huck is living in pre-war Mississippi, with a mean drunk for a father and under the care of the Widow Douglas, who is determined to whip him into a civilized, church-going young man. Finding the atmosphere oppressive, Huck soon begins his journey aboard a raft with a runaway slave named Jim. Along the way, he becomes more resolved that he’s better off not becoming “sivilized” as society defined it at the time.

The noble thing about Huckleberry Finn is how the novel allows itself to settle completely in the mind of a young man. Twain has a lot of institutions to address—Southern society, religion, intellectualism, and especially racism and slavery. But he writes in vernacular English and speaks through the uneducated Huck, with moral lessons either understated or not articulated at all by its narrator. It is in this voice that Twain accomplishes his best of satire, not to mention moments of honesty. Twain allows Huck to wrestle with the cognitive dissonance that results when ideas and beliefs begin to contradict one another.

At first Huck lives under many of the same assumptions and traditions as the rest of the white folks around him. Jim quickly becomes a kind of father figure for Huck, but despite helping him escape, Huck is slow break the notion that he should treat Jim as anything but inferior. Early in their journey, Huck apologizes to Jim after teasing him, and actually feels guilty about feeling guilty—that he should be humbled by a black man. Huck meets a series of colorful characters along his journey, with most of them—like the band of robbers, the feuding and ill-fated Grangerford and Shepherdson families, and the two con-men masquerading as royalty—serving to convince Huck of how hypocritical his society actually is.

That kind of cognitive dissonance only increases, right until the moment that Jim is sold to another family. Huck believes that freeing Jim will lead to Huck’s own damnation, but resolves to help Jim anyway, declaring "All right, then, I'll go to hell!”

The novel resolves tidily—Jim is freed once again, and the well-meaning Sally Phelps offers to adopt Huck. But Huck, as he says in the novel’s closing lines, has “been there before.” Huck is fond of the Phelpses and they only want what they perceive as best for him, the pillars of society in the South: religion, etiquette, education, and morality. But as Huck has come to see it, piety and hygiene aren’t worth much and, though he might not be able to articulate as much, he can do a better job educating himself that society has done thus far. Huck decides to head West, where civilization hasn’t had a chance to arrive yet.

Diversity is about inclusion—adopting or at least acknowledging ideas and cultures different from one’s own. But in Huck’s case it’s equally about rejection—of his old life, of “decent society.” Huck’s quest has prepared him discern for himself, to take the best of every world he encounters, accepting truth where he finds it, and rejecting the worst—the end goal for children in their efforts to make diversify, challenge their own beliefs, and make new discoveries.

Week 9

Diversity

 “One of the reasons I made [George Washington] is because movies talk down to kids, put them as a cute little kid with a box of cereal and a witty joke… You watch movies like Kindergarten Cop and it's like, 'Oh, a kid said something about sex. Isn't that funny?' It's just annoying and it makes me sad for their parents.”

 Gordon Green

Gordon Green’s first film, George Washington (2000) is a story of a group of young friends during a hot North Carolina summer. After an unexpected tragedy, the kids are forced to decide how they will cope and find their individual stories of redemption.

When we talk about portrayals of diversity in the media, it’s probably something less useful studied through individual examples versus in the media collectively—recognizing trends across years, within genres, or among target audiences. It’s just not realistic to expect a single work to be completely representative of every combination of race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Still, it’s worth noting when a piece of media makes a conscious attempt to avoid being completely homogenous.

In George Washington, Green is concerned with giving every character a voice. It’s more than just a story about a racially integrated town. It’s about honest and intimate portrayals of how we cope with tragedy and loss. It isn’t a token thing. The film has an almost documentary-feel and a dreamlike, Terrence Malick-esque pace that allows its characters to play out their stories and reach their conclusions on their own time. When diverse characters are allowed to be more than tools, but real people, these stories evolve as much into a study how much people have in common as much as what our differences are.

Exposure to new perspectives is essential during a kid’s formative years, because kids often have such a limited perspective based on where they are born and raised. But children’s media can be  particularly weak  when it comes to these types of portrayals, with minority characters rarely featured, and even less in major roles. There are real problems that come with being raised believing that there is only one way to live. When attempts are made to be more diverse, it can allow for a sense of inclusion for those not normally represented, and offer a new or unfamiliar perspective the audience may not have considered before. It allows children and adults alike to grow as people, gain new insight, and have more charity.

And, in honor of my favorite show that returned today: