Fireside Chat

My Video:

(just for fun)

Artist's Statement:

I chose to do my fireside chat on my belief that it’s absolutely essential that children grow up reading, watching, and listening to fairytales. Although my performance did not go as well as my rehearsals, I think I was able to execute the presentation aspect of my project fairly well. I chose this belief because of my own childhood experience and love for stories, make believe, and fairy tales. As a kids, my sisters and I were always imagining new creatures, alphabets, and, most importantly, stories. Those hundreds upon thousands of hours reading books, playing make believe, and discussing stories had a huge impact on my personality and world view. I believe I can attribute my open-mindedness, empathy, and creativity almost completely to the fact that I enjoyed fairy tales.

I chose some popular and not-so-popular cinematic moments for my presentation in order to shed light on the important life lessons or skills they teach to the children who watch them. If I had more than 4 minutes, I would’ve included lessons from children’s and young adult novels as well. I think often children’s films, books, and music is side lined and not given the importance or attention it deserves.

For my outside source, I drew upon two videos—one, linked here, is a simple compilation of Disney clips. This video has such a powerful emotional effect on me, not only because it’s my childhood, but because these films continue to be so dear to me because of the lessons they taught me. The other is any TED video in general—I love the presentation style of these talks and tried to capture that. From the reading, I loved the line “Beautifying is one classic operation of the camera, and it tends to bleach out a moral response to what is shown,” from “Regarding the Pain of Others.” Strangely, this perfectly applies to my belief. Fairy tales have the ability to “beautify” hard situations and lessons—like expressing grief and dealing with loss, sacrifice, etc.—without losing the integrity of the moral being expressed. Children latch on to behavior extremely quickly, so fairy tales (which I realize I’m using a very broad definition) and essential to shaping and rounding out a child’s emotional and empathetic experience.

I believe in this so strongly, that I felt like closing my presentations like a religious testimony. Fiction has such a powerful effect on everyone, but especially children, that robbing your child of fairy tales because “escapism is dangerous” is a crime.