Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Spirituality Analysis

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a lesson for children on family, fear, death, and standing up for your morals. The Deathly Hallows has both direct similarities to Christian teachings and general spiritual principles that can touch its nonreligious readers. The Harry Potter series seems to either inspire spiritual strength or cause people to dust off their pitchforks and accuse it of being Satanic. Many varieties of Christians have fought to have the book banned from schools on a technicality since it promotes witchcraft, which is a government-recognized religion, and so violates the separation between church and state. But more interestingly are the people who find that the series supports their Christian religion and that it works in harmony with their beliefs and teachings.

Harry is, plain and simple, a Christ figure, and in this last book his role as savior and conqueror of death comes to a climax. He is described as the “true master of Death” (720) and has ever held the moniker of The Boy Who Lived. The circumstance and purpose of his death is unique to anyone else’s as he realizes that “this cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery” (692). Harry isn’t a martyr or a sacrifice, dying for jumping in front of a curse meant for someone else. His death is completely on his own agency, and therefore holds more power, just as Christ’s own choice. Harry’s death would “not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort” (692), who is a stand in for evil and Satan. Even though he is scared, Harry endures to the end in the name of those he loves, which is the true lesson of his story. Harry’s spiritual strength despite his knowledge that he had a horcrux, a piece of the devil, inside him inspires children who have a desire to do good but know that they are capable of bad. Even after his resurrection, Harry invisibly casts Shield Charms to protect his unknowing friends from curses shot their way, solidifying his role as a savior and protector that largely goes unrecognized.

 

There are other parallels to Christian theology that stand out starkly if you search for them. For example, after Harry dies he appears naked and physically perfect in a white landscape that eventually becomes King’s Cross. It’s only after he sees the shameful manifestation of Voldemort’s/Satan’s soul that he becomes aware of his nakedness and “for the first time, he wish[es] he were clothed” (706). Rowling’s language and imagery evoke the Garden of Eden and its role in knowledge of evil and creation of agency. In their final battle, Voldemort shouts that Harry has only survived by accident, but Harry replies that he didn’t decide to fight back (in book 4) by accident, or that his mother died for him by accident, or that he returned from the dead that night by accident. Harry’s belief in agency and a greater force driven by love encourages a spiritual outlook on life, rather than Voldemort’s cold, calculations of only the facts.  

Harry’s struggle against Voldemort is a struggle of light against dark, moral against immoral, and love against hate. Rowling isn’t a capital “C” Christian writer and doesn’t set out to convert others to her faith, but she is a moralistic writer who hopes to get her “kidult” audience to think about the hard questions and establish tolerance as a core moral in their lives. Rowling claims that her books preach that “love is the most important force” against “bigotry, violence, [and] struggles for power” (Gibbs) and take a spiritual approach to bravery and love. The magic spells, curses, and powers of The Deathly Hallows make the spiritual tangible and the Christian morals more accessible. In a philosophic time where if something can’t be proven on paper, it doesn’t exist, the magic and imagination of Rowling’s books assure children of the legitimacy of their intangible feelings and beliefs, just as Dumbledore reassured Harry: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" (723)

 

Works Cited

Gibbs, Nancy. “Person of the Year 2007: Runners-Up J.K. Rowling.” Time 19 Dec. 2007. Web.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Scholastic Inc., 2007. Print.

The Iron Giant - Critique Analysis

Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is set in 1957, when Cold War tensions were high and Sputnik was circling the Earth. However, it’s set in this time not to rehash the old fears of communists or the Soviet Union, but to contextual the fears of today and to act as a mirror of our times. The Iron Giant is a stand in for our modern fears of nonconformity, trigger-happy military policy, and ambiguous governmental power.

The Iron Giant uses a certain amount of melodrama and spectacle to help children identify the contradictions of the self-professed “protection” of the government and their role as the “bad guy” in the film. Hogarth repeats the phrase “guns kill” throughout the film in order to encourage the giant to be a good guy, yet the government’s first instinct is to turn to guns as a solution. The political message of anti-gun violence is strong, but in the name of promoting peace and thoughtful response (as opposed to reactionary lashing out) rather than an assault on the second amendment. After discovering that the giant is peaceful, Hogarth starts talking about taking him to experts, but then stops himself and remembers that “people always wig-out and start shooting when they see something big like you.” The film critiques how willing people are, and the government in particular, to turn to violence in the face of anything that doesn’t fit into their description of “normal.”

Hogarth is an outcast like the giant, bullied at school for skipping a grade and for “thinking he’s smarter than everyone else.” In his espresso-induced rant, Hogarth expresses his frustration with being viewed as a smart show-off when really all he does is the homework that his classmates don’t bother to do:

 

Not to mention that his single-mother family contradicts the American suburbia model of father, mother, and obedient children, adding to his feelings of not belonging. This combined with the vulgarly-happy atomic bomb instruction videos critiques the public school system of overly-patronizing children and ignoring their needs and social realities.

This outcast model applies to the giant, Hogarth, and Dean respectively, but in the giant’s case, he is a Christ-type outcast. His direct comparison to Superman in the movie also directly compares him to Christ as a savior, the misunderstood who came from another world (heaven, Krypton, etc.) in order to sacrifice his life to save others. Even though he physically resembles Hogarth’s comic book villain Atomo, Hogarth encourages him to be Superman, the hero who always uses his powers for good. The giant is also dies for the sins of the people he protects, especially for Kent who screams for the missile to be launched directly at the city. Kent believes in the philosophy that if “we didn’t build it and that’s reason enough to assume the worse and blow it to kingdom-come!” By making the giant a Christ figure, the film promotes charity and peace in opposition to violence and close-mindedness.

The Iron Giant is a children’s film that addresses serious themes of nonconformity, outcasts, and government policy in a non-patronizing way. It refrains from using musical numbers or even cutesy, anthropomorphic animation in order to encourage their young viewers to exercise their critical analysis and actively participate in the film’s dialogue between peace and violence, art and guns, and good and evil.

I Wish - Family

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film, I Wish, gives a voice to two inseparable brothers who have been separated by their parents’ divorce. Koichi, older and wiser to the worries of the world, lives with their mother who is preoccupied with responsibility. Ryunosuke, younger and constantly beaming, lives with their free-spirited father. The high-speed bullet trains become a physical manifestation of Koichi’s wish for their family to be united again as the trains connect their two cities. It is rumored that the energy released when the two trains pass one another will grant the wishes of those who witness it, and Koichi’s wish comes tantalizingly close to reality.

What I found most moving about this film is that was realistic rather than the fanciful wishings of two children. Though it is a little fairytale-ish that both Koichi and Ryu gather enough money to skip school and find one another halfway between their cities, at the moment they have to yell their wishes to the passing trains the brothers acknowledge the reality of their situation. The film shows why Koichi wants the family to be united as we see a picturesque family picnic, but it also shows why the separation benefits Ryu, who is still a child. During a fight at the dinner table, Koichi dives in to stop the yelling between his parents, while Ryu removes himself from the situation, eating his rice and unable to emotionally handle the situation. Later, Koichi says that he chose the world over his own family, marking his passage into adulthood with the realization that his parents wouldn’t get back together, even if the city was drowned in lava and ash.  

I Wish lingers on the everyday events that make up a child’s life, emphasizing the importance of family in those events—school assignments interviewing fathers, making karukan cake with your grandfather, calling your brother after a long day of school, having your dreams of being an actress acknowledged by your mother. I Wish gives an insight into the joys and pains of the childhood experience and the role family plays in the coming-of-age of children. 

I also thought it was very touching that Kiochi and Ryu were played by real-life brothers, which is really incredible given the incredible acting done by both, with Kiochi’s gravity and Ryu’s infectious happiness. I liked how I Wish finished off our trilogy of family-centered children’s media of “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts” as a family history/heritage story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit as a cautionary parental tale, and I Wish as a broken family/coming-of-age story. I know that my siblings have been (and still are) an inseparable part of my upbringing and identity, and I couldn’t imagine having to accept being separated from them, let alone entrusting a parent to them.

 

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Critique

Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is interesting as a critical film, because instead of seeing the process of environmental pollution, we only see the result. The film starts in the "new normal" achieved after some previous crisis that is mentioned but not fully expounded upon in the film. Instead teaching children how to prevent pollution, the film teaches them how to live in an already polluted world, and how to fix it. By framing the plot this way, Miyazaki is politically preparing his viewers to inherit a broken world and gives them a heroine to emulate in order to begin to heal it. From the beginning of the film, children are encouraged to stretch their critical analysis muscles and ask, “why the world like this?”

Nausicaä also portrays a critical view of history and society because of its alternate Earth setting. The deliberate selection of certain World War II era design choices voice a political opinion—the German-like gas masks, airplanes, and military uniforms visually reminds the viewer of the Nazis and their totalitarian regime, coloring the Tolmekians and their princess as extremists. The Tolmekians also echo World War II not just in design, but in actions too. They’re plan to destroy the Sea of Decay is to awaken a great monster that has a weapon very similar to an atomic bomb.  By designing the Tolmekians and their Great Warrior to echo that of the Nazis and atomic warfare, the film encourages children to make connections between the destruction of war and the destruction of the environment.

 

In contrast, Nausicaä is clothed in blues and whites, pleading for a stop to the violence. This film preaches nonviolence, with Nausicaä leading the way after her own commitment to the ideal after her father’s death. Although the Sea of Decay is spreading and destroying towns, it’s the Ohms that pose the immediate threat in the film. Ohms react violently to any damage humans do to the Sea of Decay, making it not pollution that angers the earth, but violence itself. Nausicaä’s gentle treatment of the spores leads her to discover how to grow them purely, while the Tolmekians’ desire to destroy the plague leads to a deadly rampage of thousands of Ohms. Even with the squirrel-fox Nausicaä practices nonviolence, allowing it to bite her out of fear and realize on its own that there is no threat.

 

 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind uses a double pronged strategy, advocating both environmental preservation and nonviolence. It communicates these political views through design, color, and (most importantly) story. The film’s ending also encourages active hope in the viewers, as Nuasicaä succeeds in ending the war and finding a cure to the Sea of Decay, but the world is still polluted.

Lego Star Wars: The Video Game - Play Analysis

The Lego game franchise is ever evolving and expanding, but it all began (at least for this new age of console gaming) with Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005). Though it retained some aspects of play it had before, such as intertextuality, Lego’s translation from physical building blocks to video game created new aspects of play for children to engage in--elastic game complexity, competition/cooperation, and creative interpretation.

I played Lego Star Wars on an original Xbox, the console I grew up playing the game on. The very structure of the game encourages complex and varied interaction with both the game and your fellow players. The game appeals to a wide age range of players. Younger children can enjoy themselves by smashing blocks and bad guys and easily walking through the levels, while older children (and adults) can engage more deeply with the design as they explore to find secret rooms, strategically stay alive to conserve studs and achieve “True Jedi” status, and unlock the various achievements in each level as well as find all the easter eggs. The fact that none of the characters talk also makes the game accessible to all ages because it isn’t necessary to know how to read in order to understand the game. The game’s procedure is simple, find your way to the end of the level using the characters given you, but it has the potential to become more complex for older players.

Playing solo is fulfilling and successful, but the game is really designed to be played by two people. Here is where the Lego block concepts of construction/deconstruction are translated into cooperation/competition, as players need to work together to win the levels. The shared screen requires the two players to work as a team, as one player cannot run off solo to accomplish the goals on their own. As my sister joined me in play, we went through our bouts of arguing which way to explore, how to jump, destroying each other with light sabers, and working together to unlock secrets. Unlike most team games, friendly-fire is on and it is completely possible to destroy your partner again and again (to their annoyance). Players have to overcome their competitive tendencies and work together to push buttons, build/move Lego blocks, and defeat bosses.

The video game also retains the intertextuality that playing with Lego blocks often creates. During Free Play (an option available once the level is completed) the player is able to rotate through several characters, putting characters in situations that never occur in the original story. For example, you can play as Darth Maul and fight General Grievous, or have a battle droid save Naboo. In the main menu, you can also mix-and-match heads, bodies, legs, and weapons of all the characters and create your own player. This intertextual play (admittedly, only within the Star Wars canon) reflects the creativity and imagination of a child’s natural play. The game also incorporates a child’s interpretation of the iconic story of Star Wars: Episode I-III. Coming back to the no-dialogue game style, the story is distilled down to the narrative moments that strike children the most while viewing the films, and put a kid-friendly angle on them. Violence is translated into blocks coming apart (children accept popping off a Lego head) and bad guys become comical gags.

Within Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, children have the freedom to explore their virtual play space, destroying and creating, solving puzzles, and defeating hordes of droids, all while enjoying the narrative and aesthetics of the Star Wars franchise. Their play within the game builds their skills of cooperation, curiosity, and creativity as they play with others, manipulate their environments and unlock achievements, and use their imaginations to push the game to its limits.

Winnie-the-Pooh - Nostalgia Analysis

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) has a strong atmosphere of nostalgia, as Pooh Bear and his friends innocently engage with the benign woodland world around them. On his return to England from fighting in World War I as a signaling officer, Alan Alexander Milne continued his writing career. After writing several moderately successful but no longer remembered plays, he created the iconic, universal character of Winnie the Pooh. More accurately, he created a fictional version of his son, Christopher Robin, and his toy bear.

The devastation of World War  I certainly has a large role to play in the appealing nostalgia in Winnie-the-Pooh. The war brought an end to many things—a generation of men, romanticization of the glory of war, and the class system (a progressive but upsetting social and political change). The pastoral setting of Winnie-the-Pooh longs for a simpler past of simpler language and the clean innocence of a child at play. Today, Winnie-the-Pooh still creates a nostalgia for a pastoral, pre-war past, but its legacy has also created new forms of nostalgia.

The writing style itself throws the reader back into an idealized childhood, of a parent reading a bedtime story to their child. Milne acts as both the author and the narrator, interacting with the characters in such a way that he is interrupted by them while he is addressing the reader. It’s as if the reader were sitting in on a scene of a father reading to his son. For example:

“…he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a story. This evening—”

“What about a story?” said Christopher Robin.

“What about a story?” I said.

“Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?”

“I suppose I could,” I said. …

So I tried.

(pg. 4)

Milne’s use of “you” changes from addressing the reader and addressing Christopher Robin who is also a listener while the narrator tells stories involving him. The texts language also reflects an idealized past as it is very polite and charming while imitating the speech of a child. Pooh Bear is constantly saying things like, “Oh bother!” while Christopher calls him “Silly old Bear!”

Obviously, nostalgia can only be created when time has separated us from a period of life, but experience is also crucial to nostalgia. Children are unable to romanticize their lives as they are in them, not just because they are currently living them but because they lack the experience required to feel the keen sense of loss (at least in terms of time) that makes up nostalgia. Returning to the past is only appealing to us as adults because of the new knowledge we bring with us. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh appeals to the adult experience over the child’s with its small jokes of misspelled words, gentle mocking of social niceties, and a comic appreciation for child logic. Piglet’s sign, “Trespassers W,” (broken sign of “Trespassers Will Be Shot,” not the name of his grandfather), and the logic that Pooh must lose his fat for a week rather than digging him out, are examples of needing adult experience to appreciate the childish aspects of the story.

But most of all, Winnie-the-Pooh calls to our own experiences of our parents reading the story to us, a nostalgia evoked by the narration style and illustrations. It is a common childhood experience that appeals to most adults as they remember a shared memory of an idealized past, listening to a story deep in the Hundred Acre Woods where Christopher Robin was free to play and imagine with his friends.

George Washington - Diversity

Although George Washington isn’t a film that expressly sets out to expose the inequality of poor, black children in North Carolina, it does so by examining their lives and how they react to the situation of their friend dying. It is shot intimately and acted authentically which adds to the underlying argument that these children’s poor situation needs to be heard.

As was demonstrated with the children’s books we read, childhood is a time of identity formation. It is when people begin to attach things like race and culture to their personal definitions. George Washington takes place just before this formation—when children are still naïve to the seriousness of the inequalities of the world. Roger Ebert describes it as “the summer when adolescence has arrived, but…makes you feel hopeful…[and] powerful instead of unsure.” The children see each other as equals in spite of age difference or skin color or medical condition. The adults working on the railway converse with the children as if there was nothing to separate them. Green creates a sort of paradise (later shattered by the death of Buddy) of hot summer days spent in peace with all.

The film assumes that their world is the only world—there isn’t a real binary (besides the audience’s own experience) to compare their situation with. Green privileges this one side of the binary by treating it as if it were the only side. However, he keeps waving red flags for the audience in order to ground their almost surreal existence in reality. For instance, the portrait of Pres. Bush Sr. starkly stands out against its environment , just as George did when he walked by the predominantly white parade sporting beauty queens and fat, white business owners and politicians. These jolting reminders that the children’s situations are underprivileged and not a summer fairytale  emphasizes the plight of the film.

The form of the film contributes to privileging their poor, minority living as we see it through the perception of the children, similar to the way poor life was portrayed in the clip from Days of Heaven. The cinematography is glowing, warm, and beautiful, emphasizing the overgrown, rusty beauty of rural North Carolina, creating an almost surreal environment. However, the subject matter and the acting counteract the surrealist look of the film as they were uncomfortably realistic. Buddy’s death was terrifying in its suddenness and innocence, breaking the spell of these children’s carefree lives and bringing the immediacy of the problem of these children’s situations right to the forefront. Their varied reactions to their friend’s death brings a universality to their characters, peeling away the alienating layers of dialect, race, culture, and economic status that may have distanced the audience before.

Disney Infinity - Play

A child’s play incorporates many learning and social experiences that are crucial to their development—play isn’t simply a recreation to them. As we experienced in class, play involves competition, rules, mimicking adults, agency, intertextuality, interactivity, and interpretation. The clips, board games, and the video game, Disney Infinity, all demonstrate the multifaceted nature of children’s play.

It was interesting to watch those who don’t often (or never) play video games pick up the controller and figure out the mechanics of the game. Several times I heard the phrase, “What are we supposed to be doing?” This might be the key to understanding a child’s play versus an adult’s play—as we grow older, activities must have some kind of purpose and when one isn’t found, the activity isn’t worth our time, but a goal-less sandbox game like Disney Infinity appeals to a child’s curiosity and sense of play. Those of us who were more familiar with video games (or simply, more in touch with their inner child, game experience or not) found the freedom of the game exciting. Some chose to fight with their characters, other wanted to build the world around them. The possibilities of character and environment manipulation/exploration were huge, which I think appealed to some and daunted others.

The design of Disney Infinity reminded me of several other video games I’ve played—Minecraft, Skylanders, etc. Because of my past experience, I felt very comfortable picking up the controller and guessing how the designers had laid out the button commands and level objectives—right trigger for gas, 1^st button (X on the PlayStation) for jumping, left trigger for targeting, etc. This is an example of play teaching skills, even if these skills are only transferable between games. However, I’d like to argue that games teach more than just skills only useful when playing other games. When in the context of society, with other people, games can teach sportsmanship and social skills, patience, dedication, and other general life lessons. They can even teach marketable, tangible skills, such as programming and artistry. It’s when a game is decontextualized, when a child plays a game exclusively and separated from other people, that is when negative skills are learned (and where violent video games gain their bad reputation). If children play intertextually, then they also learn intertextually, and the lessons or skills they learn in a game can be transferred to other situations in their life.

My brother avidly played a video game named Kodu, basically a sandbox game with a user-friendly interface to allow the player to build worlds, create objects/characters, and then program those objects/characters with behaviors. It used standard programming logic, with “if-then” statements and modifications such as “except” and “when.” My brother became extremely involved, programming games, scenarios, worlds, etc., and pushing the game to its limits. At the age of 10 he took up an email exchange with the game’s creator, suggesting patches and new ideas for the game, which the creator took seriously and invited him to beta test every version of the game after that. His play was more than an unwind at the end of a school day. He used his creativity, curiosity, and competitive nature to learn programming, logic, and social skills that has impacted his life now as a 17 year-old being accepted to colleges.

(http://youtu.be/9Hp_T0gVkKY?t=10s)

Fantasia 2000 - Experimentation Analysis

Disney’s Fantasia 2000 uses experimentation of form and animation to bring the highbrow art of symphonic music to general audiences and, specifically, children. It modernizes the idea of high art and tempers its rules and traditions with abstract, animated expressionism. Children in particular respond to this experimental hybrid of high and low art because of its base emotional appeal—the music and the color-rich pictures eliminate the need for traditional storytelling.

Communication through words is not a child’s strong suit, but that doesn’t imply that they’re emotions aren’t complex. The music serves as the dialogue, the character’s (or abstraction’s) voice being a violin, oboe, French horn, or other instrument. The complexities of the musical compositions and the abstract stories expressed through the visuals communicate to children what they themselves have trouble expressing in words.

Three of the musical segments express different aspects of this experimentation with animation, music, and emotion. The film opens with an abridged rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This piece pulls the archetypal theme of light versus dark from the song through an abstract animation of triangles (butterflies?), light cascades, and angular black shapes. The “story” of this segment is more concerned with the struggle between heavenly color and light, and the dark, sharp black of below than it is with any character development or moral. The winging triangles and rapidly changing moods and backgrounds of the animation recall the formal practices of modern art. Children’s identification with the theme of light (good) versus dark (bad) of the music, gained through the visuals, provides them access into the world of high art and emotional expression.

The segments “Pines of Rome” and “Firebird Suite” provide a more narrative-based interpretation of the music, but also abstractly interpret the emotions of symphonic music. Though its title evokes images of trees and ancient Rome, Respighi’s piece is translated into an arctic ocean with giant whales swimming in the water and the sky. The animation stretches the imagination as whales, seemingly by the power of a star, take to the sky and breach breathtakingly in seas of clouds and light. The separation of the baby whale from his parents and the communal flight of the herd of whales to the clouds suggest a theme of familial love and protection, a theme reinforced by the tonal shift in the music from eerie/cold to grand/warm that children respond to emotionally.

The “Firebird Suite” sequence, similar to the “Beethoven’s Fifth” sequence, uses abstract ideas of nature of myth to express the archetypal struggle between destruction and renewal. Using the incredible emotion of Stravinsky’s composition, the animators visualize a soulful elk and a fluid nymph who is destroyed by a volcano spirit, but emerges from the ashes to renew nature once more. At moments the music surpasses the capability of the animation, and at others the animation interprets the music with such skill that it surpasses what the music could accomplish on its own. The hybrid of symphonic music and skilled animation communicate emotional and abstract concepts that dialogue and story alone could not accomplish.

By experimenting with the mixing of high and low art, orchestra and cartoon, Disney brings a legitimization to animation as an expressive art while making symphonic orchestration more accessible to a general audience. The animated visuals of the film appeal to the need for a form of story for the audience, children especially, and the music speaks the characters emotions and compliments the colors and movements of the animation. By demonstrating that Beethoven, Stravinsky, and other composers can express joys, fears, and emotions that children experience, Disney legitimizes the childish experience and condition.

Little House in the Big Woods - Documentation Analysis

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book, Little House in the Big Woods, is a selected account of her memories as a child growing up in a settler family. Because they are remembered experiences rather than current, recorded ones, the memories are boiled down to what impacted her as a child the most. Woven in with these experiential memories are pragmatic descriptions of common processes (making butter, cheese, etc.), creating a book that both documents a child’s perspective and the type of life a child lived in the late 1800s.

The story begins with what concerns a child most when being introduced to a new place—her home. Laura’s world centers on the “little gray house made of logs” (1) and expands outward from this center of gravity. Next, Wilder describes the large surrounding forest, filled with both benign and dangerous wild animals. The forest is simply referred to as the “Big Woods” by Laura, a child-like name that captures her straightforward view of the world around her. Similarly, Wilder capitalizes “Butchering Time” (18) to characterize how a child groups together time by the activities associated with it. Wilder captures the main concerns of a child—where you sleep, where you play, what you eat, where you are safe—through describing the world, expanding from the familiar house and out into the unknown woods.

Wilder is also careful to document not only the descriptions of her life as a child, but her childish mindset as well. In one passage, Laura personifies her corncob doll, casually treating it as if it were living: “Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn’t Susan’s fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn’t see” (21). This short passage captures Laura’s jealousy of her sister and her own imaginative compensation for that jealousy with language that rings authentic. A child’s logical thought process is also documented, with “Santa Claus did not give grown up people presents, but that was not because they were not good…It was because they were grown up, and grown people must give each other presents” (79).

Most of the book, however, is spent describing the work processes of living in a cabin in the woods. Smoking meat, making cheese, churning butter, tanning leather, Sunday routines, and many other tasks are described simply but with enough description to peak the curiosity of child readers. Each chapter is an episode describing a different event or chore to be done, moving the reader through Laura's life based on the work of the season. Though Laura is set several chores and works her fair share, her time to play is also included. Though many of these tasks are menial or mundane, it captures the true experience of a child living in the late 1800s.

Pa’s stories in particular impact Laura because it’s through stories that children learn about the world around them, and, in particular, learn about correct behavior. Each story has a serious moral that is important to Laura’s everyday life, whether it be to obey her parents or behave reverently on Sundays. Wilder’s inclusion of these stories documents their importance to her childhood experience, and captures the integral role stories play in a child’s development.

Little House in the Big Woods is a documentation of a child’s perspective and experience growing up in a cabin in the woods, doing chores and playing with her family. Its simple language expresses Laura’s young age while the episodic stories document the hard work and happy rewards of an industrious life.

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As a side note, I love this physical example of documentation. I read my mother's copy of the book that she received when she was eight years old.

Alice - Imagination

It was good (or disconcerting?) to be reminded that a child's "imagination" doesn't just consist of trees made of candy, bright purple suits, and happy songs. As our class exercise in recalling dreams demonstrated, it also includes the nightmares and strange imaginings of a child’s brain. Alice, despite its slightly disturbing appearance, demonstrates how far-reaching childhood imagination is and how a child exerts control over their imagined world.

As Freud states, it would be wrong to assume that a child’s approach to play is for the same purpose as an adult’s. While we see play as a happy, relaxing recreation, a child “takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it” (Freud). Alice in the film, bored from reading and receiving slaps from the adult she’s with, moves into her imagination to extrapolate upon reality. Her imaginary reality involves pleasing and frightening situations as she tries to exert power over her situation.

The short “A Shadow of Blue” similarly presents imagination as a means for escape for children. The girl, confined to a wheelchair, imagines that her shadow extends from herself and interacts with the world in ways that she wishes she could—walking, running, freely exploring. As in Alice though, her imagination produces a sinister element which she then has to overcome. The triumph over these imagined enemies—the pressures of the adult world manifested in the ever-rushing rabbit and the dangers of the world manifested in the crow—represent a child attempting to control the anxieties or problems faced in reality.

However, I would like to argue that Alice was more of an adult’s surrealist view of childhood imagination than it was an expression of childish imagination. The formal elements of the film (the taxidermy, the lack of score) were more adult while the actual fantasties (cookies that make you shrink, talking face cards, hedgehog croquet) were more the imaginings of a child. But perhaps I am being unfair for calling the surrealist (coughuglycough) appearance and style of the film “adult.” After all, I’m imposing a modern understanding and aesthetic of childhood onto Victorian story. Victorian era toys were more concerned with replicating reality in miniature than we are today. Using an actual rabbit to portray an imagined one might be more reflective of the Victorian mindset.

And now, for one of the most terrifying films of my childhood, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977). This clip keeps in theme with Alice as imagination being both innovative and potentially frightening. I honestly can’t watch this for very long because it somehow still communicates to some imagined fear of my childhood.

 

 

 

Not One Less - Documentation

While Not One Less isn’t strictly a documentary, it does record the natural reactions, emotions, and nuances of the child actors as they played fictionalized versions of themselves. By choosing to use amateur and first-time actors to play the children, Yimou Zhang is able to capture authentic performances and, in doing so, document childish behavior and perspective of the world.

Huike Zhang especially provides many true-to-life instances of boyish rough housing and talking back to adults. As I was watching him, I was reminded several times of similar behavior seen in To Be and To Have (2002)—the naughty grins especially. There is something about children that is unreproducible. It’s just like when you ask an adult to draw a child drawing or write like a child. No matter how good at imitating children they are, it never feels authentic. Because of Zhang’s use of hidden cameras and microphones, he was able to capture the authentic, childish behaviors and “non-acting” of his actors which provided the most true-to-life experience for his audience.

Not One Less engages in a child’s reality in conflict with the real world. At a certain level, it deals with Minzhi Wei and Huike’s disenchantment with the world as they face the harsh hunger and realities of being alone in the city. They must also learn that life means hard work and sacrifice as both of them are driven from their homes in order to earn a living, denying themselves (willfully or not) of their childhoods. But unlike some of the clips we watched in class, this narrative fights for their right to be children as they are both able to return to school and turn away from the harsh realities of adulthood in the end.

As for a documentarian recording of childhood, it shares many similarities to Zhang’s approach to fiction. The Lumiere actualities celebrate the small, seemingly mundane lives of these children, when they themselves (as small as they are) don’t find their world small or mundane. Each lunch is an adventure, each stolen possession a tragedy. Though it is our job as mentors and family members to broaden their worlds and eventually introduce them fully into the realities of the world, we must appreciate and nourish their own childish perspective of reality and celebrate and mourn with them.

I’ve had the pleasure of spending at least one night a week with my 3 month old nephew and seeing him slowly begin to recognize and explore the world around him. He learns through a gradual broadening of hi s circular understanding, as the basics (eat, poop, and sleep) build outwards into tasting, noise, dreams, facial recognition, and other sensory discoveries. Just as we saw in Secret of Roan Inish, he learns circularly, not linearly.  

This is a complete indulgence (per the example of our esteemed professor), but here is a documentation of my nephew discovering the wonder that is a tongue and hands.

 



The Princess and the Frog -- Morality

Stories are an often-used mode for teaching children morals and lessons—don’t trust strangers, don’t lie, don’t be greedy. The musical numbers in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog (2009) serve as thematic beats, summing up the flaws and developments of each character as they learn, and are especially memorable for children as the melodies and lyrics are memorized. The film uses story, in both the traditional and musical forms, to teach children that a full life balances both hard work and fun.

Although The Princess and the Frog uses traditional polarization of the villain to firmly confirm to young viewers that he is completely wrong and evil (though a degree of justification is available for adult viewers), it also uses a type of polarization between Tiana and Naveen. Tiana is obsessed with work and scoffs at wishes and hopeful thinking, while Naveen completely shirks any and all work in favor of a charmed, care-free life. Ironically, both are very concerned with money as a means to realize their dreams. The lesson is learned when Tiana and Naveen balance their polarities and find true joy in combining both work and fun.

The song “When We’re Human” uses polarization to first establish this theme of balancing work and freedom. Naveen sings of returning to his old life of riches and freedom, stating that “life is short, when you’re done, you’re done. We’re on this earth to have some fun and that’s the way things are.” On the other hand, Tiana sings, “I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve got and that’s the way it’s supposed to be…If you do your best each and every day good things are sure to come your way.” Both are presented positively to the audience, but their natural opposition to each other emphasizes their incompleteness.

While their overt goal is to become human, their true goal is to learn how to balance their lives and discover what they need, as Mama Odie sings in her song, “Dig a Little Deeper.” Before the song begins, Naveen says “what we want, want we need is all the same thing, yes?” This outlines the moral he learns—that want and need are separate, as one requires sacrifice but yields greater rewards. Naveen learns that “Money ain’t got no soul, money ain’t got no heart” and what he needs is hard work and self-control, found in the form of Tiana, to find true happiness. Tiana, though she doesn’t realize it until the Shadow Man tempts her into choosing her restaurant over those she loves, needs to learn that love and family, in the form of Naveen, is more important than being commercially successful.

In tandem, the film also emphasizes that happiness doesn’t come from money. As stated before, both Tiana and Naveen were convinced that their happiness could be achieved by obtaining money—a thought shared by the film’s villain, Dr. Facilier and his accomplice, Lawrence. The two models of happiness in the film, Tiana’s father and Ray, both have love and little else yet are very happy with their lives. Conversley, it was Facilier’s greed for the power money brings that was his downfall, and it was Tiana and Naveen’s abandonment of money (and all human commodities) that led to their happiness.

The Princess and the Frog is a moral story that conveys its lessons very effectively through its music and characters, the two most prominent aspects of film that children focus on the most. It teaches that true happiness in life is found in the balance between work and fun, responsibility and freedom, and not in the commodities money brings.

 

The Hobbit -- Adventure

As adequate as formal learning may be, there is a natural curiosity in children that drives them to pursue the unknown, the unexperienced—the grand adventure. Media, specifically adventure stories, is a way to satisfy this curiosity for the strange and the epic and curate the inquisitive minds of children. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Bilbo represents this childish, adventurous spirit as his Tookish blood and overcomes his sensible Baggins nature as he participates in a dwarvish adventure. Tolkien’s writing style and story structure reflect the childish desire for adventure and the learning process which venturing into the unfamiliar brings.

Tolkien writes The Hobbit as if he were telling the tale to a listening audience. He engages the reader by asking direct questions like, “And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation?” (20) and directly addresses the reader with “but of course, as you have guessed, he did rescue his friends in the end, and this is how it happened” (171). This style of prose engages the reader and encourages them to reflect upon the story rather than merely consume it. These points, especially the direct questions, provide active learning opportunities for the young reader as they consider, what would I do if a dwarf showed up uninvited? How should I act? What would be polite and what would be rude? Tolkien, writing specifically for children, tailors his writing to inspire and satisfy their adventuresome curiosity.  

As an extension of his writing style, Tolkien’s story structure also encourages learning and curiosity, especially in the learning and exploration of the inner self. Central to the adventure genre is a leaving behind of what is familiar and journeying into the unknown. In the beginning of The Hobbit, adventures are “nasty disturbing uncomfortable things” and with “no use” (18). But after Bilbo hears the dwarves sing of their old, lost home and gold, “something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick” (28). Bilbo’s adventure nature is awakened, and despite his fears of danger, pursues his curiosity.

In his book Walden, Henry David Thoreau speaks of how we move away from nature and its experiences as we grow older until “at last, we know not what it is to live in the open air. From the hearth the field is a great distance,” which is just the dilemma Bilbo is faced with. He must leave the comfort of his domesticity and venture back out into nature in order to connect with his true origins, just as children must pursue their adventurous curiosities.. The defamiliarization of the familiar encourages the discovery of one’s true self and identity. Leaving the comfortable dullness of home is essential to a child’s growth, whether it is a literal separation or an empathetic one through media.

Just as crucial as leaving the familiar is the return to it. On his adventure, Bilbo learns many things about the world and himself. He learns that even elf- and wizard-laid plans can go awry, that the reality of danger spoils the initial fun of leaving home, and of the strength self-reliance brings. It’s the moments when Bilbo is unsupervised that he learns the most. For example, “somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else make a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder” (154). But the use of these lessons only comes into being when he returns to Bag-End. Bilbo finds more joy in food and cheer and song, as Thorin puts it, because of his separation from them, and is now free from the social conformities that had plagued him before because of his newfound identity.

As instructive as supervised learning is, it’s important for children to escape the watchful eye of society and learn for themselves. Bilbo comes back from his adventure a different hobbit, and is more assured of his identity and place in the world because of it.

To Be and To Have -- Inquiry

As a child myself, I was always glued to Animal Planet and the Food Chanel, and not just because puppies are cute and food is delicious. I was fascinated by the nature shows and even programs like Dogs/Cats 101 and the Eukanuba dog shows, where facts about different breeds of animals were numbered off, and informational cooking shows like Unwrapped (a show about how different foods are made) Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Books like the Magic Treehouse series were little more than digestible historical facts strung together by story, and yet I devoured them eagerly. Children are, as John Locke put it, blank slates that are eager to be written on and, for good or bad, molded by society.

Children’s learning is dominated by two modes—media and adult example. Picture books and films about animals, science, history, cultures, etc. are essential to exposing children to different subjects. And when they fail to capture their attention, museums, aquariums, and zoos physically immerse them in the learning environment, such as Jean Painleve’s The Seahorse and the Bean Museum. Both used types of media immersion to teach children about the world they live in.

Our viewing for the week, To Be and To Have (2002), demonstrated the other important mode of learning—adult example. While much of informational children’s media covers scientific, artistic, and historical fact, it is the guidance of adults that teaches a child’s inquiring mind about society and how they fit into it. Although the main setting is a classroom, the focus is less on the curriculum the students are learning and more on their nature curiosities and interactions with one another. During a self-motivated project to fit together various erasers, one is stolen, two fiver-year-olds experiment (and almost succeed!) with a copier and a coloring book, and two boys figure out what makes them fight with each other every now and again. The ever-patient teacher teaches them more than how to pass exams, he teaches them how to read, write, cook, and get along with one another even after disputes.

One of my favorite scenes is when Jojo comes back from washing his hands of paint, and tells his teacher that there is a wasp in the hall. Rather than brushing him off, the teacher pushes his observation further and asks Jojo what he thinks the wasp was doing there—he encourages inquiry and continues to prod his students to ask questions and not just accept one answer.

Media has such a potential for capturing a child’s imagination and the possibilities for turning their attention toward a positive learning experience that prods them into inquiring about the world really is exciting to me as a future creator of media.

The Jungle Book -- Morality

Often in children’s media, morality is polarized in characters—bad characters are irredeemably bad and good characters always make the right decisions. The moral lessons are created when the protagonist (initially labeled neither bad nor good) interacts with these characters and experiences consequences.

The characters in The Jungle Book (1967) can easily be categorized into either “good” or “bad.” This polarization helps children understand the story and the morals more clearly, even if it isn’t an accurate representation of how good and bad operate in the real world. For adults, truth in cinema is found in the complexities of representation because it can then act as a mirror for the complexities of reality, but for children media must act as a key for them to refer to in order to understand the complexities of the world, which is why characters are often polarized. When they’re being naughty or rambunctious, they have the apes to identify with, and when they see the good concern of a parent, they have the reference of Bagheera.

Mowgli learns several different lessons from different characters on the way to the man village. With Bagheera, he learns (and rejects) his identity as a man and the responsibilities that go with it; with Baloo, he learns how to relax and enjoy life; with Kaa he learns that not everyone is trustworthy; with the elephants he learns how to follow orders; with the apes he learns that man is envied and about greed; with the vultures, he learns that friends are for picking you up when you’re feeling down; with Shere Khan he learns about the power of fear; and finally with the girl from the village he learns about the attraction of being among other humans (and puppy love for cute girls).

Ultimately, The Jungle Book is a coming-of-age story, which is really a specific brand of morality tale. As he travels through the jungle, Mowgli learns the things he’ll need to know to be a man—friendship, relaxation, responsibility, caution, greed, discipline, and even his own identity as a human. Mowgli, morally neutral (well…generally good) at the beginning navigates his way between naughty and good, partying with the apes and standing up to Shere Khan. Even Baloo and Bagheera learn lessons from each other, Bagheera learning how to unwind and take things less seriously, and Baloo learning responsibility and when to take a firm hand. Mowgli’s arrival at the man-village, including his attraction to the girl he finds there, marks his arrival at manhood.

 

Son of Rambow -- What is Children's Media?

The Son of Rambow is a nice, complex answer to the question, what is children’s media? It is a film about children and their family and friendship problems, yet it has a PG-13 rating and deeper themes that suggest an older audience. Although it is a film about children, some of its content, especially that involving the family situations of Lee Carter and Will, move it away from the “children’s movie” label. However despite its rating, I believe it is a children’s film and it’s more mature themes of parental neglect, religious conformity, and fickle social status make it a valuable film for both children and those who have claimed to move beyond childhood.

The depiction of Will’s imagination by overlaying his drawings onto real life appeals to children and to the memories of being a child in adults. Will and Lee’s adventures in skipping school and chores in order to shoot an action movie of their own is a form of wish fulfilment for young viewers, a realization of freedom and fantasy that they’re unable to experience. It reminded me of the make-believe games my sisters and I would play when we were young, acting out the worlds of our favorite books because it was the closest we would ever come to living in them. Although Will and Lee are childish, the lessons and experiences they have relate to children but aren’t inherently childish, making the story accessible to people of all ages. For example, the neglect and bullying Lee receives from his absent mother and exploitive brother resonate with children’s experiences with bullying, sibling rivalry, and lack of attention from a parent. But for adults viewing the film, it allows them to not only reflect on their childhood experiences but analyze their own behavior toward children, as well as translate the “childish” experiences into adult situations. The same idea applies for Will’s conflict with his extreme religion—a form of authoritative oppression for him and children viewers, and a larger issue of conformist and moral but narrow-minded education of children and people for adults.

Just like the child he is, Will completely inhabits the character and life of Rambo, which brings up the power of children’s media. Children, unlike any other audience, will take what they see at face value and believe the storyteller and his/her opinions. If a kid walks off a bus looking like the latest European pop rock star, then he has to be popular, someone to aspire to. But as we came to realize at the end of the film, Didier was the uncool kid, the bullied rather than the popular icon he was seen as by the English students. Likewise, the moment when Will actually becomes Rambo, when he is sitting in the hospital after the crash, getting the mud and blood washed off and being stitched up, is the moment that the dream of Rambo crashes for him. The closest he gets to being Rambo is the farthest he is from wanting to be him.  

Though I believe Son of Rambow is a children’s film, it’s scenes, characters, and themes are crafted in such a way that it loses all the diminutive, constraining connotations of that label.