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.