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.