Dear Class,
This is a brave step for me to join you on Blogger, but I figured that I would not ask you to do anything in a public forum that I would not do! Good writing means exposing ourselves to vulnerability (within reason-not the vulnerable stupidity that we see on reality television) and the possibility that we could be wrong! In the best case, public writing causes us to rework and revise what we think about a subject, and this playground of possibilities will help us both with creating our portfolios but also lead us to the recognition that good writing comes out of good conversations with people in the same boat (okay, I partially take that back-don't talk to your soccer ball in the boat like Tom Hanks in
Castaway). We are in the same boat, class!
For my creation of this blog, I must reflect on how I am trying something new (and a little intimidating) with my writing and how I am trying on new genres in the process of creating this new film class that analyzes the way that genre works in the language and discourse of film. First, I am a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to public writing. I feel a bit uneasy with Facebook because I see that personal privacy in American seems to be eroding. Despite the fact that I love people and talking with people, I am also a little bit of a hermit in the web world. Please be patient with me in this aspect, and I will do the same with you. This is a safe place, and we will be our own little group unless you want to add others to the conversation.
I see genres acting as both as a way to view the world, in that we often start to place things into categories from the day that we are born, and a way to avoid deeper observations or explorations of the world! Let me supply some examples of how genre works as a way or organizing our experience in the world! As babies, we have
parent categories that are held together through our experience of the characteristics of our parents. We have
stranger categories as well, held together through recognition that we have fewer characteristics through which to know this category and group. If we did not have the ability to group things into types based on what we observe and link together, then we would have no learning that extended beyond our tiny lives. Remember my analogy of the poison mushrooms: we are alive today because our ancestors placed mushrooms into categories based on characteristics when one ancestor was not lucky enough to avoid the poison.
As well as keeping us safe, typing or genre creation can also be destructive when categories are accepted without critical thinking. When someone accepts a prejudiced view of a group of people without seeing the many variations within a group, this typing devolves into bigotry. Unfortunately, both of these possibilities are very human. This is why I wanted us to analyze genre-making as an action and consider how each of the genres that we explore limits or expands our view of the world. I thought that film would be a great place to start because it is a popular medium. As a popular medium, all of us have some experience with making sense of film. I hope that you will feel a sense of familiarity with the medium while exploring and learning about your questions of genre within the medium of film, and I hope that this familiarity will cause you to take a deeper look, blending your sense of ownership with a strong sense of inquiry that challenges simple and commonly accepted film genre discourses.
One of my reasons for picking the film theme for this class is that I love the time in my head where I am silent but interacting with the absorbing language of film, just reflecting on what the director wants to communicate and how I am framing the directorial messages. When I keep these thoughts in my head, however, I do not get to see them evolve because there is no challenge from the outside. For instance, I just assumed that everyone was following the language and metaphors as easily as I was in this class for
The Godfather until all of you let me know that you were having trouble hearing the language. Your input helped me to see where my assumptions were lying and also forced me to think about why the director chose mumbled words and verbally indistinct dialogue. I think that the confusing sense of sound was to show the new realism of the film and also the cloak and dagger operations of the mafia. I had this new insight because of interaction with my class, and this pulled my analysis of
The Godfather up a notch! I am hoping to foster this sense of social revision by having you respond to blogs, create blogs, and trade ideas on your learning for the portfolio.
I also have one last confession about blogging: I am not an easy friend with technology! I want to create this blog as an activity that will widen my scope about what students commonly see as interaction, but I also want to push out of my own comfort level with technologies that are not directly designed for teaching. As I said in class, I love teaching online, but keeping this blog requires other skills. I will have to fiddle with structure, ideas, form, and conventions for blog writing. This is good for you because you will have a teacher who is learning along with you, but it will also help me to think about how new media genres work. Ultimately, this will benefit my teaching! My purpose for my blog is to explore how I can incorporate research strategies into our film and genre conversations and be a good thought partner for you while you are conducting your research.
Now I want to see your questions! What are you thinking of for an extended research question?
Just today, I had several questions that I could follow to write an essay! For instance, I wonder why the new action films feature women as strong, major players while older action films only have girlfriend roles.
Feel free to include paragraphs of personal writing, as I have done, with more academic explorations of your topic. You should reflect on what you know at this point and how you plan to branch out with your inquiry question.
Share your thoughts,
Ms. Walker
