I forgot to record my observations from last week, however, I think that's allright, since all we did was have a Valentine's Day Party. I did learn, however, that Pod is severely allergic to tree nuts. Apparantly, he can't even be around them.
Today, however, let me observe Pod's fine motor skills. Mrs. Hallam, the CDC teacher, required the students to write their name on one side of a piece of paper and then draw a picture of themselves on the other. Pod has developed the pinser grasp, however, he holds the pen or marker beneath his hand, writing on the side of the pen. His picture of himself was basically, a large circle with to long lines from the bottom and two shorter lines from the side. The face took up the circle, with three dots for the eyes and nose, and a curving line for the mouth. His hair was a mass of lines on the top of the circle. This was all drawn with a red crayon, along with a linear squiggle beside it. He also drew "a sunshine" with a yellow crayon.
Later, while the other children were doing the small play before snack time, he took a green marker and proceeded to draw another picture. It was similar to the first, however, when asked what he was doing, he answered "I'm busy right now. People shouldn't talk when their busy."
From the mouths of babes.
During group play (I missed his snack time because Mrs. Hallam needed help in her room), Pod played in the loft. We got into a short discussion about "what we could do with our tongues" which included me sticking my tongue out at him from below the loft, and him throwing down a shoestring to me so "I could climb up."
Improbable as that was, I decided to pretend. Pod knew to hang on to the other side of the shoestring and bear down while I "climbed" up. I let the string slip through my hands instead of grabbing them (as I'm sure I would have toppled the whole thing). When he asked me if I wanted to climb up, I said that yes, I did, but that I had to leave.
I know I've mentioned this before, but Pod is introverted. He will usually play by himself in small play and will try very hard for attention in large group play. I think that next time (since the CDC is closed during Spring Break) I will try to play with him either in the Loft or in the gross motor play, since he enjoys that.
Maybe we'll even get to play outside!
Ok. Let's talk anachronisms for a minute here.
Now, I have absolutely no problem with anachronisms. I actually enjoy them from time to time, provided they are done well. When it comes to Shakespeare, however, anachronisms have to be very carefully done. The master of mixing anachronisms is, of course, Keneth Branagh.
If anyone has seen Branagh's Hamlet, Othello, or Much Ado About Nothing, you've seen Branagh at work. In each of these, there is a huge anachronism in the setting: none of them take place during the Renaissance, or around the time conceived. For instance, Hamlet takes place in a pre-WWII Denmark. But it works for the very simple reason that Branagh did his research and made sure that everything came from that time period.
Another good example is A Midsummer Night's Dream, which features Kevin Kline. This is set in 1920's Athens, but this setting is carried throughout the entire play.
So, what am I leading up to? Very simply, I was talking to a few other students who saw the play (unfortunately, I haven't been able to see it myself) along with Allison, one of the actresses. And lo and behold what did I find? Did you say "Anachronisms"? You'd be right!
Unfortunately, according to what I've heard, they weren't pulled off as well as the examples above. If you look closely at some of the costumes, you'll notice that quite a few of them are from different time periods. For example, I'm pretty sure the Renaissance didn't have leather caps or square spectecles. But let's take the larger picture nearer the bottom. We have, in this picture, what looks to be an English Regimental uniform from sometimes around the 1700's and a dress apparantly from the 1800-1900 America.
And then, there are the wedding dresses. Modern wedding dresses.
Again, I don't have a problem with anachronisms. I think they're rather amusing sometimes. But, if you have a jumble of anachronisms from different time periods, you have to very carefully balance all of them.
And while I'm sure he would have been a fan, I highly doubt that Shakespeare had anything to do with the Beatle's "All You Need Is Love".
Ok, so I haven't been able to go see As You Like It yet, and I doubt I will get to see it due to scheduling constraints. But Fear Not! For I have a plan.
Seeing that I acted in several High School productions and that I am currently acting in the Vagina Monologues, I decided to take the actors point of view and apply how aesthetics helps or hinders the actor. To that effect, I'm going to talk to one of the actors from the play and get their point of view on how a.) the original text help/hindered them, b.) how the school's interpretation help/hindered them, and c.) what they thought of the play. (Trust me, this is important.)
Unfortunately, I won't be able to talk to said actor until later tonight, so y'all will just have to wait. ^_^
For future reference, when The Lord of the Ring, appears, I'm talking about the Tolkein's books. When LotR (Lord of the Ring), FotR (Fellowship of the Ring), TTT (The Two Towers) or RotK (Return of the King) appear, I'm talking about Peter Jackson's movies.
That said, We talked a little today about book culture in Media Aesthetics. It got me thinking (as usual) about some of the interviews on the extended DVDs of LotR. One thing stuck in my mind: that each and every day, the cast would most likely get re-writes of the script. Why? Because Peter Jackson & Co. wanted the movies to be as close to the book as possible.
When the movies were first announced, I and a few of my friends through hissyfits (this was in High School). My boyfriend at the time said, "What's the big deal?" I then proceeded to tell him just how big a deal it was, along with his sister who nearly smacked him. Now, truth be told, at the time I had only read The Hobbit, and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, I hadn't as yet gotten to read The Lord of the Ring in its entirety (I think I had read Fellowship... but I can't be completely sure.) The point I'm making is that even though I hadn't read the book entirely, I knew how important this was.
If anyone can remember that far back, there was actually an animated movie made about the books called "The Return of the King." The same people made the animated version of "The Hobbit". Now, nobody I know of talks about this version of the movie because, quite frankly, it stank. But practically everyone I know has a mild obsession with LotR. Why? Because Peter Jackson knew that the strong fanbase of the books would work in his favor IF and only IF he kept as true to the books as possible. In this way, book culture influenced LotR and many of Peter Jackson's decisions on how to produce the films. And it made them better for it.
In short, Peter Jackson is a genius, and yes, my Media Aesthetics paper is going to be on LotR. ^_^
Ok. Like a certain other English Major, I have a fascination with Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, both the books and the movie. And there is something I noticed while watching the extra footage on the Extended DVD. The dialogue in the movies are drastically different from the dialogue found in the book. Not so drastically that you have Arragorn saying, "Dude, we SO have to rescue Merry and the Pip-man!", but you can see a marked difference. For instance, the lack of the word "Alas" every five sentences.
It's obvious that the movie dialogue has been altered to suit modern conceptions of speaking, but at the same time, there is something so very Tolkeinesque about the dialogue. For instance, at the Council of Elrond, Aaragorn says to Boromir "You cannot wield it, none of us can." "Wield" isn't a word you come across in the modern vocabulary, unless you have a very old professor. You know, the kind with the suede patches on the elbows of their tweed jackets? Peter Jackson and his contingent of writers managed to keep a precarious balance of modern colloquialisms and Tolkeins original dialogue. Obvious elements have been changed (for instance, Arwen's appearance to save Frodo in FoTR never happened in the book) to connect the work back to the viewer, but a certain amount of thought went into planning this movie adaptation, since a large number of fans of the book would be rioting in the street if, say, the Ents never showed up.
A lot of thought went into how modern to make the dialogue and how much of the original dialogue to keep. Likewise, a lot of thought went into how the actors should produce their lines. For example, during the first filming of The Two Towers, Theoden, Eomer, and Eowyn spoke with a more Irish accent than what appears in the movie. Those scenes were later dubbed with the accent we hear in the movie (which, I believe, is a form of English, though I'm not sure which part of the country it is from). Accents proved to be vitally important to the movie. Orcs, Goblins, and even some of the Uruk-hai had cockneyed English accents, in contrast to Saruman (Christopher Lee) who spoke with a very precise English accent.
Peter Jackson used the talents of his cast to create a kind of bond between the film and the audience. None of the actors ever spoke in an American, Australian, French, German or Asian accent. Instead, they are all derivatives of British accents. (Which makes sense, since Tolkein was British). At the same time, he uses the differences to create a sound that essentially lets the audience know that this is a world different from their own, but at the same time it is hauntingly familliar. Everyone can recognize an English accent. But not all of us can produce it. In short, Peter Jackson is a genius.
And I think I've found a focus for Media Aesthetics. Yay me! ^_^
Today, the schedule was a bit off, but the children didn't seem to mind too much, since they had a longer bit of play time before snack time.
I've noticed that Pod is a bit of a loner. When confronted with a more dominant child, he will often go off and play by himself. He does, however, try for attention from the other children, mainly by trying to play with them. Some times, this works. However, he is constantly being put into situations that make him act out to gain more attention. When he doesn't get the attention he wants, he plays by himself. Today, while a large group of the children were playing a type of school, with one dominant female in charge, Pod went off by himself and drew a picture. I joined him, and he was willing to share space. He did not want to interact much, focusing on his picture instead. This gave me an opportunity to observe his fine motor skills. He has good control, but there is a bit of difficulty maneuvering and placing small objects such as stickers. He is a bright child. When I picked up a crayon and began to draw, he immediately recognized the stick figure as me, and the next figure as himself. He even commented that his hair wasn't like I was drawing it, but it was "down, like this" gesturing with his hand on his own head. He has a little trouble following commands, but I think that's mostly because he is trying to get attention from his peers.
Allright. This is an extension of a Literary Criticism forum entry I did today, but adding a lovely Media Aesthetics twist. We were talking today about Aesthetic distancing, or how an author will distance the reader from the characters or the characters from himself (or herself, as the case may be).
In Chaucer, we see him distancing himself from the tales by saying he's merely a recorder, that the characters themselves created the stories and he's just writing them. If that's true, then why do we say that Chaucer is the author of the Canterburry Tales? It reminds me of Borges, and how he felt that there was something outside of him that wrote his stories through him. That he had nothing to do with the stories at all.
Running along those lines, I was thinking about Tim O'Brien's work In the Lake of the Woods, and I was wondering, is there such a thing as Aesthetic Connecting? Is is possible to bring the reader to conclude that the author is integrally involved in the story. In O'Brien, many of his footnotes relate him to the story, connecting him to the story. There are times when an entire footnote is dedicated to O'Brien's thoughts on the story itself. Or, is this yet another Aesthetic Distancing technique, where the narrator in the footnotes isn't O'Brien, but another character all together?