I don’t know if I’ve taken a real English course. You don’t explain what you mean by that. You don’t say what you did with those films that was so special either. You just say that you watched them. I certainly can’t disagree with you, since I don’t know what you’re on about.
Maybe films add value. I don’t know. I haven’t taken an English class beyond the five in high school. HazelNutCoffee said that they added value by acting as a stepping stone for people to discuss their interpretation or understanding of the work by putting it in the context of a reaction to the director’s interpretation. I’ve been thinking that over for a while. At first, I didn’t like it because it seems like you could just make people explain what they thought without resorting to the director’s interpretation thing. It’s probably takes a while to get your thoughts together about a piece without a prompt though, so I figured you could read someone’s interpretation of the piece, which would take less time than watching a movie. Then I thought that saving time wasn’t a very good reason to favor a reading over a movie. Then I thought that an interpretation from a literary critic offered more insight into the piece, since they’re an expert. I think that’s a good reason not to use a movie. On the other hand, since the director isn’t an expert, it’s probably a lot easier for an undergraduate to disagree with him or her. I’m not convinced of the value.
My point is that films are texts, and can be analyzed as such at whatever level is appropriate. My other point is that to fully understand the works of Shakespeare or other dramatists or directors, you need to see their works as they intended.
Biologists don’t focus on preserved and dissected specimens to the exclusion of observing living beings. Neither do English majors focus on printed language to the exclusion of the languages of light, motion, focus, color, texture, shape, and sound.
This. I did TA training for Music, Film, and Art History TAs. My successor is also getting the English TAs, because as my boss put it, “they’re doing critical studies of a text, only their text is a book instead of a film.” There is a lot of transferability Of skills among the humanities when you get to the university level.
I don’t see how watching Franco Zeffirelli’s interpretation of Hamlet is experiencing what Shakespeare intended, but even if it’s so, it doesn’t account for the movies that are adaptations of straight up novels.
In grade 8 or something, we had to act out a scene from Hamlet. My group had the scene where Hamlet slays Polonius in the Queens’s chamber. After Polonius is stabbed, he utters the line, “Oh! I am slain.” In our rendition of the scene, we went out of our way to misinterpret that line. After the actor portraying Hamlet passed the metre-stick-as-sword to the actor portraying Polonius – who held it to his side in an I’ve-been-stabbed manner – everyone stood around for a while with confused looks. After some time, Polonius utters, “Oh!” and after pointing to himself, concludes, “I have been slain.” Zeffirelli had his scene. We did ours. Who knows what Shakespeare wanted?
It’s what we in the acadamey call the intentional fallacy. You will never be to fully understand what Beethoven was thinking when he wrote those symphonies, or what an audience member at the original globe theatre thought of shakespeare’s stuff. Further more, you presume that whatever the author thought about his works was most correct. Who’s to say that Zeffirelli, or Mel Gibson or Derek Jacoby don’t know the characters in Hamlet better than Shakespeare did? Who knows what Shakespeare wanted, and does it matter? You can only wrestle with issues of authenticty for so long before you start flogging seabiscuit with the lumber!
It isn’t, but it’s an experience that’s even more important: How does authorial intent transfer across cultures and the influence of another author entirely? Any film of Shakespeare’s work has (at least) two authors: Shakespeare and the director. Does the director add something interesting? If so, what? All of those questions are interesting, and none can be asked without the film.
My above point applies here as well.
When viewing a text that is an adaptation of something else from another medium, you get a double-reflection: Two different authors, two different contexts, and two different stories told in two different languages. The original text is often illuminated in new ways in the process of determining which piece of the adaptation came from which hand.
Amateur actor here, most often in musicals. No matter what we present, our theatre troupe usually manages to piss off a few Mormons. I say that as a resident of one of the most heavily-Mormon populated areas in Canada. That may bias what I have to say, but here goes.
My words to this student: Tough. Suck it up. Deal. Use this as an opportunity to look at the world around you. It’s not all Family Home Evenings and pizza parties for the young people at the church.
One of the problems I have with the local Mormon population is their insularity. This student needs to learn that others are not Mormon–they do not have Family Home Evenings, they do not spend Sundays at church, they do not follow any particular rituals as regards marriage, baptism, or death. Happily, many of the local Mormons understand this, and so we all get along. Sadly, some do not.
It sounds like this young lady is one such. As such, she needs to learn that not all life will be what Joseph Smith dictated. There will be times when–horrors!–she will come face-to-face with a non-Mormon, who will–gasp–have other ideas on how to spend a Sunday or a Monday night. Such as, oh, watching NFL football. Or drinking beer. Or–horror of horrors–drinking coffee!
My bias is showing. I know far too many Mormons locally who look down their nose at me when I greet the day with hot coffee. In their world, that makes them better than me. In my world, it makes them ignorant of the larger world, and the people who live in it.
This girl needs a reality check–and preferably a trip to Toronto, New York, San Francisco, or London; where she can experience people to whom Mormonism is not even a blip on the radar.
She takes a stand for what she believes in, good for her. Some things in life are worth dropping out for, some things in life are worth failing for. Too many people never realize this and spend their days miserable from their “success”
The professors COULD change, they just don’t want to.
This reminds me of when I worked as a revenue manager at a hotel. I had no family so I said, I’d work a double shift on Christmas. But the hotel owner said, “NO, if you normally would work that day, you have to come in.”
I said, “I understand this, but those people have families and I don’t, it’s slow and I can cover.” He refused. So I sat around all day at home doing nothing, while two of my staff had to have their holiday interrupted for no good reason, because someone was too stubborn to bend a rule.
Of course it’s always, “if I bend it for one I have to do it for everyone,” argument and once in a while it does happen, but when I’ve bent rules for people, somehow it never seems to happen. I guess it’s how you go about it.
I say more power to you. It’s time people stood up for their beliefs, even if it means taking a hit. That’s the only way you can learn what and what is not valuable to you in your life
It’s not in the Book of Mormon but there is a semi-official church directive to not watch R rated movies. It’s not official doctrine so you’re not actually going to get in trouble for it but it was part of a talk given by one of the church authorities a few years ago. Also any R rated films shown at BYU are likely to have been edited to remove the objectionable content.
That said, the rest of the world does not run on Mormon principles and she was unreasonable to expect it to do so. If she wants a Mormon education she needs to go to a Mormon institution. Even if she can’t get in to BYU, last I heard BYU Idaho wasn’t that selective.
RE: the editing - not likely. I used to run a University Student Union film program. Contractual terms didn’t allow editing. It was a while ago though.
At some point, though, you have to decide if it’s really worth taking a stand, or if it’s better to suck it up and chalk it up to experience.
I have a “cool story, bro” story about a student at my own uni, who complained about the content in a couple of journalism classes. He felt that he should be able to do independent study for these classes because he was a Christian, and he didn’t want his morals corrupted from what he perceived as anti-Christian bias. His advisor, who also happened to be my advisor, gently told him that independent study is intended for people who want to study topics in journalism that are above and beyond the standard curriculum, not in lieu of required classes. If he wanted to put a proposal together to study Christian media, he would be more than welcome to do so, but it could not substitute for a required class. The advisor also gently suggested that perhaps this program and this school were not for him, and that there were Christian colleges with fine communication/journalism programs that might be better suited to his moral and spiritual needs.
Incidentally, it’s fairly common for there to be no separate film or theater department at a university, so film and theater courses are taught in the English Department.
But she then would not have had the opportunity to throw a tantrum. And how is one expected to show and prove his/her faith to the world if he/she cant whine and bitch about it?
I didn’t know that (I have to say that I haven’t been actively following Neil Labute - not a favorite director of mine). He did, however, make some very controversial R rated films as a Mormon.
(We didn’t have a film department. Some of it was English, some Art History, we had one French and Italian professor really into teaching film classes. Took a class on film propaganda out of the Philosophy department, one on documentaries out of Journalism. The pornography we saw as part of a Women’s Studies film class. It was female directed porn.)
There’s standing up for one’s beliefs and there’s opting to being ignorant while paying for an education. This case does not deserve that sort of brava. The student doesn’t want to watch a film that presumably she hasn’t seen. I opted to go to a religious college and while I didn’t like that aspect of it, I realized I was also in college to learn more than what was outside of my personal bubble.