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| from Eksobionics |
Well, my main point is that even though I didn't know these things already exist, plenty of other people who did were probably asking themselves the same question. Incidentally, there are a lot of YouTube videos of the things.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Avatar, Exoskeletons, and the Disabled
Well, my main point is that even though I didn't know these things already exist, plenty of other people who did were probably asking themselves the same question. Incidentally, there are a lot of YouTube videos of the things.
Just one of the guys
I've been looking for a scene in Avatar that shows a contrast to Quaritch's ableism, and I think I've found one that will work okay. It's the landing scene. First we see all the new soldiers exiting the shuttle, and as they walk past a group of soldiers who are working nearby, they are greeted with comments like "New meat!" Jake rolls down the ramp and finds himself on a collision course with a guy in one of those exoskeletons, and it becomes clear that Jake is going to have to evade, not exo-guy. There's two ways to look at this: maybe exo-guy can't maneuver very fast, in which case, he's okay on the disability front, OR, he could, but he's forcing Jake to do so because he's another ableist jerk like Quaritch (and not a contrast). However, he says something like "watch it, hot rod," which actually has a kind of accepting tone. The next line comes from a guy next to the one who said "new meat." He turns to NM-guy, and tells him to look (pointing at Jake). NM-guy asks, "meals on wheels?" Both this comment and the hot-rod line are the kind of things that men say to each other all the time as part of some weird ritual that I don't understand, but I think it means that they are, somehow, welcoming him just as they did the other soldiers. I'm probably going to have to do some more research, since I'm pretty sure that some sociologist has come up with a name for this process. Back to the library, or at least to its website.
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| Avatar (2009 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Ignore my Disability, Please
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| English: Rocks in mountains. Deutsch: Felsen im Huangshan-Gebirge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Ideology of Ability
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| DISABLED MUST PAY (Photo credit: Darren Cullen) |
Friday, June 29, 2012
I Crash and Burn, But Get Saved in the End
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| The Scent of Crash and Burn (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
She GAVE me a thesis for my research paper. Of course, she brainstormed with me for a while and asked all kinds of questions about what I saw in Avatar (incidentally, my research proposal was a mess. I didn't re-read the instructions before I wrote it, so it didn't make much sense), before she came up with three (!) different possible claims I could make about it. She recommended that I take the easiest one, which was "Quaritch is an ableist villain," because the draft is due on 7/9. I can do it, I think.
I didn't know that a teacher could do that, so I was kind of shocked. She said that I was already thinking that anyway and all she did was put it into words, and I guess that's true, but I'm feeling sort of guilty about it. That doesn't mean I'm not going to use it, though. So now all I have to do is write a bunch more journal entries before midnight tonight (the checkpoint deadline), and then I'll get started on the draft. I have the weekend off at work since I have to work the 4th of July sale (doesn't that just suck?), so the timing is good.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
A Scene from Avatar
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| English: Colonel (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
What I've noticed so far is that he seems to be using his able-bodiedness (is that a word?) to intimidate and dominate Jake, which is kind of a rotten thing to do. He knows that Jake is coming, but instead of seeing him in his office, he's in a small weight room, doing bench presses. Now, Jake can probably do that, too (he's paralyzed below the waist), however, it seems pretty insensitive at best. But it gets worse. Quaritch gets up from the bench and goes out into what looks like a fairly dangerous work area with a lot of machines being worked on, leaving Jake to follow him. He climbs up into a kind of exoskeleton machine and starts shadow boxing, glancing down (WAY down!) at Jake. Jake rolls up to a platform next to the machine, and another guy helps him out by elevating the platform so that Jake is at Quaritch's eye level.
There's a lot more, but for me, the real payoff to this scene is where Quaritch has gotten Jake's agreement to spy for him, and he tells Jake that if this works out, he'll see that Jake gets new legs. Jake says, "sounds real good," and maybe it does, but the vibe I got from this is that Jake is buying into the medical model and hasn't come to grips with his paralysis in terms of the social model. Does that make sense?
What is Disability Studies?
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| English: A collection of pictograms. Three of them used by the United States National Park Service. A package containing those three and all NPS symbols is available at the Open Icon Library (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
My topic choice
(I wrote my first few entries in my geology notebook, and I haven't had time to post them until now, so this one is from last Monday)
After staring at the list of films for the research project for the last hour, I finally settled on Avatar, and I'm going to use disability studies as my approach. On the list, Avatar is in the myth criticism category, not disability, but it says it's okay to use a different approach for any of the movies, and besides, what I read on the myth sheet in our packet made me think of disability. I mean, the hero of the film uses a wheelchair, and some of the people that he meets treat him differently than they would treat a person without a disability, so this looks like a good choice.
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| Avatar (2009 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
After staring at the list of films for the research project for the last hour, I finally settled on Avatar, and I'm going to use disability studies as my approach. On the list, Avatar is in the myth criticism category, not disability, but it says it's okay to use a different approach for any of the movies, and besides, what I read on the myth sheet in our packet made me think of disability. I mean, the hero of the film uses a wheelchair, and some of the people that he meets treat him differently than they would treat a person without a disability, so this looks like a good choice.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Where's Rhonda?
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| English: Amphitheatre and Lake, University of Bath Seen during an Open University Summer School. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Documented Argument Essay (AKA "The Research Paper") Assignment
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| Cover via Amazon |
The Rules of the Game
in Scholarly Film Analysis
While you may have analyzed films or literature in the past,
doing so with a model is probably new to you.
Analyzing any work of art through the lens of a critical approach
requires that you accept a few basic ideas; writing about your analysis for a
scholarly audience requires that you follow a few guidelines.
Premises
1: All works of art make some kind of comment
about the world (era, culture, etc.) in which their creators live.
2: All films are works of art (you could add a
“more-or-less” qualifier to this).
3: Every aspect of a
work of art is the result of purposeful decisions by its creator (i.e., there
are no accidents). Therefore, we must
always ask why the creator has done a particular thing and what it might
mean. In the case of film analysis, we
refer to the creator in the plural, as “filmmakers.”
Definitions
1:
A critical approach (AKA critical or theoretical model or
paradigm) is a body of ideas contained in or implied by a theory. This will be your main topic to research, NOT
the film, although you may find some relevant material about the film.
2:
A theory is simply an explanation of some phenomenon.
3:
A good theory is an explanation that a.) covers all the
known facts and b.) can be used to predict future occurrences of a phenomenon.
4: The literary
present tense is a convention of academic writing, where a scholar writes
about a work of art as if it is happening at the present moment, as shown in
the following sentence: “The filmmakers
of Spider-Man make a distinction between the daylight New York
City of Peter Parker and the nighttime world of Spider-Man.”
Guidelines
1: The audience for
your essay is a scholarly one, which means that they are already very familiar with the film you are
discussing. Therefore, there is no need
to summarize the plot of the film at any length beyond a single sentence.
2: The body of your essay should begin with a
thorough discussion of the critical paradigm and why it is useful in analyzing
this particular film. You will be
drawing on outside sources here to establish your authority on the model.
3: You will need to
focus on two or three scenes in the film in order to produce an analysis that
has depth, so question everything in the scenes and apply the model to it
all.
4: Although you are
working on a few scenes, it is perfectly acceptable and appropriate to refer –
briefly – to other parts of the film, as needed, to contextualize your discussion. For example, if you were to analyze the scene
in Finding Nemo where Marlin is obstructing Nemo’s efforts to prepare
for his first day of school, it would be useful to consider the later scene in
the dentist’s aquarium in which Gill talks Nemo through sabotaging the pump,
since it is a mirror scene (i.e., one that basically repeats an earlier
sequence with a few alterations that change the way the earlier scene should be
viewed). In this case, you might prefer
to use the later scene as your second scene.
5: As this is not an
evaluation or a review, your audience DOES NOT CARE whether you think the film
is good or bad, nor do they care about the actors who are playing the
roles. It is rare to need to make any reference
to an actor; we usually only care about the character. Refer to characters by their names,
not by the names of the actors playing them, and never succumb to the
temptation to talk about them as if they are real people.
but the assignment for the essay itself is this:
Project 5- Documented Argument Essay
MLA Format
2500-3000 words, worth 250 points (25% of your course
grade).
Draft due 7/9, final revision due 7/16
The final product of your research efforts is a documented
argument essay, that is, an essay
that draws on outside authorities, documented in MLA format, to persuade the
reader of the validity of the claim you are making in your thesis statement,
which concerns an academically significant topic. This is the traditional scholarly research paper. Chapter 9 in Bullock has a good discussion of
argument essays, and we will look at it in class. Keep in mind, however, that the traditional
research paper also includes a survey of the applicable secondary literature,
which is not covered in that chapter.
The Draft, (two copies due 7/9): This should not be a rough or first draft, but rather your final, complete,
word-processed draft of the entire essay (no
introduction, but the thesis, body, conclusion, Works Cited page, any
appendices), following the requirements below, that has seen some revision. I will be giving you revision instructions on
7/11. Warning: you will NOT be allowed
to submit a final revision without having submitted a draft on 7/9! If you will not be in class on 7/9, get a
copy of the draft to me before that
date.
Your grade for the final revision is partially dependent on
how well you execute the revisions you have been instructed to perform. Ignoring the instructions may result in a failing
grade for the project.
Final Revision,
(due 7/13): A thoroughly revised
persuasive essay that demonstrates the validity of a claim through the use of
evidence (produced from an analysis) and logical arguments. It must meet the following requirements in
order to be accepted for a grade:
1. A
specific thesis statement, derived from your analysis of a film, that declares
your critical approach and makes an arguable claim.
2. Sufficient
background information to make the approach being taken understandable, as well
as a survey of the scholarly literature surrounding this approach.
3. Direct
quotations. You are allowed no more than
2 long/block-format quotations in the entire essay, but you may have as many
quotations of fewer than 3 lines as are necessary. You must draw these from at least 2 books and 4 academic
journal articles, introduced as to author and authority, integrated into your
prose, fully discussed, and accurately transcribed.
4. In
support of your claim, a well-developed argument that appeals to logic (rather
than to emotion, e.g.), considers counterarguments, and contains no serious
logical fallacies.
5. A
logical organization with transition sentences.
6. As
polished prose as possible, using Standard Edited American English, carefully
revised for clarity and readability, polished and proofread to the very best of
your ability.
7. Complete,
accurately formatted (MLA) documentation of any ideas, information or material
from outside sources.
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