I Come Up for Air and Discover a Tragedy

AURORA, CO - JULY 22: Greg Zanis of Aurora, Illinois, writes the names on the twelve crosses he made for a makeshift memorial to the victims of last weekend's mass shooting at the Century 16 movie theater July 22, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado. A carpenter by trade, Zanis made the twelve white crosses that were placed near Columbine High School after a mass shooting there in 1999. Zanis said he made these crosses as fast as possible and drove all night across the country to place them across the street from the theater.  (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Believe it or not, I have not seen or heard any news since last Thursday night.  I took the weekend off from work to finish all my papers and study for my finals this week; I told my family not to talk to me, because I needed to work on my stuff, and they wanted to help, so the only thing I heard from them was that dinner was ready.  I told my friends not to call or text, and I kept my phone on the charger.  A great plan, huh?  Well, I did get almost everything done.

I got up early today to write some journal entries (I still need a few more), and went online for the first time in four days (about 15 minutes ago), where I learned what had happened in Aurora, Colorado while I was in my own little world.  I am in shock, I guess.  I don't know how to react to it just yet.  I'm going to have to process it for a while, then I'll write more about it later today.  I think.

For now, I just want to say that all of my thoughts are with the victims, both living and dead, and their families, and will probably remain with them for a while.

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College Students, the Joker, and a Suggestion for the News Media



AURORA, CO - JULY 20: People light candles at a makeshift memorial during a vigil for victims at the Century 16 movie theatre where a gunmen attacked movie goers during an early morning screening of the new Batman movie, 'The Dark Knight Rises' on July 20, 2012 in Aurora, outside of Denver, Colorado. According to reports, 12 people were killed and 59 wounded. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

I (Dr. "Toffee," that is) am breaking into Rhonda's research journal at this point for a couple of reasons.  First, I don't see how she can avoid commenting on what happened Thursday night in Colorado; I expect that there will be something about it in the journals of all of my real, non-fictional students.  Second, I actually have had 4 or 5 students over the past few years who chose to analyze The Dark Knight for their film analysis project (not to mention a number of class discussions on the film), and all of them wanted to focus on the Joker specifically, so I have done some thinking about this already.  In fact, I spent a lot of time with a couple of them who came to my office to talk about their projects on several occasions. 

What did I learn from these discussions and the papers?  Well, don't panic -- I did not find any of them wanting to use the Joker as a role model.  What they wanted was to understand the character's motives.  They all looked at the scene where Alfred tells Bruce Wayne the story of the man he had hunted years before.  Alfred ends this with a line that's something like "Some people just want to see the world burn."  (Obviously, the filmmakers knew that they had to say something about why anyone would do what the Joker does.)  

In some of the best of these papers, the students, who were usually taking a cultural studies approach (one took a myth crit approach, examining the Joker as a variant on the Satan archetype), saw the Joker as the embodiment of the terrorist mindset, after you strip away whatever ideological trappings may exist.  The film took on a new importance for them once they came to this conclusion, which let them examine how they felt about terrorism in general.  There were some surprising insights about how people try to understand acts of terror.  And, eventually I came to value the film in a way I hadn't before I saw it through their eyes.  It says that the motivation of the terrorist is meaningless, that the terrorist --any terrorist -- is simply evil, and evil must always be fought.  Not a bad message overall for a movie.  

However, the real-life tragedy of the lives lost in Colorado is horrifying to the point that the association of a movie to it feels like an insult added to the overwhelming injury already inflicted.  If anything, it makes these murders even more evil.  And, yes, I said "murders":  the news media all seem to want to use the term "massacre" or something like it, but that, I would argue, diminishes what actually happened.  Every one of the people lumped together by the word "massacre" was an individual, and they deserve to be seen and remembered that way, not as a statistic remarkable only for its size. 

I am a graduate of Northern Illinois University (MA 1999, PhD, 2004).  Perhaps as a result of that, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how the news media cover this kind of murder story, how the coverage emphasizes the murderers and relegates the victims to a subordinate position, how it makes celebrities of these killers and, to a degree, normalizes their crimes as a typical response to some kind of personal stress.  I have a suggestion as to how we can counteract this, and I think it's about time we put it or something like it into effect.  From now on, I would like to see the news media refer to all convicted murderers (of however many people) as "prisoner number . . . , the killer of  . . .."  Yes, it would take a long time to list all the names, but so what?  We need to remember who they were, and the murderers need to be shown that they are themselves meaningless. 

The Huffington Post has posted a list of the victims along with some details (heartbreaking, for the most part) about them in an article that does not mention the alleged murderer by name.  I shouldn't be surprised, but I am, that this did not come up on my Zemanta feed, nor that when I searched for the info, every source was drawing on that posting.  So, kudos to The Huffington Post for doing the right thing.  The victims, Veronica Moser,  Gordon Cowden, Matthew McQuinn, Alex Sullivan, Micayla Medek, John Larimer, Jesse Childress, Alexander Boik, Jonathan Blunk, Rebecca Ann Wingo, Alexander Teves, and Jessica Ghawi, are far more worthy of attention than the unnamed (by me) murderer.  I do not have a list of the wounded, but I would not list them anyway as they probably want their privacy right now. 

And now, back to Rhonda's thoughts.  As always, they are based on similar ideas expressed by my students.           

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How Am I Doing?

Grade cutoffs (Photo credit: ragesoss)

I'm working on my final project for the course, a self-evaluation essay that goes with a portfolio.  And, I'm having a few problems.  I spent a lot of time over the past 7 weeks researching disability studies issues and watching Avatar (I must have seen the entire film 7 times and the scenes I used for the paper at least 30 times), which I remember doing, but the actual writing is kind of a blur.  So, I re-read what I wrote, and I'm kind of mortified by my first paper (a scene analysis with a DS approach, no outside research).  It looks like a sixth-grader wrote it.  On the other hand, I am now totally impressed by my research paper.  I gotta wonder, does everybody else in the class feel this way?

I won't know the grade until Monday, but I think that my improvement since early June has to count for something. 

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My Brilliant Conclusion about Disability in Avatar

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it really a brilliant conclusion? Probably not.  Anybody who spends time thinking about disability (and all the issues that involves) while watching Avatar (repeatedly) will most likely see the same thing that I did.  The bottom line is that this film does, sadly, rely on a stereotype about the disabled, and it does so mainly as a matter of convenience in order to get its audience to accept Jake turning his back on humanity.  Even worse, this exploitation of disability is unnecessary and cowardly.  How much bolder a statement would it have made if an able-bodied Jake decided that he would rather belong to the ecologically responsible Na'vi  than the planet-raping humans?  More about this later-- I've really been thinking about this a lot.

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Is there a draft in here? (revising my research paper)

I had my conference with Dr. Toffee yesterday, and it was an eye-opener.  I was amazed at how many things I didn't notice were wrong with my draft (on one page I even misspelled Avatar!).  I knew that I had a problem with organization, and she showed me how to fix that (define terms one by one in the lit survey section of the paper, then keep all the analysis divided into the three scenes I'm looking at).  Now it seems obvious, and I can't believe I didn't figure that out for myself.  I have to drive out to NIU in Dekalb tomorrow to use their library.  Ours doesn't have the 2 books I need to quote from (I returned the copies I got through interlibrary loan already.  I was sure I was finished with them).

Anyway, I have until 8AM Monday to finish the revision, and I plan to rewatch the entire movie (during breaks from revising, so it'll probably take all weekend) before then.  I want to come up with a brilliant conclusion about what Avatar is saying about disability and the disabled.

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Better Dead than Disabled?

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 08: Jade Jones of Great Britain looks on after her race during the Visa London Disability Athletics Challenge LOCOG Test Event for the London 2012 Paralympic Games at Olympic Stadium on May 8, 2012 in London, England. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

I'm taking a break from working on my draft, I just looked over my last few posts, and it hit me that I never talked about the second thing I mentioned from Siebers' list of myths about disability:  "It is better to be dead than disabled."  I don't know how I forgot about it, because Avatar says something really interesting as a kind of overall  position on disability. 

My first reaction to that myth was a memory of a guy in a restaurant (I think it was Chili's).  He was at the next table, and he and his wife (or girlfriend) were talking about a friend of theirs who had just come back from Iraq after being in an explosion.  I was trying not to listen, but he was loud, and we were all eating, so we were quiet.  Well, what he said was, "If that ever happens to me, just shoot me."  I didn't realize it then, but I've heard people say stuff like that lots of times.  And it makes no sense, now that I'm giving it some thought.  How do you know how you would feel if that really happened to you?  What about all the people who are living with disabilities and who seem to be enjoying life?  Where did this stupid idea come from, anyway?
So, what does Avatar say about it?  The movie basically says that it is better to be a blue alien on a planet millions of miles away from your home, surrounded by strangers, than it is to be a human with a disability. 

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