This blog is a teaching tool and a tool for, well, thinking "out loud," informally and semi-publicly. I originally intended to use it for my online Contemporary American Literature class, but the posts now encompass both focused and random thoughts related to other classes and events.
The scene I'm going to examine in detail is the establishing shot that introduces Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997). (See it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWA1T78WpI). The "establishing shot" (definition from James Monaco's How to Read a Film, rev. ed.) is "generally a LONG SHOT that shows the audience the general location of the scene that follows, often providing essential information, and orienting the viewer."
If the purpose is "orienting the viewer," the remarkable thing about this shot is that it resists orienting us; it withholds information about exactly who and what we are looking at and where we are. It's a 2 ½ minute shot in which the camera never leaves the woman we're watching, but it's only when the shot has ended and we move on to the next three shots that we realize where we are and who she is. The beginning of the movie is anxiety-producing, which is a good introduction to the entire movie, a crime story of suspense and violence.
The credits are superimposed on the shot, so the first question that came to my mind was "Is the movie starting?" Two and ½ minutes later, the answer is "yes." Then, there is the odd framing and staging of the shot. We are watching a woman in profile and she is wearing what looks like a uniform; it's a bright blue uniform and she's wearing what seems to be an i.d. of some kind around her neck and she has a patch on the shoulder of her uniform . What kind of uniform is it? Is she a security officer of some kind? She is standing still, not walking, not looking about. She has a calm expression on her face, stands erect and with dignity, and gives us no clues. But, and this is a major disorienting factor, though she is not walking, she is moving at a steady pace. This is not a "long shot," which "includes at least the full figures of the subjects, usually more" (Monaco) but a truncated shot: We see the woman only from the waist up. We know she's moving because she is passing by the wall behind her. That wall is tiled in geometrical patterns and has a wide range of colors, all fairly subdued. She stands out vividly from the ever-changing background. Is she moving or is the wall moving? How is the movement happening?
This movie, from the beginning, has a very evocative soundtrack, mostly of disco and blues-inflected music from the 70s. The whole time we are watching this woman a song is playing that seems to be the antithesis of what she represents. It's a song that repeatedly talks about "crossing 110th Street" and invokes the "ghetto," a "brother""trying to survive," and a "woman trying to catch a trick on the street." The contrast between this calm, well put-together, light-skinned black woman we're looking at and the music we're listening to raises even more questions.
At nearly three minutes in, the credits finish and suddenly the woman moves—or is moved—forward much faster. Will she fall? Be thrown forward? And…cut! In the next instant, we see the x-rayed contents of bags moving right to left and the movement is almost nauseatingly different from what we have been watching, but at least we now have a clue: We are probably in an airport. Next, a crotch being wanded, and we know we're in an airport. Within another minute or so, our woman is walking more quickly, then nearly jogging through the airport. She reaches her destination and—voila!—she is a flight attendant.
The principal purpose of this establishing shot is to create anxiety and discomfort in the viewer using all of the techniques described above. We are not allowed to rest and everything is done to disorient us and disappoint our expectations. All of these features prepare us for the movie to come in which we will be continually disoriented about who is doing what to whom and in which this calm woman will not be quite what she seems, there will be double and triple-crosses, as well as a star-crossed romance, and crime, finally, will pay.
Sedgwick's work has been a profound influence on my own development as a scholar. Her book, The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, was first a puzzlement and then an inspiration to me. Through the years, her work continued to excite, inform and inspire. Sedgwick was always at home out on the edge and never afraid of falling. She will be missed in so many ways. RMartin
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950-2009 One of the most influential cultural theorists of her generation, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, died on Sunday following "a long and very public battle with cancer," in the words of David Manning, director of media relations for the CUNY Graduate Center, where Sedgwick was a distinguished professor of English. The author and editor of numerous books, Sedgwick is perhaps best remembered for Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press, 1990), regarded as one of the founding works of what became known as "queer theory." A volume of her poetry, Fat Art, Thin Art, was published by Duke University Press in 1994. She mixed poetry, memoir, and psychoanalysis in A Dialogue on Love (Beacon, 1999), based on her struggle with breast cancer and depression. Sedgwick received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1975. Before joining the Graduate Center in 1998, she was a professor of English at Duke University, and also taught at Hamilton College, Boston University, and Amherst College. In 2005, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, then to the American Philosophical Society in 2006. --Scott McLemee See also: http://dukeupress.typepad.com/dukeupresslog/2009/04/eve-kosofsky-sedgwick-19502009.html
If you scroll down to the bottom of my blog to see blogs I'm following, you'll see Sepia Mutiny. The latest post there is about an interview with Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth), an author many of you may have read. While the event at the New School is sold out this Friday, Sepia Mutiny is interviewing her and will be posting that later in the week AND they are asking for any questions you may be interested in asking Lahiri. Ok, it's not fame and fortune, but it's a chance you might find worth taking if you have read any of her books or seen the movie, The Namesake.
I know I mentioned the title of this book—Salvador (1983)--in our first week's discussion as an example of Didion's more "objective" reportage. Though, I think I also said that she views even real, factual events through her emotional prism.
I pulled the book off the shelf just now to find a good passage to give you. Much of the book is, in fact, documented, factual reporting, but she is definitely there as the "eye" who sees what she is telling us. Here is one passage early in the book where she brings the two (the personal and the objective) together:
"One shadow sat behind the smoked glass windows of a Cherokee Chief parked at the curb in front of the restaurant; the other crouched between the pumps at the Esso station next door, carrying a rifle. It seemed to me unencouraging that my husband and I were the only people seated on the porch. In the absence of the headlights the candle on our table provided the only light, and I fought the impulse to blow it out. We continued talking, carefully. Nothing came of this, but I did not forget the sensation of having been in a single instance demoralized, undone, humiliated by fear, which is what I meant when I said that I came to understand in El Salvador the mechanism of terror" (26).
The next page begins with a long paragraph quoting a report from the US Ambassador to El Salvador on "The Chronology of Events Related to Salvadoran Situation." This book is a report on a rebel insurgency made up mostly of peasants and indigenous people against the crude military government of El Salvador, yet another corrupt, dictatorial regime propped up by the US in its efforts to thwart Communism. Ah, where did those times go?
Anyway, let me call a few things about this passage to your attention and you will see how it connects to our earlier reading. She is talking about how it "seemed" to her and what her "sensation" was in the situation. But look at the realistic details in which she has wrapped the emotional sensations: the depiction of the threatening "shadow" in the car, which is identified by make and model, the armed man kneeling between the specifically-named "Esso station" gas pumps, and we have the sharp image of the faces of Didion and her husband, well-lit targets, illuminated by a simple candle flame. There's the tension in her "fight" with herself, not to call attention to themselves or do anything startling by blowing out the candle, and that lovely word "carefully," where we might expect "quietly." "Carefully" is such a beautifully chosen word, because it goes so well with the tension of the situation, with their awareness of their watchers of whom they need to appear unaware, of the delicate terror of the scene.
What a pleasure prose like this is!
The whole book is also a factual report of events, observed by a real person, who feels real emotions in the situations. She's not necessarily there to empathize with the victims, but to show us, the readers identifying with her and feeling her emotions, their starkly displayed, realistically drawn corpses.
She can be both detached from the events and filled with emotions that are expressed indirectly. Her prose is not over-the-top emotional, but pared down and direct. Her vocabulary is simple and the sentences are straightforward, not convoluted and complex.
Here is how this feature of the class is described in the syllabus:
Analytical blogging (25%):In face-to-face classes I sometimes ask students to keep a journal.This journal is not a spill-your-intimate-secrets kind of diary but rather a place for students to identify narrowly-focused topics they want to discuss in some detail and then analyze them.To “analyze” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/analyze) is to perform a rational action, not an emotional response.You will analyze some small aspect of the text to show that you can think critically about the constituent parts of a text (e.g., character, imagery, narrative structure, etc.), ask meaningful questions about the text and apply your skills and imagination to figuring out how they work.Instead of writing these ideas in a journal, you will post them to a blog that you will set up at Google’s blog site: http://help.blogger.com/?hl=en.If you already have a Gmail account, this will take less time, but if you don’t, it still won’t take you more than about 20 minutes to set up your blog.
In this blog, every other week, you will post a short essay (about 500 words) as described above.You will end up with a total of five (5) short essays, but you may do more if you like.You may choose not to make your blog available to the whole world, but you must make it available to the people in the class, including me, of course.In these short essays (the quality of your writing will count here), you can explore or respond to issues and aspects of the text that go beyond the class discussion that will take place in our discussion board.In the discussion board in our class, I set the topics or ask the questions, and then students discuss among themselves.In your blog, you will set the topic and show us your thought processes and ideas and your classmates and I can come in and comment on what you’ve taught us or shown us in a new way.This will be a learning experience for me, too; and I will participate with my own blog that you are welcome to visit.
The rest of what I have to say here is, first, some background on my thinking about how blogging can enrich our course and, second, some more specific guidance to the class about how to use their blogs.
Why I Decided to Initiate Blogging in This Class
In my online classes of the past, I have had three kinds of writing assignments:discussion board posting/response, formal papers, and research papers.The first is a dialogue among everyone in the class on a relatively well-defined topic.The second has usually been an assignment done by the student alone and read by me, then returned to the student with feedback.The third has been a conventional, formal assignment requiring original research and the demonstration of the ability to access appropriate and varied research tools.This has also been a communication from the student to me and then I return the papers with feedback and that’s the end of it.
The formal paper and the research paper are assignments whose utility I’ve grown to question, particularly in online classes.While they do tell me some things about students’ capabilities, they don’t seem to foster more learning and whatever learning students do achieve in the assignments is not shared with their classmates.
We are a “community” of learners, so how can we best use the technology at our disposal to learn—as a community--from one another and to squeeze as much use as possible out of these interesting tools that we have, literally, at our fingertips?
One particular professor at Pace, Dr. Andres Villagra, a professor of Spanish who has taught on both campuses, has used blogs and wikis in his class for several years now and, in multiple discussions, was able to help me think through some of the ways in which blogging (I’m not ready for wikis yet!) could help students learn more and learn more from each other, and could still allow me to assess their ability to think analytically about literature and communicate their ideas effectively. That appealed to me because the formal papers and research papers of the past have ceased to satisfy me as learning tools.Another thing he mentioned to me is that in the blogs used by his advanced Spanish students, he has seen great improvement in their writing because they know their writing can be seen by the public and they take more time to get it right. Writing improvement is a stated objective of this class, so I find this very appealing.
One thing I had some trouble understanding is why the course discussion board isn’t the same thing as a blog.I see now, though, that the discussion board is an area for preliminary discussion and sharing of ideas and that it is protected from public view.It is only accessible to people in our class.I see the blog as a place where ideas that are sparked in the discussion board can be further developed and can be shared with the general public, as well as classmates.Students are not encouraged to write long, well-developed essays in the discussion board, but the blog is an ideal place for that.
I see the blogs students have set up as replacing the formal paper and as a place where ideas can be weighed and discussed not just among class participants but with a wider audience. We can break out of the Blackboard confines and take some risks in putting our ideas in a public place.In our blogs, we will publish our ideas, put new information in circulation.
How To Use Your Blog in This Course
The five essays you will post in the blog will be, at minimum, 500 words each.Each will be focused on some narrow aspect of one of our texts (see Weekly Assignments in the syllabus for due dates), an aspect that grabbed your attention and about which you want to do some detailed speculation.
Your short essays will be original, well-expressed and informed by your understanding of the texts and of the ideas behind this course in Contemporary American Literature.
You will be expressing your own point of view and will “speak” in your own voice to an audience you want to persuade to your way of thinking. You will want to impress your public with the maturity of your thought and clarity of communication.
Some examples of what you might do here:
Deeply analyze a visual image in a text, looking at it from multiple angles and considering its role in the text
Connect an immediate issue pulled from today’s headlines with a narrow feature of a text
Question why the ending of a text left you feeling unsatisfied and consider whether that might be the author’s intention
Connect an aspect of the text to a single relevant “PoMo” quality such as non-linearity or pastiche
Post your five essays, but you also may want to use your blog to share ideas or questions about the reading for which there’s no space in the class discussion board.These need not be formal essays; they might be just some immediate personal thoughts, thoughts that might later be developed into essays. Open your blog for comments, so others can help you refine your thinking or enrich the process. List your blog in the Blogger directory to get more traffic.
Customize your blog!Put up a picture and shape the appearance of the blog to suit your purpose.It’s not Facebook and shouldn’t have that personal, informal tone, but that doesn’t mean it can’t express your personality. Consider the look of your blog and choose a template that expresses your own style but does not overwhelm your writing.
The Future of These Blogs
For this semester, what goes on in the blogs should be relevant to this course.Beyond this semester, though, you may have other uses for the blogs you’ve started.For instance, you might consider using your blog as a writing portfolio to display your best work for future employers, for professors who will be writing your recommendations, or for graduate school admission.
I appreciate your patience in reading through my thoughts about how blogging might enrich our course.I wanted to share with you the pedagogical and practical thinking that went into my decision to introduce blogging to the course.You are not in it alone. I will be learning how to use this technology to express my thought process and to communicate my ideas right along with you.We’ll critique this technology at the end of the semester and determine whether I should make some changes in the future and whether using this technology has, in fact, enriched students’ experience and helped them gain a new and useful skill.
I've recently moved from New York to New Orleans where I will continue my viewing, reading, writing and teaching, though in a much hotter environment. Tweeting as an unabashed liberal @ReelNOLA
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