CSotD: First Rule of Film Time: Nobody Critiques Film Time
Skip to comments
Big Nate hits the mark with this one.
There are many cartoons based on kids, but Big Nate stands out as being, on the one hand, ridiculous and yet, on the other, pretty accurate. This week's arc, in which Nate has been attempting to break into the school paper's lineup as a critic, has been particularly good.
And today's touches off so many connections that I hardly know where to start.
School films/videos/filmstrips are a good place. My elder son had a teacher who showed so many videos in class that the kids nicknamed him "Coach." Fortunately, by the time he told me this, he had reached the age where I no longer felt compelled not to laugh at things a good parent wouldn't laugh at.
I was Nate's age in an era in which showing a film meant dragging out a lot of equipment, and most of my teachers couldn't be bothered.
And, while I can see how walking into class and seeing it set up for a filmstrip could be the sign of a day off, the material they had to draw from was, as Nate's critique suggests, so dreary that my response on those rare occasions was "oh, no."
I do, however, recall one time when all three fourth grade classrooms trooped down to the All-Purpose Room to watch a documentary on Eskimos.
I'm pretty sure it was "Nanook," but, whatever it was, it was impenetrable to us until one of the women picked up her baby and whipped out a breast to feed it.
There is nothing quite so memorable as a film stopped midstream for an impromptu, highly incensed lecture on maturity, delivered to a cafetorium full of nine-year-olds.
However little we learned from this episode, our teachers apparently learned even less, because, a few years later, somebody came up with a plan to have the last period Friday devoted to high school and junior-high teacher in-service workshops.
This would be made possible by putting us all in the auditorium to watch movies.
The money-saving part of this was that there were all sorts of movies you could get for free. The only one I remember was a documentary on the mining of bituminous coal, which was probably only 10 or 15 minutes long but felt like Sorrow and The Pity, but a little bit longer and without as much humor.
We were neither spellbound nor silent and they may have decided that their cunning plan didn't work with junior high kids, because we were somehow not present for the final and legendary film session, which involved two teachers up in the projection booth, running the films and getting a head start on the weekend.
They got a good enough head start that one of them leaned out of the booth and called to the principal, who was patrolling the aisles to keep an eye on the high school kids, "Hey, P.A.! What are you doing, selling popcorn?"
Career repercussions followed; the movies ended.
The other element in today's many-layered Big Nate is the commentary on crap plotlines.
In my guise as a writer for children, I try hard to avoid the theme I call, "The Twins Solve A Mystery," which I think results when authors grow up watching Scooby-Doo instead of reading Johnny Tremain or The Phantom Toolbooth.
The general category of tired, toothless storylines I encapsulate under that general heading also includes other hack stalwarts like "Modern Average Kid Finds A Magic Thing That Sends Him Back Into History," "Benevolent Old Fart Delivers A Lecture," and, oh, yeah, the one Nate addresses: "Evil Businesspeople Tear Down The Woods." (Lincoln Peirce gets extra credit for also working the Boring Old Fart device into this.)
I would note that most of the kids' novels winning awards these days are more along the lines of "No Businesses Build Anything And So The Whole Family Ends Up Living In Car." Preferably a divorced family beset by disabilities and substance abuse.
To win awards, you've got to be both depressing and uplifting. People need to feel that they are reading something important and significant. In fact, Mark Twain wrote the definition "Classic: a book which people praise and
don't read," and I think the Newbery Award committee has adopted that as its mission statement, adding only "unless assigned."
Which basically means that, if kids' books were food, there would be two choices: Tofu or Twinkies.
And when it comes to books kids might want to read on their own, well, kids raised on a diet of junk storytelling come to expect it and not only don't question yet another installment of "The Twins Solve A Mystery" but are also insensitive to the fact that every kids' movie for the last decade and a half has been CGI-animation with trash-talking animals, a wryly pragmatic female and a hapless kid bullied by larger semi-subhumans.
I'd rather they watched documentaries about bituminous coal. At least they know that those suck.
Oh, and I suppose it's unnecessary to point out that Big Nate's scathing critiques have not actually been getting into the school paper.
You can't speak truth to power if it was power who appointed the editor.
Comments
Comments are closed.