Henry Giroux

Walt Disney has been dead for 43 years now. What would he say to the way his legacy is being managed? Certainly his nephew Roy is unhappy with the Disney corporate culture established by Michael Eisner et al, as soul-less and rapacious.

Henry Giroux writes well, and largely convincingly of the dangers which Disney presents, to me the important dangers are the creation of a population with little or no ethical grounding, and no sense of community or public good. I can concede that these may disappear as children gow older, but I would worry that this would not happen until they are much older and iun the meantime we have a class of commercial immoralists.

Another problem which bothers me is the use of academic professionals to assist in the commercial rape of youth. It seems to me that these people are acting unprofessionally in prostituting their abilities, and themselves seem to lack a sense of the public good and interest.

Giroux may speak in generalities, but in my view, his analysis is spot on.

Disney has been exceptionally aggressive is defending its copyrights, as well as lobbying to have the term of copyrights extended. The stanford Fair use Project has a special video on copyright and Fair Use, specifically positioned to enrage Disney:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/documentary-film-program/film/a-fair-y-use-tale

Vidas Secas

Fernado Birri and I

All in all, an amazing day in class. I look forward to tomorrow. The consideration of gender construction is of especial interest.

I was talking with Lesley about Paolo Friere, and brought up the connection between his work with education of the poor, with Latin American film movements, especially Brazil's Cinema Novo. The New Latin American film movement was heavily influenced by post war Italian Neo-realist style, combined with Marxist political thought. In Argentina, Fernando Birri (Tire Die, 1958, and Los Inundados, 1961) and Fernando Solanas (La Hora de los Hornos, 1968) pioneered socially conscious documentaries and feature films which dealt with the poor. In Brazil, Carlos Diegues, Glauber Rocha and Nelson Perreira dos Santos (Vidas Secas, 1963) made films which underscored the bleak lives of the poor, especially in the North-East of Brazil, as well as undertaking a discourse on the nature of Brazilian culture and society sparked by Marcel Camus' Orfeo Negro, 1959. Although disliked in Brazil, Camus' film drew world-wide attention to Brazil, and started the spread of the Bossa Nova (Jazz Samba music). Orfeo Negro's all black cast drew attention to Brazil's racial problems. Diegues directed a number of Afro-Brazilian historical epics such as Quilombo (1984).

Birri and Rocha eventually wound up in Cuba, where the most radical reshaping of film was taking place. Cuban film is determinedly political resulting in a different approach to film making from Hollywood's. High spots might be La Ultima Cena (1976) and Fresa y Chocolate (1994), by Tomas Gutierre Alea, dealing with the position of gay people in the revolution, and racial oppression. Birri is ranked as the Father of New Latin American Cinema, and this cinema is almost without exception critical of government and society. In Chile, Miguel Littin directed the docudrama El Chacal de Nahueltoro, which dealt with joblessness, education and the death penalty.

These films all reflect societies which Friete would want radically changed through a Marxist educational intervention.

Many of these films are difficult to source, but Birri's are on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6-WYdzEzZk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFGy2i8rqHE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw1tHxpCOWc&feature=related

Media Convergence

Prennsky's comments are most interesting when looked it from a Media Studies position on convergence. While Media Studies suggests the digital technologies are converging, Prennsky suggests that, at least in the short term, digital users are diverging. I certainly lie somewhere in the middle of his dichotomy. While I reject omnipresent telephony, in many other ways I side more with the conceptions of the digital native. I suspect my work with the computer museum may have made my transition to digital life somewhat easier. Mike and I were also talking about Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy. In Media Culture and Theory II with Dr. Potter, we talked about the huge difference between pre-literate thought and literate thought which has been very greatly effected and shaped by not merely writing, but also publishing, and how our thoughts are often given a form by the nature and organisation of print. The new digital approach, continues to influence the nature of thought processes, often returning us, in part, to pre-literate approaches to knowledge. Ong's ideas, which centre on the use of memory for information storage, give us new approaches to behaviour and thought, and make more understandable differences that are now sometimes solely attributed to age difference.

In my daily life, I use telephony sparingly, e-mail frequently and instant messaging somewhat. I think IM's often tiresome, resulting in interminable babble about nothing if allowed to go on. I prefer to keep it short.

Remorques

Well, after some confusion and trepidation, I have been able to attend the Media Literacy workshop, which i have anticipated eagerly for some time. The opening lectures seem more than promising, and offer some interesting points, especially from a Media Studies perspective. At the same time, I do have some concerns originating in my lack of background in education courses, and the disjunction between the K-12 orientation of the course, and my own need for collegiate level work with Olase Freeman when I assist him as he teaches Dance History.

I am 65, retired, having worked in the transportation industry and as a curator for the Rhode Island Computer Museum. I have manifold degrees, 4 to date: BA's in English and Film Studies
from Rhode Island College, and MA's in English/Black Studies and Film Studies, also from Rhode Island College. I was the first graduate student to do work in Black Studies at the college. I am also pursuing an MA in the Media Studies programme.