teaching notes

Fairy Tales 2/23/05

Continued discussion of Jack Zipes’ essay on Disney. One student in particular was clearly upset that the article was “biased” against Disney, and pointed out repeatedly that Disney just intended to make a successful film—not to destroy fairy tales. Another student pointed out the passage where Zipes notes

Of course, it would be a great exaggeration to maintain that Disney’s spell totally divested the classical fairy tales of their meaning and invested them with his own. But it would not be an exaggeration to assert that Disney was a radical filmmaker who changed our way of viewing fairy tales, and that his revolutionary technical means capitalized on American innocence and utopianism to reinforce the social and political status quo. (333)

I also noted that, in the process of interpreting texts, the author’s intent is only one piece of information we may bring to bear in interpreting (along with social and historical context, responses of readers, effects of form—we’d begun by talking about shifts from written to filmed form). The discontented student said he wanted some facts instead of these opinions, wanted to know what Disney himself said about what he did. And I did note that what Disney said was he wanted to make a successful film, and that motives are often mixed (e.g., the Grimms wanted to preserve German folk culture, to win the approval of literary critics, and to make money). I also asked the class how it might change their interpretation of the tale to know either that Disney wanted to make money, or wanted to make art, or wanted to promote his views of the world, and another student said it wouldn’t really change her view, because the movie (we’d just seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) was what it was. And another said writers always want to present their view of the world. But I fear the discontented student remains unhappy-- probably convinced I am biased. If I don’t come up with another way to address this sort of thing, I may simply have to stop teaching this course.

Science Fiction 2/25/05

We discussed Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll,” but didn’t get to “They”; two stories per class may be too much. (On the other hand, I did spend some time at the beginning discussing magazine publishing of stories in the 40s&c, so if the Lem report last time had been shorter, we’d have had more time today.)

But I must find better ways to elicit analysis of this. The story drives me crazy, frankly. I loathe Heinlein, have done ever since I got to the part in Stranger in a Strange Land where we’re told (authoritatively) that women really want to be raped, and I threw the book away. But he’s the “Dean of SF” and all that, so it seems wrong not to include him.

But “The Roads Must Roll” is anti-union: the technicians grievances are presented as completely unjustified, and the narrative events have more weight that the sop to labor in the references to a previous, justified strike. It’s anti-leftist—the story’s “Functionalism” is an anticommunist portrait of something supposed to be like Marxism. Unlike “functionalism,” neither socialism nor Marxism actually argues against the value of human equality (more the contrary--and indeed the story's references to the "little people" seem to suggest that the vision of "TRMR" is not really endorsing a belief in equality--paradoxically enough, perhaps, it rather confirms the leftist critique that bourgeois democracy is not truly democratic). The idea of the power of the essential workers is perhaps modeled on the communist notion of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"--which Marx suggested as an intermediate stage before the withering away of the state (and which Lenin & Stalin took up as part of their rhetoric for the USSR). Like the Lenin/Stalin models, though, Van Kleeck's plan seems to be more a vision of individual power (& VK’s neurotic compensation) than of actual collective control. And the story glorifies the strong silent brilliant kingly manly technocrat who has to leave the little woman at home to attend to his important job. Blech. Anyway, I wanted to get them to see this as problematic, but I couldn’t make it happen without just putting it out there, which I was reluctant to do. Feh. Meanwhile “They” is a solipsistic fantasy of being the center of the universe. Blech.

why limbo is crowded

A while ago I forwarded to students in my sf class a news article about evolution not being taught in US public schools. We’d been talking about The Time Machine and the influence of evolutionary theory on H.G.Wells’s text. I also couldn’t resist throwing in a link to some textbook stickers made in response to the ones briefly applied to Georgia science texts. Anyway, I was thinking the sf students would be sympathetic to the whole science thing. But as it turns out some of them, at least, are more into the fiction side of sf. The only student to actually respond to the email told me he was shocked, shocked about the failure to teach evolution, but that he himself believed in intelligent design.

Argh. I mean, really. It’s creationism tarted up as science. Argh. Current events make me feel less and less articulate. But at least the reality-based community still has some members not as dumbfounded as I feel. A piece on the unintelligence of "intelligent design" in the Sunday NYTimes points out how badly designed many biological systems are. For instance, the human reproductive system:

Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined.

Okay, enough. I have way too much work to do to be venting here about this stuff.

But I mean, really. Argh.

aaauuauaarrgghh

Scott "Right about most everything so far" Ritter, USMC, UNSCOM, reports that Bush has signed off on a June attack on Iran and rigged the elections in Iraq so the Shia came below 50%:

On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.

The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.

patriotism means no questions

The title of this post is taken from a propaganda remix poster I have on my office door.

Counterpunch has been running a number of good articles about the recent targeting of Ward Churchilland, more generally, of academics pretty much anywhere to the left of Attila the Hun.

Carolyn Baker, writing about her students' future as cannon fodder and Mall-Wart cogs, observes,
Some of us who "profess" to have something to teach in higher education would like to make the demolition of these young psyches and bodies a little less traumatic by telling the truth about their world right now and teaching them how to think, question, problem-solve, and prepare for the increasingly hellish existence that their elders have allowed to evolve. However, when we do so we are called "terrorists", "subversives", "unpatriotic", and "criminal." The degree to which this development parallels the educational scenario of Germany in the 1930s cannot be overstated.

Then again, maybe I'm being unfair to Attila.

light bulb joke

Q: How many Bush Administration officials are needed to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its performance is improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?