This is where it started: the original story by Chris Claremont with art by John Byrne – the graphic novel can be used in a lesson comparing media and critiquing adaptations
Let’s take a visit to the world of writers today! For those of you either teaching or learning about the meaning of the word “exposition,” please go and see X-Men: Days of Future Past. There’s lots on display there.
Speaking of writing, there are two wonderful examples of the craft of fine writing to be found this weekend at the New York Times: A.O. Scott’s reviews of the X-Men movie and Blended are absolutely brilliant. I particularly recommend his review of Blended; there you will find the best summary of the “Adam Sandler” movie experience that I have seen to date, such as “There are comedians who mine their own insecurities for material. Mr. Sandler, in his recent films, compensates for his by building monuments to his own ego. In Blended, he once again proclaims himself both über-doofus and ultimate mensch, disguising his tireless bullying in childish voices and the ironclad alibis of fatherhood and grief.” A.O. Scott concludes the piece on Blended with the rating description: “Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It will make your children stupid.”
Every once in a while, some students will select Adam Sandler movies as a topic of study (for example, those directed by Dennis Dugan, or “Double D” as the last presenters called him), and I have to watch snippets from a variety of Mr. Sandler’s films. I think I am going to have A.O. Scott’s review of Blended made into a poster and put on my classroom wall. Media literacy includes examples of brilliant critical writing too, after all.
Barry Scheck of Innocence Project and Pamela Gray
I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past with my eldest son this weekend, and before the movie we were barraged with the onslaught of previews for brain-frying movies that are about to arrive: Let’s Be Cops, 22 Jump Street, The Expendables 3, Kingsman, and…oh, here’s a “woman’s movie” — Lucy (starring the consistently superb Scarlett Johansson). Ah, Luc Besson is back with the latest incarnation of his adolescent “perfect woman” fantasies that he can’t move on from (La Femme Nikita, Fifth Element, Angel-A, etc.), along with his usual vicious Asian stereotypes and more. I’ll pass. So, a propos of all this, I would like to bring up this article about a recent talk with screenwriter Pamela Gray (Conviction, A Walk on the Moon), who is featured in our From Page to Screen Close-Up interview. Watching those trailers, I couldn’t help but think about these lines from the Golden Gate Xpress article, “Gray also said that what she really writes are character-driven screenplays, and that most of hers just happen to involve female leads. She said the challenge is not writing for these women, but instead lies in the sexism of the industry: ‘What’s more difficult is getting those movies made (and) finding assignments with good females roles,’ Gray said. ‘There are fewer and fewer of those assignments now.'” So, perhaps that is your assignment right now for your media literacy and production class!
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In a recent blog post on the National Council of Teachers of English message board, NCTE Council Historian Paul Thomas discussed the topic of the degree to which false ideas persist in popular perceptions of scientific “truths” despite their having been thoroughly debunked, or never even been shown to be demonstrably true in the first place. He wrote about the quite widely accepted but totally false idea that humans supposedly “only use 10% of their brains” and its use in the movie Lucy, directed by Luc Besson, as a reference point. In a post from earlier this year — Getting All Black and Blue Over Media Literacy — I discussed the degree to which falsehoods and distortions become accepted as fact by movie viewers, even if there is copious evidence — whether historical, social, scientific, or otherwise — that these false perceptions are indeed untrue. Funny enough, the standard line of “it’s only a movie” should be more aptly referenced as “well, it’s in a movie, that’s why they believe it.”
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