Debate

Tonight I made pizza and watched the vice presidential debate. It was ok, but nothing stellar. Biden had better (clearer and more direct) answers but that is not shocking at all.  Palin was "cute" as usual, and less blatantly stupid. Whatever...no fire was ignited in my heart. It's still Obama all the way, no shocker.

In class tomorrow we'll be having a little debate ourselves (really more of a discussion of the readings but I sense some tension). I'm trying to figure out how I want to moderate things. I appreciate Betj's super-positive style, but I have a hard time being positive when I think what someone's saying is foolish. Obviously it won't do to call out WR121 students, but I do want to press them into more critical thinking. We'll see how it goes. 

"I will lose my mind if I don't get them..."

In the course of preparing my teaching materials I've been reading and thinking about John Taylor Gatto's "Against School". I've especially been mulling over his assessment of the material culture and its relationship to maturity. Gatto writes,  "Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it."

This passage is thought provoking on its own, but in combination with a recent Burlington Coat Factory ad they've been playing on TV the passage seems to hit me over the head. 

This ad features phrases like "must have", "gotta have", and "I will lose my mind if I don't get them". All the features of a temper tantrum in the making are attributed to full grown people in this ad. Distressing. 

In other news we went out to Finley today to finish up the vegetation surveys. Today was the toughest of all. We walked all over a 30 acre plot of rose bushes and pitted earth. It was pretty amazing to see so many rose bushes in one place, and so few blackberry bushes after being at EE Wilson where there are tons of them. We took a break under a black hawthorn in the beds of elks. It was so delightful. 

In the end it was hot and trying but we got all 40 plots checked out and made it back to the truck only a bit burnt and thoroughly dusty. 

Dialouge and Commodity: an ending

Today in the grad only meeting of Women't Lit class we started discussing Linda Hutcheon's Theory of Adaptation. In the course of this discussion we read where Hutcheon states that "sequels and prequels are not really adaptations...nor is fan fiction" (9).  I found this comment somewhat bewildering. Although I realize that in some ways the three excluded modes do not substantially depart from the "original" or "adapted work", I think that they do fit the three primary criterion Hutcheon establishes earlier in the text (8). Furthermore I think that it might be interesting to pay some attention to the rather recent phenomenon of creating print spin-offs of film and television productions. For me this shift in media strongly suggests adaptation. 

I mentioned this in class by specifically referencing CSI which began as one television program, and is now three television programs which have been the source for a number of paperback novels, magazines, video games, board games etc... This topic brought us all rather quickly to the issue of commodification. Since CSI is a television show produced to make money (not "art") how does this effect the idea of the CSI novel as adaptation? Are the novels:

1) Not adaptations because they are part of a moneymaking franchisee phenomenon?

2) Not adaptations because they are like prequels, sequels and fan fiction?

3) Cross media adaptations which meet the three major criterion set out by Hutcheon regardless of her later caveat and the market forces behind CSI?

I'm voting three. There is no real point in arguing high culture v. low culture since all modes of communication and literature can be valuable sources of information, the study of which can provide the scholar with critical insights. Furthermore regardless of whether it is Dean Koontz or Edith Wharton or the Bible for that matter, market forces play a role in the availability and production of texts. 

Our little group briefly talked about how the idea of dialogue separate from commodification might benefit entry level academics (i.e. freshmen). Although I can imagine the value of such a worldview, where learning and texts are cherished and explored for no real "market" reason, I have a difficult time envisioning this. If everything is subject to the market in our time and place, then what dialogue is there that is not impinged by the market?

I like to think that I do what I do because I love literature. Ultimately this is probably about 85% true. Somewhere in there you can add in egotism and money, then you'd have a fuller picture.

Today my summer term partially ended. 

Tomorrow more Pendleton.