Like talking to teenagers about sex, not enough conversation happens between elementary/middle school students and their adult counterparts (teachers and parents) about video games. If the questions are asked the responses are finite “Nos.” (I don’t think I need to tell you how well abstinence works as birth control.)
At my local library kids stand three or four deep, peering over shoulders. Their peers have reserved time on library computers to do exactly what they do on their DSs. Initially, I saw this as a problem because they weren’t using the library machines on the terms I understood: searching the web for links to information and informational sources, composing papers, building tables, etc.
It stopped being a problem when I realized, my terms were written on the limitations of the library computers of my generation: green, angular text on black screens, the groans, clicks, and whirs of the 20th Century progress.
This recent awakening made missing Thursday’s New York Comic Con (NYCC) panel on National Gaming Day particularly disappointing for me. I made the decision to stay in on the first day of NYCC 2011 to nurse a cold.
I did make it Friday, however, for a full day in the exhibit hall(s) – including a special side trip to the New York Anime Fest (NYAF) exhibit hall and stage. I had completely missed the Anime Fest last year. Regrettably, I only fared a little better this year. The challenge for the NYAF is retaining its unique identity and audience in the shadow of the slightly older, much larger, and more pop culturally accessible NYCC (everyone knows the Avengers, not everyone knows Naruto).
This year Chevy and Animal Planet had booths at the NYCC. Next year, will JAL and Toho have booths at the NYAF?
The NYCC felt better organized and laid out this year. There were rumors that this one was even larger than the last one. I hadn’t realized just how large the Javits Center was until Sunday when my children and I spent a bulk of our day in the North Pavilion for Kids Day at the NYCC.
The NYCC with the kids means shorter days for me and addressing more basic needs like packing a lunch, snacks, and water. My kids were with me all three “official” days of the NYCC. One day, I was unprepared and spent $3 on a limp tasteless hot dog from a cart outside the Javits Center. I also had to make the decision to skip Saturday’s Avengers panel. It was an easy decision and my kids were eager to stay but I could tell by the droop in their lids that it would have been too much. Even if they would have stayed awake through the wait, I doubt they would’ve been able to sit still through the panel.
Last year, I definitely attended more panels and screenings (with and without my kids). Over a year since we cancelled our cable subscription, some of the panels like the Haven panel, while inspiring interest, didn’t have the same draw as meandering through the North Pavilion to see what was going in terms of Beyblades (my kids’ latest obsession) and Nerf shooters.
But it’s not just about the latest and greatest. This year’s NYCC was also a reunion of sorts. A chance to chat and catch up with the people at Amazing Society and Gazillion about Superhero Squad online (heroup.com). Last year, they showered my kids with gifts and special Superhero Squad playing cards to celebrate the launch their site, an online MMO directed at young audiences.
They were just as nice and generous this year. Heroup.com (online) and Little Big Planet (PS3) are the only two games where I let my children interact online with others. The former has become my children’s favorite game. Before the end of the year, we will commit and by subscriptions to the game.
Netflix is streaming Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. The movie is as good as I remember it. But watching it now as a former New York City school teacher and a father of two, there’s a message there that wasn’t there when I first saw the movie (pre-classroom and pre-parenthood). It’s a message about the subtle disparities between what we (the adult world) teach and what they (our children) learn.
The first half of the movie takes place in a Chinese Opera school, a school for castoffs and orphans who are taught to act and sing emotionally complex narratives. Chinese Opera schools are stereotypically portrayed as brutal, unforgiving places – But not cold or dispassionate. For many of its students, it is their only opportunity to escape their impoverished condition. There is a culture there that only its teachers and students understand.
This is illustrated in the scene where one of the main characters, Douzi, and his classmate run away from the school, only to return shortly after being moved by a professional opera performance. Watching the performance, his classmate cries: “What does it take to become a star? How many beatings? When will I ever enjoy such fame?”
(I should say now that I don’t speak Mandarin, so my interpretations of the text are based on the movie’s translation of the language.)
The assumption is that through strict training, discipline, and corporal punishment students at the opera school will excel in their no nonsense study of the art. Upon returning to the school Douzi and his classmate witness the entire troupe being beaten by their Master and his assistants. Douzi tells the Master, “I am the one that ran away beat me instead.” He voluntarily accepts his beating for running away and in doing so he saves his classmates from further punishment.
However, the classmate he ran away with takes a different course of action. As Douzi is being beaten by the Master, there is a cry and one of the Master’s assistants comes running saying something terrible has happened. The Master, his assistants, and his students look and see their classmate hanging from a rafter. Douzi’s runaway cohort has killed himself. The Master is shocked. This obviously wasn’t the lesson he wanted to teach. However, it is the lesson that Douzi’s classmate had learned.
It is interesting to consider that Douzi’s classmate kills himself not because he is afraid of his impending punishment (he has runaway before) but because he has been convinced he will not be able to rise to the expectations of the Master and his classmates — And no matter how hard he tries, he will never escape his fate of poverty and brutality.
While there is no evidence the Master speaks about fate before the suicide, in his introduction of the opera, Farewell My Concubine (from which the movie is named), after the suicide, he speaks about inevitability and the futility of fighting fate. In reference to the Chu King’s defeat, he says,”No matter how resourceful you are, you cannot fight fate.” At the conclusion of the story, however, the Master, who had been pacing back and forth as he told the story, sits down in his chair and states,”There’s a lesson in this story for all of us. Each person is responsible for his or her own fate.”
What’s the lesson here? The dilemma is in the notion of fate itself. If you cannot fight fate or manipulate it, how can you be responsible for it? It calls into question the notion of thinking before you act.
There is also a lesson in Farewell My Concubine about a student’s responsibility to his peers and the pressures that he puts upon himself to their expectations. In education, this is termed “collaborative learning” (or in plain English: Working in Groups). Douzi demonstrates this in the scenes immediately following his classmate’s suicide.
He is given the difficult task of playing the concubine in the school’s production of the famous opera, Farewell My Concubine. He keeps messing up his lines. He keeps saying, “I am by nature a boy, not a girl.” The correct line is: “I am by nature a girl, not a boy.” Time and time again, he keeps screwing up his lines. Then one day, during a visit from the representative of a prestigious and wealthy benefactor, Douzi’s best friend and protector, Shitou, rams the Master’s pipe into Douzi’s mouth and curses him, saying he’s ruined the opportunity for the troop to become successful.
After the tears are shed but before the scene ends, Douzi boldly recites the troublesome lines again, much to the surprise of his classmates and teacher. He is fundamentally changed. He has gone against his “nature” and internalized his role as a nun – a girl – a woman. In fact, he has learned his lessons so well and so completely that after he is raped by his school’s benefactor, he takes in an orphaned baby he finds on his way home and becomes its “mother.”
Returning briefly to the lesson on fate, the Master makes a comment about fate when he, Shitou, and Douzi find the baby. Douzi picks up the baby. The Master says, “Fate has determined each of our lots. Leave him (the baby) to his destiny.” Douzi goes to return the baby but the scene ends with the Master, Shitou, and Douzi walking away with the baby in arms.
Despite his teacher’s beating, Douzi is unable to speak his line correctly. The teacher-directed model (that’s what educators call it) does not work. It isn’t until his peer relationships are threatened that he learns his lines. He gets his lines right when he is punished by his closest friend for the sake of the rest of the troupe. In 21st Century speak, we might call this “collaborative learning” or “shared learning” (without the violence of course), a process of peer-to-peer teaching and learning similar to what occurs on the playground when children interact on the periphery of an adult’s watchful eye.
Unmanaged, however, this powerful process can be quite harmful. Unmanaged peer-to-peer interactions can lead to bullying, bias, and negative hive behavior. Each peer group requires someone trusted by the group who can effectively question its actions.
Jaron Lanier wrote about the dangers of “digital collectivism” in his aptly titled essay, Digital Maoism. Using Wikipedia as his reference, he makes it a point to state that he is not opposed to a collective knowledge building resource like Wikipedia but:
the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it’s been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise… This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
The movie begins and ends at the end of China’s Cultural Revolution, one of the dreadful historical periods Lanier mentions. Douzi and Shitou reunite after over a decade of separation. In that time, the Gang of Four and the Red Guards devastated China’s artistic heritage including outlawing traditional Chinese Opera. The two friends reunite to perform the opera that made them famous (and infamous) after the Gang of Four are deposed.
Though I don’t think I list it anywhere as a favorite movie, watching Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine again – almost 20 years since the first time – strikes the familiar chords that made it a good movie to me that first time and there are additional notes making it a good movie to me this time.
