I enjoyed the movie very much tonight, though I felt a little over prepared for it. Here are a few interesting points:
1) In keeping with my diatribes on postmodernism, Dr. Sexson narrated that "text informs reality." This is one of the principle ideas behind p.m., whereby all that exists to us our symbols and images of other icons and images resulting in our reality being provided for us. A child, a tabula rasa, might be the only truly natural thing, other than nature, in this world. G.C. Lichtenberg said, "the nearer we get to any natural object, the more incomprehensible it becomes. A grain of sand is undoubtedly not what I take it to be." Our reality is made up of our present symbols and images which are readily perceptible, as such, we are the sum of our images. It would make sense that a child is the sum of his or her images (by the way, I got autographs from the stars of tonight's performance!) I was watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia tonight and Dennis had to perform his life to make his fictional memoir true. Life follows art, not the other way around.
2) We also heard that "A world of story liberates literature." Meaning, the literacy breeds literacy, and this remind's me of a quote, though I cannot remember who from, "Some say only the free are educated, I say only the educated are free."
3) Here are a few interesting connections between nature, children, and books that were mentioned. Children could be seen as beasts being raised towards civility, or as an "aged philosopher focused on dreamlike creatures performing what it means to be human." Bob Dylan said words to that effect, if you imagine nature as a didactic agency that decays the eternal spirit of a child (which I don't think is far reaching if you consider the fact that once a child begins to read he loses the child inside of him), "I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams which nature can't touch with decay."
Beasts were described with an anti-nature bias by which they were only considered to the extent at which they serve humanity. Also, "reading about animals is reading about the uneasiness of the human condition." Literate children are both a part of nature and apart from it, the "metaphor meets nature, and the child meets the book." This reminds me of beast fables which were popular in Jacobean England. Such plays would include Ben Jonson's Volpone, where each character embodied a particular animal. Volpone means fox and his sidekick is named Mosca, which means flea. Animals, according to the narration of the film, and kids resemble each other; moreover, animals disguise human weakness and dramatize morals. My feeling is that there is a strong possibility that we view children in the same way we view nature, trying to assimilate them into society and instructing them towards a purpose or intent. Here is an interesting quote from C.S. Lewis, "What we call man's power over nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with nature as its instrument." The early primers used animals and nature as a vehicle to instruct and preach, but to what extent? Here is another quote from George Eliot, just replace animals with kids and the meaning stays the same (as per the suggestion the kids are meant to learn but not question), "Animals are such agreeable friends--they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." Finally, here is a quote from E.B. White which relates to Sam's blog about how we teach children (again, replace nature with kids) "I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially."
Thanks for reading. Sutter
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