Assignments for Week 13 (Nov. 22)
Project #2—Hollywood or editorial cartoons—due Dec. 6. Continue working on that this week, and I’ll keep new readings to a minimum.
READINGS: “How Tom Hanks Became America’s Historian-in-Chief,” by Douglas Brinkley, Time, March 15, 2010. Especially for those of you who are looking at movie depictions of history, this will be of interest and possible use in your projects. But I want everyone to read it. What do you think about the apparent need to make history entertaining in order to make us pay attention to it?• Resources: News databases. Katie’s research tips (from a former Smarts TA). Snagfilms is an online database of more than 1,000 documentaries, which may be useful for your projects, but otherwise is kind of cool.
• SmartTalk on blog—how are your projects coming? What amazing things are you discovering? What great sources have you found that others might use? What problems are you confronting?
I chose "Hollywood," and "All the President's Men." The problem I'm confronting is the very heart of the project - what is different about the movie than real life. The "News database" Dr. Ted posted has been a real help, tho'. I found a bunch of good sources that should kick my project in gear. Otherwise, it's extremely interesting. Learning a lot about Watergate :)
ReplyDeleteI know what you (Katie)mean about struggling to know what is different in the movie and what really happened. I suppose that is the whole purpose of the project, to figure out how close the movie is to the actual events. Good Night, and Good Luck appears to be so serious and accurate it is challenging to know what isn't correct. Good luck with the rest of your project.
ReplyDeleteWhile looking things up on how the media affects children i cam across how television could possibly increase a child's chance on having ADD or ADHD... it said about five hours of TV per day at age 1 is associated with a 28% increase in the likelihood of having attentional problems at age 7. A similar 28% increase at age 7 shows up for 3-year olds who watch about five hours of TV per day. Alternatively, each additional hour of TV watched above the mean at ages 1 and 3 increases the likelihood of attentional problems at age 7 by about 10%.
ReplyDeleteMay not be a whole lot of an increased chance. But still found it interesting.
I've found it interesting how in Iron Jawed Angels, Alice Paul is almost depicted as what she fought against -- a woman dependant on men. You have this whole sneaky theme of her romance with a fictitious cartoonist for the Washington Post, and there seems to be a suggestion that she is (or was) willing to provide influential editors with certain "favors" to get coverage. The movie could have done without that attitude.
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting is the way in which the director rearranged history to make it seem more climatic. Sure, she got all the right events in there, for the most part, but in the wrong order. And there's no mention of the reality of her reasons behind the hunger strike -- Paul was protesting the conditions of her prison, not her inability to vote. That nice monologue she recites during interrogation, the one everyone quotes as coming from the "real" Alice Paul? Yeah, it didn't happen.
I chose All the President's Men and I am so interested in the story. I learned so much about the part of US History. My strongest sources are from the Washington Post. However my biggest struggle has been finding stuff from the New York Times. They charge you money to look at their articles that were published before 1981
ReplyDeleteMy project is coming along fine. I am realizing that Hollywood either chooses to tell the truth as it is or sugar-coat it to appeal to their market. This is probably why some movies based on real-life do not satisfy critics. Especially when the movie is based on history, people almost always want to know what really happened. When they see a movie based on a historical event & this does little to tell the generation now what had transpired, the audience is disappointed & the movie does not do very well. Because movies are such a big part of the entertainment industry, there are have been a lot of websites and books which offer great help in accomplishing my projects. There have been no problems so far.
ReplyDeleteI'm doing my project on how women are portrayed in political cartoons. I'm finding a lot of info- more than I thought I would. This is great, but it's also becoming a problem because I'm realizing I really need to narrow down my search. I think I actually want to steer away from the way women in politics are portrayed and go more towards how women in society are portrayed in general. I found a great site for political cartoons, www.cartoonstock.com
ReplyDeleteMy project came along really good. The movie I chose was The Insider, and I was really surprised not only by how good the movie was, but how adamant Lowell Bergman was about being a journalist and keeping his word.
ReplyDeletePlus...it's really scary to know just how far money can put someone and everything you can get away with just because you have cash.
--Chelsea Ebeling