Help one of your Hogpro Faculty on a research project.

May 13, 2013 by 1 Comment

Hunger Games readers and movie fans are needed for a study being conducted at Mary Baldwin College on empathy for fictional characters. If you are age 13 or older and a native speaker of English, you are eligible to participate. It will involve taking an anonymous online survey (Click here for the link) and should require no more than 30 minutes to complete. This study is approved by the Mary Baldwin College Institutional Review Board.

PS.  If you run into any problems with the survey, please alert me at lfreeman@mbc.edu  Thank you, friends!

Filed Under: Hunger Games, Louise Freeman

Literature, Film and Legacy: Reflections on a Random and Completely Unbalanced Sample

May 6, 2013 by 12 Comments

As promised, here is my sampling of books and associated movies that I experienced in my own childhood, and my own thoughts looking back at them, in view of the question asked earlier about whether the films destroy the book legacy. I am interested in hearing from others, older and younger than me, about how their experiences compare.

Doctor Dolittle: Hugh Lofting’s Newberry-winning series was published between 1920 and 1950. My father adored the series as a boy and he, in turn, read it to me, when I was in elementary school; eventually, I re-read the entire series for myself. As much as we both loved the books, neither of us had any affinity for the 1967 movie musical. No one who understood the charm of the books about the mild-mannered, dumpy and completely asexual animal doctor from Puddleby-on-the-Marsh could relate to Rex Harrison’s handsome, singing vet with an ongoing love interest. Besides being a pretty unsuccessful film in its own right–Leonard Matlin’s review suggested its one merit was its ability to put unruly children to sleep–it apparently triggered backlash against the books by drawing attention to the unfortunate 1920’s racial stereotypes that were no longer acceptable in the 1960’s.  Attempts in the 1970’s to edit the unflattering ethnic portrayals into a more acceptable format (a move taken with the permission of Lofting’s son) unfortunately produced rather clunky stories and destroyed key plot points. I doubt many kids today read the Doctor Dolittle books at all.

As for the later “Dr. Dolittle” movies with Eddie Murphy, they had so little to do with the original books that it is pointless to mention them. Calling Murphy’s character “Dr. Dolittle” just because he wound up talking to animals (against his will, of course, as opposed to the diligent study of the original) makes about as much sense as calling the  “George of the Jungle” cartoons Tarzan. The only thing these movies could do for the books is leave potential readers wondering where the fart jokes are.

To Kill A Mockingbird: Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning book (1960) was followed by an Oscar-winning movie that won the author’s full approval; Ms. Lee was so impressed with Gregory Peck’s legendary portrayal of Atticus Finch, a character inspired by Ms. Lee’s own father, that she gave him her father’s gold watch. For myself, I read the book around 1980 and watched the movie for the first time a year or so after that. These were, after all, pre-VCR days when you had to wait for an old movie to show up on cable.

The To Kill a Mockingbird movie is arguably the best and truest film adaption of a great book ever made. It’s also the reason I say that a true book fan will always be disappointed by the movie. As good as it was, upon my first viewing, I was left very let down by all the details that were left out of the movie: the visit to Calpurnia’s church, Miss Maudie’s house fire, the mud-and-snowman, Miss Dubose the morphine addict and pretty much every action of Dill (I think Walter Cunningham had more lines).

But, even if it failed to capture some of the richness, there is no doubt that it was a very, very good movie. I would be interested to know, today, how many people encounter the book before the movie and vice versa. But clearly people are still enjoying both; To Kill a Mockingbird was #3 on NPR’s 2012 top 100 novels for teens, right behind Harry Potter and Hunger Games. I think this is a case where the book and movie complement each other and both contribute to Mockingbird’s continuing popularity. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Call For Papers: “Of Fairy-stories, Fantasy and Myth” Gonzaga/Whitworth Seminar on Faith, Film and Philosophy

April 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I thought this event might be of interest to HogPro regulars:

Call for Papers: Faith, Film and Philosophy– “Of Fairy-stories, Fantasy and Myth”

October 11th & 12th, 2013

Gonzaga University’s Faith and Reason Institute and Whitworth University’s Weyerhaeuser Center for Faith and Learning are pleased to announce their Seventh Annual Seminar on Faith, Film and Philosophy, entitled “Of Fairy-stories, Fantasy and Myth.”

The past decade has seen film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, as well as three of C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia,” and, most recently, Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Although the immediate inspiration for our seminar is the release of the first part of Peter Jackson’s cinematic treatment of The Hobbit, our interest is neither solely nor primarily in Jackson’s films. Instead, we wish to explore a variety of cinematic treatments of myth, fairy-story, and fantasy, and to explore philosophical and religious questions raised by such films.

The Star Wars saga, the various incarnations of the world of Star Trek, the imaginative world of Pan’s Labyrinth, the Narnia films, Snow White and the Huntsman, Prometheus, Wrath of the Titans, How to Train Your Dragon, Arrietty, Ponyo, Hugo, Shrek, Knowing, The Road, After Earth…. These are but some of the films that fall within the purview of our seminar. Even apart from the content of these films, the genres touched upon in our title raise very general questions about art, reality, meaning, and truth.

For example, is film an appropriate art form for mythopoesis? What is the nature of the reality portrayed in these films? What truth, if any, can films of this sort explore or convey?

Possible topics for seminar papers include the following, although proposals on other topics or questions of relevance are certainly welcome and encouraged.

• What constitutes a literary fantasy?
• What motivates literary fantasies? Is there a psychological payoff? If so, what is it?
• What is the underlying neurological basis for fantasy? Why do we fantasize in the first place and what evolutionary value might this have?
• Gender identity in fantasy and science fiction.
• Social functions of fantasy literature, including political functions.
• Cinematic treatments of sexual fantasies.
• Revenge fantasies.
• Heroic figures and our fantasies of being like them. (What do Iron Man and I have in common?)
• Fantasies of the end of the world, their characteristics and functions.
• Fantasies and reality: since most fantasies are never realized in actuality, why do we keep having them?
• What’s the difference between a fantasy, whether literary and filmic and outright hallucination or delusion?
• Criticisms of the work of Peter Jackson.
• Epistemological issues: what can be known by means of a fantasy that might not be known otherwise?

• The Life of Pi as fantasy.

• Fantasy and possible worlds.

We are particularly interested in popular films from the last 20 years, although the program committee will certainly consider exceptions to the 20-year rule.

Seminar sessions will take place on Friday (October 11th) and Saturday (October 12th). Public lectures and other events associated with the seminar will take place in the days leading up to the seminar. One of the public lectures will be on the evening of October 11th, when one of our invited speakers will give a keynote address. The invited speakers include Michael Foley (Baylor University), Richard McClelland (Gonzaga University), and Katherin Rogers (University of Delaware). These invited speakers will also participate as resident “experts” during the seminar discussions.

Proposals not longer than two pages (double-spaced), and in Word format, should be submitted electronically to Dr. Brian Clayton at clayton@gem.gonzaga.edu no later than 30 June 2013, and should include title, author(s), institutional affiliation (if any), mailing address, email address, and the text of the proposal. The seminar organizers will send acceptances by 8 July 2013.

The seminar and its associated public events are part of a series of jointly-sponsored programs focused on “Faith, Reason and Popular Culture.” The conviction behind these programs is that if Christian institutions of higher learning are to respond properly to their charge to be places where faith seeks understanding, then they must engage contemporary popular culture. Film is among the most powerful and important forms of popular culture. Thus, the seminar organizers seek scholars who will engage in two days of discussion investigating issues of faith and philosophical import raised by contemporary popular film. Presenters need not have any formal academic appointment.

For further information please contact Dr. Brian Clayton, Director, Gonzaga University Faith and Reason Institute at clayton@gem.gonzaga.edu.

Filed Under: Louise Freeman

Shut up, ladies?

January 29, 2013 by 9 Comments

A writer friend of mine sent me this link to another female writer’s blog, where she has a post about the disrespect female writers get compared to men, from both genders.  Given that the bulk of Hogpro posts are about series authored by women (Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, and I hope that Divergent will eventually get equal time!), I thought it would be interesting to discuss.  Hey, she starts with Jane Austen…

So, what do you think?  Does the “Shut up, ladies” phenomenon exist?  If so, is the Hogpro site a refuge from it?  If anything, we have the opposite problem…  while some great YA male-authored series have been brought up here (Percy Jackson, Chaos Walking) they never have sparked quite the same level of discussion as the “chick lit.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Zip to the Marshland: The significance of Tris’s high flying adventure.

January 3, 2013 by 3 Comments

When I compared the slide down the Chicago zip line to the swing of the Dauntless faction from stability to instability, it was an afterthought to my previous posts on personality theory. But I have recently had occasion to look through that scene in more depth and I have concluded that the significance of that outing is far greater than I realized.

Usual spoiler warnings apply. But if you haven’t read these books already, you really should! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Divergent, Louise Freeman