Online Response 3

The school in To Be and To Have seems like a haven for learning. The documentary form is well suited to explore the quiet moments of learning the children experience. The delicate and personal way Georges Lopez teaches makes me long for a time of simpler learning. Both the form of documentary as well as the interactions on the screen speak to the idea of Tabula Rasa we discussed in class—these children have a blank slate and are learning, by degrees, the ways and meaning of the world. In the meantime, as they learn, their knowledge is often ill-placed and confused, but we soon see them improving to “exercise of those other faculties of enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning about them, and reflecting upon all these…” (John Locke).

The documentary form communicates the idea of Tabula Rasa—a blank slate—in a fantastic way. To use Dean Duncan’s objectives for documentary filmmaking, this film exalts the everyday. The observational style, low angles, and long takes share a fascination with the tiny, mundane processes of the film. Extended takes of the children goofing off, making faces, dawdling, and daydreaming portray the wonderment that surrounds everyday life, which, for these children, is a new and exciting passage in the slate of their mind. The very idea of exalting the everyday and taking fasciation with children, reflects the ideas of inquiry in that children are still fascinated with the world—and consequently are fascinated with other children and their own representation.

The little subject Jojo perhaps provides the best example of Tabula Rasa. His fascination with the world, as well as his interactions with the other students, show that he has little idea of how the world truly operates. One memorable scene is when he has paint all over his hands and Monsieur Lopez is telling him to wash it. Jojo goes on and on about how he has one of the little trinkets on the desk in his own home. After a few repetitions of this, he seems to finally get the idea that he needs to go wash his hands.

Another interesting case study is in the older students, Olivier and the other one whose name I can’t remember. When they are sitting with Georges for fighting, they seem to have no clue how to handle the conflict. Later on, toward the end of the semester, it’s obvious that these boys have learned to put aside their differences and have become friends.

Overall, the film is the very illustration of the enlarging, compounding, abstracting, reasoning, and reflecting that Locke describes. Both the documentary form and the subject matter portray the idea of having a blank slate and still being excited about the mundane world.

Online Response 2: The Jungle Book

 While it’s smattered with reluctance and a lot of tangents, The Jungle Book is a coming of age story. Mowgli has lived in a state of innocence, knowing nothing of the world that he really belongs in. The story operates under the assumption that children are neither good or bad, but are in need of moral construction in order to maintain a pattern of goodness. Because of this, Mowgli’s morality is completely dependent on whomever is taking care of him—until he reaches maturity and leaves to make his own decisions.

When Mowgli starts out, he is happily living with the wolves. They love him, and it’s apparent that he is doing nothing wrong—until the adults have decided that he has reached a point where he needs to mature and start to live his own life. However, at this point he is handed over to Bagheera. Bagheera immediately begins teaching Mowgli his own ideas of morality. According to Bagheera, Mowgli needs to be more focused, less silly, and leave the jungle—really his childish ways, behind. When Mowgli is measure up against Bagheera’s ideals of morality, he fails and is viewed as naughty.

However, when Mowgli meets up with Baloo, the morality he is taught changes. Baloo is much more neutral, and views Mowgli’s innate childishness as his best quality. For Baloo, right is having fun and wrong is taking things too seriously—something that Mowgli immediately takes to heart. As Mowgli is compared to Baloo’s sense of morality he is viewed as good and nice. However, this changes when Baloo is also held to Bagheera’s correct version of morality and finds himself failing. Consequently, Mowgli again is seen as naughty.

When Mowgli has no adult to guide him, he has no morality guiding him. When he is with the chimps, everything is chaotic—the same thing happens with the vultures once again is in a state of chaos. Mowgli’s coming of age happens when he creates his own kind of morality. Despite Bagheera’s insistence that Mowgli should avoid Shere Khan and Baloo’s laziness, Mowgli decides to fight against Shere Khan and succeeds, creating his own version of morality and reaching maturity.

While the big picture of morality is still a clear black and white—Shere Khan is evil and everyone else is good—good varies. When Mowgli is a child, he is dependent on other adults to display what morality is. When he reaches maturity and starts making his own decisions, Mowgli creates his own version of morality. However, that morality is informed by what he has been taught in the past and so he does what Bagheera and the other adults wanted him to do anyway and goes to live in the village.

Online Response 1: Son of Rambow

In reaction to the permeation of culture in modern, western society, children and technology has in many ways become the contemporary news scare. Instead of “Learn what random bacteria in your tap water is doing to you!” it has become “Learn what media and technology are doing to your children!”

When I was a kid there wasn’t as much of a scare concerning TVs, computers, movies, and digitized books—rather, they were the fuel for creativity. This is why the relationship between children and media in Son of Rambow is so fascinating. Will and Lee Carter are not impervious to the negative effects of media (violence and blowing off school is an issue), but media plays an overall positive role in their lives. Rambow is less of a destroying force, like Will Proudfoot’s mother fears, but is an enabling idea that allows Will to explore his own abilities and create his own identity, gain a social education, and come to terms with the absence of a father figure in his life, making the assumption that childhood is a time for exploration and fun rather than a time to be a miniature adult.

When Will is first pictured in class, he is sitting in the back of the room drawing. Even when he goes outside while the other children watch a film, Will hides his drawings. He has very little idea of what a world outside his family’s fundamentalist religion might provide. When he first spends the afternoon with Lee Carter, his exploration of his own abilities begins. Initially growing out of the kindness he has been raised to exhibit, Will starts to do things he would never have done before—biking out of his neighborhood, making friends, and even watching a movie. When he leaves that first time his whole world becomes alive and for the first time in the film, Will is controlling the world rather than it controlling him. He defeats the scarecrow and is himself a hero.

Will also gets to create his own identity. Unsatisfied with the person he is at that moment, being Son of Rambow is a transcendent identity for him that bridges the gap between being am outsider to being a smart, fun kind of kid. Unlike Will’s religion, his obsession with a film is something that the other children understand and is ultimately a language that he can finally use to communicate with the other children. Lastly, being Son of Rambow gives the shadowy memory dad a form that he can look to and fills in the gaps he is feeling because of that loss.

Will becomes happier and happier and his family is released from the tyranny of their cult-like religion the more the film’s idea of childhood is embraced. Son of Rambow asserts that childhood is a time for non-reality, for goofing off, for experimenting, and for movies. All of this goofing off and movie watching is what results in the larger lesson of friendship the film explores.