Last day!

        Today was the last day of our A-term! For the past eight days, we have been reading individual books, and today was the day to finish and create a presentation that incorporated our book of choice and the Disney movies and retailing we studied within our A-term! We spent most of our day preparing, practicing, and presenting our individual presentations. Each presentation focuses on answering one big question: a question that is specific enough to relate to the topic but broad enough to connect to other subjects.

The Prince and the Dressmaker
by Jen Wang

 

        The book I chose was The Prince and The Dressmaker by Jen Wang. I really loved this book and would definitely recommend it! For my presentation, I focused on the question, "What traits do protagonists reinforce, and what does that say about social norms and ideals?" I started by making a list of traits I noticed throughout the stories and Disney movies. I answered this question by showing how Disney movies are a root cause of unrealistic social expectations. I used my book as a counter-argument. This book is unique because it is a story about a prince exploring his identity by wearing dresses. This book changes the stereotypes of storytelling. This book left me to think more about the future of storytelling and how our world is always changing. 

         That was just my presentation! The rest of the group had some amazing presentations as well! Focusing on so many different social issues from gender, identity, and even talking about the lack of cultural accuracy. It was a really peaceful way to end our A term, learning about all the books my peers read and how that contributed to their understanding of the movies we watched and the stories we read. 

Slide on traits 

Slide on social norms

Daily Blog: Tuesday 3/30/21

Today, we started off by doing some independent reading of our choice retelling book and/ or working on our blog. We then continued our focus on the story of Aladdin/Arabian Nights. We read an article that was a social commentary on "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," which we read on Monday, that talked about various translations of the story and their influences and accuracy. Before we went to lunch, we had our first seminar on Aladdin/1,001 nights. During this seminar, we attacked many questions concerning Disney's Aladdin (1992), "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," and other articles we read about this story. We focused on topics like having a male protagonist and the gender roles represented.

After lunch, we watched Disney's Aladdin (2019) and then concluded the day with a brief seminar, bringing all of the Aladdin/1,001 nights' versions and adaptations together as a whole. We focused more on big questions concerning things like the way culture is represented in this story and how the different adaptations changed the story along with the purpose of these changes. 

Daily Blog: Monday 3/29/2021

     Today we focused on familiarizing ourselves with Disney's Aladdin (1992)movie and the original tale it is adapted from. During the beginning of the morning, we spent time writing blogs and/or reading our independent reading books. After that, we were introduced to the assignment that will be the culmination of all that we've learned during this A-term: a presentation. Then we watched Disney's Aladdin (1992) from which arose a lot of questions around Princess Jasmine, and comparisons between this tale and the Cinderella tale, since they're both rags to riches type stories. 

    When we came back from lunch we read about the original Aladdin tale. It's one of many tales from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a book that contains a number of various stories from Asia. We then read the original Aladdin tale called The Story of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp. What I found most interesting about this story as compared to the other fairytales we've read, is that Aladdin starts out as a deeply flawed protagonist who due to extraordinary circumstances and luck learns and grows as he gains more knowledge. This is pretty different because in most of the other stories we don't really learn anything at all about the characters and they're totally stagnant throughout the story. Lastly, we read an article about the racism and controversy around the 1992 movie, and how it perpetuates a number of harmful racist stereotypes about West Asia. 

Daily Blog: Friday 3/26/2021

 Daily Blog: Friday 3/26/2021 Jeremy & Ryan

On Friday morning we read passages about Mulan, discussing such after writing questions on the Padlet. The original writing of Mulan also known as the Ballad of Mulan was in Chinese, adding deeper meaning and context to the story. We also read some articles on the controversies surrounding Mulan (1998). We proceeded to write down some questions about both the Ballad of Mulan and the articles about the controversies before having lunch. After lunch, we all sat down and watched Disney's live-action version of Mulan. During the viewing, our Chinese Language teacher, Mr Zhou, entered the classroom and watched the film with us. After watching Mulan (2020), we proceeded to write down some questions on our group Padlet for our seminar. A short break occurred before we started our seminar on Mulan (2020). The first thing we discussed after the movie was the usage of Chi in the film. Most of us were dissatisfied with the usage of Chi in this film because it completely went against the original film’s message; women could be on the same level as men. However, instead of empowering women in this film, it made them look weaker since the men in the film don’t use Chi and were still able to keep up with Mulan who used Chi. 

Another problem with the usage of Chi in the film was that it wasn’t culturally accurate to what Chi is. According to Chinese culture, Chi is the life force that flows through all living beings. In this film, however, Chi is described as only flowing through warriors and not women when that is incorrect. On top of that, Chi does not magically make people stronger and grant incredible abilities. Another point of topic was about how there was a secondary antagonist that was portrayed as similar to Mulan. We wondered about the significance of the character as it was not in the original 1998 version of Mulan. After our discussion, Mr. Zhou gave a passionate speech about how the film did not represent Chinese culture properly. He pointed out some of the questions on our group Padlet. For example, there was a question about why the Chinese actors didn’t speak their own language despite the film being set in China and having a predominantly Chinese cast and audience. He also pointed out how the moral of the film did not align with how the Chinese view family values through the fact that Mulan still returned to her family to be a generic housewife despite saving China and had the opportunity to become one of the emperor’s elite squad of soldiers. Mr. Zhou also had a similar problem with how Chi was portrayed in this film and talked about how American Hollywood movies tend to not show the full picture of different cultures’ traditions for the purpose of making profit from their western audience. Thus, giving western audiences a false impression of that culture’s traditions.

Daily blog: Thursday 3/25/2021 Ariana & Jayla

 Ariana Luk & Jayla Balderas 

Daily Blog for Thursday the 25th 

Today was day four of the Stories, Retellings, Disney, and More A-term. Each student received a book of their choice that re-told classic fairy tales, and we started with 45 minutes of personal reading time. We were encouraged to choose retellings of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan/Warrior Woman or Aladdin/One Thousand and One Nights. These books will tie into the final project next week. Afterward, the class read an article on the original version of Sleeping Beauty and how horrific the tale was, answering and asking questions as to why the story of Sleeping Beauty continues to exist and why certain parts were taken out. This led us to the next activity; a seminar focusing on the live-action Maleficent movie. Offering a completely new lens to the well known Sleeping Beauty tale. Many points were brought up, questioning if Maleficent was truly a villain or what can redeem one. The students discussed how solid Maleficent's motives were and how much involvement she held in Princess Aurora's fate. The morning finished off with class splitting up into groups to create big questions, a few popular ones were why true love is a consistent concept in Disney movies, why it's important to hear the perspective of the villain, and what is a lesson in Sleepy Beauty. Then for thirty minutes before the class broke for lunch everyone started to answer the big questions on a document.

After our self-reflection session on the big question of our choosing we joined back together to engage in a seminar. Of course our discussion topics are quite similar to our big questions because they were discussion of the questions. The motives of villains, disney's stories on the concept of love, and why it's important to hear the stories of villains were defently all included. As this is our last activity regarding Sleeping Beauty, a discussion about our big questions was well-fitting. When the schedule wouldn't allow for further discussion we could end the day with Disney's Mulan (1998), in preparation for tomorrow's activities. 

Daily Blog: Wednesday 2/24/3: Isabelle & Sofi

 Isabelle Saxon & Sofi Savarese

                                              Daily Blog for Wednesday the 24th   

Poster from the Original Movie

This Morning we all came into the classroom and started with our Seminar on Cinderella. We had amassed a lot of questions and thoughts about Cinderella on the class Padlet; however, we focused on our big questions and Ever After questions. Our big questions were unlike the specific movie questions; the big question focused on larger overarching topics about all Cinderella stories as a whole. It was an interesting discussion about what defines a “Cinderella” and other larger discussion-worthy themes in the stories. Everyone had such interesting perspectives, it was so interesting to see what everyone noticed about the stories. Then we took a break and when we came back we watched the original sleeping beauty. It was very interesting to get to see the movie and see it in a very different way then when I was a child. Then after that, we all headed out to go have lunch.

The Hybrid and In-Person Students Talking Over Zoom

After our break for lunch, we read three different short stories of the original versions of sleeping beauty. We read two versions of Little Brier-Rose by Jacob and William grimm and The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by Charles Perrault, the earliest version. We then developed “big questions” about the story and the text about views on the protagonist/ antagonist, villains' characteristics, storyline, language, timeframe, gender roles and more. We then proceeded to have a short break before coming back and watching Disney's Maleficent. This was a movie that shows the villain's perspective and twist to the story. We also worked on analyzing the movie and creating discussion questions for our upcoming seminar.

Poster of the 2014 Movie 

Monday, March 22, Day 1 Ariela and Wyatt

Monday, March 22, Day 1  

Ariela Kluk and Wyatt Quillin

Today was the first day in our “Stories, Retellings, Disney, and more” A - Term, and we dug into the world of Cinderella. We started off watching Disney’s original version of Cinderella, and both in-person and online students watched and took notes. This was a classic and a crowd-pleaser, as always. We then read the Grimm’s Fairytales version of Cinderella. The last version of Cinderella that we watched was the Brandy/ Rodgers and Hammerstein’s version of Cinderella with, you know it--Whitney Houston. This version had a lot of diversity and racial diversity, which was really progressive and inspiring to see. 

All of the Cinderella movies shared a common moral in being kind and believing in your dreams. Because she is always on the outs in her family, Cinderella is alone or talking to animals or strangers. She is treated like a servant but always finds the kindness to do what her family says. Overall, today was extremely successful and informative, and I know that we all will look at Cinderella from a different perspective from now on.   

Students online are able to watch the movie through zoom with the in-person students.