despite how easily we can make fun of dolls and movies, they really are beneficial
As I skimmed through the entries for this week's blog I feel that most people are at the same general level...I don't know much about women's history and the women's movement...which I can also say I describe myself in that category. Freshman year here at the U I took a pretty general history class from mid 1800's until the present. We read tons of articles and watched movie clips and viewed pictures from all periods of time but I felt the strongest emphasis was on the women's movement. Throughout the semester we were told to pick a movie off of her list and write a paper on how it had been modernized. Of the movies a friend and I chose "Iron Jawed Angels" solely because it was the only one we could find at Blockbuster on that given day. After watching it both of us had pages of notes with dates and names, areas including the music and the sex/love story that made it more modern...but also areas that really hit us just because we knew very little about what women had went through back in the 1920's as they fought for equal rights.
When I saw the post topic question being what do you know and what would you like to know more about, my first thoughts were of that movie. I feel kind of silly admitting it but most of the dates, names and facts about the women's suffrage movement that I can remember are from the movie "Iron Jawed Angels". I remember being genuinely interested in what my teacher that semester taught and having pages of notes from class discussions, but without using that knowledge and repeating it, it was obviously easily forgotten. The movie indeed had its parts that were altered to fit the taste of a much different population of people and when I initially got my assignment to pick out the Hollywoodized parts, I thought it was because they were bad or took away from the story. One would definitely argue that it does, however I know how much I learned from that movie and would argue that if the only way people will learn about women's history or history in general is through more modern methods than I think its great people are still interested in learning.
Along those same lines, I feel American Girl Dolls do get a negative feedback because they are stereotypical dolls that express only certain periods in history. I was one of those girls that had the Kirsten doll because of my ancestors, where I lived and the similarities in appearance between me and Kirsten. With each holiday I collected her books and clothes and friend and I would compare our dolls and the stories that went with them. I remember learning a lot of historical tidbits from the doll's story books, where as if I never got the doll in the first place I wouldn't have learned them until well later in life. So summing up American Girl dolls, I think they are constantly trying to out do themselves and some of the accessories and options are a little much, but young children that do purchase the dolls and the stories that go with them learn something along the way. Maybe an expensive lesson but most parents I know don't spend the time to break down history with their children.
I guess in summary of it all, I feel a lot of what I know about history is from modern ways of learning it and yes I have been one to critique movies or dolls for making changes to make it more appealing, but if it works and people can see what is truth and what is just put in for entertainment value, I see nothing wrong with it.
Comments
i agree that movies and dolls are good ways to modernize and spread important messages. entertainment spreads many "media messages" - some that are easily discernible and others that are more difficult to pinpoint but, we should be critical of what all those messages are. i think that they affect us more than we realize!
i think this is an important conversation that will continue as the term goes on.
Posted by: Rachel | February 6, 2007 07:59 AM