Thursday, March 7, 2024

What I Like and Disliked Exploring 2019 Dora Movie

On the recommendation of a family member, I checked out a DVD of “Dora the Explorer: The Lost City of Gold” from the Marion Public Library.

The plan was to watch it with a grandson who was staying with us that weekend, but the second-grader rejected that option, claiming that Dora and Boots are a menace to society (there is no reason—he’s a second grader), instead preferring “Muppets Treasure Island.” It was, all things considered, a reasonable choice, and the Muppet movie, which draws from classic literature, was better than the Dora movie, drawn from an old TV show.

I watched Dora on my own last night.

The family member who recommended Dora didn’t claim it was a great film, merely that it was fun to see a live actor behaving like Dora, especially when the scene shifts to Dora’s high school years in LA. On that criterion, I would say Dora hit its mark. It playfully portrayed a blend of a cartoon universe with what would happen if that universe intersected the real world.

In particular, I had never seen Isabela Moner, who plays the teen Dora, before—and I think she does a fine job, believably inhabiting the persona of an improbably upbeat cartoon teenager from the jungle suddenly thrust into the jungle of American high school.

Image from Paramount Pictures Dora page.

The film was also deeply flawed. It set up too many pointless action sequences, as modern movies have a tendency to do. Many of the supporting character were thin as cardboard. The teens in LA were trope teens, with the “popular girl” improbably being roped along on the jungle adventure just to provide a wholly unbelievable romance with poor Diego.

At least, and I am grateful for this, Dora herself, while she meets a boy who becomes her friend, is not on the hunt for any boyfriend.

Any movie of this sort is best if it has an interesting villain—think of Tim Curry as Long John Silver in the aforementioned Muppet movie. Sadly, this is one goal the Dora movie doesn’t meet, with the villainous twist being totally unsurprising and the villain’s character and motivations being way too cartoonish.

Still, this flick is an homage to a cartoon. I’ve only seen snippets of the cartoon, but I suspect a fan who grew up on Dora would find this update fun.

And, even if would have liked more depth of character and believable creativity in the plot, I found this film watchable. There are some positive messages, some nice thoughts about the value of being true to yourself, some entertaining songs.

And Isabela Moner, who shows some promise as a young performer.

If I were rating this on the 5-point scale, I suppose I would consider it a lukewarm 3. I’m not going to rush back to the library to get it soon for a rewatch, but if the second grader suddenly decided that he’s a Dora fan and wants to see, well, OK.

The real winner here is the Marion Public Library. I know, it’s nice to get books at a library, too—but they seemed to have a very interesting DVD collection. Maybe I won’t be going back soon to explore Dora again—but there are other films there that I may watch this summer!


Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Thoughts on the Times We're In

 

Newspaper flag
This year's flag of the Mount Mercy Times, designed by student Jenna Welty

As I noted on one of my other blogs, the Iowa College Media Association held its annual convention Feb. 8. On that blog post, I wrote about convention speakers and an award that I was honored to receive.

But what about the Mount Mercy Times? Well, the student “newspaper” at Mount Mercy University did well, earning six awards including four first-place honors. That’s the good news. The less good news is I’m struggling to see how we win as many in next year’s contest.

This is the first year that the Times has switched to an all-on-line news source. So far, it has not gone as well and I would hoped. I hate that we’re over halfway through the academic year and we don’t seem to be producing all of the stories we should be nor promoting our content enough. Why? I suppose you should probably ask the faculty advisor.

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem it’s me.

Well, that’s not 100% true, but it’s 90% the case. Student media succeeds when students care about it enough, and, without a newspaper to produce, students have allowed The Times to become too much of an afterthought. My challenge is the ongoing one that is the most important to me: How do I inspire students to unleash their inner journalists?

If you know how to do that, please let me know. Honestly, I don’t think there is a simple answer, and I don’t expect one.

Anyway, enough griping. Let me spend a little time celebrating, too.

Image of profile
Image of winning profile. Image is link to document where you can see all MMU Times winners, or click here.

The Times has a kind of story called a “snapshot,” which is a personality profile accompanied by at least one good image of the subjects, sometimes several images with the main one being a good profile picture. And Catherine Kratoska, a staff writer, was recognized for the best profile story in the recent 2023 contest for a story about Robin Clark-Bridges, a now-retired MMU librarian who created and tends two gardens at the entrance to the library.

I think it helps that Annie Barkalow, a talented student journalist at the time, made the images that go with the story. Good pictures help sell good personality stories.

And I take a little pride, too, in that the profile, while a kind of story the Times did on a regular basis, was also a direct result of a class assignment. In Introduction to Journalism, I have students do an interview lab—that spring, Clark-Bridges agreed to come to class for a sort of news conference, a group interview, and Kratoska’s story was originally a lab and homework class assignment.

Another first-place award was for staff editorials. Over the years, the Times has had a history of strong editorial writing. A good staff editorial reflects a depth of opinion that goes beyond an emotional rant—it should be a thoughtful advocacy on some controversy of relevance to the audience.

In the contest, a student media outlet can submit three staff editorials. The three that the Times submitted are:

  • What MMU needs is a 'freedom of expression' policy, Dec. 8, 2022.
  • Questions of Justice: America, MMU still have work to do to combat system racism, Feb. 16, 2023.
  • No more stolen sisters: Join the right to end violence towards Indigenous women, May 4, 2023.

I am particularly proud of the one on freedom of expression, a key issue at any university but a particular challenge at a private, Catholic university. It’s to MMU’s credit that, when the university did write its policy, it very much had the flavor that the students asked for—mostly, it’s a policy to protect, not quash, student expression.

And we won another first-place awards, too. The current editor of the Times, Delcie Sanache, is a sophomore nursing student who joined the Times staff last year as sports editor. As a freshman, she then took over when the previous editor had to step aside for personal reasons.

Photography hasn’t always been a strength of the Times, but Delcie made an image at a soccer game that judges said was the best sports photograph of the year.

Well, cool.

Soccer image
Delcie Senache's award-winner soccer image.

And in fall, I wrote a blog post about how much I liked the Barbie movie, and a student in a writing class said she disagreed. I encouraged her to turn that disagreement into something, and she wrote her own review of Barbie.

It was, according to ICMA, the best review of the year. And it was strictly online—published this fall after the “paper’ had become a news web site. So, excellence in journalism and writing doesn’t depend on the dead trees, which is a good thought to keep hold of.

Screenshot of Barbie review.

I’m hopeful that things can come together better for the Times this spring. Before Spring Break, I want us to be drawing more attention to good stories that students are executing well. We’ve produced some good stories this year, but again, not enough to have many contest entries for next year.

Well, contest entries aren’t the main point of college student media. The main point is that student journalism makes a difference at a college campus. In our culture at large, the decline in many local newspapers has led to “news deserts,” which means a key part of civic engagement, a voice that can make a difference in communities, is sadly lacking.

I don’t want that to happen at MMU. I may be near the end of my career, but I hope that the Times continues its mission to be an authentic student news media at Mount Mercy University.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Wolfe Misses in 2016 Language Rumination

Tom Wolfe
From Wikimedia Commons, White House Photo by Susan Sterner.March 22 2004. American writer Tom Wolfe. I'm in general, a fan.
Tom Wolfe is an entertaining spinner of stories, although I tire, sometimes, of his typographic trickery and long, rambling sentences. Nonetheless, in a series of nonfiction works and novels stretching back to the 1960s, he’s an enchanting, worthwhile American writer, a unique, acerbic jester of words.

Late last December, the weather was not all that good and we were looking for something indoors to do with a grandson, so we took him to the main Cedar Rapid Library. I am a slow reader in a house full of books, so I have been a very infrequent library visitor—my card was so old I had to get a new one in order to use it.

But there I saw Wolfe’s 2016 book, “The Kingdom of Speech,” and obtained a new library card so that I could check it out. I think I've read most of his books and liked most of them, so why not?

And I was disappointed. Wolfe attempts to discredit the Theory of Evolution, on his way to arguing that human language is not connected to our biological history, but instead a unique human creation, a tool.

In a sense, he’s right when he culminates by declaring language to be an artifact, like a Buick, and thus not something that comes from our evolution. He’s correct, as far as I can tell, in pointing out that language is artificial, constructed, invented, not something we’re born with.

As for Evolution, Wolfe seem to distrust that as a tale no less fanciful than any other creation story. He's deeply wrong about that. And the fact that language is artificial doesn’t meant that it’s not connected to our evolution as a species.

His attack on Evolution let me disenchanted. It seemed to be that the one who is mistaken here isn't Darwin, but Wolfe.

“There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis,” Wofle writes. They are, he states:

  1. Has anyone else observed and recorded the phenomenon?
  2. Could other scientists replicate it?
  3. Could any come up with facts that contradict the theory?
  4. Can scientists make predictions based on it?
  5. Does it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas?

“In the case of Evolution … well … no … no … no … no … and no,” Wolfe declared.

And that was where I stumble. I’m not a scientist, so my understanding here is based on casual reading, yet in four of five points, I think he’s wrong.

Has anyone observed and recorded the phenomenon? Well, sure. There’s an extensive fossil record of many species, including ours, changing over time. Our fossil record isn’t complete—converting bone to rock is rare—but in the two centuries that Evolution has been an idea, the ancient bones seem to bear it out. And we even see it occurring in real time—the quick shifts in the virus that caused our recent pandemic, for instance. I think part of the issue here is that, even when it’s acting quickly, Evolution in complex species occurs at a time scale a human mind struggles to grasp. We as a species haven’t reached a million years yet, but even hundreds of thousands of years of modern humans walking the Earth is far beyond a single lifetime. We struggle to fully understand that time frame. And yet our modern knowledge of genetics confirms it—we not only know Evolution is real, we can track it; for example, we know the percent of the Neanderthal genome that is left in modern humans. So his first “no” is fully bogus. Lots of scientists have seen and continue to see the phenomenon.

Can other scientists replicate it? That’s a question asked when a testable hypothesis is being experimentally proved or disproved. Evolution is more of a framework incorporating lots of disparate evidence—but yes, serious biologists and paleontologists have all “replicated” this large hypothesis by replicating many of the small pieces that add up to the big idea. Wolfe’s "no" is a bit of sleight of hand, Evolution is not a hypothesis testable by a single experiment, but despite that, it’s been “replicated” repeatedly and reliably.

Can anyone come up with facts to discredit the theory? Although Wofle recounts several creation myths and seems to put them on equal footing with Evolution, he answers this one “no,” which seems like a win for Evolution, the one positive he concedes to the idea he’s attacking. You can come up with lots of alternative stories of how the world came to be, but none other that has the history of scientific observations that Evolution has.

Can scientists make predictions based on it? Sure. We get a new flu shot every year in response to a virus that is constantly evolving. The Theory of Evolution alone doesn’t help us concoct next year’s shot, but I think pretty much 100 percent of the scientists who are working on the 2024 flu shot are making projections based on genetic shift, on natural selection—Darwin’s machinery at work. It’s not exactly a “yes,” because, again, the phenomenon is not one observed in short-term human terms, but Evolution very much shapes what biologists conjecture about what comes next. The word “prediction” is a bit tricky here, since Evolution is messy and random, but sure, we expect constant change due to Natural Selection, and we correctly act on that understanding.

The final “no” is, to me, one of the weirdest. It seems to be that this big theory clearly illuminates a mystery. Evolution didn’t spring into Charles Darwin’s (or Alfred Wallace’s) brains from nothing, but were part of the burgeoning 19th century exploration of the world. The idea of inherited traits was barely being understood. The variety of plants and animals found that matched their sites yet were similar to related species nearby—the increasing catalog of life was providing hints. The question was, where did life come from? Darwin’s conception and understanding of Evolution is not the same as ours—scientists today understand DNA and genes and fossils much more than they did in his day—but he fundamentally was right. We can see at a molecular level that species did come from other species, we can trace how related different plants and animals are to each other based on their molecular fingerprints, we know so much more today about an origin story that was being explored but not understood in Darwin’s time. So, yes, Evolution illuminates. Why does Wolfe say "no" here? I do not understand.

I don’t mind Wolfe’s mocking of British social classes, nor even his attacks on modern academics. And I’ll concede that, like a Buick, language is something we create. But I think he’s missing an important point. Our capacity to create language (or Buicks) is not coincidental to understanding us.

A Buick is possible because we have among the largest and most complex brains in our mammal clan, combined with deft, opposable thumbs. Over the ages, we have used those evolving features of our biology to create and change the world. And Wolfe is not only correct that language is a created artifact, he’s on target that we use language as our most valuable human attribute, as the main artifact that gives us the world dominating (and world threatening) position we occupy today.

And yet, remember that the Buick has evolved. The Buick of 2024 isn’t the one of 1954. Before Buicks, there were wagons and chariots and the wheel. The Buick is an artifact, and thus did not biologically evolve, but artifacts are selected by us and I think there is a parallel in the changes in the stuff we make and in the critters we observe in that, over time, change seems unavoidable. Change is driven by selection, natural or human, and is a constantly seen reality.

Language? We made it. But when? Were the first speakers humans of our species or somewhere along that hominid path that diverged from the apes millions of years ago? Did Neanderthals sing and tell stories and chant prayers at funerals? Probably. Homo Erectus? Probably not. But when was the change? We don't know, but that doesn't mean our language ability didn't evolve.

Our faces, our jaws, our lips, our vocal chords—they give us an incredible ability to mimic a wide range of sounds, to hum and whistle and sing. And speak. One reason we’re unique is not just that we have a big brain that helps us to to craft the artifacts of Buicks and of language, we also have the vocal apparatus for vowels and constants and clicks and whistles. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives (see genetics, and no, we didn’t descend from them, their body rebuild since the time of our common ancestor has been more radical than ours—it’s accurate to say, from a chimp’s point of view, that they descended from humans) have an impressive variety of vocalizations.

They, too, can plan and coordinate actions. They make wars in groups. They even craft tools and use primitive spears for hunting (so much for Wolfe’s false assertion that only humans make artifacts). But their lack of language stunts their capacity to build a Buick—partly because their throats and sinus cavities and vocal chords can’t do the kind of subtle sound trickery as Home Sapiens can. To speak, we gave up, over eons, a large jaw and impressive canines—but we gained our ability to make and share words and shout and whisper in words our more complicated plans, to record our knowledge, to have a weird and marvelous bipedal body built, by natural selection to create our special brands of sound.

Our bodies’ aren’t revolutionary, they are similar to our cousins who went extinct, and to our ancestors. It is worth asking: When did we start talking? And were we even Homo Sapiens yet when our chimp-like wide variety of vocalizations began to grow so complex, thanks to our changing mouths and heads, that they became something we would call a language?

It’s a question hard for us answer. Spoken words leave no fossils. So linguists struggle and don't have an answer, now. But, (Taylor Swift, via Anne Reburn) what is Wolfe being when he dismisses the whole field of linguistics? "You, with your words like knives ..."

We known that we write and other species don’t, but it took us most of our existence on this planet before we mastered that trick of converting what we say into what we can read--before our created languages “evolved” to the point where setting them down in stone and clay and later, paper, occurred to us. Was it just a cultural shift or maybe a subtle evolution in our brains and hands? Both, maybe?

I’m not in Tom Wolfe’s league as a wordsmith. But I am a reader and a writer. And I can see that language is so embedded in the nature of us that it seems impossible it’s not embedded in our biology—a product of Natural Selection. Just as a Buick is (indirectly, because, again, we are evolved so that we can make Buicks, which no other species can. Yes, raccoons have opposable thumbs, but they don’t have poetry or owner’s manuals, and that makes all the difference).

“The Kingdom of Speech” was an interesting book—almost any Tom Wolfe book is interesting. To me, however, it is also deeply misleading. In the end, it is not fragile, unhealthy, selfish, and jealous Darwin who seems discredited, but a modern human master of language who seems to think that the notion we came from the same muck as worms and birds and lizards is icky.

It is not. “We were from the sewer, but so was everyone else” (lyric from “Your Light” by The Big Moon). Evolution is just how and who we are, thumbs, limbs, brains, verbs, nouns, verb tenses—all of us, arising slowly over thousands and millions and billions of years of change—with our evolving languages that do give us mastery of the planet, but aren’t separate from the evolutionary history that makes us, well, human. We may feel that way sometimes (again, Big Moon) but our words are not foreign objects in our mouths--they belong there, they are naturally there.

So OK, Tom. You’re right. There seems to be no “natural” language, at least not as far as we know now The history of language has a lot yet to be discovered and who knows what me might still find despite years of dead ends?.

But you’re deeply wrong, Tom, too. We have the language organ, or multiple language organs, and we ought not be offended by the fact that we evolved that way.

Saturday, January 6, 2024

The Mouse that Roared Belongs to Us All

 

Well, it finally happened.

Teaching about copyright law in communication classes is always interesting. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to protect intellectual property, with an unspecified reasonable time limit, which has led, over the years, to a tangle of patent and trademark and copyright law.

But throughout much of the late 20th century into the first two decades of the 21st, there was a reliable rule—the length of copyright would be extended whenever the mouse was endangered. When Steamboat Willy approached public domain, the residents of what Nicki Haley calls "the most privileged nursing home in the country" would shake themselves into action. (Nikki and I don’t agree on much, but she has a point--the quote was specifically about the Senate and it applies well there).

Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley campaigns in 2024 in Council Bluffs Iowa. Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Matt Johnson of Omaha, Nebraska, I am assuming an actual human photographer.

Anyway, I don’t think the failure to extend copyrights is a sign of our historically do-nothing, rabble-rousing bunch of political extremists in the current Congress, even if Disney is a favorite punching bag of the far right these days. It's just that more that almost 100 years on, Disney doesn’t need Steamboat anymore.

Of course, the other creative works that feature later interactions of Mickey Mouse are still very much protected. “What is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film,” said Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor at the University of Iowa, quoted in a new story by NPR.

And Mickey Mouse is still protected by a Trademark—Trademarks don’t expire, they last as long as a company can protect the name of its good or service (it’s a fuzzy area of law, eventually a term can enter public domain if courts rule people treat it as a common term—thus “aspirin” is no longer “Aspirin” because it has entered the common tongue).

This whole area of law can sometime be very Mikey Mouse. There, Disney, come after me—a common language use of a Trademark term, but not one, I hope, that the powers that be in corporate America will care about.

Anyway, Steamboat Willy, the first cartoon of Mickey, is free for you to embellish and use as you wish. And I have to update my copyright lectures. Again. And copyright is very tangled--just listen to Tessa Violet, a singer-songwriter, in a video seven years ago trying to explain music copyright:

Copyright is an interesting area of media law that is often shaped and reshaped by technology. The original idea is that a creator should benefit from their creation because that fosters more creativity—gives painters and writers and musicians an economic incentive to toil away in the hopes that something will become popular and enrich them.

And it sometimes happens, although the history of intellectual property is rife with examples of how corporations get inexperienced creators to sign away the rights to their creations.

The computer age has long complicated a creator’s power to control their creations, too. As a professor of mine once noted (it was in graduate school over 30 years ago, and sorry, I don’t have the notes to accurately track down who said it), to a computer, information is a “liquid.” It flows easily from place to place, it tends to be hard to contains, it seeps out a leaks everywhere.

In ye olden days, a creator crafted an artifact. A musician, if she were lucky, had a “record.” The manuscript of the Great American Novel was on typed pages (we’re in the modern era, in the 19th century, hand-written pages) stored in files. A photograph was a “print” from a “negative,” and not that easy to filch or move from place to place. Films were recorded on celluloid.

The computer dispenses with the artifact. My words here are digital blips, easy to copy perfectly, easy to download and move from file to file (don’t you dare!).

Add to that the Steamboat Willy complexity of corporate America lobbying over time to extend the limits of their copyrights, and you have an active, difficult and contentious area of law.

But the heart of the idea is still important. Creators are important. Some person thought of this and crafted it, even if “it,” these days, are a series of bytes rather than an analog thing.

Until, of course, now.

It would have rocked the copyright world a few years ago if Steamboat Willy churned into public domain, but it feels like more of an asterisk, an afterthought, a tiny curiosity now.

The real energy is: Who owns AI creations? And what can artificial intelligence use as it reprocesses huge amounts of data into new computer files? These days, creators don’t need to get their hands dirty, and they may not have hands at all. For example, late last year, a pretty bird appeared on social media to herald the holiday season, but as Snopes points out, it's not a bird at all, just the AI idea of a bird:

Santa Cardinal
"Ho ho ho, humans! The joke's on you. This chicken-headed monster is not a cardinal at all. There's no bird, no tree, no limb, no snow. It's all in my mind. Insincerely, AI." (image from Snopes article debunking the image).

The New York Times has acted to protect its works, suing Microsoft and other corporations over their AI systems synthesizing Times stories. The Times is a slightly ironic champion of human creativity, having had over the years some interesting legal entanglements over how it has treated freelance creators, but I applaud old media here.

You go, grey lady. Stand up for us who stand up as me move through our lives, those of us hairless apes with opposable thumbs who try to make new stuff.

We don’t have AI’s ability to crunch mountains of data. But AI doesn’t have our thoughts, emotions, feelings or need to be protected so that it’s creativity can be rewarded.

An ongoing, long-term theme (especially in the music realm) has been the struggle of creators to benefit from what they have created. That benefit, legitimately, has always had to be balanced against the larger needs of the community, which is why copyright works do lapse into the public domain eventually.

Hundreds of years after Shakespeare’s death, it’s OK for Taylor Swift to sing about Romeo and Juliet, even if she gets the story completely wrong, because copyright does not and should not apply to those long-dead and never alive fictional lovers.

On the other hand, we’re already being flooded with words and images that don’t represent human creativity, but rather a synthesized, synthetic reality based on the massive database of creativity.

It creates numerous challenges. I do think AI is here to stay and that it has numerous benefits for us, but I also think it needs careful development and guardrails to protect the humans who originally sent that mouse down the river in a weird 1920s cartoon.

It’s not time for us to give up on our own creativity in frustration over AI’s mechanical perfection.

Or, so I hope. Steamboat Willy, you seem rather quaint now. But my hope is that what we humans create now doesn’t too quickly seem the same. The old order of copyright law has passed down the river, but the ideal of a creator benefiting form creation shouldn’t sail off with it.

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Am I OK with Tay Tay on Time Cover? Sure

Time covers of Taylor Swift
From Reuters, Time magazine released image of it's Taylor Swift covers.

As a choice for 2023, I don’t think Time Magazine missed by naming Taylor Swift as its person of the year.

In some ways, it’s her second time, since she was part of the group of women on the cover when “The Silence Breakers” appeared in 2017.

But there’s no doubt that Taylor Swift is huge this year, and it’s a testament to her enduring power as a performer. She’s lasted 16 years as a star in the fickle world of popular music, and she has used some savvy moves to make herself the center of an entertainment empire. Which culminated this year with the ongoing Eras tour/movie and the cover of Time.

When Swift first started to make it as a singer, I wasn’t much of a fan. Her early songs were country pop, and that’s not my jam. “Tim McGraw,” her 2006 first hit, isn’t something I’ve listened to very often.

With Swift, her songs are often promoted by and appear as popular videos, and the one for “Love Story,” 2008, is slickly produced, but the arc of the song is irritating to me. The country music feel here didn’t help, but the real “Romeo and Juliet” wasn’t a love story, it was a tragedy about manic infatuation that left a trail of bodies in its wake. If he was Romeo and you were Juliet, you two would be dead now.


Then again, I didn’t hate early Taylor. “You Belong with Me,” 2009, shows that her voice has matured a bit. Her lyrics were getting better, and her sound is transitioning.

It’s still country, but definitely more at the pop end. And, true, the video is ridiculous, with evil (dark) Taylor contrasted with nice (blonde) Taylor—and Swift’s female pop-singer supermodel level good looks make her ineffective playing the wallflower.


Since those early years, Swift’s songs have grown more sophisticated and relatable. She began to get sassier and edgier after her teen moon-eyed faze.

Think of “Mean,” released in 2011. Still country, but the lyrics are getting more fun. “Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city and all you’re ever going to be is mean.” Maybe it’s a little thin skinned, but given where she is now, I guess I’d have to say it’s accurate foreshadowing—someday she did indeed become big. And big is an understatement, although she wasn't all that small in 2011, either.

I was getting a bit more into Taylor Swift. 2013 was the year of “22,” and “Red.” “Red” seems so raw and sincere—a song I can listen to.

And “22”? Even in my 60s, I can recall being that young, and Swift captures the feeling of young adulthood very well.

Plus: “happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time” is a way many of feel at any stage of life.

More mainstream pop and more adult Taylor Swift produced one of the most watchable music videos ever in 2014: “Blank Space.” And that year, she also advised us that she was going to “Shake it Off” about media critiques of her life.

The "Shake it Off" video shows a woman at the top of her video-making and song-making game.

Thus, by about 10 years ago, Taylor Swift was creating songs that an old man still finds interesting, relatable and listenable—and she’s only grown from there. In 2019, there was “You Need to Calm Down.”

A rumination on both anti-homosexual culture and the nature of celebrity, "Calm Down" is a relevant, interesting song. Totally on my playlist today.

Then came 2020, and “The Man,” one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs and music videos. Yeah, the nature of media attention to you would be very different, Taylor, if you were a guy Taylor rather than a girl Taylor, and way to point that out.

I tend to be a little behind in listening to Taylor Swift’s music, so I don’t have as much to state on her more recent songs, except that perhaps my favorite Swift song of all time, so far, is 2022’s “Anti-Hero.”

“I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser, midnights become my afternoons.” In my speech classes, I try to teach students to begin any public discourse with an attention-grabber—and has anybody ever heard those opening lines and not wondered what’s coming next? And what comes next is, to me, interesting and compelling poetry.

“I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.” It’s always easier to look out at the world, even to burn our eyes with a dangerous look (don’t stare directly at the sun) than it is to understand the self, to stare directly in the mirror.

“Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism, Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time).” Give Swift credit, she seems to be doing a bit of mirror looking here.

I have mixed feelings about the official music video for Anti-Hero—the little sit-com funeral scene is OK, but interrupts the song. Since she wrote and directed it, I blame Taylor Swift for that. It’s her, she, she’s the problem.

But I love the song. It touches on one of the great human problems—in all of our lives, isn’t it often true that we feel like monsters on the hill rather than sexy babies? And don't all of us sometimes recognize "I'm the problem?" So here is the lyric version of the song video; it's not as much fun as the official song video, but uninterrupted:

A few weeks ago, I was at an event put on by Guardian Institute of Martial Arts, a school in Marion that is run by my daughter and her husband. Some of the black belt Taekwondo instructors there are teen girls. I think it could have been my daughter, but someone mentioned to them at that event that I’m a Swift fan.

Three of them came over to ask. Yes, I said, I am a bit of a Swiftie. No, I know, I’m not as obsessed with Taylor Swift as a true Swiftie is, nor do I have a friendship bracelet. I meant that I am aware of her music and that I’ve grown to enjoy it. I am a fan.

The girls were pretty excited about that. They love TS, too. And that’s nice. Often, popular music and musical choices shift with time. For most of us, our most enduring favorite songs were ones that we encountered as teens or young adults—there’s something about the soundtrack of key transitions in our lives that sticks with us, like the smell of fresh bread baking that can draw you back into your mom’s kitchen. When I hear an early Heart song, I’m taken back to my youth.

But I don’t mind listening to newer music. And I don't know what is says about me, but I do have a thing about female performers. While I can think of many men whose music I enjoy, I am drawn to female singers.

And enjoying new creations, I think, is important as I age. I still live in the world of today. True, these days, music is over-produced, and there was some raw energy and honesty in the pre-disco music of the 1970s that I really like. Yet here I am. Taylor Swift is person of the year. It’s a meaningless media accolade, but I don’t mind this weird annual ritual created by Time magazine.

And I don’t argue with the choice this year.


Saturday, December 2, 2023

Celebrating Human Intelligence in AI Era

Art in window
Grandson noticed how light shone through his picture when he put it up in a window.

I am not always that thrilled with AI. I see lots of images crop up on social media showing pictures created by AI, and I find it discouraging.

I don’t want my art created by AI programs that are basically just ripping off large collections of human-art. I don’t want Chat GPT creating my sentences for me. I know that AI is all around, and I’m sure I benefit from it in many ways, but I still worry that we’re in danger of forgetting ourselves. I suppose the algorithms at Meta and Google that are always watching take advantage of AI technology, too. I don’t want to be a Luddite, but I’m not ready to say it’s OK to serve up AI-created gruel rather than humans taking the time to create.

So, I enjoyed several reminders of human intelligence, inefficient and limited as it is, in the past few days.

In one of my classes, we held a spelling bee on Friday. That is a rather quaint and old-fashioned exercise in the era of commonplace spell check and more sophisticated writing aids, but as I told the students, tuning into the actual spelling of the words you use means getting to know those words better.

In five students participating, one young woman stood out and handily won. We chatted after class, and she credited her upbringing. Her mother, a school teacher, had emphasized language skills and reading to her children, and this student had been an early reader.

Spelling Bee
The winner of the spelling bee.

True, spelling is something you should use computer aids for, in my opinion. But I liked the old exercise, emphasizing that your own understanding of words in your own brain still matters.

That Friday afternoon, my wife and I attended a musical, “The Lion King,” at Kennedy High School. The play was well cast, the teens really got into their parts, and the young kids and older folk in the audience enjoyed the show.

There is something raw and real about live theater, and this was a very pleasant experience. Sunday, I’m planning to attend “The Wizard of Oz” at TCR—another point of contact with the possibilities of human creativity.

Then, on Saturday, Dec. 2, the Cedar Rapids Art Museum had a Family Fun Day. The museum was free to enter that day, and there were various activities for kids. My wife, one of my daughters and I accompanied three grandsons to the day. They enjoyed moving about the galleries, and we created little games for them there, such as “find the painting with a lobster” in one room, or “find the picture of the father and son” in another.

Watching video in CR Museum of Art
Grandsons watching video as part of display in Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

They created greeting cards, pop-up books and “blind” art drawn with their eyes closed. It was a fun time to enjoy images that reflected the humanity of their creators, not an AI compilation of what a genre of image should look like.

I am unsure about the implications of AI, and I need to learn more. I hope that it evolves into tools that we can control to enhance our lives and not the robot overlords who will end us.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy some human efforts. A young woman who can sure spell. Teens who can become animals on stage. Grandsons scurrying about an art gallery, enjoying the images there.

At the dawn of the AI era, I take some comfort in simple, human skills and creativity.

Saturday, November 4, 2023

Fall Film Festival: Francis Calls for Action

students watch film
Two Mount Mercy students watching one of the videos as the Fall Diversity Film Festival.

I feel the need to get a copy of “Laudato Si,” a 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis. I know I can read it for free online, but I would prefer a booklet version.

On Friday, the Department of Social Work at Mount Mercy University held a “Fall Diversity Film Festival.” You could go to Flaherty Community Room, grab some popcorn and a beverage like hot cider or hot chocolate, and then choose another room in Basile to view a film.

Six films were offered, but due to having a music practice Friday afternoon, I was only able to view two. Before going to the Chapel of Mercy to practice ringing hand bells, I watched “Coexistence Architecture: VinziRast-mittendrin.” It was a six-minute look at a project in Vienna where people in need are housed together and work at a restaurant. I liked that film, then went to my bell practice, and came back.

For my second film, I selected “The Letter.” My plan was to watch half of it and them probably head home for the day because the showing was broken into part 1 and 2—but instead, I stayed and watched the whole thing. It was too compelling to stop.

The 2022 YouTube documentary is about an invitation sent by The Vatican for various people (among them two scientists from Hawaii, a climate refugee from Senegal, a 13-year-old climate activist from India, an indigenous chief from the Amazon region) to meet Pope Francis as representatives of the many types of people who experience the negative impact of climate change.

The event was set up by the Laudato Si Movement, named after the Pope’s 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si” which he wrote as a letter to all of humanity, enjoining us to wake up to the environmental crisis we face. I know that the event was, to some extent, a PR stunt, but it was genuine, too. The voices of these people were important to listen to.

The central problem that Francis spoke about in the film is that humans don’t seem to understand how urgent it is to act to reverse global warming.

“We see what is happening, and the worst thing is we are becoming used to it,” he said.

Student watching film
MMU student enjoys popcorn while watching a film.

My favorite person to watch in the documentary was Ridhima Pandey, the 13-year-old girl from India. The documentary features all of the people getting their invitation to meet Francis in Rome, and she was clearly excited as only a child can be. And yet she was also smart and mature for her age—sometimes, the young have not yet had their vision clouded by years and can speak and see clearly.

Then there was the heartbreaking moment when Arouna Sande, a climate refugee from Senegal, gets a cell phone call from a friend who joined other climate refugees on a dangerous boat journey to reach Europe. Most didn’t make it when the boat sank.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the event and only wished I had seen more films. I was moved by “The Letter,” and I hope others will be, too. Fortunately, the full film is available for free on YouTube: