Yesterday observed at the Museum of Natural History. I went to observe the room of aboriginal art and the Easter Island sculpture. Last time I came to the museum I saw many children flocking towards the Easter Island Sculpture right after the movie "Night at the Museum" came out. This time I wanted to further investigate this event.
The room that the sculpture was in is a long room. A group of children walked in and saw the sculpture known in the movie as "Dum Dum" at the opposite side of the room and ran towards the sculpture. I can't emphasize enough how many times the kids repeated, " Dum dum dum dum dum." It rang from their mouths.
At first thought it was really great to see that a hollywood movvie could interest children in cultural history. I started to brainstorm how children are so interested in hollywood and celebrities that it would be great if hollywood could re-spark childrens interests with school and cultural history. Unfortunately, shortly after I established my idealist hopes I observed that the children weren't interested in the Easter Island Sculpture. They enjoyed matching the sculpture to something they thought was cool that they saw in a movie. It was like seeing a movie star on the street and matching them to the role they have played in a movie.
As I continued to watch I noticed that the children had little if no interest in the origins or history of the Easter Island Sculptures. The education was at a very surface level. The children might have known what the Easter Island sculptures are from the movie. Maybe a docent could of sparked interest with the children. I was only able to see individuals and families walk through on their own. In the end the children just saw their famed "Dum Dum", nothing more.
This hurt me a little. I wanted to know why children were so fascinated with the object just because it was in a movie. An answer came to me quite quickly," Movies and hollywood are cool and the general public is obsessed with celebrities... Ultimately "Dum Dum" is a celebrity of sorts. He just not human. "Originally I had thought I had a great a idea brainstorming that hollywood could serve an education purpose. I thought this would be a new way to bring "cool" back to school.
I think that could be an interesting project to find out if kids became more interested in history through hollywood. Unfortunately when I think about the few cases when hollywood has taken a historical story, a topic with educational content, it is always created in binaries. It's oversimplified and taken out of context. I understand why they do this, it makes it easy to understand. This is because we are lazy. As a society we watch movies generally for entertainment. We want to sit in front of the t.v. or projector and veg out.
I suggest an alternative to this norm. This isn't a new idea and is happening more and more, but big budget hollywood needs to throw us a challenge. I say give us a movie that makes us feel empowered by problems solving and strategizing. It feels good to think and all of us want to be smart, I would assume. Don't only give us one good guy and a bad guy. What about introducing people who are people and aren't just good or bad, but possess many different emotions and tendencies. Let us think, investigate and let us make up our minds about the issues presented instead of indirectly or directly telling us how we should feel.
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