There’s something I remember hearing throughout high school English classes. Whenever we’d read some classic work—Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men in ninth grade, Jane Eyre and Hamlet in twelfth—I’d hear people complaining that they couldn’t enjoy the books because we were being forced to read them. Something about the simple fact that we had to read To Kill a Mockingbird made it unenjoyable to some students, who might’ve enjoyed it a lot more if they’d chosen to read it on their own.
I can sympathize with this view, but I don’t share it when it comes to books. Reading books for school and having the opportunity to talk about them in class has always been something I loved; I don’t think I would’ve liked Animal Farm as much, for example, if I hadn’t discussed it in class with Mrs. Robinson. Same goes for The Giver, which I read in seventh grade. That class, with Ms. Fifield, was maybe my favorite English class that I ever took before college; I distinctly remember the feeling of actually loving going to class, because it meant we could uncover the mysteries of The Giver’s strange society together.
When I got to the University of Michigan, and as I got more into TV and movies—even spending my spare time watching TV more than reading—I was attracted to the idea of a Screen Arts and Cultures department. There were no film classes in high school, and suddenly I was able to replicate the experience I’ve always had with English classes, except we’d get to talk about movies instead.
Oddly enough, though, my experience with film classes has always been different than English classes. While English classes have always enhanced the experience of reading, SAC classes inexplicably seem to make the experience of watching movies…maybe not worse, but not better. The same way students wouldn’t want to read The Great Gatsby for the simple reason that they were being forced to, I’ve resented being forced to watch movies like Citizen Kane or Chinatown. It’s weird, because I think I’d genuinely enjoy these movies if I watched them on my own. But sometimes having to go to screenings at set times (often when I’m either really hungry for dinner or tired after just eating) makes me resent the movies we have to watch.
I’m not sure why this is; maybe Michigan’s film department is just crappy, but I don’t think it is. I’ve enjoyed most of my professors here, and I know theoretically that talking about movies in class should be just as stimulating as talking about books in English classes. And to be fair, I’m learning to enjoy the movies themselves more; this semester I’ve watched The Rain People, The President’s Analyst, and Il Sorpasso, and all of them I’ve either loved or just enjoyed watching. I haven’t come close to falling asleep during the screenings like I have in previous classes. It’s just that talking about them during lecture and discussion isn’t enlightening for me like it is talking about the books I read for English classes.
Maybe, in the end, the answer is just that I prefer books to movies. There was a time earlier in college when I was a little worried that I’d been wrong all along about my great passion in life; maybe I was supposed to move out to L.A. and work in the film industry instead of the publishing industry. But over the past couple years, taking both English and SAC classes has reassured me that, despite any new interests, my original passion is still the one I’m meant to pursue. Sometimes it’s nice to remember how much you love the thing you’ve chosen to study.
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