{"id":8107,"date":"2017-01-25T02:37:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T06:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=8107"},"modified":"2017-01-25T02:37:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T06:37:37","slug":"reaffirming-your-passion-on-english-classes-vs-film-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2017\/01\/25\/reaffirming-your-passion-on-english-classes-vs-film-classes\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaffirming your Passion – On English Classes vs. Film Classes"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something I remember hearing throughout high school English classes. Whenever we\u2019d read some classic work\u2014Animal Farm <\/em>and Of Mice and Men<\/em> in ninth grade, Jane Eyre<\/em> and Hamlet<\/em> in twelfth\u2014I\u2019d hear people complaining that they couldn\u2019t enjoy the books because we were being forced<\/em> to read them. Something about the simple fact that we had to read To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> made it unenjoyable to some students, who might\u2019ve enjoyed it a lot more if they\u2019d chosen to read it on their own.<\/p>\n

I can sympathize with this view, but I don\u2019t 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\u2019t think I would\u2019ve liked Animal Farm<\/em> as much, for example, if I hadn\u2019t discussed it in class with Mrs. Robinson. Same goes for The Giver<\/em>, 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<\/em>\u2019s strange society together.<\/p>\n

When I got to the University of Michigan, and as I got more into TV and movies\u2014even spending my spare time watching TV more than reading\u2014I 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\u2019ve always had with English classes, except we\u2019d get to talk about movies instead.<\/p>\n

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\u2026maybe not worse<\/em>, but not better. The same way students wouldn\u2019t want to read The Great Gatsby<\/em> for the simple reason that they were being forced to, I\u2019ve resented being forced to watch movies like Citizen Kane<\/em> or Chinatown<\/em>. It\u2019s weird, because I think I\u2019d genuinely enjoy these movies if I watched them on my own. But sometimes having to go to screenings at set times (often when I\u2019m either really hungry for dinner or tired after just eating) makes me resent the movies we have to watch.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure why this is; maybe Michigan\u2019s film department is just crappy, but I don\u2019t think it is. I\u2019ve 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\u2019m learning to enjoy the movies themselves more; this semester I\u2019ve watched The Rain People<\/em>, The President\u2019s Analyst<\/em>, and Il Sorpasso<\/em>, and all of them I\u2019ve either loved or just enjoyed watching. I haven\u2019t come close to falling asleep during the screenings like I have in previous classes. It\u2019s just that talking about them during lecture and discussion isn\u2019t enlightening for me like it is talking about the books I read for English classes.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d 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\u2019m meant to pursue. Sometimes it\u2019s nice to remember how much you love the thing you\u2019ve chosen to study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something I remember hearing throughout high school English classes. Whenever we\u2019d read some classic work\u2014Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men in ninth grade, Jane Eyre and Hamlet in twelfth\u2014I\u2019d hear people complaining that they couldn\u2019t enjoy the books because we were being forced to read them. Something about the simple fact that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2178,"featured_media":8108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8109,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8107\/revisions\/8109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}