As my English A1 HL class concludes their first semester of coursework, where we studied what we called the idea of “blurring the lines between fictional realities and autobiographical impulses,” I decided to screen Michele Gondry’s The Science Sleep as a bridge between the prose that we have studied, and the drama texts that we will begin next semester.
J. Hoberman’s review of the film for the Village Voice is one of my favorites, but I’m also excited to see what my class thinks about this strange and surreal work that only Gondry could create, as well as the connections we can make to what we have already studied. A. O. Scott’s review of the film for The New York Times is also quite good:
But its fugitive, ephemeral quality is part of its point: dreams, after all, are hard to remember, and perhaps don’t hold the meanings they seem to. Without them, though, our minds would be emptier and our lives much smaller. So while “The Science of Sleep” may not, in the end, be terribly deep, it is undoubtedly — and deeply — refreshing.
There is a brief, interesting three-part Making of Science of Sleep which I have embedded below:
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Hey Mr. Quale – hope you’re doing well. I’m currently reading articles about the Internet take-over of print journalism for my science in media class and one of the quotes I read reminded me so much of your class I had to share it. I think you’ll appreciate it:
“This is the way my career ends. This is the way my career ends. Not with a bang, but a Twitter”…!!!
(Here’s the article it came from: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum)
Thanks for this article, Rachel. I love the Eliot allusion–and the fact that Twitter is being compared to a dying “whimper.” This is very close to how I feel about the Twitter phenomenon. I’m going to use this article with my A2 English class (since we spent last semester on a media studies unit), and I am also going to forward it to my dad (since he was a journalist for most of his professional career). Have you read the SF Chronicle lately? I think the Matador Caper rivals it’s journalistic prowess.
I agree with the argument, “Undoubtedly, one can find excellent science information on the web, but the question is whether most people will find it.” My fear is that most people are not. The majority of my tech-savvy students have no clue what an RSS feed is, or how to use Google Reader to actually read blogs, and I do feel that finding the information you want–maybe even more true with education bloggers–is like wading through a “Library of Babel” for reliable “texts.” Sorry, I had to get a JLB reference in there somewhere. But as we get further into this debate of where we get our knowledge from, doesn’t Borges come across more and more like a prophet? Or is this just me?