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Podcast 33 looks at three DVDs suitable for
younger secondary students. In Australia, these students are in Years 7
and 8, around twelve and thirteen years old. The three DVDs are a new
Astro Boy (Bowers, 2010), Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010) and
Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009). Each has a bright
image on the cover, all are rated PG in Australia, so available for showing to the age group
and above, and all are animations falling within the broad genre of
Science Fiction.
As the
first semester has just finished leading into two weeks of a winter break,
these DVDs were most useful. Students' reports were written, grades noted in
the computer and the last couple of classes were just right for an
animation, with focus questions written on the white board in a pretense of
pedagogic rigour. Two of the DVDs were also useful for older Technology
students studying animation and multimedia, but that is not the purpose of
this podcast. Instead, it is their value as SF texts for this age group that
is discussed.
The script for
Podcast 33 can be found through the mySF Scripts page at
http://www.pataphysics.net.au/mysf_project/mysf_scripts
The script will be useful for anyone wanting to find citations or to
follow links to resources for these animations.
By far
the most exalted of these animations is, of course, Astro Boy
(Bowers, 2010), a recent reincarnation and creation myth for a Science
Fiction icon. My head teacher, a man in his early thirties, wears an Astro
Boy t-shirt in summer and coveted my mobile phone faceplate in white with
the robot boy logo. With my wife I visited a large touring 'Astro Boy'
exhibition at the
National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne. There, the Master of Manga
and Atomu's creator, Tezuka Osamu, was showcased and honoured.
Osamu's amazing contribution to manga and then to the television serial for
Astroboy is not covered here but those interested can find an
overview in Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from
Origins to Anime (Bolton and others, 2008). And there are literally
dozens of fully-stocked websites devoted to Osamu's Astro Boy, many with
early manga images, then on into the1960s cartoon series.
The
most recent Astro Boy (Bowers, 2010) animation shares some characters
and some concerns with the earlier and more successful versions. The story
has been trimmed in some areas and elongated in others, including a few
extra characters who befriend this Astro Boy, such as a robot trash can dog
and a gentle giant robot, that might just be a result of merchandising
research.
Bowers' Astro Boy (2010) is set on a floating island, Metro City. The
citizens of this city enjoy privileged status, served by robots that are
clearly sentient, with their own individual characters. The robots of Metro
City are discarded onto the groaning, rubbish-strewn earth below, where
rejects from Metro City scavenge amongst the techno trash.
There
are hints of other recent texts in Astro Boy (2010), not the least of
these the much stronger and more interesting Wall-E (Stanton, 2008).
The same contrast of selfish humans with sentient, mechanical slaves toiling
on a despoiled Earth are seen, but Astro Boy (2010) does little more
than nod towards this scenario.
Astro Boy
(Bowers, 2010) is a busy, ninety minute production. There are elements of
the enlivening of Frankenstein's monster when the robot is powered-up for
the first time, as well as several sub-plots of the robot-boy's strange
relationship to his scientist father, one of the least satisfactory elements
of the narrative.
Also
in the pot are the sage and benevolent Doctor Elefun defending Astro Boy,
the gang of children down on the surface of the planet, an evil leader of
Metro City, a huge robot, a weak love interest for the boy aspect of the
robot, and several comic robot characters, such as a talking squeegy bottle.
At the
centre of the story is a very simple binary: the battle between good energy
and bad energy, made palpable by fragments of a meteorite, separated into a
glowing jewel of blue (Astro Boy's good power source) and a bead of red (the
unstable violence that powers the enemy, giant robot).
The
battle between Astro Boy's blue energy and the evil robot's red energy pulls
the narrative together when it veers away into tangents until finally Astro
Boy somehow defeats the evil robot (now inhabited by the character of the
mayor of Metro City) and is born again as a hero robot defending all humans.
Bowers' Astro Boy (2010) does have some redeeming ideas. Apart from
the age old battle between good and evil with the rise of a young, male hero
figure saving the day, it is also a coming-of-age story. Astro Boy's problem
is that he is neither boy nor robot. He asks the same questions as so many
other coming-of-age protagonists:
Why am I here? Where am I going? What will happen to me
in the future?
How do adults see us? Why do they treat us like this?
Why are we so powerless? (Jones & Fisher, 2000)
Astro
Boy faces problems with misguided parents. He faces major decisions and
copes bravely and honestly with these, without help from his family for the
most part. The viewer of Astro Boy (Bowers, 2010) understands that it
is not the boy's DNA that makes him human, it is his willingness to
sacrifice himself for others, to suffer and care and finally to understand
his role as a defender of humanity.
The
dominant reading (Evans, 1996) of Astro Boy (Bowers, 2010) is the
hero's return to save the city, set within a specious Science Fiction
scenario. The young viewer recognises the good in the robot-boy and
identifies with the need to fight against injustice. It is Astro Boy's
introspection when shuddering between the worlds of humanity and robotics
that ties into the age and concerns of the young secondary viewer. Astro Boy
reflects the uncertainty found in the viewer while assuring them that all
will be well in the end, with the young creature growing into a certainty of
self that allows for confidence and strength, a rebirth as a full citizen
hero, admired by all.
The
animation of Astro Boy (Bowers, 2010) is far more advanced than any
and all earlier versions. It can be beautifully constructed and some scenes
such as the bucolic restarting of the friendly robot Zog are as memorable as
the fights through Metro City. Created for 3-D presentation and with teams
of wire-framers labouring for the production company in Hong Kong, Astro
Boy (Bowers, 2010) can only be disappointing for those who understand
the importance of this icon in Western and Japanese cultures, but for young
students this version of the man/machine tale at its simplest and shallowest
can be effective.
Following examples from Cox and Goldsworthy in Featuring Film 2: the
sequel (1997), students
might be asked to write Astro Boy's first speech to the people of Metro City
as their new hero. Students should try to use Astro Boy's idiom and speech
mannerisms to outline the basic tenets of the new society under Astro Boy's
benevolent protection, including the liberation of sentient robots and the
restoration of the Earth.
Students might also be asked how successful is this animation in creating a
sense of the future? (Cox & Goldsworthy, 1997) As a classroom of the future
is depicted in Astro Boy (Bowers, 2010), students might also be asked
to write a 'futurised' version of the class, writing a simple screenplay for
the director of this sequence, including costumes and props (adapted from
Cox & Goldsworthy, 1997: 48).
Jorge
Blanco's animation Planet 51 (2010) for the Spanish Ilion Animation
Studios and distributed by Sony is even richer in its visuals than Astro
Boy (Bowers, 2010). The characters are beautifully modelled and the
enitre planet setting is stunning, perhaps due to the luminosity of the
greens and blues and the soft rounding of most objects - an intentional
device to enhance the alterity (Roberts, 2000) or alien nature of the
culture, though, of course, they are not alien at all.
The
Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010) trailer gives it all away. A big, beefy and
boofy NASA astronaut comes to Planet 51 and claims it with an American flag.
Then the astronaut, Captain Chuck Baker, realises the planet is already
inhabited. In fact, he has pitched the flag in a suburban back lawn and at
the same time trod on a squeaky rubber duck. It's a nice idea.
The
reversal of roles with Captain Chuck as the alien fits in neatly with the
'Enemy Within' theme area of the mySF Project. But there are problems with
this as the indigenous of Planet 51 seem to be nothing other than versions
of an idealised 1950s regional American town. They have gently reptilian
features with antennae and skin the colour of unripe snow-peas. In a
dazzling example of convergent evolution, the Planet 51 indigenous speak
American English and breathe oxygen. They are are naïve and sheltered, to
the point where most of the males wear no pants and have no apparent
genitalia.
Captain Chuck has landed in Glipforg, a charming rural hamlet most
reminiscent of Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985), except the
Glipforgians look humanoid/amphibious and have not invented the wheel but
instead use an unknown form of energy to hover their transport.
The
viewer starts the narrative with another coming-of-age problem as the
teenage protagonist, Lem, has a new job as a guide at their Planetarium and
he desires but is not bold enough to ask for a date from the cute, female
Neera, who lives next door.
In the
pseudo 1950s Glipforg all the teenagers know the films of alien invasion,
abduction and terror. They fear the arrival of Humaniacs, blobby one-eyed
monsters who can control minds and wipe out army tanks with x-ray laser
blasts from the cyclopedian organ. Captain Chuck looks nothing like their
feared Humanic monster from the Glipforg drive-in B grade movie, but he
still causes widespread panic and the army is called in. Captain Chuck is
sheltered by Lem and mayhem ensues.
The
Lem and Neera relationship is a boy-next-door romance resolved when both
teenagers assist Captain Chuck to escape the army and its ridiculously evil
Professor Kipple, voiced by John Cleese, who is more a Doctor Strangelove
(Kubrick, 1964) clone than an army psychiatrist or alien specialist.
In
short, the first half of Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010) is well-paced,
interesting and works well in turning the tables on alien invasion. It has
several clever references to 1950s B-grade SciFi films and stories but of
course these may be lost on a younger secondary audience. It also includes
intertextual puns, such as the licking tongue of the nasty beast from
Alien (Scott, 1979) transformed to a pet, as well as a host of other
SciFi moments, more suited to parents or SF teachers than most students. The
jokes worked initially and the animation looks wonderful, but the second
half of the text and its conclusion lost its sense of juxtaposition from
norms, simply following the simple narrative instead.
Perhaps it is because the Glipforg culture is so close to Captain Chuck's
and the viewers’ own that the narrative loses impact, making it more
difficult to look at this animation as a useful way to start a discussion of
what it is about aliens that is so fearsome.
The
dominant reading of this text is a satirical view of the SF alien invasion
sub-genre and its temporal location in an idealised American 1950s. The
teenage couple are paired, the young hero shows courage and resourcefulness
against adversity, the defence forces are manic xenophobes cured by Captain
Chuck's arrival and a whole culture matures from
naïve isolationism into a more robust and accepting democracy.
For
young secondary students the theme of acceptance of Otherness or alterity is
useful as preparation for Science Fiction studies, but this message is not
coherent and is not explored at depth in any significant scene in the
animation.
It
would also be difficult to use the fear of the alien as a means to discuss
racism as several critics of Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010) have pointed
out the voice of Captain Chuck comes
from Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, but the animation depicts a
blonde-haired, blue eyed astronaut. And if Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010)
is interested in the analogy of inclusivity to extend to different
races, why are all the Glipforgians so uniformly luminous green? And why are
the female Glipforgians, denoted by longer hair/tentacles, longer and
thinner faces with lipstick, and their skirts, expected to merely support
the pant-less males? Perhaps the one idea of the human as alien on a distant
planet was the only real idea of the animation?
In the
end, Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010) does focus on the need for healthy
societies to accept difference, so teachers may like to use it as an
opportunity to discuss cultural difference and inclusivity. One approach
would be to note that the legal meaning of 'alien' is simply a person in a
country where they are not a citizen of that country. There may be aliens in
the classroom already, proud of their different cultural backgrounds.
Teachers might discuss 'culture' with the students, defining it as a set of
shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterise a group.
Student activities for
Planet 51
Students could be faced with a hypothesis that an alien, this time from
another planet, has travelled to Earth and landed near the school, just out
the back, towards the hill in that cleared space next to the Smoker's Tree.
It emerges from its craft. Nothing is known of the alien except that it
looks very unlike an human. It brings out from its craft a glowing panel.
One student guesses this is a communications device. The authorities have
been advised and police are on their way but there are a few minutes
available to make first contact right here, right outside this school.
Working in small groups, it is the students' task to accept that the panel
is, in fact, a communications device and they are to come up with the
best possible three questions to discover if the alien has a similar culture
to any or all of the students. What can students say about their own
cultures or collective culture to establish similarities?
Similarities are evident in the reversal tale of Planet 51 (Blanco,
2010) and the third animation covered here, Monsters vs Aliens
(Letterman & Vernon, 2009) from Dreamworks. There are clever switches of
expectations, definite homage to SciFi classics and some lively satire based
partly around an alien invasion.
The
main reversal of Monsters vs Aliens is signalled early in the
animation. Just as in Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010), we see a young couple
in a car 'parking' when a meteoritic streak furrows the night sky. The car
radio changes channel on its own, lights flicker but in Monsters vs
Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009) it is the young woman who takes
control, who carries her chunky male companion out to see the arrival of a
huge robot. Right from this early scene there are references to Haskin's
1953 War of the Worlds, and Close Encounters (Spielberg, 1977)
but here the young woman is the valiant hero defending species and planet.
This juxtaposition of gender roles is continued throughout Monsters vs
Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009) and works extremely well - a strong
enough reason in itself to make this a useful talking point with young
secondary students looking at the male-dominated SF genre.
Like
Planet 51 (Blanco, 2010), the Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman &
Vernon, 2009) animation is a wonderful opportunity to play spot the
reference, though in this latter example the pickings are much richer. This
is seen by the 'monsters', all garnered from many SciFi examples. The
Missing Link is a talking amphibian excavated from the ice as in Carpenter's
The Thing (1982) and bearing some resemblance to the Creature from
the Black Lagoon (Arnold, 1954). The mad scientist is Dr Cockroach, a
hybrid human and bug created by the same accident as found in the original
Fly (Neumann, 1958) and its many remakes. The gelatinous blue third
monster is BOB, a direct descendent from The Blob (Yeaworth, 1958).
BOB is a great star in this animation. The fourth monster is Insectosaurus,
a nuclear mutant enlarged (but not enraged) like Godzilla (Honda, 1956),
that pupates into a Mothra (Honda, 1961).
The
animation’s protagonist, Susan, becomes an ash-blonde giant just short of
fifty feet in height and imbued with extra-terrestrial meteorite energy. She
is not touched by an alien giant to become enormous, as in Attack of the
50ft Woman (Juran, 1958), instead it is an exotic radiation from
quantonium in a meteorite, echoing many other B-grade movies using
radioactivity as a SF narrative device.
The alien threatening life on Earth is Gallaxhar, a many-eyed,
squid-like beast in a tri-bulge starship with advanced technologies,
including giant robot probes with cyclopean eyes that scan objects with blue
light.
The
dominant reading of Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009)
relates to the changes undergone by Susan, showing how a dependent young
woman subservient to her fiance learns to trust her own abilities, choosing
to help others with a group of societal outcasts, the Monsters of the title.
As noted by Young Media Australia (2010) in their review of the animation,
the 'main messages' are that good will conquer evil, self-belief will prove
successful, to value friendship and to accept differences. Added to this can
be a strong anti-sexism ethic that is identified immediately by younger
secondary students.
It is
only through the heroism and teamwork of the Monsters that Earth is saved
from an evil and despotic alien, arguing for inclusivity regardless of
appearance. It is the shared cultural values of humans including the
American military in their secret Area 52 location as well as the Monsters
working cooperatively that defeats Galaxhar and his clone minions. In many
ways this is a return to favourite SF themes where the alien intruder unites
humanity, finally, again harkening back to classics such as the
interpretations of Wells' War of the Worlds (1898). The invocation of
an alien invader is a plea for human unity.
Activities based around
Monsters vs
Aliens
There
is much that can be done with Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman & Vernon,
2009) in the younger secondary classroom. It would serve well as an
introduction to the genre and the sub-genre of alien invasion by using
trailers from the movies noted here found on
YouTube, perhaps starting with
The Blob (Yeaworth,
1958) trailer and contrasting this with the grainy preview to BOB from
the animation, shown in the War Room bunker (again borrowed largely from
Kubrick's Strangelove (1964)) and then a general discussion of BOB as
character and problem solver. What makes BOB seem human? Is it shared
cultural values? How is Galaxhar contrasted with the Monsters?
There
are
activity sheets posted on KidzWorld to support the release of
Monsters vs Aliens on DVD but these are too simple for younger secondary
students. The Maze games, number activities and so on might be useful for
students to make their own activity sheets and puzzles, using online tools
such as at
Kathy Schrock's Discovery Education site.
For
literacy pursuits Claudio Azevedo has posted some
simple quizes based on Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009) in a
blogsite post with a downloadable activity sheet using the animation for
grammar work. The sheet looks at the grammatical superlative, the highest
degree of the comparison of adjectives and adverbs. This makes a great deal
of sense (or should I say supreme sense) for a narrative including
characters such as Insectosaurus, Escargantua and where a simple Susan
becomes Ginormica.
The worksheet can be found here from a Scribd upload or students
can run with the idea to create and describe in superlatives new monsters
changed utterly through scientific experimentation, alien intervention or
meteoritic mishap.
As
Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009) was filmed using a new 3D
camera technique, students looking at graphic design, animation or at basic
computing will be interested in the accompanying extras on the DVD disk and
also interviews with the creators in the Australian periodical Screen
Education (Robertson, 2009 & Robertson, 2009b).
Of the
three animations suitable for younger secondary students Monsters vs
Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009) is recommended while Planet 51
(Blanco, 2010) may be useful to discuss shared culture values. Astro Boy
(Bowers, 2010), while disappointing as the latest in a proud history, can be
turned to use as a coming-of-age story and to introduce the hero mythology
that can be found widely in SF.
Thanks for
listening to Podcast 33. Thanks
also to SlowAlan for the musical segues as well as the podcast opening and
closing music.
Podcast 34 is aimed at teachers of older secondary students. Its purpose is
to look at two recent SciFi DVDs, Surrogates (Mostow, 2009) and
Gamer (Neveldine & Taylor, 2009) as representative of the way Science
Fiction elements are used to support extraordinary action and special
effects. Often the DVDs taken home by students are strong and bloody,
classified for over 15 years. They are not able to watch these narratives at
school, often for good reason, and Podcast 34 promotes a framework that may
support students in critiquing films that purport to be within the SF genre
but offer little of value and are rife with internal contradictions,
stereotypes and 'gyroscope' science.
If you
want to find out more about the mySF Project and its blog site, aim for
www.pataphysics.net.au/mysf_project. You can also send an email to
michaels@pataphysics.net.au.
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ends
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