Master & Little Narratives

In class we discussed the ideas of master and little narratives and how they were portrayed in our list of popular culture.  My writing group chose to look at The Breakfast Club to dissect to see the different types of narratives that were portrayed throughout the film.  Even though the movie was primarily filmed in a high school library, there was a lot going on in the film.  

My group thought that the master narrative in the film was the students in the school on Saturday and how they have come together because they all hated each other in the beginning.  The little narrative was that each character had their own story, a story about why they are who they are.  Some examples were that the bully's dad beats him at home, and then they wrote a letter to Mr. Vernon saying "What we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...and a princess...and a criminal..." This shows that they are all individuals and have come together in detention.  There are also other narratives such as a rebel narrative because they are clearly rebels if they are in detention in that first place.  

Heros

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."-Joseph Campbell

    

In class on Wednesday we got into our writing groups and did Hero Narrative Group Work and we were asked to select ten movies or TV shows from the class list and to discuss the heroes in them.  On my group came up with our list but The Blind Side stood out to me in particular.  The Tuohy family took in an under privileged high school student named Michael Oher and gave him a home to stay in and a bed that he never had.  The Tuohy's had everything they needed and selflessly took in another child.  Like the quote says, a hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.  The Tuohy family didnt' have to take in Michael but they did anyway, to help him.  They weren't flying through cities saving people from burning buildings or bank robbers.  But they gave Michael Oher a chance to succeed because he couldn't have had the opportunities to do so before.  Everybody has different views of a hero and that is actually pretty interesting to me.  

"Fashion fades, style is eternal." -YSL

In class we discussed different representations of school and learning in popular culture.  We talked about different movies,TV shows, songs, comics, games, etc. and I thought that fashion could also be a good representation as well.  In school, all students have different learning styles.  They can learn really well using one technique and may struggle using another technique.  Like learning, people all have their own clothing style.  I was thinking about broad categories that I could group the learning style into.  I came up with traditional and nontraditional learning styles.  The fashions i thought of to go along with those styles would be preppy and hipster. 

 The traditional learning style would be compared to a preppy style.  A person who is preppy has a very traditional/classic look and don't really step outside of the box and experiment with different styles.  A traditional learner describes a student suited to learn with in the boundaries of a physical classroom using a predefined curriculum.   The classic and traditional look is always in style and is never changing.  It's very safe and you can never go wrong with that look.  Like the traditional clothing style, traditional learning is very safe and you can never go wrong with it.

The other learning style that can be represented by fashion is a nontraditional learning style.  The "hipster" would be the one to portray this learning style.  A hipster is a person who is aware of and interested in a new and unconventional patterns.  In school, there are always new technologies that teachers use to help students learn.  There are also always new theories that are coming out everyday.  Like the nontraditional learning styles, hipsters are always trying out the new fads that are coming out.  They like to experiment with these ideas and styles and they are trying to find their identity in a sense.  What style is cool and "in" one day maybe be totally gone the next day and they just keep trying out the new styles.  

Don't let anybody dull your sparkle!

 I thought that this quote was not only appropriate for your life, but also for writing.  You need to be an individual and you shouldn't care what other people think about you or let people put you down (dull your sparkle).  I always hated when we had to peer edit papers because I thought that people are going to judge what I wrote or think that i'm dumb for having bad grammar.  But I had to stop thinking like that.  I shouldn't care what other people think about my writing because they are my ideas and it shouldn't matter what others think.  Last semester, Lacy wanted me to play around and be more creative with my writing and I was really hesitant at first because I didn't want to sound stupid and I didn't think that I was very creative.  As the semester went on I stepped more and more out of the box and I really began to enjoy writing more.  I didn't feel dumb and I knew that nobody was going to dull my sparkle because I knew that what I was writing was good enough.  I think that everybody needs to start thinking in that way because they will have much more effective writing.