Life in Film: Film Platypus

-
I paint my life in bricolage of Autumn Leaves

 My high school art teacher always told us: "art is with your eye, not with your hand." In other words, Art is a way of seeing the world. It draws our attention to things we don't normally take the time to see -or even know how to see until an expert shows us. Where we grow up and what our life's experiences are color how we see any given piece of art, but it works the other way as well. What pieces of art we've seen color how we see our lives. I've been watching all sorts of autumnal fare this Autumn season and it helps me narrativize my life while also being narrativized by the life experiences I bring to it. That said, I've been feeling lately that if my life could be narrativized in film it would be Over the Garden Wall, followed by Dead Poets' Society, shading into Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House. There are, of course, other ways to spin it, but that's how I feel right now. What about you? If your life was a weekend of cinema, what pieces would you pick?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

-
Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo
Read more

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

-
I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games.  Aren't they just for kids, and boys wh
Read more