bloodyrosemccoy: (Midna)
bloodyrosemccoy ([personal profile] bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2013-03-09 10:16 pm

Wait Till I Apply It To Zelda Games

So my friend is an English teacher, and this year she decided to teach The Hobbit to her seventh graders. She asked me if I have any ideas about what to teach them. I think she was expecting a few thoughts. I NOW HAVE TWO SEMESTERS' WORTH OF LESSON PLANS.

Now to get a teaching certificate and go find some seventh graders.

At the moment we're discussing how Joseph Campbell's monomyth relates to The Hobbit.* I'm arguing the case that stopping at Rivendell counts as a Meeting With The Goddess. My case is that the Goddess is more a convenient archetype meant to suggest a well-known meeting of a sage guiding figure, and also that Elves are incredibly fabulous. I am glad she's more interested in my academic argument than my spurious bullshit, though, because otherwise I would have to pull out The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as Exhibit A arguing Elrond's goddesslike qualities, and my friend is Mormon, so it would go unviewed.

Maybe we'll just skip right on to the Atonement. There are fewer drag queens involved.

(I'm always surprised at how overtly gendered Campbell's theory is. I think he's pretty cool, but to start with "The meeting with the Father Figure" and then immediately have to explain that the father figure doesn't necessarily have to be your dad or even a MAN tells me you need to find better terminology. Also, it tells me that George Lucas has always been one damned literal bastard.)


*Answer: pretty much exactly.
shadesofmauve: (Shades Of Mauve)

[personal profile] shadesofmauve 2013-03-11 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Heh. As a huge fan of a disastrously mangled video game trilogy (Mass Effect), applying classic literary crit to video games seems fairly normal to me. After the Ending Fiasco genuine phd English professors came out to explain why it was broken!

The average quality of grammar and spelling on the forums went up quite a bit for a month or two. Sentence construction probably jumped a few reading levels, too. :P

[identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com 2013-03-11 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I should look to see if the Wikipedia page on GLaDOS still has all those long-winded literary and social analyses using all those buzzwords like "identity struggle" and "male narrative" and "unreliable narrator." Campbell's right--we do filter it through our own realities.