Reactions to bullying

Following on from Naroa's blog entry, I just wanted to direct you to the full details about Amanda Todd and post these two related videos.

Amanda's story is reinforcement of the worst kind for what I said in my comment about Snapchat. Keep aware of the fact that any photo taken in this day and age may come back to haunt you.

An ice film

Today I went to see Disney's Frozen. I'd put off watching it because it's only being shown here dubbed, but the combination of its continued release (and thus popularity, including with children in some of my other classes) and a couple of viral videos convinced me to give it a go.

The first of the latter was this multilingual version of the headline song Let It Go (which has now won the Oscar for Best Song), which I became aware of thanks to an episode of the Fine Brothers' Kids React series. (You can tell that I watch a lot of their videos!)

The second was this homemade (well, car-made) video entitled Good Looking Parents Sing Disney's Frozen in which they perform Love Is an Open Door, perhaps the film's next most prominent song. While they are indeed good-looking, I find it rather self-centred of them to describe themselves as such, since they are the ones who uploaded the video.

The couple, who as you can see seem to be far more into the film than their young daughter, are in fact not singing but lip-synching, although they do do it extremely well. It's great that they are such fun parents for their children, but perhaps not so great that the husband frequently takes his eyes off the road and at a couple of points both his hands off the steering wheel. Worst of all, the wife bizarrely seems to have her seatbelt behind her back! Perhaps ominously, the couple who sing the song in the film (highlight the following text for a spoiler) turn out not to really be in love.

I normally loathe dubbing (films in foreign languages are always subtitled in Great Britain, as well as in Poland where I have also lived), but it does not seem so bad for cartoons. On top of that, the first video made me feel reassured that they had made a lot of effort to do it well, and the React version that it was for a good reason (for kids all round the world to be able to enjoy and sing the songs). I read the plot synopsis when I got home and was glad that I hadn't missed any details; I also watched a couple of the songs and had actually enjoyed them more in Spanish. Neverthless, I still feel that it would better for Spain and the Basque Country to end dubbing, at least for films aimed at adults and teenagers.

Anyway, I really liked the film as a bit of escapism. The characters, especially Elsa (the Snow Queen) are more developed and complex than in most Disney offerings. It also has a good message of balacing self-sacrifice with being true to oneself. Best of all, it sets a good example for little girls as there are two heroines who (again, scroll over the following text for a spoiler) save each other in sisterly solidarity rather than relying on a Prince Charming to rescue them. I guess that most of the class may not be into this sort of animation at the moment but, trust me, it's only a few short years between childhood and enjoying them again as an adult.

Selfie-important or selfie-confident?

Here's another of the Fine Brothers' React series, centred around one of the most prominent new words of recent years, selfie (as the video says, the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year 2013, edging out twerk), and whether taking them is conceited.

This video is slighly topical for me because it features Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones (which I've never seen or for that matter read, but which everyone seems to recommend). I was standing next to her at a Dublin International Film Festival party the other weekend while a friend of mine who was in a film with her was talking to her, but I couldn't be bothered to speak to her myself.

Anyway, back on track: I've been a proponent of selfies since long before the term existed as, with rare exceptions such as my profile photo here, I'm the only person I trust to take photographs of me. With the exponential rise of smartphones there has been an explosion in selfies. One's gut reaction might well be that this is indicative of narcissism, egocentricty or attention-seeking, but is that necessarily true?

No one else decides a person's words for them, so why shouldn't each individual be at least a significant contributor to their own photographic record? Isn't it in fact healthier for them to choose when they look the best (whether that means hottest or most displaying their true soul) rather than for someone else to tell them?

Of course it's abhorrently tedious and vapid to upload an endless stream of selfies to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, but perhaps some good autobiographical shots can support someone's self-esteem or give them a smile once they reach old age.

Viral hits – or misses?

We can play the radio in our classroom, and a couple of weeks ago two songs came on in succession that are big viral hits from last year. The first was Ylvis's The Fox:

It's interesting that in Scandinavian countries such as Norway, where Ylvis come from, people can and do choose to make content in English with the full knowledge that people from all walks of life will easily be able to understand and consider it perfectly acceptable. In contrast, the vast majority of even intelligent, well-educated people in Spain watch dubbed versions of films and television programmes.

Here are teens and 'elders' responding to the video as part of the Fine Brothers' excellent React series, in which they compare it to Gangnam Style and the Lonely Island:

The second song was Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, which the teens have also reacted to:

There are (at least) two potentially objectionable aspects to this song. The first is the objectification of women in the video (and especially in the 18-rated version). However, I think that is the less serious of the two, because the models involved have made a relatively informed choice and their presence and behaviour suggest nothing illegal. The more significant issue is the implication of the title and the lyrics.

The videos have in common a widespread ambiguity of our times, and especially of YouTube videos, over whether they are satirical parodies or serious, as exemplified by many of the reacters' comments. In The Fox, this is simply to intrigue the viewer and is thus a good marketing ploy to promote a chat show. In Blurred Lines it is rather darker, since viewers are much more likely to buy into the literal message even if Thicke doesn't mean them to, and foxes' self-esteem cannot be hurt by what they say being misrepresented.