Play, the basis of culture?

Play comes naturally to young things – like these piglets, equally happy playing with their Christmas gifts or with the wrapping paper.  Or children, who effortlessly play all day at housekeeping, firefighting, fort-dwelling, save-the-worlding….

When did we lose this?  Why did we lose this?

Was it way back when working the soil became toil with sweat, when the burden of childbearing came down?  Maybe occupational labor was originally occupational play – 9 to 5 of fun and games.  Did we forget how to play when, like Tom Hanks in “Big,” we permitted “important responsibilities” to make us forget who we really are?  If so, is there anything left to be redeemed?

When adults use the word “play” as in, “We played at the beach all weekend,” it sounds strange to me, although it is hard to nail down why – is it that adults don’t have the capability to play or shouldn’t be playing?  Have we simply permitted a bent and distracted world to shame it out of us?

My husband informed me that the word “play” in Spanish as it refers to musical instruments is the same word as “touch,” so that, for example, you touch the trumpet or touch the oboe.  Play implicates the physical world, but it probably comes a lot easier for most adults to play in their minds with ideas, inspirations, wonder – although most of us could probably play more in this area as well.

I liked this idea of linking play to an object – that even performance art is tactile, although in a different sense than painting, or weaving, or landscaping.  A lot goes on in the mind during such play, for sure, and is connected to the body, to movement, to the incarnate.

Could it be that just as children are learning how to become adults through play, art is a blessing that survived the curse, or maybe one of the blessings that accompanied the curse, giving us the playing field for learning to be re-creators, learning how to come into our status as image-bearers?

Don Miller on the Church's Effect on Literature

Don Miller has a great post up this week called "Is Church Life Stifling Your Creativity?"  Here at Relief, we've often had to carefully straddle the line between offending our Christian audience (people who keep Relief alive while asking many of the questions that Miller lists) and offending our sense of craft and Relief's mission to bring the authentic to light. So check out his post and let us know what you think--we're eager to hear.

http://donmilleris.com/2011/01/05/is-church-life-stifling-your-creativity/

Reality TV Wasteland?: I Beg to Differ

Stephen Swanson looks to reality TV to establish his new philosophies and contents of education.  He is very glad that Lent is over, as snark abounds in this column.

Recently, as I tried to convince the IT department why I needed "Hulu" and a couple other television-streaming websites unblocked, I was surprised to learn that not everyone innately sees the educational importance of contemporary reality television.

Who has not learned something from reality television?  I could found a whole school curriculum drawing from reality TV.

A Catalog- a brief selection

Survival 101: encourages students to challenge themselves through personal and physical challenges of deprivation and competition, while including discussions of ethics.  Section topics will also include Biting Fauna, Things You Might Be Surprised You'll Eat For Money, Things You'd Be Surprised That You'd Do For Something to Eat, and a brief discussion of history/anthropology.

Fitness and Weight Loss 220: strives to show students ways to adapt cultural standards of health and beauty on individual levels, rather than addressing the deeper, institutional, economic and cultural aspects of society that result in the definitions or extent of the problems. Methods will include strict dieting, large quantities of exercise and shame, as well as peer pressure.  Plastic surgery might be covered, time and need permitting, especially for female students.  The course will not emphasize long-term health or effects that are not visible or measurable, preferably on big screens and numbers in front of others.

New for Fall: ALL students must have liability waivers signed and notarized before any activities or surgeries begin.

Apprenticing in Business, Finance, and Other Competitive Industries 480: Students will examine ways to work as groups as part of a corporate environment, including introductions to basic business, marketing, and publicity concepts and exercises.  Additionally, students will be expected to become versed in the privileges and ethical laxity that their desired career owe them as a mark of their success.  A short thematic unit will cover staging "performances" that display corporate goodwill through a short period of working in a lower class job or the destruction and rebuilding of a needy person's house, regardless of the effects on their costs and abilities to retain the house in the future.

*Note: The quality of this class depends highly on the quality of participants.  So, come ready to learn.

Spring & Summer Interims in New Jersey, New York, Miami, Chicago, Cancun, as well as many road trips and tours will be offered to all students.  These courses emphasize interdisciplinary learning that test and encourage the development of problem solving, setting and keeping goals, travel planning, time management, and relational communication.

*Note: Additional, specialized interims will be offered on specific subjects as follows: "The Effects of Steroids", "Alcohol & Other Mood Altering Substances",  and "Inter-gender Non-verbal Communication" (Same-Gender N-V Comm. is offered when interest dictates).

*Additional Note: "Sitting in Cafes/Clubs, Awkward Silences, Staring, & Flesh-colored Beards"  will not be offered after this year, and all students must attend the "Social Diseases" workshops before and after their trips.

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Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in detective narratives.

Why I Hate Nazis (Apart From the Obvious)

This week Stephen Swanson lets out his supreme hatred of Nazis.  No, it doesn't have anything to do with his dislike of efficient extermination of whole peoples.   Nor is it a reaction against the Sieg Heil, in both the formal and informal forms.  It's more...so much more.

Reason 1: They are Everywhere.

I'm not the first observer to notice that Nazis and talk of Nazis are everywhere.  You can't kick a looted Luger without running into a video game, pundit, protest sign, movie, or documentary mentioning Nazis.

This is too much!  I know that in the 1980s, we had the brief flirtation with drug dealers as the bad guys, but that petered out despite the attempt of Miami Vice (2006) to bring it back hard on board numerous "go-fast" boats.

The Nazi's just won't die!  I've spent hours sniping them  in Medal of Honor and before that in Castle Wolfenstein.  They just coming and coming.

Reason #2:  They've Taken Over

No, I know that "we" won, and even in today's divisive political arena, most people think Nazi's are bad.  However, right there is the problem!

"Nazi=Bad" has become "Bad=Nazi".  Anyone who was awake in formal logic class (Oh right, NCLB doesn't really emphasize logic and many colleges are decimating their philosophy departments)...umm, anyway, people should realize that just because B follows A does not mean that A follows B.

And for these people, I have one message:

Stop Referring to Everyone You Don't Like as a Nazi!

Don't compare them to Nazis, unless they are actually similar to the National Socialism of the 1920s-40s.

Hey, you, Teapartier, Obama is not like Hitler.  He's just not.  Hitler came to power using the rhetoric of fear of foreigners and difference to correct the post WWI economic crisis in Germany.

Hey, student writing a paper for my class, anyone who commits genocide is not a Nazi.  They might be bad people that Americans should speak out against and maybe use force to contain and destroy, but you can't call everyone a Nazi.

Hey, liberal protester in Ottawa, Ann Coulter is not a Nazi.  Yes, she does seem to fit the ideal of beauty.  She is Wagnerian in many ways.  Yes, she does look a bit like Leni Riefenstahl.  Yes, she does use race and class as divisive methods to build up a strong nationalist base bent on eliminating the "Other" usually by violence or force.

Ok, you might get away with that one.

The Point:  Nazis are Destroying Our Language from Beyond the Grave

The English language is a pain in the tuckus, but as this sentence implies, it's strength and vitality comes from its ability to incorporate and accept a wide range of words and meanings from other languages.  This provides an sense of subtlety and nuance that comes with the blending of language.

In recent years, I've noticed that my students have no sense of nuance.  They reach for the brightest, boldest, and clearest example within reach, which perhaps explains the Googling of everything.  Because of this, we, collectively are losing our ability to draw from a diversity of evil and suffering in the history of the world.

There are tons of bad people in our own history and from around the world.  Why are we outsourcing to Germany and not friendly, efficient, welcoming Germany of National Lampoon's European Vacation (You know what I mean) or even of today.  We go with the Germans of the 1930s and 40s?!  We can do better when creating analogies and effigies.

Sadly, I guess the seeds of over generalization of evil were already there at our beginning.  Even then, the "patriots" defined a "tyrant" as their rightful monarch who wanted them to pay taxes like every other colony in the British Empire.

Maybe I'm naive, but we're Americans!  Our country was founded by people who stuffed straw in sacks, put a crown on it, and called it "George" as they set it alight.  Now, we let people in the Middle East doing all of our flag burning and effigies.

I'm better than that!   You're better than that! We're better than that!

***

Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in detective narratives.

A Tough Few Months for Populists: The Loss of Howard Zinn and Ray Browne

Stephen Swanson departs from initial post on the meaning of “union” and various queries into whether it has “a state” regardless of speeches in order to highlight the passing of some ones who have been vitally important in shaping his beliefs about voice, art, and culture: Ray Browne and Howard Zinn.

The losses of Ray Browne, who died last October, and Howard Zinn, who died on Wednesday, provide me with a chance to write something that’s been on my mind for three months. Zinn and Browne shared a view of America starting at the bottom and working up, rather than the more traditional top-down. It’s so often that we highlight the fastest, biggest, richest, most beautiful, and most powerful things as the best, but these men made their lives’ work emphasizing the popular, average, and normal, and turning those words in assets not reasons for derision.

Ray Browne, it’s Ok to Study the Popular…

Calling Browne the founder of popular culture is a misnomer. People have been interested in and examined popular things for some time, but Browne, at least in the American academic system, pushed for the acceptance and respect for popular culture in academics and criticism. For example, his book on Lincoln, Lincoln-Lore: Lincoln in the Popular Mind, argues that understanding Abraham Lincoln as a literal, real person limits the citizen’s understanding of the role that Lincoln has come to hold in American minds, words, and ideals. And that one must examine thing of Lincoln that reach beyond facts and words of him as a man. His work and the works of those who he influenced have spread to the point to almost make what was once unthinkable, almost normal, that we can and should think about our common world and the things we “like” as a part of our intellectual lives.

Howard Zinn, We Must Listen to the Popular…

I am in no way the most devoted to Zinn of my friends, in fact one of my cohort literally made the movie, and so must leave detailed discussions to them. In almost everything Zinn wrote over the past 30-plus years, he emphasizes the need for citizens of America to seek out and actively listen to the voices of the average Americans from throughout our history and through all points on the political spectrum. During the times of my post-secondary education (1997-2007), American popular culture has trended toward the assumption of a nearly blind acceptance of authority that we agree with and rejection of those with whom our beliefs conflict. This period has shown increased reliance on pundit/mediators to break down and keep the gates of our physical, intellectual and spiritual lives, and regardless of whether one agrees with Zinn’s politics, the need for a citizenry to educate themselves on the realities of our collective histories and current place presses on my mind daily as I encounter students with huge gaps in the most basic geographical, historical, and cultural knowledge necessary to make even basic political opinions.

To Me…

The underlying assumptions in Browne and Zinn’s works revolve around a respect and need to understand those that have been labeled mundane or ordinary. These days it grows harder and harder to convince my students, and even my peers, that they have something worthwhile to learn, consider, evaluate, and express, and that they should not also look to the simple or obvious sources for these knowledges but should dig deeply and sift carefully, testing themselves and their environments throughout their daily lives and into their futures.

***

Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in contemporary film noir.