On Tuesday in Children’s Literature class we were officially at the
beginning of the second half of the term.
Professor baker
talked briefly about Thomas King’s “A Coyote Columbus Story”. About how it combines the oral tradition
with written narratives; how it blends mythic and specific time.
I pointed out that
all the Europeans are portrayed in the artwork with patches on their clothing
and their ships, whereas the indigenous people are all portrayed with no
patches. I wondered if it was meant to represent the Europeans trying to cover
up holes in their logic.
As we were about to
move on from one story with talking animals to another, she asked us to think
about what it means to have talking animals in a story. I would say that it
relates to what we have common with all mammals, which is emotionality, ruled
by the middle brain. The brain stem, or lizard brain is what we have in common
with all vertebrates, including the ability to dream.
She asked how many
had read E. B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” or had it read to them when they were
young and most of them raised their hands. I don’t think I’d even heard of it
until I was an adult, even though it was written in the 1940s. The book deals
with the insecurities of the era immediately following world war two.
It contains one of
the most highly charged first lines: “Where’s papa going with that axe?”
The drawing of Fern
feeding Wilbur the pig evokes paintings of the Madonna with the baby Jesus.
There is the
continuous backdrop of non-hateful violence against which Wilbur’s salvation is
contrasted.
Wilbur, more so
than all the other animals in the barn, is dependant on others, even in
adulthood.
A lot of E. B.
White’s ideas about writing are metaphorically contained in the idea of
Charlotte’s web and the description of how she weaves it. White also co-wrote a
literal book on writing entitled “The Elements of Style”. The main advice is to
revise and rewrite over and over again. Advertising techniques are used to
promote Wilbur and he begins to live up to his own hype.
During the break,
the professor and I were both agreeing that for White to give Fern an interest
in boys seems a bit early for an eight year old.
After the break,
she made all of us stand up and sing, “I’m a little tea pot.” I stood up, but I
didn’t sing. Apparently there is a difference in one line between Britain and
North America. They sing, “When the tea is ready”, while we sing, “When I get
all steamed up.”
The use of lists as
narrative tools can emphasize abundance and gives text a swing and rhythm.
We moved on to
Philippa Pearce’s “Tom’s Midnight Garden”, a text which she said shows how the
mind can hold multiple contradictory things at once.
At the end of
class, I told the professor that the idea of living up to hype reminded me of a
quote from Salvador Dali. I thought he said, “If the painting doesn’t look like
the model, the model isn’t trying to live up to the painting”, but he said “I
do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the subject grow
to look like his portrait”, which is the same thing anyway.
After class, there
would have been time to home before work, but not time enough to take a siesta.
So I went to the models lounge at OCADU and dozed for almost two hours.
I worked in the
late afternoon for Sylvia Witton, who has been a faculty member at OCADU since
it was OCAD and OCA before that. She had been an instructor for many years but
then languished in a non-teaching position until she finally got to give
classes again. Last year she went on sabbatical and said she painted,
travelled, thought, tried a little sculpture and even wrote some bad poetry. I
asked her if she got paid and she told me she got a small percentage of her
regular salary while she was off.
Sylvia is a very
nice person. She’s also one of those old school instructors who are very
conscientious about the comfort of models. She had two heaters ready before I
was even there. I thanked her for that and told her that some of the new
instructors just say, “Oh! You need a heater? Well, okay, I’ll try to find
one!” She said those instructors need to be “mentored in”. She’s about my age.
She had long hair for many years, but now that she’s cut it she kind of looks
like a taller and calmer version of Alice, from The Brady Bunch.
After work I took a
short jaunt up to Yonge and Bloor and headed home from there.
That night I
watched Buster Keaton’s silent film, “The Navigator”. Buster is a filthy rich
dumb guy, but “every family tree must have its sap.” He suddenly tells his
valet one morning, “I think I’ll get married today!” He immediately books the
honeymoon cruise and then decides to go and ask someone to be his bride. He
goes to a wealthy woman he knows to ask her and she says, “No.” and so he
leaves for his honeymoon cruise alone, while she leaves with her father for the
docks because he’s left some papers on a boat. Meanwhile, some spies have
decided to sabotage a big ship called The Navigator by setting it adrift.
Buster gets onto the Navigator by mistake and so does the woman while looking
for her father. They both end up adrift on a big ship alone in the middle of
the ocean. Since they’ve both been served their food by others all their lives,
they have no idea how to cook anything. There’s plenty of food but they don’t
even know how to make eggs and coffee, so there’s a comical scene of them
trying. After several weeks of bumbling they become fairly competent but then
the ship gets damaged and Buster has to put on a deep diving suit to fix it. A
swordfish attacks him and while he is wrestling with it another swordfish
attacks, so he uses the one swordfish to fence with the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment