Bert McCoy's
"MyTeaching Resources"
English 9-12
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    • Bert McCoy Meditation Quotes >
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      • Present moment quotes
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    • Top 10 Rules for Success >
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      • Who Moved My Cheese/ #2
      • Who Moved My Cheese/ #3
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      • The Four Agreements:
      • The Four Agreements
      • John Wooden's, "Pyramid of Success"
  • Teaching Stories
    • Teaching Stories/ Quotes >
      • Spiritual Paths
    • Mooji Stories
    • "The Emperor's Three Questions" by Leo Tolstoy
    • Avadhuta Gita >
      • Avadhuta Gita
    • Teaching Stories
    • Mullah Nasruddin Stories
    • The Bhagavad Gita vs "To be or not to be." >
      • The Bhagavad-Gita
    • Vedanta Teachings >
      • Advaita / Nonduality Quotes
      • Advaita
    • The Emerald Tablets/Alchemist
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  • Cool Quotes
    • Rumi Quotes >
      • Non-Dual Quotes
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    • Inspirational Quotations 1
    • Inspirational Quotations 2
    • Cool QUOTES!
    • Motivational Quotes
    • Wisdom
  • Film Studies 2019-2020
    • Film Study Syllabus >
      • Film Study Terms
      • Film Vocabulary 2
    • Parasite Film
    • Arrival Film
    • Film Posters >
      • Denis Villeneuve
    • Film Studies Films >
      • Movies for Film Class
    • Film History/The Lumiere Brothers and more...
    • Film Making Quotes >
      • Lucy Film
      • First Films of Great Directors >
        • Editing (Cuts)
        • Federico Fellini
        • Jean-Luc Godard
        • Screenplay Theme
      • Hollywood Casting and Film
      • Sam Mendes 1917 Film
      • Rotten Tomatoes Best films
      • Screenwriting Sample Scrips
    • Movie Etiquette >
      • Character Types
      • Turner Classic Movies
      • Free Movies
      • Pulp Fiction Film
    • Film Agenda 2019-2020 >
      • Permission Letter
      • Filmmaking and Advice
      • Breaking Into Hollywood
      • Film Schools
      • Filmsite
    • Film Quotes >
      • The 100 greatest movie quotes of all time
    • Cinematography >
      • Film Shots
      • Camera Shots
    • Famous Film Directors >
      • Directors Favorite Films
      • John Ford
      • Jean-Luc Godard >
        • Breathless >
          • Breathless
      • François Truffaut
      • Female Film Directors
      • Akira Kurosawae
      • Andrei Tarkovsky
      • David Fincher
      • Christopher Nolan
      • Fassbinder Films
      • Coen Brothers
      • Martin Scorsese
      • Steven Speilberg
      • Quentin Tarantino
      • Directors/Producers
      • Andrei Tarkovsky
      • Stanly Kubrick >
        • Stanley Kubrick
      • The Wachowskis
    • The Seven Stages of Film Production
    • Austin Film Festival
    • Sundance Film Winners >
      • Sundance Film Festival
    • Inside The Actor's Studio
    • Television Studies
    • Screenwriting Tips
    • Narrative Design and Terms >
      • Film Study Narrative Design
      • The Hero's Journey >
        • What is an Archetype?
        • Hero's Journey
        • The Hero's Journey #1
        • Hero's Journey #2
        • Hero's Journey #3
      • Mise En Scene >
        • Mise En Scene
      • Peaky Blinders
      • Peaceful Warrior
      • Peaceful Warrior Quotes
      • Peaceful Warrior Script
      • Peaceful Warrior
      • Groundhog Day >
        • Time Loop Films
        • If today was your last day?
        • Discussion Questions Film Studies
        • Character Counts Film Studies
      • The Legend of Bagger Vance/The Gita >
        • Production Notes Legend of Bagger Vance
      • Meet Joe Black >
        • Death Takes A Holiday 1934
      • Alfred Hitchcock >
        • Alfred Hitchcock
        • Alfred Hitchcock Presnts
        • Dial M for Murder
        • Psycho >
          • Psycho 1960
          • Ed Gain Psycho
        • The Birds
        • Rear Window 1954 >
          • Disturbia
        • Vertigo >
          • Vertigo 1958
        • Rope
        • To Catch a Thief
        • Notorious 1946
        • Strangers on a Train 1951
        • North by Northwest 1959
        • To Catch a Thief/ Hitchcock
        • The 39 Steps 1935
        • The Lady Vanishes 1938
      • Marathon Man
      • Poltergeist >
        • Poltergeist
      • Jaws >
        • Jaws
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey >
        • Stanley Kubric
      • 100-Foot Journey >
        • French Laundry Restaurant
        • The Hundred Foot Journey
        • 100 Foot Journey
      • Ratatouille Quotes
      • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
      • Documentary >
        • Basquiat
        • filmumentaries
        • 200 Free Documentaries
      • 42 The Jackie Robinson Story
      • It's A Wonderful Life >
        • it's a Wonderful Life
        • It's a Wonderful Life #2
        • It's A Wonderful Life Screenplay PDF
      • I Am Legend
      • The Matrix >
        • The Matrix Reloaded
        • The Matrix The Animatrix
      • Inception
      • Avatar
      • War of the Worlds >
        • H.G. Wells
        • War of The Worlds Vocabulary
        • War of the Worlds 2
      • Forever Strong Rugby >
        • Forever Strong
        • History of Rugby
      • Hoosiers >
        • Hoosiers
      • Goal The Dream Begins
      • Aliens and Cowboys >
        • The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
      • Film Noir >
        • 12 Angry Men 1957
        • Casablanca >
          • Casablanca
          • Casablanca Review
        • Film Noir >
          • Film Noir Titles
        • Strangers on a Train/ Hitchcock >
          • Strangers on a Train/ Hitchcock
        • The Maltese Falcon
      • Charlie Chaplin >
        • Charlie Chaplin
        • New Page
      • JFK Assassination 1 >
        • Robert Yeoman
        • JFK/Oliver Stone
        • JFK Assassination 2
        • Robert Richardson and JfK
      • Miracle >
        • Flow
      • Patch Adams >
        • Patch Adams 2
      • Gattaca >
        • Eugenics
        • Gattaca
        • Gattaca filming Locations
      • Point Break
      • The Dark Knight >
        • Batman 1
        • Batman 2
      • Inception
      • Finding Forrester
      • The Ring
      • Blade Runner 2049 >
        • Blade Runner
      • Rocky >
        • Top 25 Cult Films:
        • Screenwriting software
      • Films To Consider: >
        • Breathless, by Jean-Luc Godard (1960)
        • Interstellar
        • What Dreams May Come
        • Powder
        • Forrest Gump
        • Mr. Holland's Opus >
          • Vimeo Short Films
          • Sketchbooks for Class
        • The Shining
        • Breakfast at Tiffiffany's
        • Indiana Jones
        • Rain Man
        • French Kiss
        • Silence of the Lambs
        • The Hunger Games/Quotes >
          • Suzanne Collins
          • The Hunger Games
          • The Hunger Games
          • The Hunger Games Seneca
          • The Hunger Games/ Questions
          • Catching Fire
          • The Hunger Games
          • The Hunger Games/ Chapters
          • The Hunger Games/ Characters, Facts, Themes,
        • The Last Samurai
        • In the Mood for Love
        • Seabiscuit
        • Malcolm X
        • 3 Days of the Condor 1975
        • Das Boot
        • Crimson Tide
        • U-571
        • The Hunt For Red October
        • Mr. & Mrs. Smith
        • Promised Land
        • Wonder Woman 2017
        • Planet of the Apes Films
        • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
        • A Fist Full of Dollars
        • The Conformist >
          • The Conformist
        • Peter Sellers
        • Gladiator
        • The Last Emperor 1987/ Bertolucci
        • Phenomenon 1996
        • Back to the Future
        • The Butler
        • Contagion 2011
        • Speed Racer
        • The Rainmaker
        • Remember the Titans
        • In the Mood for Love
        • 1984 George Orwell
        • Lord of the Rings Films
      • Citizen Kane >
        • Citizen Kane #2
      • The Perks of Being a Wallflower
      • They're Here!
      • The Wild Wild West! >
        • John Wayne / True Grit
        • Clint Eastwood/ High Plains Drifter
      • The Pride of the Yankees 1943
    • German Expressionism in Film >
      • Fritz Lang
      • Dadaist Films
    • Film as Social and Cultural History
    • Filmmaker IQ
    • National Archive Films
    • Atlas Shrugged /Ayn Rand
    • 2016-17 Film Play List
    • Scary Movies >
      • Horror
      • Flowers in the Attic/ Parental Responsibilities
      • Ghost of the Lagoon by Armstrong Sperry
      • Frankenstein 1910 Silent Movie
      • Free Movies
      • My Favorite Directors...Best Directors >
        • My Favorite Actors
    • Dreamworks
    • How to find the theme (s)
    • Man vs Nature Films
    • Film Studies
    • Film Set Lingo
    • Film Studies Lectures
    • Sound Design
    • Film Sound
    • Film Editing
    • Film Lighting Terms and Techniques >
      • Film Lighting
    • Acting Techniques
    • James Bond
    • Film Studies/ Film as Literature (FAL) >
      • filmsite.org
      • Classics Movies #1 >
        • Classic Movies #2
      • Buster Keaton
      • Buster keaton vs Charlie Chaplin
      • Sidney Portier Movies
    • Film Techniques and Terminology
    • Zorba the Greek
    • The Hollywood Reporter
    • Education Movies
    • WAR!
    • Braveheart
    • Glory Road
    • Historical and Period Drama Movies
    • Marlon Brando/On The Water-front
    • Mutiny on the Bounty
    • Stages and Archetypes of the Hero's Journey
    • October Sky
    • Spy Movies
    • Stephen Fry
    • Paper Towns
    • From Weak to Strong Movies
    • The Secret Life of Bees
    • Environmental Movies
    • Sports Movies >
      • A River That Runs Through It >
        • Fly Fishing Quotes
      • Money Ball >
        • Money Ball #2
      • Dogville
      • Goal / History of soccer >
        • Goal (page two)
      • Teamwork Movies
      • www.ronaldothefilm.com
      • We Are Marshall
      • Pele
      • Chariots of Fire
      • Remember the Titans
    • Lance Armstrong Doping
    • FAL/ ?
    • Madame Bovary
  • English 9 Curriculum Map 2018-19
    • Siddhartha >
      • Siddhartha Vocabulary Words
    • English 9 Unit 1 >
      • Video Games >
        • Video Gaming
        • Video Games #2
        • Game Programmer
        • Video Game Jobs
        • Video Games/Presi/Slideshare
      • Video Games
      • Story Telling /Moth
      • 10 Rules/Carmichael
    • The Cast of Amontillado
    • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian >
      • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Vocabulary Words
    • Direct and Indirect Characterization
    • Overly Sarcastic Productions The Classics
    • English 9 Unit 2 >
      • Food >
        • BBC Fast Food Baby
        • BBC The Truth About Food
        • BBC Beef Burgers
        • GMOs
        • Food
        • Food
        • Food
      • Richard Wright/Blackboy >
        • Black Boy by Richard Wright
      • The Age of the Essay Paul Graham
    • English 9 Unit 3 >
      • Siddhartha >
        • Siddhartha
        • The Odyssey Vocabulary Words >
          • The Odyssey Movie
          • Create a Myth Assignment
          • Odyssey Timelines/ AWESOME!
          • Odyssey Audio
          • The Odyssey/60 Second Recap
          • Freewill vs Determinism quotes
          • Freewill vs Determinism
          • Greek Gods
          • Greek Vases
          • Ancient Greeks
          • Greek Gods
          • The Greeks/Gods
          • Greek Gods/Godesses
          • Greek Gods and their Characteristics
          • Greek Gods/Videos
          • Odyssey
          • The Odyssey and the Hero's Journey
          • The Odyssey Presentations
      • Greek and Roman >
        • Untitled
        • What is theater?
        • Ancient Rome
        • The Gladiator Graveyard
        • Spartacus Behing the Myth
        • Helen of Troy
        • Worst Jobs Roman/Anglo-Saxon
        • Ancient Greek/Roman Music
        • Ancient Greek Homes
        • Rome/History/BBC >
          • Marcus Aurelius
          • The Stoics
          • Metal Detecting Roman/Greek
        • Oedipus The King >
          • Oedipus the King/Prezi
        • Homer, The Iliad
        • The Norse Gods
    • English 9 Unit 4 >
      • Graffiti >
        • Bansky
        • Bansky Art Sold fo
        • Street Art
        • The Top Street and Graffiti Artists to Watch in 2015
        • Graffiti Analysis
        • Anamorphic Graffiti Illusions by Odeith – Fubiz
    • Romeo and Juliet
    • English 9 Unit 5/ Poetry >
      • Various Poets
    • English 9 Other >
      • English 9 Essay
  • English 12 2017-18
    • Restorative Justice >
      • Juvenile Justice Essay Resources
      • Adam Foss
      • Racial Profiling >
        • Racial Poetry
        • Racial Profiling
      • Racism
      • Bullying #1
      • Race/Racism/Bullying
      • Jim Crow Museum
      • What Would You Do?
      • Bullying
      • Bullying
    • Eng 12/ Life after high school >
      • Personal Statement
      • Vision Board Assignment >
        • Vision Board Project
      • UC Writing Prompts/Journals
      • Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff
      • Job Applications/Business Letter
      • Interview Questions and Answers >
        • Interview Q & A
        • Interview Q & A
      • Job Seeking/Resume/Q and A
      • FAFSA
      • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
    • Unit 2 Week (3-5) "College Application Essay" >
      • Commencement Speeches #1
      • Commencement Speeches #2
      • Great Speeches
    • Zoot Suit >
      • Zoot Suit 2
    • 1984 Language, Gendetr, and Culture in George Orwell's 1984 >
      • 1984 Key facts, characters, themes, motifs, and symbolism
    • Brave New World 2016 >
      • Brave New World 2017 1
      • Gender, Language, and Identity
      • Brave New World Character Name meanings
      • BNW Vocabulary
      • BNW Chomsky
      • Brave New World Vocabulary Words
      • Brave New World 2016 2
      • The Perennial Philosophy/Huxly
      • Mystic Quotes
      • Papaji Advaita Vedanta
      • Nissargadatta
      • Vedanta Advaita Quotes
      • Kristnamurti Quotes
      • Sola BNW
      • Iron Maiden/ BNW
    • Into The Wild 2016-17
    • Into the Wild/ 11/15 >
      • Into the Wild/ Characters >
        • Into The Wild/Characters >
          • Into the Wild/Themes, Characters
      • Into the Wild/ Vocab
      • Into the Wild/ Quotes
      • into The Wild/ Chapter Reviews
      • Into The Wild/ Symbolism
      • Into To Wild/ Themes
      • Into The Wild/ Glossary
      • Into the Wild/ Quiz 1
      • Into the Wild/Jon Krakauer >
        • Is Ignorance Bliss?
        • Into the Wild/ Essential questions
        • Into the Wild/20/20 >
          • Into the Wild/Eckhart Tolle
        • Chris McCandless Articles/Outside Magazine
        • Into the Wild/Jon Krakaur
        • Into the Wild/2015/Nomads
        • Into the Wild
        • Into the Wild/The Big Two-hearted River/Nick Adams
        • Into the Wild/Who Am I
        • Into the Wild/Pierre Bezuhov/From War and Peace
        • Into The Wild/Various
        • Into the Wild/2015/Rush
        • Into the Wild/Tolstoy
        • Into the Wild/Springsteen
        • Into the Wild/Jack London
        • Into the Wild/Emerson
        • To Build a Fire/Jack Londen
        • Into the Wild/Louis L' Amour
        • Into the Wild/Thoreau
        • Into the Wild/Boris Pasternak
        • Into the Outdoors
        • Into the Wild/Alaska Denali
        • Into the Wild/Snowboarding
        • Into the Wild/2014/15/Supertramp
        • Into the Wild/Vocabulary
        • Into The Wild/Themes >
          • Into the Wild/Themes
        • Into The Wild/Glossary
        • Into the Wild/ Papaji
        • Into the Wild/Eckhart Tolle
        • Into the Wild
        • Into the Wild (Prezi)
        • Into the Wild/John Muir
        • Into the Wild/Quiz
        • Into the Wild /Movie Questions
        • Into the Wild/ Q&A
        • Into the Wild/ Climbing Videos
        • Into the Wild/Moose
    • Standards
    • English 12 Syllabus
    • English 12 2016-17 >
      • English 12a Final Essay
      • Letter To Myself >
        • Letter to Myself
        • Letter to Myself
    • English 12 Essay 2015
    • History of the English Church >
      • History of English
      • History of English
      • The History of English >
        • BBC Anglo-Saxons >
          • Anglo Saxons >
            • Anglo Saxon Lyre
            • Anglo-Saxon The History of English
            • Worst Jobs in History (Middle Ages)
            • The Worst Jobs in History--The Dark Age - Part 1-6
            • The Worst Jobs In History - 1x03 - Tudor
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Roman & Anglo-Saxon
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Medieval
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Tudor
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Stuart
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Georgian
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Victorian
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Urban
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Royal
            • The Worst Jobs In History-- Industrial
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Maritime
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Rural
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Christmas
            • The Medievil Mind >
              • The Medieval Belief
              • The Medievil Treasures BBC
              • The Medieval Power
              • Age of Conquest
              • The Crusades
              • The Black Plague
              • AEngla Land
              • Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons
              • The Staffordshire Hoard
            • Beowulf >
              • In Search of Beowulf
              • Beowulf PPt Presentations
              • British Literature Learning Videos >
                • Paganism vs Christianity
                • The Germanic Tribes
                • Beowulf & the Anglo-Saxons (1-8)
            • The Canterbury Tales
        • Language
    • English 12 Reading >
      • Epic of Gilgamesh Audio 2000 BC.
      • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Late 14th-century
      • The Wife of Bath's Tale 1405-1410 from canterbury Tales
      • The Passionate Shepard
      • Shakespeare 1564-1616 >
        • Shakespeare/ Tudor England
        • Novels/Plays >
          • Hamlet's, "To Be or Not to Be"
          • A Midsummer Night's Dream
          • Macbeth
          • Macbeth
          • Macbeth Act by Act
          • Shakespeare Poems
          • Globe Theater
          • Shakespeare Sonnets
          • Sonnet 1
          • Sonnet 1 Blog:
          • Sonnet 18
          • Sonnet 29
          • Sonnet 29 Blog:
          • Sonnet 75
          • Sonnet 75 Blog
          • Sonnet 130
      • Romeo & Juliet/ Shakespeare 4/15 >
        • Romeo & Juliet/ Shmoop Resources
        • Shakespeare Glossary
        • Shakespeare's Globe
        • Quotes about Shakespeare >
          • Shakespeare Quotes
          • Shakespeare Castles
        • Romeo & Juliet/ Characters
        • Romeo & Juliet/ Themes, Motifs, Symbolism
        • Elizabethan Clothing
        • Royal Shakespeare Company
        • Romeo and Juliet 1
        • Romeo and Juliet 2
        • Romeo and Juliet 3
        • Romeo and Juliet/ 60 Second
    • Six Centuries of Verse: Metaphysical & Devotional Poets >
      • Ben Johnson
      • John Donne
      • Andrew Marvell >
        • Jonathan Swift
        • A Modest Proposal
      • To His Coy Mistress
    • Romanticism 1790-1850 >
      • Romantic Spirit
      • Mysticism
      • William Blake
      • William Wordsworth
      • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      • John Keats
      • Percy Bysshe Shelley
      • Mary Shelley
      • Lord Byron
      • James Joyce
  • My Favorite People
    • Favorite Artists >
      • Brian Dettmer Book Cutting
      • Bansky
      • Julian Schnabel
      • Phillip Guston
      • David Salle
      • Robert Motherwell
      • Picaso
      • Raushenburg
      • Francisco Clemente
      • Joseph Beuys
      • Cy Twombly
      • Jean Michel Basquiat
      • Keith Haring
      • Kenny Scharf
      • Kaws
      • Sun Xun
      • L' Arte
      • Richard Serra
    • AESOP
    • Adyashanti
    • Maya Angelou
    • Jane Austin
    • James Baldwin
    • Bansky Quotes
    • Coleman Barks
    • Joseph Beuys
    • Harold Bloom >
      • Harol Bloom/ How to read and why
    • Jorge Luis Borges
    • Robert Bly 1 >
      • Robert Bly 2
    • David Bowie
    • Ray Bradberry >
      • There Will Come Soft Rains
      • Usher II
      • The Veldt
      • Marionettes Inc.
      • Fehrenheit 451
      • Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary
      • Fahrenheit 451 Quotes
    • Russell Brand >
      • Russell Brand
    • David Brooks
    • Barbara Brodsky
    • James Brown
    • Buddha >
      • Buddha
    • Warren Buffet
    • James Cameron
    • Albert Camus
    • Jack Canfield
    • George Carlin
    • Lewis Carrol
    • Caroline Casey
    • Paulo Coelho/Alchemist >
      • The Alchemist by
      • Paulo Coelho
    • John Coltrane >
      • John Coltrane
    • Steven Covey >
      • Steven Covey
      • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People/Steven Covey
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • Noam Chomsky
    • Deepak Chopra >
      • Ask Deepak
      • Deepak Chopra
    • Winston Churchill
    • Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
    • Ram Dass
    • Simone De Beauvoir
    • Anthony De Mello
    • Daniel Dennett
    • Shanti Devi
    • Junot Diaz
    • WALT DISNEY QUOTES
    • Fyodor Dostoyevsky >
      • Fyodor Dostoyevsky/ The Brothers Karamazov
    • Carol Dweck/Mindsets
    • Bob Dylan >
      • Bob Dylan
    • Thomas Edison Quiz
    • Albert Einstein >
      • Albert Einstein
    • T. S. Eliot
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • Jane Eyre
    • Anneliese Marie Frank
    • William Faulkner
    • F Scott Fitsgerald >
      • The Roaring 20's
      • F Scott Fitzgerald 2014-15
      • The Great Gatsby
    • Benjamin Franklin
    • Robert Frost
    • Stephen Fry >
      • Stephen Fry
    • Neil Gaiman
    • Dan Gilbert
    • Malcom Gladwell
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    • Gurdjieff
    • Steven Hawking /black Holes
    • Hafez/Hafiz #1 >
      • Hafez/Hafiz Poems #2
      • Hafez/Hafiz #3
      • Hafez/Hafiz #4
      • Hafez #5 >
        • Hafiz Poems #7
      • Hafez Poems #6
      • Hafez Poems #8
    • Thich Nhat Hanh
    • Tyrone Hayes
    • Ernest Hemingway
    • Hermann Hesse >
      • Siddhartha Quotes
    • Christopher Hitchens
    • HOU HSIAO-HSIEN
    • Langston Hughes >
      • Langston Hughes/ Poems
      • Langston Hughes
    • Aldous Huxley >
      • Brave New World 4/15 >
        • Secret Societies >
          • The Knights Templar
          • The Freemasons
          • The Rosicrucians
          • The Illuminati
          • The Carbonari
        • BNW/ Chemtrails vs Contrails
        • BNW/ Unit Plan
        • BNW/ 2015
        • BNW/ TED
        • BNW/ William Blake/Doors of Perception
        • BNW/ Details #1
        • BNW/ Details #2
        • BNW/ Soma= DMT?
        • BNW/ Futuristic Movie Trailers
        • BNW/ Dystopia vs Utopia
        • BNW vs 1984
        • BNW/ Orwell vs Huxley
        • BNW/ Noam Chomsky
        • BNW/ Huxley Complete Works
        • BNW/ Vedanta and Huxley
        • BNW/ Advaita Vedanta
        • BNW/ Bohemian Grove
        • BNW/ Corporate Deceit
        • BNW/ Shakespeare and Religion by Huxley
        • BNW/ Geo-Engineering
        • BNW/ About Aldous Huxley
        • BNW/ Doors
        • BNW/ Conspiracy?
        • BNW/1984 Synthetic Telepathy
        • BNW/ May 13th
        • BNW/ Transhumanism
        • BNW/ What is DMT? Soma?
        • BNW/ Psychological Warfare
        • BNW/ NWO
      • Brave New World 2014 >
        • Brave New World 2014 >
          • Brave New World #5 2014
          • Oligarcy
          • Transhumanism
          • Agenda 21
          • Inequality For All
          • Inequality For All
          • Brainwash Update
          • Globalization
        • Brave New World Quotes
        • Brave New World >
          • Brave New World #2
          • Brave New World #3
          • Brave New World #4
          • enotes/Brave New World
          • Brave New World Vocabulary Words
          • Aldous Huxley
          • Bio-Engineering
          • CHEM-TRAILS
          • Genetic Engineering
          • Aldous Huxley
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Making sense of films

Films as Social and Cultural History

 Increasingly historians have moved away from a history that chronicles battles, treaties, and presidential elections to one that tries to provide an image of the way daily life unfolded for the mass of people: how they worked, what they did for fun, how families were formed or fell apart, or how the fabric of daily life was formed or transformed. Film has an important role to play in these histories. While traditional historical documents tend to privilege great events and political leaders, historians now use other records to discern the lives of "ordinary" people: census records, accounts of harvests and markets, diaries and memoirs, and local newspapers. Film is perhaps more like these records of daily life than it is like the documents that record great events. Motion pictures may provide the best evidence of what it was like to walk down the streets of Paris in the 1890s, what a Japanese tea ceremony was like in the 1940s, what the World Series in 1950 looked like, or how people in factories did their work or spent a Sunday afternoon in the park. All of these subjects could be staged and distorted, of course, and film can be transformed in many ways. But as a record of time and motion, films preserve gestures, gaits, rhythms, attitudes, and human interactions in a variety of situations. In almost any film archive, and in numerousplaces on the Internet, one can glimpse images of simple actions, from the way a Buddhist monk in Ceylon folded his robe in 1912 to the way people boarded trolley cars in New York City in the 1930s. While film shares much of this information with other forms of documentation, especially still photography, motion pictures allow viewers to see and compare the everyday physical actions of people across the globe and throughout the twentieth century.
This is not to deny that film provides indelible images of some of the twentieth century's great events. Our horrified consciousness of the Holocaust relies partly on the filmed images from the liberation of the camps, and our knowledge of the devastation of the Atomic bomb comes partly from motion pictures of Hiroshima or of A-bomb test explosions. Conversely, twentieth-century disasters or traumas that went unrecorded by motion pictures -- such as the genocide of the Armenians or mass starvation in Asia -- are less present in public consciousness because of the lack of vivid images. But when we focus on social and cultural history, especially the important role of leisure in the lives of ordinary people, film not only provides evidence and records but takes on a key role.
In addition to the primarily non-fiction or documentary films discussed above, we must consider Hollywood's primary output, feature films. Can fictional film be used as historical evidence? As evidence of what? Fictional films serve as historical evidence in the same way that other representational art forms do -- by making events vivid, portraying social attitudes, and even revealing the unconscious assumptions of past societies. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation cannot be viewed as an objective or accurate view of the era of Reconstruction, but it does -- painfully, and even unintentionally -- indicate the sorts of hysterical anxieties and aggressive fantasies that underlay American racism, especially in the early twentieth century. Attitudes about gender, class, and ethnicity, as well as heroism, work, play, and "the good life" are all portrayed in fictional films as they are in an era's novels, plays, and paintings. But as a form of mass visual entertainment, films reflect social attitudes in a specific and vivid manner.
From 1915 to about 1955, movies were arguably America's most popular form of narrative entertainment. Movies, therefore, aimed at a wider target audience than that of most novels and plays. Does this mean that movies reflect social attitudes more accurately than any other medium, since they reached the greatest number of people? Possibly. But a mass audience does not mean that movies in America represented all points of view. It often indicates the opposite, with film studios avoiding certain controversial points of view in order not to offend a wide-ranging audience. Since films were released nationally and globally to make a profit, producers tried not to offend groups they recognized as influential and usually avoided political controversies or minority opinions.
Further, from 1916 until the 1950s, movies were not protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. A court ruling in 1916 (concerning the state of Ohio's ban of The Birth of A Nation) held that film could legally be subject to censorship because of its vivid psychological effects and audiences (including women, children, and the "lower classes") who the court deemed more impressionable than the readers of printed matter. A number of states and localities created film censorship boards. Although Hollywood studios occasionally released controversial films, they usually avoided such themes as racial prejudice, child labor, and venereal disease. Likewise, in contrast to the current trend of niche marketing, Hollywood ignored small specialized markets. A small, and financially marginal, series of independent producers did make films targeted at minority markets (such as the African-American films produced by Oscar Micheaux or the Yiddish films directed by Edgar G. Ulmer). These independent films provide fascinating evidence about the issues and assumptions current in smaller communities, often in sharp contrast to Hollywood films.
Interpreting Hollywood movies as a reflection of prevailing social attitudes or generalizing from specific films requires great caution. Fictional films are complex industrial and social products and how they are made, distributed, exhibited, and received by audiences and critics must be investigated to fully evaluate their roles as historical evidence. For example, it is dangerous to interpret a few films from a specific period as simple reflections of American society. The attitudes portrayed in a specific film may represent a series of compromises carefully designed to be non-offensive. In addition, individual films can indicate very different attitudes toward labor unions, big business, race relations, or women's rights.
One Hollywood strategy for creating and pleasing a mass audience included designing films so that audiences could interpret movies in different ways. This is clearest in the carefully regulated portrayal of sexual behavior during the period of Hollywood's dominance (1917-1960). An adult or sexually aware audience member may decide that Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart have sex when Casablanca cuts from their passionate kiss to a brief image of the control tower beacon at the nearby airport. But a child or a socially conservative viewer may assume nothing happened. Most important, the studio could deny to a censor that any sexual activity took place. The Production Code Administration (an industry-created "watchdog" committee charged with locating scenes that might be considered objectionable and proposing ways to modify them) often suggested such ambiguous scenes to film producers to avoid problems with state or local censorship boards.
Ambiguous scenes provide rich material for studying social history, but they require complex interpretation and investigation. Such investigation requires moving beyond the evidence on the screen (whether movie theater, video, or computer monitor) to ask how reviewers, censors, and fans understood films. Likewise historians need to investigate the actual process of filmmaking and the variety of viewpoints involved in production. Hollywood studio archives are filled with discussions of what material should be cut from scripts, what might be offensive to different audiences, how to soften images of sexuality or violence, or how to blur political references. Every Hollywood film involved compromises between divergent viewpoints, often aimed at creating room for multiple interpretations.
Thus, a broad range of materials are needed to write a full history of the cinema as part of cultural life. Film production and film-going are social practices and important aspects of twentieth-century life. To understand them we need to investigate technology, economics (including business and industrial organization), advertising, and distribution -- all of which influenced where films were shown and who came to see them. A wide range of documents provide evidence in this quest, including letters, trade journals, movie reviews, contracts, financial information, scripts, and studio memos. In addition, many non-traditional sources are key to writing the social history of the movies. For example, the design of movie theaters or the switch to video rental stores; censorship and pressure group protests; fan magazines and movie-based souvenirs; fashion designs introduced by films; educational matinees for school children; and reactions by specific communities as gathered through oral histories. The actual role films play in people's daily lives, in their sense of themselves and their world, especially for the early part of the century, however are extremely difficult to document. Those vanished audiences will always remain somewhat elusive.
Early films often served, according to film historian Charles Musser, as "living newspapers." Filmmakers, film exhibitors, and early film audiences highly prized filmed records of celebrities or current events. Film companies sent cameramen around the world, providing a priceless record of the people and events that shaped the first two decades of film. However, at this same time standards of visual authenticity were still being formed. Newspapers at the turn of the century were only beginning to be able to print photographs, and the practice of illustrating events through drawings and sketches was still current. Likewise, early film companies frequently produced films of current events using actors and re-staging. Did audiences of the time see these as fakes or simply as useful vivid re-enactments?
Most likely their judgment depended on how the films were exhibited. Many re-enactments were announced to their audiences as such, but some exhibitors undoubtedly claimed that films showed "the real thing." So we must ask whether an early film image is a representation of an event or a re-enactment. For instance, Edwin S. Porter produced a film entitled The Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison for the Edison company in 1901. Leon Czolgosz, a mentally disturbed anarchist, had assassinated President McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Czolgosz was executed with the fairly new invention of the electric chair in the prison of Auburn, New York. Porter's film begins with a panorama of the actual prison seen from outside, followed by a scene staged in the Edison studio of the execution, which carefully reproduced the actual electric chair and descriptions of the electrocution process. While the film is certainly an important historical document, revealing popular fascination with both the fact and the manner of Czolgosz's execution, it cannot be taken as a record of the actual execution.
Researchers can determine which films are inauthentic by using documents that surround the films. The Edison bulletin for the Czolgosz film makes clear what is authentic (the view of the prison) and what is inauthentic (the reenactment of the execution). In addition, close examination of films themselves often reveals the theatrical nature of sets (painted backdrops and flats), the compression of events, and clear overall lighting that indicates a film studio rather than an actual location. Other elements, such as behavior and are "staginess," are more subjective judgments but also can alert a viewer that a purportedly documentary scene was arranged for the camera.
Films go through many transformations as they are copied or transferred to video, but the most important visual aspects of a film are those that can give clues to its production. What can we see about how the film was made by looking at the film itself? How was it shot and how was it arranged for the camera? Was the camera on location or in a studio? Where was the camera placed and why was it placed there? What sort of lenses were used? Did the camera operator use artificial or available light? Was the scene specially arranged for the camera and how was it framed? What angle of view was it taken from? Was the camera on a tripod or hand-held? If there was camera movement, how was it done? After examining individual shots, you must also consider how the film was edited. What scenes may have been cut out by the editor? How do shots begin and end? With the shots that follow each other, how much time actually took place between them? Do the shots form a sequence or are they only loosely connected? If they form a sequence, did the original event really occur in this order?
While many of these questions (such as what footage was cut in the editing process) cannot be answered with certainty by simply examining the film, careful examination can reveal some important features. Only rarely are sets so convincing that a viewer cannot tell if the film was shot on a set or not. The image reveals camera angle, distance, composition, and even lenses. Occasionally such aspects can be very revealing of a film's authenticity. A too carefully arranged composition -- such as camera operators capturing a battle from an ideal viewpoint that would have placed them in mortal danger from enemy fire -- can reveal it as a re-enactment.
Editing can make historical interpretation of film tricky for three reasons. First, it can utterly re-work or determine the meaning of a film sequence. Second, it can be done after the filming. Third, films can be re-edited in ways not immediately obvious to a viewer. Many early filmmakers and theorists understood editing as perhaps the most powerful tool filmmakers had for making meaning. While a single shot usually supplies some sort of record of what the camera filmed (even if artificially arranged), editing always presents a reconstruction and can greatly change the meaning of what was shot, creating relationships of space and time that may not have existed originally.
As I mentioned earlier, one must be especially aware of editing when watching a compilation film. Editors can create a sequence of a battle, a riot, or a political convention by cutting between combatants or political orators and their audiences, but they are combining shots taken at very different times and sometimes different places. Thus, in Hearts of the World, a fictional feature film made during W.W.I., D.W. Griffith used documentary images of the war to heighten the film's drama. But as film historian Russell Merritt has shown, the images that seem to show one battle actually combine footage from several events and even mix footage shot by both British and German cameramen.
Do most people recognize film and photography as an objective form of evidence? The idea that photographs and movies "do not lie" has a long history, with many legal cases (and many more fictional cases) resting on photographic evidence. Some argue that films and photographs can indeed lie -- they can be doctored, staged, or faked in many ways. However, this very practice confirms the dominant belief that photographs are evidence. Why would someone try to alter a photograph except to capitalize on its credibility? In a legal context, however, photographs and motion pictures count as legal evidence only when accompanied by detailed testimony as to the nature and context of the photograph.
Photographic evidence, therefore, must be both scrutinized and interpreted by experts. Clearly the same is true for films as historical evidence. The interpreter must know or at least speculate how films were produced in order to ask what they can tell us, and must understand not only what films show but how they show it. Given the levels of interpretation, can we claim motion pictures as a unique form of evidence?
Most theorists agree that photography has a unique relation to what it represents because the photographic image has a direct causal relation to the subject it represents. The light reflected from the objects or people photographed causes the image to be captured on light sensitive film. A photographic image not only resembles its subject, but indicates its existence, which is why journalists try to obtain (or to fake) photographs of things whose existence is in doubt, whether flying saucers, American prisoners still held in Vietnam, or Bigfoot.
But the photographic process is not simple. An object must first pass through the sophisticated apparatus of the camera before it is imprinted on the film. This journey includes a lens, an aperture, and a shutter that, in combination with the film, all have certain qualities that influence the nature of the image. Second, the camera has been placed by a human agent. A photographer carefully arranges the framing and other aspects of the images (focus, f-stop, speed of film, and time of exposure). In the case of mechanical set-ups, like surveillance or satellite cameras, a human-devised program operates the camera automatically.
Of course, all historical evidence should be subject to skepticism. Historical documents, eyewitnesses accounts, and archeological objects all claim a direct connection to events or situations that historians evaluate and interpret. Film, however, offers a unique ability to reflect and resemble historical figures and events. A motion picture of Teddy Roosevelt does not simply claim to be related to the president and big game hunter, but to show what he looked like and how he moved. This is perhaps film's greatest attraction and seduction: by capturing images in time, it seems not simply to represent things but to make them present. Because of this ability to, in the words of one theorist, "mummify time," some early audiences saw cinema as a defense against death.
What issues come up when evaluating film as historical evidence? How can we know that an early film is authentic? What does the film show and how might its images have been manipulated? Finally, what are film's strengths and weaknesses as a historical record?
A recent experience will help explore these questions. A producer preparing a film on Teddy Roosevelt sent me a bit of film (transferred to video). He doubted the film's authenticity, and asked me to judge the nature of the images it contained. An authentic image of Roosevelt, particularly one not well known, would be rare and valuable evidence. Given the physical deterioration of early film, I was likely to be viewing a later print, made either from the original negatives or by duping (photographing a film to make a copy rather than making a positive print from the original negatives) a positive print. These processes not only remove the physical material of the original film but can also change the framing of the image and contrast of tones. (Read more about the physical properties of film). Duping reduces an image's clarity, and sometimes duped prints go through several generations -- a photograph of a photograph of a photograph -- and lose clarity at every point.
These changes are compounded when viewing a film electronically, whether on video or computer. The original frame area may be altered to fit the screen, cutting off essential information. The proportions of the film frame most frequently found on video monitors and computer screens is based on the film frame that existed until the 1950s, when theatre owners widened movie screens to compete with television. Because of the overspill built into most monitors, film images lose information from their left and right edges when shown on a monitor, and color can vary greatly when color film is transferred to an electronic format. Film images hold more information, and more detail, than current electronic modes of presentation (except for high definition TV) can display.
In other words, the film image as it was originally produced may have undergone an enormous number of transformations before we actually look at it. While these transformations can make studying film difficult (for example, if the footage of Teddy Roosevelt had been duped so many times that I could hardly see his facial features), knowledge of them allows historians to make use of films as historical documents. Therefore film documents must be treated with the same skepticism and scrutiny that you bring to any evidence. In the case of the Teddy Roosevelt film, the footage was in black and white and had the same original proportions as the monitor, so some distortion was minimized. Although some clarity of detail was missing (probably due to both duping and the transfer to video), the images were still recognizable.
Understanding a film as historical evidence requires informed judgement based on knowledge from outside of the film. The Teddy Roosevelt footage showed a mustached, bespectacled man in a hunting suit and pith helmet waving from a hill. This was followed by a shot of African natives looking off-screen, as if frightened, then a close-up of Roosevelt as the "great white hunter." It is well documented that in 1909 Roosevelt went big game hunting in Africa and took a cameraman with him to record his exploits. Could these images be authentic documentary evidence of that hunting trip? Two clues led me to confirm the suspicion that the film was staged. First, the figure, while clearly made up to resemble Roosevelt (the glasses, the mustache), did not really match other photographs of Roosevelt from this period. This was an actor portraying the former president. Second, and perhaps most important, the cut to the African natives indicated images that had been arranged to give the impression of simultaneity -- to indicate that the natives were looking at, and reacting to, Roosevelt). But the hunter and the African natives were almost certainly not filmed at the same time (the lighting and backgrounds of the two shots did not match). This points to one of the aspects of filmmaking most significant in the use of film as historical evidence: film cutting or editing.
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