Classic Film Friday: Rabbit Proof Fence

This movie isn’t a classic yet, but after watching it, I’m confident that it will be. As citizens of the United States we often tend to believe that we invented oppression. Rabbit Proof Fence proves that subjugation can crop up anywhere, even in the desolate Australian Outback.

The film is a dramatic retelling of a true story about 3 “half-caste” aborigine girls in 1930’s Australia. In that time, aborigines were considered wards of the state. And if you believe the premise of the movie (it is the subject of controversy) the government wanted to eradicate the cultural divide between white settlers and aborigines via assimilation …or essentially to get rid of aborigines altogether.

Since he girls were of mixed race, or “half-caste”, they were under the authority of the government. The state extricated the girls from their mother’s custody and delivered them to an orphanage some 1200 miles away so that they may be assimilated into the white culture.

Molly, the oldest girl, decides to run away and bring her younger sister and cousin with her. The rest of the movie is spent portraying the agonizing and seemingly hopeless journey they made trying to find their way home.

This is one of those movies that lingers in your mind for days after seeing it. There is irony in the fence, an inherently non-native apparition of the landscape, and how the girls use it as a navigation tool that would have otherwise made the trip impossible. Rabbit Proof Fence is a (near classic) tale of heroism that rises above the barbarous mentality of the past. Through great tragedy and despair comes a story of empowerment. If you like Rabbit Proof Fence, you should also enjoy Whale Rider, Water, and/or Children of Heaven.

Drowning in a Sea of Negativity

Over the past few days I’ve been perusing local blogs on the Postscripts Big Blogroll. It’s quite the cornucopia of ideas, pictures, opinions, and information. I ran across a few that were rather scathing and reading those scornful blogs forced me to reflect upon myself. The last thing I want to do is come across as some kind of mindless naysayer filled with so much venom and disdain that I give the impression of a lock jawed, paranoid, close-minded antagonist stuck in only one frame of mind. This is not what I want to accomplish. Nope, not at all.

But I’m not prepared to plow my head into the sand and pretend everything is just fine either. So how does one straddle the fine line? Seriously, it’s really hard to not appear overly negative, just as it’s equally difficult to not come across excessively positive. Moderation is the key right? Easier said than done, but I’m going to try. This isn’t going to be a place that will only point out what is wrong, it will celebrate, promote, and encourage those who are doing right too.

Citizen Journalist, Social Revolutionary, or Pool Pooper?

You know when newspapers started offering online “blogs” I envisioned “citizen journalism” as being a catalyst for newspapers to take an online lead and run with it to fruition. They plow the field and provide water and sunlight (along with the occasional weed removal) while the public provided content is the seed that will eventually grow into that harvest-able news piece.

Sounds like a good deal right? The “blogger” gets the satisfaction of his/her particular issue receiving exposure and the paper gets another data source from which to mine news stories. But it hasn’t worked out that way. At all.

In fact the juiciest, most titillating or scandalous tidbits pointing toward government corruption or incompetence, openly and thoroughly discussed online, got little if any exposure in print. One can only guess as to why. The paper has limited resources, concerns about alienating advertisers, or the editors simply have their own agenda to push... take your pick. But something has been happening via “citizen journalism” in Beaufort County, just not as I would have ever expected it.

When the school district decided to have a mandatory countywide meeting, forcing all employees to travel at their own expense from one end of the county to the other, all it took was a slight stir of the pot and suddenly buses were provided. When it came to light that a certain school was almost completely devoid of updated teacher websites, within about a week of open discussion online and out of the blue contact information and teacher bios started popping up on the school’s website.

So while the citizen journalist might have been woefully ineffective at getting newspaper reporters to pick up the torch and shine it brightly on the injustices of the world, bloggers can take at least a small amount of solace in realizing that sometimes, even if the issue is rather small, they can make a difference by speaking out. Sure you’ll leave yourself wide open to public ridicule and character attacks. And it probably won’t win you any popularity contests, but the public awareness gig has always been a thankless job, no matter what the medium. The internet and public web logs are becoming more intertwined with everyday life and has made it that much easier for an ordinary John Q. Public to become a rabid watchdog. It’s time everyone took notice.

Who’s next?

Teachers to Learn About Area Ecology

My detractors out there (millions and millions of you) think I’m a sniveling complainer that is unable to say anything positive about anything. Admittedly my posts do tend to be on the negative side, but it is hard to remain positive when you find so many things wrong. Anyway I’d like to take the opportunity to step aside from the vigilance for a moment and mention something good, or rather “fluffy” about local education.

The LowCountry Institute has offered (free of charge) workshops to 40 educators within Beaufort County that will introduce them to various natural habitats found in our area. These workshops should enable teachers to cover environmental topics in the classroom as they relate to our surroundings. The classes will be held one Saturday per month beginning in September and runs through until May.

The classes include:

Marine Life and Geology of Port Royal Sound Intertidal Habitats @ Fish Creek Park & Pinckney National Wildlife Refuge

Ecology of Freshwater Habitats @ Spring Island

Barrier Island Ecology @ Hunting Island State Park

Longleaf Pine Ecology @ Webb Wildlife Center

Nemours Plantation @ Combahee River

Bear Island & Donnelly Wildlife Management Area Ecology of Sea Islands @ Spring Island

Ecology of the Savannah River Floodplain

Old Growth Cypress Trees @ Beidler Forest

This isn’t exactly book math or social studies type stuff, but simply knowing more about our local habitats and spreading that knowledge is an important step in conserving our limited resources. Teachers will be giving up one Saturday a month for a period of 8 months to attend. A big thanks to the LowCountry Institute and the educators who committed to donating their time to help keep South Carolina’s natural habitats pristine.

Check This Out

I just wanted to give a shout out to Postscripts, a website affiliated with the Post and Courier out of Charleston. If you want to expand you horizons and see what other people in the lowcountry are blogging about, check their Big Blogroll. The site offers "one stop shopping" for REAL (and local) blogs.

Classic Film Friday: Some Like It Hot

Considering the time it was made, Some Like It Hot has got be one of the more risqué movies of its day. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two hard luck musicians who are forced to cross-dress their way out of Prohibition Era Chicago in order to avoid getting “rubbed out” by the mob. The reason they have turned into transvestites is they cannot find work as men, but land a job in a women’s band traveling to Florida by rail. On the train they meet singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe).

Staying in drag, “Daphne” (Lemmon) garners the attention of a rather over zealous millionaire while “Josephine” (Curtis) attracts the affection of the bell boy. Joe (Curtis…again) steals some men’s clothes and glasses, because Sugar loves a man in glasses, and contrives a scheme to make Sugar fall for him. Our two cross-dressing comedians then formulate a plan to trick Daphne’s millionaire admirer out of his yacht while Joe leads Sugar into believing she’s finally scored the big money boyfriend of her dreams. All of these shenanigans quickly come to a screeching halt when the Chicago mob shows up (what a coincidence) at the same hotel the band is playing.

There’s plenty of laughs from Curtis and Lemmon and plenty of eye candy in Monroe. The movie also features Monroe’s classic “I wanna be loved by you”. And if all that wasn’t enough, the last 10 seconds of the movie delivers one of the biggest punch lines to ever come out of Hollywood.

Still Wondering Why South Carolina Schools Rank Near the Bottom?

According to this article: Thousands of students miss 1st day of school.

Everyone all together now. W T F?!?!

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, if parents can’t drive the importance of education into these thickheaded kids, their educational careers are already doomed.

Meanwhile, closer to home, my daughter has completed 3 days of middle school and has yet to receive a single textbook. So essentially she could have skipped the 1^st (and 2^nd and 3^rd) day of school and not missed anything at all. It’s not hard to connect the dots here and the picture doesn’t look good.