Day 5
Posted by Lindsay , Tuesday, April 12, 2011 4:20 PM
Class yesterday was pretty good. We started off the class talking about Disney, and how they became so popular. They control the storyline, and make everything appeal to younger children. The only kissing in it is shown as romantic, and it is often about princesses. This led into a discussion about storytelling, and what makes a story. We all contributed to a list on the board, some of them included: Beginning, middle, end, viewpoints, conflict, climax, resolution, rising action, setting, characters, themes, morals, etc... I had heard of all of these from various english classes.
After this discussion, we watched two more TED talks by Amy Tan and Elizabeth Gilbert, both writers. I found Amy Tans talk to be a little boring, but I enjoyed Elizabeth Gilberts. Amy Tan talked about creating something out of nothing. She talked about how nature, nurture and nightmares help us figure out our creative processes. She also talked about how experiences in life have an effect on our creative process, and how she found hints from the universe by gaining focus on her work. Elizabeth Gilbert talked about the muses (daemons) in Greek mythology, and how great it would be to have them. Then, if we created something that was bad, we could blame them, and if we created something great, we would not get all the credit and would not be expected to create something great again. She also spoke about how you can't be tormented about gaining ideas, and can pull yourself back and say that you have to work through it, even if no ideas are coming. They both talked about how artists have an image of being mentally unstable, which is not always true. I really liked Elizabeth Gilberts idea of working through things, to enjoy it, and not be worried about it.
I also enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert's talk more than Amy Tan's. When I think back, I thought that Amy Tan started off well in the beginning with humor, but then it started to get dull as she went on. With Elizabeth Gilbert's talk, she was upbeat and humorous throughout her talk and to me was a lot more interesting. I also liked the fact that Gilbert said to enjoy our work and not let it worry us. That we should continue to work and keep showing up.