Taking the Blogging Plunge

As a high school teacher developing a course called Film as Literature, I thought it would be helpful to look at my own feelings about the screen stories that are a part of my life. Although I am an avid reader, I think it's probably safe to say that I have "read" far more movies and television shows than I have books. In fact, I've been keeping track of the number of movies and books I have "read" so far this summer, and movies outpace books two to one.

When I was in college, I tried to have a book discussion group. At the first meeting, we were on top of things and discussing character motivation and themes, but by the second meeting, Book Club was already an excuse to get together and to party. Talking about books is often a bust.

I don't think the same is true about movies and television though. It's very hard to connect to my Facebook friends about things I've read, but a status update about a movie I just watched will always catch a few comments. Movies and television, at least for the time being, still have a positive socializing effect. They give us something to talk about when we can't talk about anything else. On one of my all-time favorite shows, Seinfeld, TV is the only thing that makes George Costanza's relationship with his mother work: "You know, I think we really need to be in front of a television set. You take T.V. out of this relationship, it is just torture." (See http://www.seinology.com/scripts/script-107.shtml if you don't believe me. What a world where we have Seinfeld scripts on demand.) 

Around my house, we're in front of the TV a lot, but not because we can't stand each other. We watch TV shows and movies separately and as a family because we enjoy them, but we do it very passively. We watch and laugh or get tense or cry (mostly I cry; the rest of my family doesn't share this crying-at-movies trait with me), but at the end we say, "That was good/bad/okay/whatever," and leave it at that. As I said, passive.

My wife and I have been pushing our kids and ourselves to do more - to avoid being boring Boyers. Go, do, be, create. This blog is an attempt to avoid being a boring Boyer. I want to develop a method for analyzing the strengths and weakness of the screen stories on television and in film, and I want to sharpen my writing skills. No more passivity.

I want to discuss the things in movies and television that excite, bother, and move me and to explore how and why they affect me in the way that they do. I don't want to sit blankly in front of a screen; I want to analyze what's going on, to learn more about the craft of screen storytelling, and to share those insights with people who are similarly interested.

I hope you'll be there with me - correcting me, challenging me, inspiring me, and perhaps even agreeing with me.

And now I can totally rationalize watching more TV.

Next up: Troll 2 (available on Netflix Watch Instantly).