It’s the Little Things

 This week, we spent a whole class period analyzing a five minute video clip. When watching the video clip from Moonlight of the boy learning to swim, the second thing I noted in my WNB after ‘informal clothing’ was ‘father/son.’ After discussing with the class, I ended up changing it to ‘father/son relationship.’ This slight difference mattered a lot to me when Miss Feldkamp first questioned a student for evidence of how it is known that it is exactly a father and son, as in a blood or legal relationship, being depicted. It could be mentorship after all, or friends, or an uncle, or even strangers for all we know. And once she asks this I realize I don’t know. After all, the main interaction between the two is the man teaching the boy to swim. There is technically zero evidence of them being a father and son, but nearly everyone in class had assumed the same thing. Realizing how quickly assumptions are made in the mind, which later proved more complex as the discussion shifted to the familial themes of teaching, love, trust, closeness, and intimacy being shown through the cinematography, I realized how small actions can lead to a larger whole.

Video of Moonlight Swimming Scene

Later this week, we watched Fat Ham. It wasn’t until later, while writing this blog, that I realized again how quick and easy it is to assume a trait about somebody I don’t even know. If seeing the actor for Juicy on stage in all of his heavy eye makeup and black clothing wasn’t enough to depict him as emo, then I don’t know what could be. But what really caught my attention that piqued my curiosity was how the actor chose to hold himself as well, shoulders stiff and near his ears for nearly the whole play. He had been so into it at some point I wondered if that was simply how the actor looked! But as soon as the actors stepped out into the crowds afterwards to chat with the audience, even in the same brooding outfit as before, the languid nature of his posture was what completely changed the actor’s energy. He seemed so much more relaxed as he leaned back and smiled with audience members that I finally understood that no matter the lengths it takes to stage something to look a certain way, no amount of CGI, makeup, or otherwise could have as much power as the behaviors of the people could. It’s the humanness of it that gives it so much power, no matter how small a scale it may seem to be.  

Me when someone tries to say you’re reading too much into something but this is AP lit