Thursday, March 25, 2009 » I watched the movie �The Ringer� for the first time last Friday. I remember my dad telling me about it last summer, somehow comparing the character Stavi to his Burmese neighbor next door. Ignoring the somewhat racist comment my dad made, I thought the movie sounded funny, but never had a chance to watch it. Until last Friday. I may be five years late in seeing it, but it was worth it: what a great movie.
�The Ringer� is about Steve Barker, who after having to fire Stavi, a janitor at his work, hires him to do lawn work. Stavi cuts his hand on the lawn mower and does not have insurance, so Barker looks for a way to pay for the surgery. What does Barker do? He rigs the Special Olympics by competing in it.
I watched the movie next to my friend Haley, who is also a communication major. We�re both in a class called �Media and Society� which, as the name suggests, involves studying the effects of media on society.
About halfway into watching the movie I said to Haley, �Dude, we should do a media evaluation on this movie!� I was referring to one of the three evaluations we�re required to write before the end of the semester. We have to consume a medium, analyze it and place a value on it.
Haley answered me, �Wow, is this really how we�re going to spend our Friday night?�
I ignored her comment and went back to watching the movie. I laughed at the quotable lines (�I can count to potato!� and �Oh, Mylanta!�). I pondered the deep, philosophical themes. I raised an eyebrow at inappropriate content�
Yes, Haley. This is how we�re going to spend our Friday night.
Even though I haven�t admitted this to Haley, as we finished the movie, I couldn�t stop thinking about what we had learned in class about media evaluation.
What determines media�s value?
Does the rating system? If a movie is rated R, does that mean it�s bad? (Indiana Wesleyan�s �approved list� would say otherwise.)
Does the amount of cussing? I�ve seen Web sites that count the number of swear words in movies; others delve in deeper with counting sex scenes, violent acts and profanity, then giving it a rating from �Very Offensive� to �Excellent!� based on those criteria.
What Haley and I are learning in our class is that you shouldn�t place a value on something before breaking it down (analyzing it) and making sense of each part (synthesizing). So to take a movie about a man pretending to be mentally handicapped to win the Special Olympics, and judging it based solely on the plot structure or amount of cusswords would be foolish.
The best example of this I can think of is from �The Ringer� itself. Barker, who�s lying in his Olympic dorm room, asks his roommate Billy (a mentally handicapped man) if he thinks there are only good people and bad people in the world or if good people can do bad things.
There�s a pause and the audience thinks about the circumstances. Barker lied to his teammates, lied to the people hosting the Special Olympics, he lied, essentially, to all of America. But he lied for a good cause. He was raising money for his friend Stavi who couldn�t afford surgery�
The audience finds this quote ironic. If it�s true that there are only black and white, then Barker is a bad person and Billy knows it.
There�s danger in evaluating the media in the same manner. If we watch something and write it off as good or bad, based solely on one or two criteria, we aren�t seeing the full picture. If we�re going to be what my professor calls �media literate,� then we need to look at each piece and see how each piece fits together to create a valuable or invaluable medium.
Maybe this takes too much effort � I don�t know. It sure sounds like it. Taking time to think about what I�m consuming before I consume it (or as I consume it) doesn�t sound fun. It sounds tedious. But as I�ve had to evaluate media for my class, I�m learning that it�s not really that bad. In fact, after a while it comes naturally.
It�s making me conscious of what shows I�m watching and maybe what effects they have on my view of other races, religions, cultures, etc. The media might not be from the devil � as some claim it is � but I can be careful about how much and which media I consume.