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(1) Cool and (2) Srsly???
9 April 2014 11:44 pmThe cool: The HTML5 Gendered Advertising Remixer. Drag and drop to mix audio and video from heavily boy-targeted and girl-targeted toy ads to see how ridiculous they both are. It's quite funny. I was particularly amused by overlaying the audio for Tonka Garage with the video for Betty Spaghetti.
The srsly?????: We all know about "trigger" warnings; fanfic has had them for ages as a courtesy to its reader. But it's really too much when college students demand trigger warnings on their syllabi.
This boggles my mind.
I'm not at all against trigger warnings in fanfic -- after all, fanfic is known for pushing the envelope in a lot of ways. But fanfic is, when all is said and done, a hobby. A thing you do on your own time, for your own reasons, in which you are free to seek out or avoid anything you like, from SSHG to Giant Squid + Hagrid.
The entire point of college, on the other hand, is (or should be) to expose you to new things, things you don't know about, things that make you think, and yes, even things that might make you uncomfortable. Because real life has those things. It's meant to spur dialog, critical thinking, analysis -- none of which are possible if the only things you look at are things that make you feel good. Because real life demands those abilities. And most importantly, it's meant to be a bridge between your (usually protected) childhood and the (often unpleasant) real world. Because yes, hon, you will encounter things that may be hard for you in Real Life.
If we allow students to opt out of things that they assume or imagine might upset them, or that they just plain fear, it seems to me we are doing them a disservice.
Thoughts?
The srsly?????: We all know about "trigger" warnings; fanfic has had them for ages as a courtesy to its reader. But it's really too much when college students demand trigger warnings on their syllabi.
This boggles my mind.
I'm not at all against trigger warnings in fanfic -- after all, fanfic is known for pushing the envelope in a lot of ways. But fanfic is, when all is said and done, a hobby. A thing you do on your own time, for your own reasons, in which you are free to seek out or avoid anything you like, from SSHG to Giant Squid + Hagrid.
The entire point of college, on the other hand, is (or should be) to expose you to new things, things you don't know about, things that make you think, and yes, even things that might make you uncomfortable. Because real life has those things. It's meant to spur dialog, critical thinking, analysis -- none of which are possible if the only things you look at are things that make you feel good. Because real life demands those abilities. And most importantly, it's meant to be a bridge between your (usually protected) childhood and the (often unpleasant) real world. Because yes, hon, you will encounter things that may be hard for you in Real Life.
As The New Republic pointed out, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s brilliant novel about the great harms of colonialism, Things Fall Apart, now carries the warning that it “may trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, and religious persecution, violence, suicide, and more.”
If we allow students to opt out of things that they assume or imagine might upset them, or that they just plain fear, it seems to me we are doing them a disservice.
Thoughts?
