Celeste Bauer

Film and Culture 1070

KC Jensen
Final Essay

Final Essay

My final essay is going to be a little bit about me coming back to school. It will be about
the growth Ive made learning how to become more of an informed film consumer, how I have
sharpened my interpretive skills concerning the media and how Ive become a more active viewer. I will
explain how this course has given me more awareness, sensitivity and respect for cultural human
differences in the United States. I will also cover how my classes this semester have helped me improve
my writing skills.
Coming back to school was a big step for me. It was a tough decision, I was having to choose to
do something for me to be able to make life and things easier for me and my children. Being a single
mom to three wonderful children, I am the only person who is solely responsible for the wellbeing of my
children. I love my children and I want whats best for them. I relate this to a movie that I had to watch
for my Film and Culture 1070 class this semester, A Better Life. This movie was about Carlos, a man
that was from Mexico, he was raising his son, Luis, on his own. Carlos did anything and everything that
he could trying to help out his son, trying to give him a better life. Carlos had come to the US with his
wife illegally. They had their son and shortly after coming to the US and shortly after that, Carloss wife
left him. Carlos was faced with the very difficult task of raising his son as a single parent. I can relate
because I am doing the same, raising three kids on my own. I have chosen to come back to college, I
want to make a better life for me and my children. I want to be the example to them so that they know
that getting a higher education is important.
My dilemma was coming back to school, knowing that it would take my already precious time
from my children. I really enjoy time with my kids and I love watching them learn and grow. I decided
that this love of watching them learn and grow isnt enough. How can I expect them to know that
getting a higher education is important, going to college is important, if I havent finished my higher
education? I hold education as a great priority and requirement for my children. I decided that the best
way to require more of them is by being an example to them. Of course I hope my children dont follow
in my footsteps exactly, I hope they make the decision to go to college right out of high school. I hope
that they are watching and learning from my mistakes and that they will hold getting an education as a
priority and that they will be able to accomplish more and be better than me.
I havent been in school for eight years. Spring 2014 is my first semester back. Taking both my
Film and Culture 1070 class and my English 2010 class has been a real struggle for me. It has been hard.
I have never been much of a writer, so coming back to school after not having written a paper in over 8
years was difficult. I have had to learn more time management skills so that I could still accomplish all
that was already on my plate, working full time and being a full time single mom. I had to be able to
take the time to read chapters, watch movies and make a personal interpretation of the movie, I have
had to take a lot of time and effort every week in writing papers and assignments.
I am grateful for the opportunity to come back to school and while enjoying both classes, I most
enjoyed my Film and Culture class. Not only did I learn and refresh my writing skills but it also helped
me to gain more of an awareness, sensitivity and respect for cultural and human differences in the
United States and the world in general. This class has given me a heightened awareness to movies and
the reality of what is in film. There are different types of elements in all movies. The filmmaker uses
different elements of the artistic medium to communicate the cultural diversity message of a movie.
Some of the different types of movies that we were assigned to watch are Asian, African American,
Native Americans, Latinos, women in Film, Sexual orientation, Masculinity in films, and films containing
those with a disability. I have learned while watching different movies that I tend to enjoy and
appreciate Latino movies, some sexual orientation movies and especially films containing or portraying
the lives of one with disabilities.
I have chosen to watch, and write about a movie portray the daily life struggles of a family
dealing with challenges they faced having a son with a disability. The movie I and briefly write about is
Mr. Hollands Opus. I chose to watch this movie because I have watched it in the past and I
remembered that Id enjoyed watching it and I would like it again. It is a movie that I could watch with
my family. The movie is about a married man, whose life job is to write and compose music. Composing
music is what he enjoys and what he is interested in doing, however, he actually works as a music
teacher at a high school. He says that being a music teacher is only his temporary job to pay the bills,
just until his dream job of composing music takes off. Mr. Holland is a passionate composer who
believes that his true calling is to write one memorable piece of music. Over the course of his life,
however, Holland becomes a reluctant hero, a man who fulfills himself not at the piano, but at the
blackboard, where his impassioned teaching and love of music inspire a disparate array of students.
(Levy) He falls in love with teaching and with the students. His life is all torn apart when he and his wife
have a son and they end up finding out that his son is hard of hearing, deaf. Music, rhythm and the beat
are such an integral part of his everyday life, he will not be able to teach this love to his son. Glenn
Holland reacted to this information with hostility and really struggled with it. He shut out his family in
many ways, meanwhile his wife was able to learn and teach his son, Cole, American sign-language. This
movie was great at depicting the life of what it would be like for a family and particularly a lover of
music finding out that his son is diagnosed as deaf. In the movie Glenn and Cole get in an argument with
Glenn saying that his son will never understand his love of music. Cole lashed out saying that he did
understand it, but that he needed his dads help. Mr. Holland learned how to reach out to his son and
put together a concert where he signed Beautiful Boy, honoring his son. Their relation was able to be
restored. At the end of the movie, it shows that the music is being discontinued and Mr. Holland finds
himself out of a job. He had since finished composing his lifes work, and on the day he had to pack up
his office, his wife and son came to help him pack up. Mr. Holland had been able to make an impact on
many students lives. Unbeknownst to Mr. Holland, his wife and son had given past students copies of
his composition and when he was leaving, many of his past students had come back to thank him and
play his composition. It was an emotional moment for them all. I got emotional a couple times in this
movie and ended the movie with tears.
I dont think I will ever just watch a movie again. Taking this class has be great. Though
sometimes I wonder if I am over thinking and analyzing movies now. I find myself watching movies and
saying yep, this is definitely film noir, or asking is this femme fetale? I find myself leaning to some of
the older movies and tv shows like Perry Mason and Bonanza. My dad likes watching Bonanza and other
older country, cowboy movies and since wed studied Hispanic, Native Americans, and Asians in films, I
find myself really trying to pay attention and see what nationality is playing the Indians or the Asian cook
in. I also find myself thinking of the different angle the movie was recorded in. I try to decide why the
filmmaker decided to film movies from different angles. I find myself saying to myself when Im
watching a linear or non-linear movie, if there are flashbacks or not. I see more and more similarities in
movies from the same time era.
I really have enjoyed taking this class. I will miss class on Thursday nights and I will miss our
class discussions and hearing others takes on our assigned movies. I couldnt have asked for a better
instructor for my first semester back in school. My English class was really tough for me and had I only
take the English class, I dont know for certain that I would continue on. I really needed a professor like
KC Jensen and I will look back at this class as being a memorable class.



Cites Worked
Levy, Emanuel. Review: Mr. Hollands Opus. Variety. December 31, 1995. Web. May 3, 2014