In the film freakonomics, there were certain intellectual moves that the writers made. One of them was to tackle an issue for about 10 minutes and show all the poblems that issue created, and then they would sort of show a "what if" situation. There was a lot of 2 sided arguments which basically made the movie have noo definitive meaning, it was just made to show how we can view certain things. Another move was how the writers used evidence like first hand witnesses accounts of the topics, and also getting profesors who debate eachothers ideas and put them both in the movie to express differences, but really never saying who was right. The 3rd tool that was used was the ay in how the writers always tried to make the film funny rather than make it a intellectual film. I think the moves in that was to create the interested effect. When movies like this are made, they have to have some sort of comedy or a break off of all the facts and add some life into the movie or people get bored easily. his may also have been a way for the directors to sort of insult our intelligence, like by giving stupid situations and then having weird drawings and even weirder people explain the findings, its sort of like not adding any intelligence to the film but just a bunch of nonsense and no logical thoughts.
This film was highly dependent on test subjects, such as the 2 high school kids who were interviewed along with the other 900 who weren't. Also having the everyday person describing what their opinion was on a topic. The film was also dependent on commentary and visual cartoon illustrations to get ther point across in a simpler way so that us kids can understand better and not be completely lost.
i agree with the statement that Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices. This film tackled a few topics thatpeople hogt about but could never understand because they had no evidence. his film helped me see that bribery does impact youth adn that it can change someone's life if used properly.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteSome very strong work on your blog this semester so far.
In this post I liked your list of the 3 tools that the intellectuals used in the movie.
In your chapter responses you've got some sharp precis' and interesting reactions. Obviously some were better than others.
My favorite pieces though were the family and the fast food posts (3&4). Reading about your grandma was fascinating - and your point about "judgement" and self-presentation in terms of food struck me as important.
For improvement work on consistency of quality and proofreading (especially capitalization and spelling ). For instance read the below excerpt from this last post and see how many errors you can spot.
"The 3rd tool that was used was the ay in how the writers always tried to make the film funny rather than make it a intellectual film. I think the moves in that was to create the interested effect. When movies like this are made, they have to have some sort of comedy or a break off of all the facts and add some life into the movie or people get bored easily. his"