I dropped my Entertainment Education class after I was once again shot down by professor. As I mentioned, the final project is to write 13 episodes of a TV or radio drama. (Each episode is supposed to be 15 minutes. What one does with a 15 minute TV episode, I have no idea). Anyway, I said that I wanted to write about health insurance, the uninsured and underinsured and make it a comedy. My professor told me that I had better be Shakespeare if I wanted to write a comedy about a serious issue. Shocked, I tried to explain that I wanted to attempt to make the complicated health insurance problem in this country more accessible through a comedy. "No. People don't take comedies seriously [duh] and therefore, comedies are not to be written about serious issues." ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Grrr... Um, I recall a movie that won the freaking Academy Award that was a comedy about the Holocaust and I don't remember Shakespeare writing the screenplay. I can go on and on with more examples of comedies about serious issues, but that would be preaching to the choir. The choir being everyone in the world EXCEPT for that professor. Also, after telling me and the class last week that we could not use cartoons or puppets, she read one of Aesop's Fables as a great example of a story with a message. Adios to that class. Done and done. It's a shame, because ideally it could have been a great class. I also feel justified since I am one of many who dropped the class. Not to mention, she taught the same lesson two classes in a row. I felt like I was at the Learning Annex, not Johns Hopkins.
I was mildly worried about losing those credits, but fortunately I'm picking up a few doing work/research for my advisor on what seems to be a very cool project. So, it all works out. I think... except that I told my advisor I knew Excel. I mean, I know of it. Like it exists. I've even used it once or twice to make databases, but I don't really know it know it. Guess I'll be figuring it out soon enough.
While I'm on the topic of figuring things out, I figured out that maybe it's not okay to blatantly point out obvious sexual connotations of a health brochure in a lecture class (although my classmates didn't seem to mind). My theory professor (ahh, theory... it reminds me of Wesleyan) put up this slide to show how changing the color and image of a brochure was more culturally appropriate for the audience the brochure was trying to reach-- Latina women. The message-- get breast exams:
Well, while everyone was talking about how cooking together is how Latina women commonly interact, spend time together, talk about important issues, blah blah, I was focussed on the obvious fact that these women are inspecting fruit. Fruit with nipples. I raised my hand and asked if I was the only one who noticed that there's a bowl full of breasts in the picture... that they were giving the fruit Los Mamogramas. My professor said something like, "Well... it it fruit." Um, sure, professor... "But it's also clearly breasts. With nipples." Anyway, people laughed, the professor said we were all getting punchy, the lecture ended and a friend told me I had a dirty mind.
Am I alone here? Have I been corrupted by working in television for too long? (And when did I get the balls to raise my hand in a lecture class and bring up the topic of breasts and nipples?) Does public health need to be so serious? I spent an hour in stats lab today (sorry, can't help it) doing a problem that had to do with the probability of Nepalese girls dying in various situations. Morbid, but also really funny! One of Colin Quinn's few aphorisms, which I always keep in mind was "nothing is sacred." With that in mind, I look at what's absurd, even within a serious topic. Is there something wrong with that? I didn't think so, but I'm learning in public health school, there may be. Time for change. Me and Obama. Here we come.
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