This is where it all began: my 5th grade class recently started reading "Percy Jackson and The Olympians: Book One: The Lightning Thief," as the read-aloud portion of our reading workshop. As the baller teacher that I am, I had taken it upon myself to start a mini-unit on Greek mythology. Hello, "Percy Jackson and The OLYMPIANS." These kids know jack squat about some freakin' Olympians. So, just today, we watched a video on brainpop, perused through some illustrated books on mythology and the students picked Greek gods, goddesses and mythical creatures out of a sombrero (an excellent teacher would have had a Greek hat... a laurel wreath?) at random and began researching them on their personal laptop computers (technology grant!). They're going to make powerpoint presentations (technology grant!).
On a completely different genius thread, I had started playing classical music to my students during morning work time and some math work time. Hello, classical music makes kids smarter. Mainly, we're listening to my favorite composer, Beethoven. The kids are surprisingly into it. They say things like, "this part sounds sneaky." Ah, inferencing from music. My job here is done. They're LOVING it. They're rushing home to download it now. Or, I suppose any music played during school is a welcome change from the typical SILENCE expected by the public education system. YOU WILL BE QUIET AND DO YOUR WORK IN SILENCE WITHOUT TALKING. Anyway, as I watched Itzhak Perlman blow it out of the water on his mothereffin violin on a recent episode of the Colbert Report, I got to thinking, "I want to show these 21st century urban philistines (aka my students) just how powerful classical music can be! If only there were some sort of awesome entity that combined images with music... preferably classical music... images that kids can appreciate... like a cartoon..."
Aha! The brilliant idea emerged: MOTHEREFFIN' FANTASIA. I happened to know for a fact that Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" was featured in "Fantasia" during a series of scenes based on characters from Greek mythology. Thank you, childhood: about 10 VHS tapes and no cable TV led to a lot of viewings of "Fantasia." Freakin' centaurs and satyrs and cupids all hanging out being bosses until eventually Zeus shows up to hurl lightning bolts at them. Can we say, "PERFECT?!" Talk about cross-curricular teaching. Play a video featuring both Greek mythology and Beethoven? And then make those young scholars write a response to it. The kids'd be all like, "Yo, Ms. H! We're makin' mad connections! You plan this or somethin'?" "Yeah, I did." To youtube!
I did not happen to know for a fact that "Fantasia" is some fucked up racist naughty bullshit.
We open on a pool where female centaurs are bathing. NUDE. And their perky female centaur boobs are just out in the open, nipples rustling in the wind. Ok fine, I can appreciate the human form but playing naked centauresses (?) to a class of 11-year-olds is certainly a fireable offense. Maybe I can cue it up to after the boobs?
Well, it's hard to do that because right after the boobs there's a cenatur pickaninny. So, that kind of put a damper on my relationship with "Fantasia." A freakin' hair-braided-big-eyed-big-lipped-earrning-wearing-dark-skinned centaur DOING ANOTHER FEMALE CENTAUR'S NAILS. AND FREAKIN' LOVIN' IT. Later on, the female pickanniny centaur is trotting behind the other centaur carrying her wreath for her and that bitch freakin' swishes the pickaninny centaur in the face with her freakin' tail! And let's be clear here: Disney drew blue centaurs and pink centaurs and puke green centaurs but the brown centaur is a pickaninny centaur.
Later, Dyonisus shows up and is just a stupid, drunk, fat baby in a diaper accompanied by two black Zebra centaurs. They're fanning him so clearly they work for him in some capacity but being from Africa, they get to be exoticized so they're way sexy and very flirtatious. ;-)
Overall, I determined that this excerpt of "Fantasia" was not an appropriate cross-curricular activity for the students in my class. Too many boobs and drunk dudes acting like asses in wine rivers and cupid butts and, oh yeah, pickaninnies. My mother and father were pretty pro-nudity in films and pretty pro-wine at dinner so it's no wonder they let me watch this stuff. Besides, the cupids don't even have genitals... which opens up a whole other door of conversations I'm not trying to have with prepubescent kids.
Apparently, the pickaninny version has been banned from public viewing since 1969. The same year my alma mater went co-ed. Ah, PROGRESS.
