One Book, Two Book, Good Book, Bad Book.

Okay, the title is a little bit misleading, I'm not just going to talk about books here. But I've been more and more finding myself in a very odd situation. For the last seven years, my area of study has been very specific; I study narratives, stories, texts. It doesn't matter if it's a book, comic, or movie, I study how that particular medium tells it's story. I'm fascinated with character, plot, motive, conflict. I study it and I practice it. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm able to write the perfect story the way I would like to, there is definitely miles to travel on that road. However, I do know what a good story is when I read it, and, more importantly, I know when I read or see a bad one. I had better know anyway, student's grades kind of depend on that. So, my situation.

There are lots of terrible narratives out there, and being an English teacher I run into them. Not from my students mind you, (I've actually got some amazing students this semester and am really proud of them) but narratives in stores and theaters. And many of my students, friends, and family love these narratives and of course they come up. My goal is to be supportive of people that enjoy cinema and read books to start moving up the ladder to better books and movies. In order to do this, I try to keep my opinions to myself, but it isn't always that easy.

Transformers 2 pushed me over the edge. Whenever this movie comes up, I can't help but voice my opinion. Which is: it is probably the worst movie I have seen in five years. Okay, I know that is nonspecific and bordering on hyperbole. Transformers 2 is misogynistic, racist, base, pointless, and void of any satisfying story. And those are just the facts. I'm sorry if you liked it, or that me saying that about the film has offended you. (By the way, if it did really offend you, you may want to stop reading now.) So yes, this opinion sometimes slips out, like it did the other day in ENGL 2010: Writing About Graphic Narratives (Yes, I teach a comic book class). In response, one of my more intelligent students asked the question: "Well, what did you expect from it? It's big robots and things blowing up. The movie was what it was suppose to be." Damn smart students, he was right.

I saw the first Transformers movie, it was alright, not great. I know Michael Bay is a horrible writer and director. I went in expecting the second to be a weak film. I wasn't expecting it to be District 9, Iron Man, Aliens, Terminator 2, or other great Sci-Fi movies. But was that really what it was suppose to be? And can't I just be upset with what it was? Michael Bay knew that if he tried to connect with the lowest common denominator of movie goers, it would make him money, but couldn't it have been great? Couldn't it have transcended what Sci-Fi movies can be? You know what, I'm officially expecting more. The simple fact that every scene and shot of Aliens adds to that story, the characters, the greatness that is that film means that I'm allowed to be angry when there are robot testicle jokes and dogs humping for no reason. And as a teacher, I'm going to tell students that they can find better, much much better.

The problem with this stance, is that when I do take it, I'm the bad guy. When The Da Vinci Code came out, family members constantly asked me if I had read it. Me being the English Major, they assumed that I had. So, I gave it a try. At page 116 I gave up, I just couldn't handle the massive plot holes, weak characters, and piss poor narrative. When this information came out to my family, I was obviously wrong. I was the one who liked "Weird" things and of course had no idea what made a good book.

Why can't I expect more of Dan Brown? Why can't I expect him to write better sentences than my 1010 students? This goes double for Stephanie Myers.

HUGE WARNING: If you are a fan of Edward and his fellow sparkling people, turn back now!

I first want to say, if people start reading because of Dan and Stephanie, that is great. There are far too many people who don't read. And if they picked up The Da Vinci Code or Twilight and then moved on to other amazing books, that is great. I endorse that, but that shouldn't be the start and full stop. The Twilight books are just bad, poor writing, poor characterization, zero depth, and female lead character that I hope no girl out there would ever want to be like. There are books out there that are so much better: Coraline by Neil Gaiman, The Harry Potter books, A Series of Unfortunate Events. And those are just the young adult literature stuff (which Twilight is.) If you are an adult and you like Vampires (real vampires, Myers does not write vampires) then at least try some Ann Rice, or, hey, this great book by a man named Bram Stoker. It's called Dracula and is amazing.

My role as a teacher, particularly a college English teacher, is to help my students become better writers, to challenge them with more complex texts, and to not settle for weak or marginal. I wouldn't give a student an A if they submitted a paper or story with weak characters, horrible sentence structure, and misogynistic or racist themes. So why should I just be accepting of the same problems at the local theater or book store. What was I expecting? Well lately very little. America seems to be more and more accepting of slop and I can't expect it to change over night. What is it suppose to be? Better. Great. Amazing. Life changing.

In no way do I expect everyone to suddenly like the same things. Some people dislike fantasy, horror, romance, or science fiction, and that is great. But shouldn't we expect every horror movie or novel that comes out to be good, or well done?

I try to register my dissent and approval with my wallet, but sometimes that dissent is drowned out by the applause for robots with big gold teeth and sparkling stalkers.