Posts tagged families | Culture Making

4 December 2009

"Home Movie Reconstructions 1974 / 2004," by Elliott Malkin :: via The Morning News

As part of his short film Family Movie, Elliott Malkin revisited the scenes and protagonists of his family's old 1970s Super 8 movies, creating shot-for-shot reenactments that are both eerie and good-humored. Played side by side in sync, the ultra-wide aspect and split screen call to mind old stereoscope cards, as past and present combine to provide parallel slightly different views on people and things, giving the sense—or could it be the false sense?—of depth and perspective.

re: families, movies, nostalgia, time

Nate:

13 November 2009

I recall having a strong sense of Lego nomenclature as well, though I'm hazy on the details. I should go out to the storage bins in the garage to root around and see if the touch of plastic can retrieve any specific terms. Meanwhile, Language Log's Geoff Pullum sums up this delightful article well: "It's about the deep-seatedness of children's need to have names for all the things they deal with — and the lack of any necessity for there to be pre-existing names in the language they happen to have learned."

re: children, cultural worlds, families, language, names, play, words

Nate:

from "A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families," by Giles Turnbull, The Morning News, 4 November 2009 :: via languagehat.com

Then, when another seven-year-old came round for tea after school one day, I overheard the two of them, busy in the spaceship construction yard that used to be our living room, get into a linguistic thicket.

“Can you see any clippy bits?” my son asked his friend. The friend was flummoxed. “Do you mean handy bits?” he asked, pointing.

“Yes,” replied my boy. “Clippy bits.”

Of course! This language of Lego isn’t just something our family has invented; every Lego-building family must have its own vocabulary. And the words they use (mostly invented by the children, not the adults) are likely to be different every time. But how different? And what sort of words?

21 October 2008

Of all the statistics in this generally fascinating summary of recent research on religion and consumerism (in Adweek, of all places!), these are the ones that really make me say, Yikes.

re: consumption, entertainment, families, generations, shopping

Andy:

from "Church and State," by Mark Dolliver, Adweek, 6 October 2008 :: via Bob Carlton (Facebook friend extraordinaire!)

In a pre-Christmas poll last year of religious Christians with kids age 2 to 18, 78 percent said they’d bought DVDs of movies or TV shows for their teenagers, and 87 percent said they’d bought these for kids 13 and under. “However, one-quarter of those adults (26 percent) did not feel comfortable with the DVD products they bought.” Likewise for music CDs: “About six of 10 parents bought these discs for their kids, yet one out of every three of those parents (33 percent) had concerns about the content.” As for video games, 39 percent of the parents of pre-teens were concerned about the content of games they’d bought, as were 46 percent of parents of teens.