television, media, george lucas, indiana jones + time traveling

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 4 of 10

“Even in high school I was very in­ter­est­ed in his­to­ry – why peo­ple do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time try­ing to re­late the past to the present.”
—George Lu­cas

“What is hap­pen­ing? Are we slow­ly go­ing fur­ther back in time? I don’t like this.”
—Emi­ly Duchaine, as Gre­ta Van Fleet per­form­ing on SNL
 

To­day I teach his­to­ry – but be­fore col­lege, I had very lit­tle in­ter­est in his­to­ry, un­for­tu­nate­ly.

Even Mon­ty Python couldn’t drag me into it. And to me, read­ing An­i­mal Farm (1945) in high school was about noth­ing but a bunch of an­gry farm an­i­mals, I did NOT make the con­nec­tion at all to pol­i­tics.

I did love fig­ur­ing out wat was the ‘ori­gin’ sto­ry of com­ic book char­ac­ters. And that got me think­ing a lot about where things come from. And even­tu­al­ly I was able to rea­son that most ori­gin sto­ries are made up, from com­ic books to ac­tu­al his­to­ry.

But it was a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege teacher, Michael Svanevik, who got me ex­cit­ed about his­to­ry, hu­mans and how the past to­tal­ly re­lates to the present.

Time frame: 1987.
 

hu­mans were as messed up then as we are now
Svanevik loved re­search, he’d do all his own and his spe­cial­ty is lo­cal where he’ll dig up every­thing he can – warts and all.

And hu­man his­to­ry is NOT PRET­TY.

The class I took with him was His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can West and he told great sto­ries about wat a bril­liant weasel Thomas Jef­fer­son was, while George Wash­ing­ton was vain as hell, Lewis and Clark sex­ing their way thru the North­west, why John C. Fré­mont is only known to­day for a Bay Area town that sells cars, how he quit work­ing for Dis­ney cause Davy Crock­ett was re­al­ly a crim­i­nal (Dis­ney paint­ed Crock­ett as a folk hero), why the mas­sacre at The Alamo was be­yond bru­tal, and how Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er was the most bril­liant man he ever worked for.

He had the hu­mour and de­liv­ery of Jack Ben­ny. And it was one of the first cours­es where I re­mem­bered al­most every­thing he taught – cept for wat I need­ed to kno for his ex­ams, at the time, of course.

It’s his ap­proach to his­to­ry – cob­bled with my in­ter­est in standup com­e­dy – that still feeds how I teach to­day. And re­search is a part of every class I stand in front of.
 

“You’ve got to stop call­ing it re­search. You’re scar­ing the col­lege stu­dents.”
—Bill Mead, de­sign di­rec­tor at my for­mer de­sign school
 

So I start­ed call­ing it ‘dis­cov­ery.’ Be­cause that’s wat lawyers call go­ing thru box af­ter box of pa­per look­ing for shit they can use against their op­po­nents.

Then I start­ed call­ing home­work ‘gigs.’

But I still call toi­let pa­per ‘toi­let pa­per’ be­cause ‘bath­room tis­sue’ nev­er caught on with me.
 

sprin­kle some learn­ing in there
I’m not sure where the FLOMM ed­u­ca­tion­al com­po­nent fell into place.

It was there, but not di­rect­ly. When I re­al­ly start­ed get­ting into the MAEd., I was fas­ci­nat­ed with all the dif­fer­ent ways a per­son can learn.

Some­where along the way I was work­ing with a start­up whose mis­sion was to help teenagers do ca­reer re­search. I sug­gest­ed a game in­ter­face to make the re­search feel like ‘play,’ al­low­ing per­son­al­i­ty types to sync with suit­able ca­reers – some­thing I to­tal­ly re­late to: I’d say most stu­dents who sign up for a Graph­ic De­sign course do not even kno wat Graph­ic De­sign is – hell, back in 1985, I had no idea wat it was, it was pure chance some­one men­tioned it to me. How many oth­er awe­some fields are out there that kids are well suit­ed for but they have ab­solute­ly no idea they ex­ist?

Af­ter that fell apart (in­no­v­a­tive on­line des­ti­na­tions ‘Twit­ter’ and ‘Face­book’ were seen as rad­i­cal, as was my ‘bounc­ing balls’ gam­ing con­cept), the idea of mix­ing my own sideshoot­er with ed­u­ca­tion fits my take the bore­dom out of the class­room ap­proach I be­lieve in.

The ex­cite­ment of do­ing some­thing in­volv­ing pop­u­lar me­dia-based learn­ing man­aged to get into my head and stay there.
 

hang on, indy!
I kept think­ing back to Lu­casarts’ ed­u­ca­tion­al work in­volv­ing video games – then in the 1990s, George Lu­cas had the idea to take a pop­u­lar char­ac­ter, In­di­ana Jones – and put him in his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tions.

The Young In­di­ana Jones Chron­i­cles (1992–93) was an ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­per­i­ment that did well in Eu­rope and con­fused Amer­i­cans. In ad­di­tion to be a test­ing ground for new tech­nolo­gies that would be used in the Star Wars pre­quels (1999–2005), The Young Indy tele­vi­sion se­ries dra­ma­tized im­por­tant his­tor­i­cal peo­ple (and events) with In­di­ana Jones in his for­ma­tive years just hap­pen­ing to be at the cen­ter of every­thing – from the in­ven­tion of Cu­bism to the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion – with doc­u­men­taries to ex­plain wat you are watch­ing.

The se­ries took place ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, WWI, the 1920s – all eras I was in­ter­est­ed in when orig­i­nal­ly study­ing Graph­ic De­sign.

And I learned a lot watch­ing Indy whine his way through these sit­u­a­tions. (Lu­cas re­al­ly liked to turn Indy – and Darthy – into whiny kids. Darthy was sup­posed to be scary. The pre­quels made him not so scary.)

This also fits with Meg­gs’ ‘ice­berg’ ap­proach: Would the au­di­ence want to learn MOR be­yond their in­tro­duc­tion?

That’s wat Young In­di­ana Jones set up with its most­ly-un­even episodes – in re­view, some were well made, oth­ers, un­for­tu­nate­ly, are hard to watch. There’s some­thing about 1990s tele­vi­sion still try­ing to find its voice at play here. Al­though the over­all ef­fort I still think de­serves its due.
 

“His­to­ry is re­al­ly about peo­ple more than it’s about events and the peo­ple are just like we are – and there­fore it’s very easy to con­nect to them and ex­plore the whole idea through the doc­u­men­taries and, say, through books and oth­er things by do­ing re­search on­line … [to] be­gin to re­al­ly un­der­stand the fas­ci­na­tion of his­to­ry.”
—George Lu­cas on why the Young In­di­ana Jones se­ries
 

Like, a sim­i­lar ap­proach did work for Star Wars – fans are SO OB­SESSED they’ve bro­ken out al­most every Star Wars in­flu­ence – from The Dam Busters (1955) (be­low) to Art His­to­ry (also be­low) to the Viet Cong – to some­thing I’d no­ticed Modesto-born Lu­cas was do­ing: Nam­ing things in Star Wars af­ter places in Cal­i­for­nia, from ‘Big­gs,’ to ‘Corel­lia’ (Cordelia), to ‘Con­cord Dawn,’ to ‘Se­bul­ba’ (Sepul­ve­da) to ‘Cadera’ (Caldera) to ‘Kamino’ (Camino) to ‘Crock­ett n Tubbs’ (WAT?).
 

 

Lu­cas is well-read and his ref­er­enced works are so em­bed­ded in Star Wars, a friend from high school ear­ly on ac­tu­al­ly fig­ured out wat was go­ing to be the over­all sto­ry arcs of the Star Wars pre­quels – should they ever be made – with the fe­male lead hav­ing a vow­el at the be­gin­ning and end of her name – just by read­ing a lot of Joseph Camp­bell.

Self-ini­ti­at­ed ed­u­ca­tion.

Some­thing that a güd teacher can only en­cour­age, can only hope for. Stu­dents who WANT to learn on their own. Be­yond the class­room.

Hell, my en­tire teach­ing ap­proach is based on the idea that the real learn­ing will kick in long af­ter my class is just a mem­o­ry. All I do is sug­gest things to tap into, be a guide so stu­dents own in­ter­ests take over …
 

fic­tion as his­to­ry
I loved HBO’s Rome (2005–07) and missed it when some­thing called GOT even­tu­al­ly took its place.

The Tu­dors (2007–10) was amaz­ing, un­less you’re watch­ing it with some­one who knos a thing or two about the ac­tu­al his­to­ry.
 

“OH MY GOD, Wolsey didn’t die like that!”
—My wife, watch­ing The Tu­dors
 

An old­er se­ries I en­joyed was the 1990s take on The Un­touch­ables (1993–94) – a tad styl­ish, it did at­tempt to fol­low Eliot Ness’ his­to­ry a bit MOR than the most­ly fic­tion­al Un­touch­ables (1987) movie – which is just plain fun to watch, even down to recre­at­ing the baby car­riage scene from Potemp­kin (1925).
 

How far is too far with fic­tion??

That’s a hard ques­tion. Some­thing that his­tor­i­cal dra­mas, such as Reign (2013–17) – based on Mary, Queen of Scots – have tak­en to task.
 

“It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t have to be beau­ti­ful. It just has to be true. And even if it’s a lie, make it an in­ter­est­ing lie.”
—Max Roth­man, ex­plain­ing how to Mod­ern Art
 

then there’s max
So while I’m com­plain­ing about his­tor­i­cal dra­mas, I de­cid­ed to in­clude one in my les­son plans. Be­cause a doc­u­men­tary I had picked (not go­ing to say which) put me to sleep.

Writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Men­no Mey­jes – one of the au­thors of In­di­ana Jones and the Last Cru­sade (1989) – Max (2002) is a film about Mod­ern Art, Pol­i­tics + Pow­er and ex­plores ‘WAT IF’ young in­fantry cor­po­ral Adolf Hitler’s doomed art ca­reer ac­tu­al­ly stood a chance, un­der the men­tor­ship of gallery own­er Max Roth­man (John Cu­sack).

Easy to stream, easy to un­der­stand with sub­tle cues that re­al­ly ex­plain the Mod­ern era – won­der­ful writ­ing, tons of fore­shad­ow­ing, plus Doc­tor Who and the mom from Netflix’s Lost in Space (2018), Leelee So­bies­ki be­fore she van­ished, the guy from HBO’s Rome play­ing George Grosz – it has every­thing a güd his­tor­i­cal dra­ma needs.
 

 

Stu­dents who’d watch it were fas­ci­nat­ed, and I found, it’d help them re­spond well to the Mod­ern Art por­tions of both my Graph­ic De­sign His­to­ry course and my Bauhaus-themed Fun­da­men­tals class.

Mod­ern art ed­u­ca­tion HAS to be part of THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923. In a sort of a fic­tion­al can lead to want­i­ng to kno MOR out­side of the game kind of way.

Be­cause every­thing can be googled at this point, no?

With Max Roth­man and his Snow An­gels goad­ing me on­ward, I start­ed de­vel­op­ing nü art (right) based on mul­ti­ple in­spi­ra­tions (left) from Mod­ern Art his­to­ry:
 

con
tinue
read
ing —

                   forward to  PART 5   • • •

· · ·  back to  PART 3

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Up top: Har­ri­son Ford in his only Young In­di­ana Jones ap­pear­ance.

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