Wow, it's been nearly a month since I last got on here. I've been pretty busy over the holiday season, trying to get some work done on my thesis proposal. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but I have about half of it outlined and the rest mentally outlined - so let's just hope I don't forget anything. I do hope everyone had a nice holiday, regardless of which one you celebrate.

Now as I gear myself up to start back in school, I do so with a bit of enthusiasm that I haven't had in a while. I have been awarded a Teaching Assistantship to help with the new Ethnographies of Cities course. This is a new course, and the instructor has no idea how it will work. One of my duties is to help find and select feature films that show the character of major cities: Rome, Paris, London, Tokyo, LA, New York, etc. She wants to do a unit on "future" cities, selecting Blade Runner, so I suggested Star Wars (naturally).

The hard part of finding these films is to find films with enough coverage shots showing the city and what makes it "it." I.E.: What makes New Orleans New Orleans as opposed to it being a copy of New York or London. So if any of you have any suggestions on "Earth cities" - especially contemporary ones, feel free to suggest them. For NYC, my first thought was Woody Allen's "Manhattan."

Our thinking is along these lines, using SW examples:

Mos Eisley: Described as a "Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy"
1. Coverage shots of the city show the architecture, the layout, and the various species who call it home.
2. The Cantina (might work well with Dr. Regis' thoughts of doing a small unit on the cafe as important part of city life) shows how people of all criminal backgrounds interact, where they go to hide, and how they disregard the "no blaster" bit and shoot each other in the bar.

Mos Espa:
1. A similar city to Tatooine, but the coverage shows more of the shops, the street venders, and even the cramped slave quarters.
2. The size and crowded feel reflect how easy it is for someone who wants to "get lost" to avoid normal detection.

Coruscant:
1. The entire planet is a city, fitting for the capital of the Republic/Empire.
2. The architecture - primarily the Jedi Temple and the Senate - reveal important ideals of the founders of the Republic and the Jedi Order.
3. Anakin and Obi-Wan's chase of Zam through the streets shows that even great "future" cities have traffic jams, and that it ends up in the lower levels of the city reveals the seedy underbelly that includes less-than-admirable professions: deathstick selling.
4. Throughout all the scenes, Lucas shows both th good and bad in this city, shows the massive crowds of all species, and the three philosophical groups that make any government center what it is: the idealistic, the good but corruptable, and the corrupt.

That's the basic idea. Of course, as time will only permit for excerpts from all films, I may have to work and create a montage of Coruscant scenes to show all the representative features. For "Earth cities," I'm sure we'll look for films that show recognizable features: Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the Louvre, etc. Nothing is finalized yet, and since we don't have a film budget (we're not football, so we have no money), we have to limit our films to what various departmental film libraries have on hand or what we can order through Netflix (a service I highly recommend).

The science fiction/future city unit will be one unit of many, probably just one class, as it's a 3 hour, once a week, late afternoon class. But the adventure of the new class appeals to me - and being able to push a scholarly/academic discussion of Star Wars is always fun. Now I need to see if I can find some work in refereed journals on cities in science fiction.

Off I go.

May the Force be with you.