Movie Night

  
Every time I go to Kaolack and come home with a full computer battery I make a bowl of popcorn and host a movie night with my family. The kids love the cinematic adventures and I love listening to their commentary as they discover something for the first time. We've watched everything from Disney movies to Jurassic Park, and although I've tried to explain the concept of fiction to them, I think I've left them with a few false impressions of the world. My brothers and sisters are convinced that frogs and donkeys in America can talk (thanks to Shrek and Princess and the Frog), that white people can grow hair long enough to climb up (Tangled) and most terrifyingly, that dinosaurs still exist and regularly eat people. Its funny to watch them try and reconcile what they see on screen with their own world. They had a long argument over whether Aladdin was a talibe, a beggar child that attends Koranic school, or a Pulaar because his pants look like the traditional chaia that they wear. In they end I think they decided that he was a mixture of both.

Last week, having run out of fiction, I watched two episodes of the BBCs Planet Earth with them; shallow seas and great plains. It was especially entertaining to hear their commentary on the animals, which they tried desperately to categorize in terms of the things that they know. Some animals, like elephants and monkeys, they recognized, but most of them were too far outside their realm of experience so they tried to stuff them awkwardly into familiar boxes. Whales? Big fish. Not too much of a stretch. Lions? Large cats. Again, a reasonable extrapolation. Some things, though, were a bit off the mark. Seals became "dogs of the water," American buffalo were "Forest cows," and there was a long argument as to whether the Arctic Fox was a dog or a "cat of the forest." Any manner of gazelle was dubbed a "goat of the forest" and somehow a manatee and her cub became "water donkeys." I think they really enjoyed the fantastic imagery, although I don't think they always understood exactly what they were seeing. The views from space, for example, completely eluded them. Still, it is fun to try and broaden their horizons, even if they don't quite believe these things exist.