Film Question #2

"We are all scientists"

1. As a child, perhaps during my elementary school years, I was quite the curious one and often wondered how things worked. A moment in my childhood in which I recall being a “scientist” was when I was interested in bugs. One day, my father was cleaning the yard and to his surprise, he found a petite grasshopper hanging out in his grape vine. When my father called us over to see it, I was shocked because I was under the impression that grasshoppers were green, and this specific grasshopper was like an orange/red color. I decided to keep the little grasshopper and keep it in a jar. The grasshopper’s color really had me puzzled, so I gathered information and did some observations. At that moment, I hypothesized that the little grasshopper was red because we were in the summer solstice. For days, I kept observing the grasshopper and, to my surprise, the grasshopper was slightly bigger and, yes, green! At first, I thought my hypothesis was correct, but then I saw some evidence that falsified my theory. As I examined the jar, I noticed that the grasshopper has shed its skin, which is why it grew in size and changed color. I was extremely amazed, but somewhat bummed because I had been incorrect. A few more days had passed, and one morning I decided to feed the grasshopper some avocado tree leaves. When I approached the jar, I saw a grey figure at the bottom of the jar. I was heartbroken because I thought that the grasshopper had died and turned grey. I then looked around some more and to my amazement, there it was! A full grown, greyish color grasshopper. This fascinated me even more because I did not know this occurred with grasshoppers. At that moment in my childhood, I was obsessed with Pokémon and I related it to how Pokémon evolved to different stages, which brought a plethora of excitement. This relates to the “we are all scientist” phrase because, without realizing it at the time, I was using the scientific method to solve the mystery of the grasshopper. Even after I saw my hypothesis was incorrect, I decided to look further into it, and discovered, not why the grasshopper was orange/red, but how the grasshopper “evolved” into its adult form; something entirely new to my original theory.

"Voodoo Voodoo"

2. “Barney and Friends” was one of my all-time favorite shows when I was growing up. From when I entered kindergarten to when I entered third grade, I enjoyed watching the show and singing along with Barney. On one of the episodes, Barney and his friends could not go outside and play because it was pouring rain. They then sang a song to make the rain go away, “rain, rain go away/ come again another day/ Barney’s friends would like to play/ rain, rain go away.” One winter evening, I remember the skies were cloudy and grey. What do you know? It began to rain. I believe that evening my mother had planned for my brothers and I to go play at my cousin’s house, but we canceled due to the rain. I was extremely upset, and then remembered the song that Barney sang. So then I began to chant, “rain, rain go away/ come again another day/ Barney’s friends would like to play/ rain, rain go away.” To my amazement, the rain briefly went away and I looked up at the sky in awe. I was so excited and went to call my mom over and show her that my chant worked and we would be able to go play with my cousin after all. My mom, being the believer that she is, was shocked and amazed at my “talent.” She then said, “mira, ya salió el sol” (look, the sun came out). Of course she was hyperbolizing the situation, as always, but it made me feel good. However, after being excited over this miracle, it suddenly began to pour again, even worse than the last time. I was aggravated and lost hope in the song and I have not sung it sense because I felt deceived and as if Mother Nature, and life itself, lied to me. I then came to a final conclusion about what had occurred: Barney is a fraud.
I don’t consider myself to be a huge skeptic, but I believe that the reason this chant worked was merely by coincidence. I’m not a firm believer in destiny or that “things happen for a reason,” I believe that things happened by chance. There was nothing majestic about the chant that made the rain go away, it just happened by a random set of events; the rain just stopped, the cloud briefly passed.

"Calvino's Shuffle"

3. Calvino’s shuffle is an important metaphor because it allows us to reason with why things are correct and incorrect. This concept basically instructs that, we as rational and critical thinkers should view these certain events, ideas, etc. in different perspective rather than just jumping to conclusions. Analyze the circumstance, and then react to the circumstance depending on what outcome you want to face. You need to be open to the possibility that there is more to something than one really thinks. This can be correlated to the term functional fixedness in psychology. Functional fixedness is the inability to utilize an object for something other than what it was originally intended for. Although, Calvino is more open to seeing things differently, functional fixedness does the opposite; for example, you need to screw in a flat head screw that is loose but you do not have a screwdriver. You can use the edge of a coin to screw it in, or even unwind a paperclip and make yourself a screwdriver (Calvino’s shuffle). We are more focused on how things only have one logical solution when, in reality, there are multiple solutions.