Akeela and the Bee

[pegkerr]

We went to see Akeela and the Bee last night. See the trailer here. I have been thinking about it today. Yes, I saw the predictable elements of it, but I really, really liked it. First of all, it's great to see a positive, family-friendly movie focusing on a young girl, and Keke Palmer is a charming, natural actress. Secondly, I realized as I thought about it today, it's really a heart of flesh/heart of stone movie, the kind of story I seek out above every other. Roger Ebert says this about the movie in his review

Now I am going to start dancing around the plot. Something happens during the finals of the National Bee that you are not going to see coming, and it may move you as deeply as it did me. I've often said it's not sadness that touches me the most in a movie, but goodness. Under enormous pressure, at a crucial moment, Akeelah does something good. Its results I will leave you to discover. What is ingenious about the plot construction of writer-director Doug Atchison is that he creates this moment so that we understand what's happening, but there's no way to say for sure. Even the judges sense or suspect something. But Akeelah, improvising in the moment and out of her heart, makes it air-tight. There is only one person who absolutely must understand what she is doing, and why -- and he does.

I realized today, suddenly, that this aspect of the movie shares a lot with the movie The Competition The movie Akeela and the Bee obviously has some things to say about the pressures on young black students to hide their light under a bushel academically, and some critics have touched upon this, but I think there is stuff going on about gender, too. I started to wonder what Carol Gilligan, for example, with her examination of the differences in ethical systems between men and women, would have made of Akeela and the Bee, and particularly the moral choice that Akeela made in the final round. Would that have played differently if Akeela was a boy? Would it have been believable that Akeela would have done that if he were a boy? Note the similarity of set up to the situation in the Amy Irving/Richard Dreyfus story in The Competition. Could anyone have bought the story if the genders were reversed?

Comments

[pumpkin-trina.livejournal.com]

I want to see this film but haven't had the chance yet. Your post just intrigued me even more. Now the cheapie theatre in my parts has picked it up, so I have lots of good reasons to rush out to see it before it is out of theatres.

Did you watch "Whalerider" by chance? It is one of my favorites of all time, and I'm guessing if you liked "Akeela" you would like "Whalerider."

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen Whale Rider, although I know it is highly recommended, and I do want to get around to it.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I haven't seen it because I actually WENT to the National Spelling Bee and, while I was terribly happy while I was there, I realized later that I was probably the single poorest kid there (and I grew up in a mediocrely middle-class family). The people who win the National Spelling Bee are not inner-city kids from D.C. They aren't Midwesterners. They're kids whose parents hire tutors in Latin, Greek, and French. They're kids whose parents make them spell 5,000-10,000 words a day. There's a whole massive business selling Spelling Bee prep things -- computer programs, books . . . well, those were the ones available in 1995.

The problem I have with this -- and I'm sure Akeelah and the Bee addresses it -- is the problem of creating geniuses. You can't. You can create someone with a good work ethic and good skills with memory, but you can't create someone with an eidetic memory and with that spark of genius, and I feel that too many people try. It's for various reasons -- not just the National Spelling Bee. We hurt kids that way. (No, my parents didn't do that to me. I've seen it happen, though.) The other thing you have to remember is that the spelling bee only goes through eighth grade. These kids are mostly 14 and under. (It's not sour grapes for not having won -- it's that, as much work as I did with the dictionary and various other sources, I walked into the competition not having a chance and not knowing that I didn't have a chance, just because my family doesn't have a lot of money.)

Have you ever seen Spellbound? I mean the documentary about the National Spelling Bee from about '99. (Well, the '99 Spelling Bee. I forget what year it actually came out.) It's excellent. (Some friends took me to see it in the theatre. They thought that would be funny. It was.)

I have no idea what ethical choice Akeelah made, other than my own guessing due to it being one of the seven basic plots, but I will say this: I remember learning at one point in time that boys will stick to the rules (when there's a dispute in something like kickball) and girls will try and make everyone happy. Nature or nurture? I'm going to weigh in on 'both', because that's usually the answer.

I think if the genders were reversed (meaning a female mentor and a male student) it wouldn't work. I'm trying to picture it. I don't think it's the idea that a woman couldn't mentor a young man as well; I think it's at least partially a historic phenomenon (we assume that older mentors are male because there were a lot more men than women in the work force thirty years ago, etc.) but . . .

You know, that's kind of weird. I remember hearing (don't know where) that while girls are willing to read stories about boys and girls, boys only want to read stories about boys, which is why there are slightly more male main characters in children's fiction (e.g. Harry Potter). Would we believe Harry Potter if he was a girl, and I don't mean Hermione?

If Hermione were a boy, would she make us more mad?

Gender roles are such a strange thing.

Sorry . . . this seems really down on a movie I haven't even seen, and I'm sure it's a good movie and all, but . . . *shrugs* Maybe when it comes out on DVD.

Oh, by the way, the kid from my area got out on the word 'putative' this year. The funny part is that he'd never heard of the word before, and I use it every day at my job. (Men who have been claimed to be the father of a kid but not proven so are 'putative parent father's.)

(I got out on the word 'scansion'. Third round. Just in case you wondered.)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Class definitely gets addressed in the movie, too.

If you do see it when it comes out on DVD, let me know what you think.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to your heart of stone/heart of flesh post. It is very relevant to what I'm going through right now.

I will look for Akeela & the Bee on dvd. I second the rec for Whale Rider.
Two other good movies that you might like is the documentary Mad Hot Ballroom (my girls loved this) and the very heart-wrenching Rabbit-Proof Fence.