Andrew Heaney
To begin, I should say that I am a massive film buff, and thus decided to see what and how I could obtain information for watching an hour’s length of my favorite film; Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic Seven Samurai. The film is three hours and 27 minutes long, and is subtitled in Japanese. The second hour, which is the portion of the film that I watched, is full of “show, don’t tell” moments. The information I received about the world of feudal Japan, a topic I know very little about as it stands, as well as the different class system between Samurai and farmers, is fascinatingly shown through character’s reactions and implied through characters asking questions rather than expository dialogue or a less subtle flashback scene. Furthermore, the cinematography and sound of the film as well as the incredibly directed performances, help show what characters are thinking or trying to do. A great example is from my favorite character of all time, Kikuchiyo, played by legendary actor Toshiro Mifune. His exaggerated body language and tone shows everything you need to know about him and what he will do, before he says a line of dialogue.
I later decided to find my way through nature and hike a large portion of Burke Lake Park, which took me a full hour to do. What I obseved was fairly astonishing. This includes seeing the horrible state of the excessive algae in the lake, observing a large amount of fish take shelter away from the algae, and witnessing multiple flocks of Canada geese try to forage away from the algae. This shows that the lake is in horrendous condition, and I learned this simply through observing the animals and the water of the lake. I observed many other things as well, including hearing different species of songbirds, corvids, and other birds call, seeing some trees do better than others in their growth, and observing Grey and Fox squirrels as well as Eastern chipmunks forage for nuts and acorns.
With all of this being said, despite learning a large amount of information while watching the aforementioned film, I feel like I gained far, far more information in nature than watching a single film. It is quite difficult to describe my reason as to why, other than a quantitative reason that I simply learned more in nature for an hour than watching an hour’s worth of a film about Samurai helping farmers from the threat of bandits. In conclusion, I feel that the screen-less environment that is nature can be a very educational place to be, far more than anything a screen-filled environment, such as a television at home, can.