Q and A with Walter Metz
January 2008
(Interview by Scarlet Reierson, American Studies Program Administrator)
|
| INTRO: Walter Metz, associate professor and interim department head of Media and Theatre Arts, team-taught AMST 201 in fall 2007 and is teaching the course again this spring, 2008. He is also team-teaching AMST 202 this semester. Checking in with Professor Metz on his thoughts about these courses, the American Studies degree program, and The Simpsons MOVIE:
|
| |
|
| Q: |
This is your second semester teaching AMST 201 (Intro to American Studies) and your first with AMST 202 (The Arts in America). How are the classes going so far? Can you tell us a little bit about each of these courses?
|
| A: |
In the Intro class, which is a study of how Americans can be defined via where they live, I showed clips from Rocky to define the urban, Bewitched the suburban, and Gilligan’s Island the rural. We’re now in the midst of tackling Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden, as great an academic book as ever’s been printed.
The sequel to the course, AMST 202 is even more exciting. Dean Susan Agre-Kippenhan and I decided to teach a research course about the American West, in which we discussed major American Studies texts but then had students do art projects related to this material. It’s a bold experiment in the combination of academic study and art making in the undergraduate classroom.
|
| |
|
| Q: |
What is your favorite part of teaching the AMST 201 course? How about 202? |
| A: |
My favorite part of teaching any course lies in the ability an instructor has in showing young students the intense passion that comes from learning about something in intense detail. I have my students read complex books and demand that they’ve eaten them up. Students are almost always overwhelmed by this critical reading boot camp, but the best of them emerge at the end of the semester with life-long reading skills. This mode of teaching is the best mode of repayment I can think of for the great teachers I had over the years. |
| |
|
| Q: |
What are your thoughts on the new American Studies Degree program? |
| A: |
I am delighted that MSU has invested in a significant expansion of its humanities programs. American Studies is a wonderful interdisciplinary pursuit that allows both students and faculty to convene around material which is vital for the society in which we live. American Studies allows one to think about where we live, who we are as a culture, what books we read, what movies we watch, and who we might vote for, and why. I am hopeful that MSU will make similar investments in other crucial interdisciplinary humanities pursuits such as film studies and women’s studies. |
| |
|
| Q: |
I sat in on one of your 201 lectures last fall and LOVED that you showed a clip of The Simpsons to demonstrate a “postmodern critique on postmodernism.” Can you tell us a little bit about this?
|
| A: |
Well, quite simply, The Simpsons is the most important and most dense television show in the history of the medium. It’s postmodern in the sense that it takes the history of Western civilization, grinds it up, and repurposes this cultural stuff into an engaging form of comedy. There’s a moment in the episode “Simpson Safari” in which Homer tries to kill some African bushmen. Subtitles reveal that the angry sounding warriors are really discussing their everyday lives. When Homer’s spear flies by their heads, just narrowly missing them, one of the men exclaims, “Hey, that could have hurt someone!” At the University of Massachusetts in the 1970s, the African novelist Chinua Achebe gave a scandalous lecture in which he critiqued Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for its racism. This caused quite an affront to the white intelligentsia: they saw Conrad as a racial progressive for critiquing the horrors of imperialism. Achebe merely observed that a critique of racism might want to give voice to African people as human beings. The little moment in The Simpsons does this far more than the high modernist Conrad ever did. It’s a remarkable example of the intense intelligence of American popular culture at its best.
|
| |
|
| Q: |
Who is your favorite Simpson, and why? |
| A: |
Well, of course, it’s very hard to choose. It’s a bit like choosing one’s favorite molecule: I like carbon quite a lot since it can be both charcoal and diamond, but then again one kinda needs oxygen in order to sit here typing. If I must choose, I guess I’d choose Mr. Burns. Not only is he a great businessman (who else would think of blotting out the sun to force more people to use his nuclear power?), but he’s also quite funny: “In my day, if a donnybrook didn’t go 115 rounds, we’d demand our nickel back!” |
| |
I like Lisa – she’s a good little activist :)
|
| |
Yep. She’s also quite the literati. Anyone who quotes Allen Ginsberg to decry the madness of Bart Simpson—“I saw the best meals of my generation/ destroyed by the madness of my brother. / My soul carved in slices / by spikey-haired demons”—is OK in my book. Come to think of it, I’d rather spend an hour with Lisa than that smelly Ginsberg.
|
| |
|
| Q: |
Have you seen The Simpsons Movie? What did you think? |
| A: |
Oh, only about 100 times. My children’s love of The Simpsons is one of the many things that makes me believe that our civilization will survive at least another generation. They make me watch the film on a roughly hourly schedule, which is much better than having to listen to which Pokemon creature evolves into who.
|
