For my culture artifact I chose to watch the Calvin sponsored movie "Shattered Glass". In this movie, the main character, Stephen Glass (played by Hayden Christensen) works as a journalist for the magazine, "The New Republic". He moves up the ladder of success fairly quickly with his 41 published articles that grab the attention of his coworkers and magazine readers. Stephen has a way of getting the biggest stories before anyone else. How does he do this? He cheats. And lies. Stephen Glass knows that when articles are fact-checked, the notes of the author are the primary resource. So Stephen makes up facts in his pages and pages of notes. This seems to go quite well for him until he comes up with a story where his facts, websites, and phone numbers don't seem to match up. It all goes downhill from there. Stephen Glass's tragic tale actually says a lot about evil and redemption. He lies in his articles because he wants to be noticed. Stephen dreams of becoming a great writer by capturing large audiences with his neatly crafted stories. He achieves this, but not with the truth. Instead, he deceives his much-loved editor and his closest friends at the magazine and eventually loses his job. Even though Stephen is the main character, we don't love him or find him the hero in our minds. During his constant lies we simply let out exasperated sighs and embarrassed glances for him. By the end of the movie, we can almost label Stephen as crazy! The nature of Glass's deceit was greed. He wanted to get to the top, with any means possible. Stephen's "redemption" could be that even though his lying got him fired, he was able to write a "fictional" book about what happened to him. It's funny that when he writes "fiction", the stories are actually true events.
Discussion Questions:
1. Stephen ultimately becomes a great writer through his fictional work. Does this mean that lying and deceit can actually make us happy or get us what we want in the long run?
2. How does the story of Stephen Glass reflect the culture of our empire today? Is it a positive atmosphere or a negative one?
I'm glad you checked this one out, Aemelia. I'd like to see it, but haven't yet. It's interesting to think about how Glass was, in a sense, just giving his readers what they wanted (kind of like Dr. Rapaille in The Persuaders--tapping into "reptilian" desires).
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