At the beginning of every period, I do a "Today in History" segment with my students. It's a neat book from the History Channel that gives a day-by-day account of all kinds of historical happenings.
Today, I was doing birthdays (did you know Brooke Shields turned 41 today?). The one that floored me was that Clint Eastwood turned 76 today. What floored me even more was the collective look of puzzlement on my students' faces and murmured comments of "Who is that?" "I've never heard of him before." Oh Lord, my age is showing, and I'm only 33. The majority of my students have never heard of Clint Eastwood. I tried listing his famous characters like Dirty Harry, Josey Wales, and the Man with no Name. I even tried his famous quotes: "Go ahead, make my day." "Do you feel lucky punk? Well do ya?" Nothing. Blank stares.
Finally, I had a breakthrough. I told them that Eastwood won the best director and best picture Oscar for Million Dollar Baby. Luckily they had heard of this movie, and I got lots of "Ohhhh, he was in that movie?" I said "Yes he was, he played one of the trainers." Then I got another question that floored me: "Was he the black trainer or the white trainer?" I patiently explained, "Morgan Freeman was the black guy, Clint Eastwood was the white guy."
I now live in a world where lots of people don't know who Clint Eastwood is.
Good Day to You, Clint
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
5 comments:
Nor do they know of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Audie Murphy or Earl Flynn ! We teach such culturally and hero deficit children!
OMG! okay, I'm only 40 and know all those folks that polski3 mentioned and Clint Eastwood, etc. What is with the younger folks these days???? Do their parents not watch movies with the older Hollywood types in them??? Or are they so shallow that they only focus on things going on today?
My mom was a John Wayne freak and always watched Errol Flynn movies, etc. plus I LOVED the old scary movies with Bela and Lon Chaney and not to mention Abbott and Costello, oh I could go on......I'll slink off my box now, thanks for listening.
Come to think about it, I think many of my male students would appreciate "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" (Remember her?)....Saturday afternoon hostess of the low budget sci fi/horror flicks on independant TV stations.....
Clint Eastwood was semi-important in Back To The Future Part 3.
That was one of the most humorous things about that whole movie were the constant references to Marty McFly as "Mr. Eastwood". Did you notice when he makes it back to 1985 on the railroad tracks, the sign says "Eastwood Ravine" instead of "Clayton Ravine"?
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