Volume 8 Issue 4, February 2010 - The Heschel School

Page 6 Helios Volume 8 Issue 4 February 2010
Illustration by Sigal Palley
American Creativity Reduced
to Remakes
(Continued from page 4)
old and new. Senior Jenna Merrin,
lifelong Batman fan, remarked,
“Batman Begins, and later The Dark
Knight, brought respect back to Batman's
name. They made him the
dark, somewhat disturbing character
that he is in the comic books and
the original animated series, rather
than the butt of thousands of jokes
that Adam West's Batman or George
Clooney's Batman turned him
into. Batman fans were thoroughly
pleased.”
While these two franchises
did extremely well with their new
installments, other franchises had
less luck with remakes of old movies.
Recently, The Pink Panther, The
Heartbreak Kid, Disney’s A Christmas
Carol and The Last House on the
Left all did extremely poorly among
critics and audiences. Perhaps this
comes from a sense of nostalgia –
while a new installment can be either
good or bad without ruining earlier
installments, a remake of a classic
movie can potentially kill all fond
memories of the original.
Junior Esther Lenchner noted, “I
think that when movies are completely
redone, there is a new creative
opportunity for the film maker,
though it is more challenging since
they have to be very creative to not
simply make the same movie.” In
the case of classic and beloved movies,
any change that the film maker
makes in order to differentiate his or
her movie from the original can be
seen as a negative change. Therefore,
remakes of old movies must be done
with just the right amount of innovation
to the idea and preservation of
the classic movie.
Hollywood is not just remaking
classic movies, but TV shows,
as well. Recently, a slew of remade
shows have been aired, including
Melrose Place, 90210, Battlestar
Galactica, and V. For the most part,
these shows have done resoundingly
well, with large fan bases and critics’
approval. The new Battlestar Galactica
is often hailed as far superior to
the original. While the original was a
campy series with cheesy costumes
and sets, the new version is a complex,
beautiful, and meaningful television
show.
Merrin commented, “A new
show doesn't ruin the old show – [it
has] no impact on the previous show.
New shows are different enough that
they don't affect our views of the old
show.”
This sense of separation from
the original series allows television
shows to exist on their own, and not
simply as an extension of an old one.
Creators of televisions shows have
creative license that creators of remade
movies do not.
Even current fashion is becoming
a reflection of the past. Leggings,
high-waisted skirts and pants,
and cardigans are all making a reappearance
on the fashion scene.
Many fashion critics attribute this to
a sense of nostalgia – time has a way
of making fashions of the past appear
more glamorous than they were
at the time. For instance, Hollywood
has made powdered wigs an 18thcentury
fashion staple, while in reality,
they turned hair a dingy shade of
gray and were not completely enjoyable.
In their new versions, fashions
eliminate all the undesirable aspects
and simply become trendy.
Freshman Kate Prince said,
“I hope sixties fashion never comes
back. Some parts of it would be great,
and some parts would be awful.”
As Merrin states, “I think it's a combination
of lack of creativity, laziness,
and lack of confidence [that leads to
franchise reinvigoration.] I'm pretty
sure the mindset is: If something
has already done well, why not do it
again and make money? That way,
[creators] don't have to think of a
new idea, don't have to work all that
hard, and think that they'll get a big
fat paycheck. I think the best phrase
to describe that mindset is EPIC
FAIL.”
Sustainability Committee Reaches
Out to Young Environmentalists
By Emma Goldberg
On January 20, nine members of
the Heschel High School Sustainability
Committee traveled together to the Heschel
Lower School. The Sustainability
Committee was founded at the beginning
of this academic year and dedicates itself
to raising awareness about environmental
issues, such as recycling and energy efficiency.
Bringing their enthusiasm to the
Lower School, the Committee partnered
with the fifth grade in working on a recycling
project. Rabbi Anne Ebersman, who
coordinated the event, said, “Our 5th graders
are taking a leadership role in teaching
the rest of the school the rules of recycling
and inspiring students and staff to be more
mindful about recycling.”
To aid the fifth grade in its recycling
goals, each Sustainability Committee
member partnered with a group of
fifth graders; together they prepared instructional
skits about how to recycle. The
fifth graders presented these skits to every
Lower School class later that week.
Twenty-seven years ago, nine
years before any of this year’s seniors
were born, Judith Tumin began her career
at the Heschel School. At the time, it was
a small, new school, as it had opened in
1983, the same year Judith began teaching
here. When the principal of the school
where she had been teaching, together
with Rabbi Dov, decided to take the job
as principal of the Heschel School, Judith
followed him, both because “the [Heschel]
school sounded wonderful,” and
because she knew the principal was “a
very exciting and interesting educator to
work with.”
While Judith, who is currently
an English teacher and the Ninth Grade
Dean, misses the intimacy and tight community
of Heschel in its early years, she
appreciates the different kind of ambience
that the school has to offer today. “I
equally like the bustle of a building with
almost three hundred kids and forty or
fifty staff members,” she says, “There’s
an energy—a breath of opportunity that
didn’t exist then.”
Before becoming a teacher, Judith
worked in publishing for three years.
She then went back to school to get a
Masters degree, and has been a teacher
ever since. “After almost forty years I
still love teaching. I’m happiest in the
classroom. I can’t imagine doing anything
else.”
One of the first rules a student
learns after arriving at Heschel is not to
sit in Judith’s chairs. She has four different
chairs strategically placed throughout
the building—one in the teachers’ room,
one in room 322, one in the gym, and one
in her sixth floor office. “This is a very
communal building; we have very few
things that really belong privately to anybody,”
she explained. “This is my chair,
“It was a great experience,” said
sophomore Sasha Gayle Schneider, a member
of the Committee. “I felt like I was educating
the next generation—and partnering
with them—to help our earth.”
The Committee members discussed
issues that have arisen regarding recycling,
such as confusion over paper and
plastic recycling, and found that the Lower
School shared many of these issues.
This activity was part of a long
process that the Committee has been working
on to reform Heschel recycling in both
the Lower and High Schools.
Said Ethan Finkelstein, co-founder
of the Sustainability Committee, “the
mission of the sustainability committee is
to inspire people to live green. The fifth
grade is trying to do so by creating videos
about how to live sustainably and I thought
that it was very meaningful to… see how
such young students care so much about
the environment. I only wish that the students
in our high school could be as driven
and motivated to be green as these young
students are.”
Teacher Profile: Judith Tumin
By Zach Stecker
Photo by Rebecca Leeman
and so I expect students to be respectful
of that.”
Judith is widely known to be a
huge fan both of professional basketball
and of the Heschel Heat basketball team.
Having played basketball in high school,
she appreciates the game because “everybody
on the court is doing something. It’s
fast moving. It’s beautiful in its execution.
It’s accessible, and there’s a lot of
it--it’s a very long season!”
Less well known is that Judith
was at Woodstock. She remarked that
it’s one of those life experiences that just
can’t be replicated. “It’s hard to describe
what Woodstock was like. Sometimes you
could get close enough to hear the music
and sometimes you couldn’t; sometimes
it mattered and sometimes it didn’t. But
there’s something about being in mass
crowds who share a constellation of belief
systems…when you’re with people
who are all there for the same reason, it
creates a world of its own.”
Judith enjoys traveling to different
countries on her own. She’s been to
all Western European countries, and visits
friends from her adolescent years in
Israel every few years. She appreciates
flying, and just being in the air; she has
gone parasailing, which she tries to do
whenever she can, and has been in small
gliders.
One might think that, after almost
forty years of teaching and twentyseven
years at the Heschel School, teaching
might become tedious or monotonous.
But for Judith this is not the case.
“One of the things I like about teaching
so much,” she said, “Is that the chemistry
of the group is different, the individual
kids are different, the energy is often different.
Something has always changed.
Every year is a new year.”