It’s not very often that I get to introduce my students to American pop culture; they are so media saturated. They all watch Glee. They all know who Taylor Swift is. They constantly make jokes at poor Justin Beiber’s expense. Last week my class and I were studying the age of American industrialization, Henry Ford, and the assembly line. After they had dutifully taken notes from me for twenty-five minutes, I decided to reward them with a short video clip I thought they might enjoy.
I showed them the clip from the I love Lucy show in which Ethel and Lucy take jobs working in a candy factory. Their job was to wrap individual candies as they moved down the assembly line. Things start out fine, but then –in typical Lucy Ricardo fashion- things went haywire. It’s a classic clip but a little dated and black and white. I didn’t know if my kids would like or appreciate it.
Fear not. They liked it. In fact, I would say they more than liked it; they loved it. By the time Ethel and Lucy were stuffing the excess candy into their mouths, their hats, and their blouses, my students were stamping their feet and –dare I say it?- squealing in delight.
They enjoyed the three-minute clip so much that I showed it to them a second time and got the same over-the-top reaction.
Good to know that classic slapstick transcends time and culture.
-Jack
It went so well that I am trying to figure out how I can work the Vita-meata-vegamin clip into my curriculum next week.
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