Fireside Chat

Families Can Be Together Forever

For my fireside chat I made a video consisting of pictures from my wedding, a couple pictures from my past, and video clips from some of my favorite movies. I wanted to tell a story of my family and the dynamic I have with different members within it. The clips from movies I used were scary accurate to the relationships I hold with my parents. I told a personal story about my family while also expressing some errors I find within the primary song "Families Can Be Together Forever."

As soon as Benjamin said that this fireside was meant to be a means to possibly tell a personal story, I instantly thought of telling the story of my parents divorce. When it came to what type of mode of presentation I would use I wanted to solely do a video, since I am not one for presenting in front of a crowd. Well then he said "and there has to be an element of performance," and I sunk. I decided I would figure out how to bring in some kind of performance later, and focus on the video aspect at first. 

My idea of comparing still images to movie clips came to me right away. I feel as though with still images, even though a picture is worth a thousand words, they tend to be deceitful and misleading about what the true story is. I find this to be true especially with my wedding photos. In the pictures we all look like best friends, despite the fact I was upset with my mom or that my dad did not really approve of the marriage thing in the first place. Oh yes, so back to my story of my parents divorce. The weekend before the fireside chat, I watched A Doll's House at the request of Dean Duncan. I instantly chose to use that final clip as the way to tell that my parents got divorced. Also, instead of using a wedding photo to overlay that clip, I found a photo from about a year before they got divorce, one of my last photos of us all still sealed as an eternal family. After my parents got divorced I started to become really annoyed with the song "Families Can Be Together Forever." It means well but the type of family dynamic it describes, be it broad, is hardly common among families, at least it wasn't with my family and many other families I connected with after the divorce. So I decided that would be my element of presentation, satirically singing that song in a primary sort of way, which is accurate to my form of singing. 

While looking for clips to describe my current relationship with my parents I stuck to movies I know, and the conversations within these clips are way too accurate. I legitimately did yell at my mom for having such an easy life now with her "perfect job and perfect boyfriend," both of which came to her as a result of the divorce. She was always accusing me of not understanding her because of how young I was. With my dad, Dan in Real Life is our family's favorite movie. That scene was perfect for our relationship because when I first told him I was going to marry my now husband he was not excited in the slightest. This was meant to really depict my life, and even though most comments I got after my presentation stated that people just thought I was trying to present situations that contradicted the traditional primary view, I was hoping to tell an abstract story about me. And even though I find problems within that primary song, I believe it instills a sort of hope for future marriages which is why I included the segment with me and my husband at the end.