The Importance of Roughhousing
My wife showed me this video and I had to share. It doesn't quite align with my focal them but it definitely hits home. As a father to two rambunctious young boys, I have enjoyed the time honored joy of roughhousing and hope to continue to do so. I roughhoused with my dad and I'm sure he roughhoused with his dad too. It seems as though many of my friends experienced the same thing growing up and, therefore, I assume everyone has roughhoused with their parents as kid. So if my assumptions are correct, why the need for a video promoting it?
"The Importance of Roughhousing" is a five minute video produced by the Youtube channel, The Art of Manliness. This particular channel contains a number of videos including topics such as How To Deal With A Patchy Beard, How To Develop A Manly Voice, and How To Smoke Brisket. It's a humorous video blog addressing...well...manly subjects. After seeing this video, I chose to critique it because 1) I thought it was well done and 2) because of the subject matter. The arguments made for roughhousing address several societal issues related to children today despite them being made in a humorous light-hearted video. The thing about comedy is that it sometimes permeates the truth.
I will evaluate the video on the following traits: research, media application, and originality - voice - creativity:
Research
This short video makes a compelling argument for how and why one should roughhouse with their kids. Although the video is generally humorous in nature, the points made by the presenter carry a more serious undertone. It's more than just a fun time for the kids; roughhousing contributes to the development of a child in multiple ways as laid out by the video presentation. As for research, however, I don't recall any specific citations for the studies referenced in the video. I hate to give this digital story low marks for research because of the lack of citation or sourcing because I find myself agreeing with many of the points made. It must be acknowledged though that much material on the internet comes without the proper research behind it - and this same material can mold people's opinions.
Media Application
The application of media to this digital story was completely appropriate and allowed the author to tell a story that was engaging and rich in content. What better way to illustrate roughhousing and all that goes with it than to compile video clips of examples and tutorials. The "how-to" instruction gave the video a professional feel and the editing allowed the story to be told seamlessly. Although, the video was professionally done, allowing the producer to incorporate both serious and humorous content.
Originality, Voice, Creativity
The Art of Manliness videos are fun to watch and touch a number of different types of topics. The star of each video is the same though he often takes on different personas. In this particular video, the voice is professional and instructive and takes a simple subject matter and makes it into something a little more serious. It's a fun and creative way discuss roughhousing in a manner that is not absurd yet not too uptight.
Mike-
ReplyDeleteThank you for the enlightening video on the importance of roughhousing. How would you rate this video on a scale from 0-30 (10 pts. for each trait and 30 pts. being the highest score)? It's too bad that the video did not have documented research to back the importance of roughhousing. It sounded like the presenter either thought that the roughhousing was important or that he read that it was helpful somewhere. It would have been interesting to compare a child's academic and social improvement before and after roughhousing. I think the video could be improved with documented evidence of the benefits. I had difficulty separating what was humor and what he though was factual. I think it would be helpful if the presenter would make a clear distinction between what was humor and what was potentially beneficial about roughhousing (maybe exaggerating with special effects or actually stating this is a proven fact or fiction).
This was awesome, I loved this video as I believe roughhousing is always fun. However, I do agree presenting research would have really supported this video. I think this video is very interesting because there are so many negative comments out there on how parents should "parent" their children. I have seen many videos where the parent may be roughhousing with their child and a few individuals would call the parent a "bad" parent and claim that the child in danger. Videos like this may bring some light to the issues.
ReplyDelete