Sandra K. Friday
This concerns an eight-year-old Chinese girl who carries the weight of the world. It takes place in the 1930's in a province of China where she is sold for ten dollars, on the black market, as a boy, to an old magician who is longing to pass his craft on to a male heir before he dies. When he discovers, after a several days, that this little boy, "Doggie," as he calls him, is a girl and that he has been duped, he throws her a small bag of coins on the landing and pushes off in his primitive junk, leaving her desperate on the shore. She implores him not to abandon her because she has been sold seven times previously. Ali in
Children of Heaven
bears the burden of losing his sister's shoes, and it feels to him like the weight of the world, but he, at least, has a family and a roof over his head. Doggie is fighting for her life in a patriarchal society that throws girls away.
King of Masks
has about twenty-five scenes, so the
storyboard strategy
that I introduced to students for controlling the plot in
Children of Heaven
will be crucial. The first major scene is a celebration, replete with dragons and fireworks, so it should be easy and fun for students to capture this on a small square of poster board. It is at this celebration where we watch Wang, King of Masks, working his craft of instantaneously switching masks for an enchanted street audience. Students could once again jot down five significant differences they see and share them for extra credit, as they did with
Children of Heaven.
When the famous opera star that is also the female impersonator pleads with Wang not to die without an heir to his mask magic, he goes looking to buy a male child on the black market (not that uncommon in China in the '30's.) His ten dollar purchase gets him what he thinks is an eight year old boy, whom he calls Doggie, a term of endearment, and in the next two or three short scenes, they begin to bond. Things are looking up for both the old man who seems to have solved his problem and for the boy who now has a caring
grandpa
, until in a desperate public scene, Doggie is forced to confess, "I am a girl!" The old man is stunned. This occurs about thirty minutes into the film. Students will then
write a response,
referring back to the prompts from Canada's story and
Children of Heaven,
and speculating on what they think will happen. Students could write
another response
when they have finished watching the film and compare their overall response with the one they made after just six scenes when Doggie declares, "I'm a girl!" A few prompts that might be useful for them here are: Now I understand. . . ; At first I thought. . . , but now I think . . . ; This part is really saying. . .
They will then start their
storyboards
, including a caption that describes the essence of the first scenes, e.g. celebration, and King of Masks is seen performing by a famous female impersonator opera star; over tea and Wang, King of Masks, laments to Liang the impersonator, that he has no heir; Wang buys a "boy" heir on the black market; they bond on Wang's little Chinese junk; Doggie becomes very ill and Wang spends lots of money for medicine; then, Doggie, asked to "piss on a cloth" as a remedy when Wang inadvertently is wounded on the ankle, must confess in public that she is a girl!!! Yikes!
It is also at this point in the story/film that students can begin to make
observations about the conflict
and write them down on a graphic organizer. They can brainstorm the scenes they have on their storyboard and/or we can view the first thirty minutes of the film again. We will revisit possible conflicts: man versus man, man versus himself, etc. Students may observe here that in some stories there seems to be more than one very significant conflict. At this point they need not choose; the graphic organizer will be an on-going work as the story unfolds.
The lives of these two unlikely mates, an old street performer with a unique craft and a young girl who has been sold as many times as the number of years she has lived, become inextricably and tenderly intertwined, but with life-threatening ramifications.
Students can practice the Language Arts CAPT of discussing how a scene or a quote is significant to the story, or to a character, or to the plot by using prompts for a scene they choose: (1) "What has the scene to do with the lesson in the story?" or (2) "How does the scene show a trait or traits of one of the characters?" or (3) "How does the scene serve as a hinge on which the story turns?" A good scene for this activity in
King of Masks
is the scene in which Wang has learned that Doggie is a girl and he throws her a bag of coins and pushes his junk off from the landing, but when she cries out to him and leaps into the water to swim to the junk, he jerks off his shirt and jumps in to save her. He has grown attached to this young caring child who calls him
grandpa
and who is filling a void in his life, even though she has turned out to be a girl. In another scene, Doggie from a rooftop, threatens the police captain, in public, that she will fall to her death if he does not give his word that he will release old Wang from execution for a crime he did not commit. She falls, and you must watch the movie to learn the outcome.
Students can repeat the graphic organizer exercise in which they answer the question, "
Does a character in the story change or grow
in some way?" There is no question that Wang, King of Masks, develops a whole new view of the value of girls, at least of
his
girl, from the view he had at the beginning of the film. They can also repeat the graphic organizer exercise answering the question, "
Is there a significant or important lesson
or message in the story?"
Tackling the CAPT question: "Does the story have effective qualities, making it a good story?"
This is as good a time as any to introduce the Language Arts CAPT question, "What qualities does the story have that make it effective literature?" This brings me back to my rationale for designing this unit; students do not have the vocabulary they need to answer such questions. Prompts for this question vary widely from very literal characteristics such
as
: lots of details or lots
of action
, to abstract characteristics such as:
an important
lesson/message
or
a
believable story.
As this unit progresses, students will develop a list of terms they can use to answer this CAPT question. Of course they already have started this list by making observations about the
conflict in a story
and backing it up with evidence (quotes or scenes); by making observations about whether a
character changes
in the course of a story;
at first, but then, and finally
and backing these up with evidence (quotes or scenes); and making observations about the
lesson
in the story
and backing it up with evidence (quotes or scenes). These three characteristics alone make a good case for an effective or good story. And
King of Masks
has all three: conflict, character change, and lesson or message.
Students don't have to finish a story or film to revisit the question, "With which events or characters in the story do you or someone you know relate?" Since the unit focuses on the anxiety experienced by children on their way to growing up, students might consider how the anxiety of Canada, Ali, and Doggie interrelates. And as the future of three Aborigine girls in
Rabbit-Proof Fence
changes in a matter of minutes, students can assess their anxiety on their 1,200-mile trek
to growing up
.