Probing...On a Sunday Afternoon

My copy of The Movies came in the mail yesterday, and this afternoon I was finally able to crack it open.  While I know that academics get published because their theories are seen as acceptable and relevant to their field, I was still amazed at how closely Gee's probe, hypothesize, reprobe, and rethink cycle fit my first experience with the game.

I opened my studio, ready to take the movie industry by storm; however, after my first few movies were released, I found myself exactly where I had started--at the bottom of the heap.  Why weren't my actors giving better performances?  Why was my director always stressed?  How could I get my writers to produce better scripts?  To develop my next plan of action, which would hopefully take my little studio to the top, I began experimenting.  I looked to see what would happen when I gave my actors a raise after a movie or treated them to a makeover.  I took my director to the snack van after a hard day of shooting, and I made sure that my writers had adequate experience with a particular genre before making them churn out a script.  

I also uncovered a few details that will definitely help my studio: the news releases will let me know which types of movies will be popular with audiences (when the stock market crashed, people were all about the comedies!), and actor will get very jealous if everyone except him gets a pay raise, and too many trips to the snack van will result in a food addiction and require a trip to rehab.

After this first round of probing, I find myself wanting to start over to give my studio a better name...looks like my appreciative system (Gee, 2003) is in full effect.