Where does new language come from?

Probably from more places than I can imagine, but I’m especially fascinated by the language that technology brings us. During my residency at City High School and Pueblo Gardens Elementary School, I encouraged my students to write about technology and media that they interact with on a daily basis: video games, YouTube Channels, memes, and screens. Technology serves us but is simultaneously a trapdoor that we can fall into and then google how to get out of. It’s so much of our lives and I want my students to explore this tool that liberates us and at the same time insulates us (how is this not fascinating fodder for poetry?). Below is a list of what students are interested in, based on the poems they wrote during my residency:

Lil Moco

After seeing his name pop up in a student’s poem, I decided to check him out. Lil Moco is a cholo parody account on Youtube and has two million subscribers. He brings two worlds together: an old school cholo trope fused with internet personality antics. He has a giant sharpied tear below one eye: it’s exaggerated like his character. He has music videos, skits, and you can watch him play Fortnite, or go about his day, sort of like a live (life) stream. Living vicariously through popular personalities is not new, but watching a character play video games or go through their daily routine is strange and fascinating because it’s so foreign to me. 
 
Pig the Pug 

Pig the Pug came up in four different student poems, all from my third-grade class and appropriately so. I originally thought Pig the Pug was a spinoff of Peppa Pig, but it’s just a children’s picture book series that tells moral tales about Pig the Pug and his friend, the wiener dog Trevor. Pig the Pug is not a kind protagonist.  Pig doesn’t share his toys, and lies about who made a mess and blames it all on Trevor. I only took the time to read two Pig the Pug books online but each one ends with Pig getting hurt and in bandages. All the stories are moral tales that encourage sharing and kindness towards others--standard picture book stuff. These are cute and funny tales and I can see why my third-grade class likes them so much: they’re accessible, easy to read stories with great art.

Jeffy

This was definitely the strangest of the references that I picked up on in a few students’ poems. Jeffy is a character in the SuperMarioLogan (SML) plush toy Youtube world, which has 8 million followers. SML makes very low budget, 10-15 minute episodes with handheld plush toys. Jeffy is one of these puppet characters and is a stereotype of a child with a learning disability and very controversial. This is a channel that moves in adult-ish humor yet the gags are childlike. It’s slapstick and silly and since the language is for adults, kids are attracted to it. It’s a strange world. Be thankful you know little to nothing about Jeffy.

Chucky

Irrespective of technology, elementary school students are still intrigued by Chucky. Something about a doll that comes to life and terrorizes people must be scary and compelling for someone just discovering such things.

I was substitute teaching in El Paso, Texas ten years ago and I remember fifth graders being scared/amazed at the mythos of Chucky. I had a student mention, and then write about, Chucky during my residency teaching third graders at Pueblo Gardens and was surprised (I guess I shouldn’t be) that they knew who Chucky was. During my residencies, I try to get students to make a lot of content and then we can edit out the less interesting language. My student’s Chucky poem didn’t make it to the final editing/publishing stage but it’s an avenue that I wanted the student to feel free to explore. 

Fortnite 

Fortnite is a game for all systems (Xbox, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC...) and is a video game phenomenon that combines the construction game genre (think Minecraft) with third person shooter type games (Gears of War). I still don’t quite understand how Fortnite works and in future residencies I’m going to ask my students to talk more about it. Yes, it might be a fad that gets surpassed by something more exciting in a few years but by encouraging my students to write poetry about this game I’m hoping it helps them document an era in screen history, and perhaps add some depth and a lens to the game that students may not have thought was there.

Are all these instances of media, technology and influencers relevant? Are they all noteworthy or worth our work in poems? For my students the answer was yes. I hope that writing about how they interact with screens will help my students be aware of the way screens shape us, and that this can inform their poetry lives going forward. I also think about the William Carlos Williams line from the poem, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”: “It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably everyday/for lack/of what is found there.” I don’t believe that anyone literally dies from what they find or don’t find in poetry but I’m always surprised (and I want to be surprised) by new themes and ideas in poetry, and my first residencies at Pueblo Gardens Elementary and City High School helped me see what future topics (news!) in poetry might look like. I hope my students are able to inject what is news to them in their creative work and this might help them see their online avatars as more than just entertainment, but as an engagement in their lives that can help them be critical of the media they intake and maybe even help them balance their online lives with their real world relationships.

 

Gabriel Dozal is a teaching artist in our Writing the Community program. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. He is from El Paso, TX and writes about the borderlands. He has work in The Literary Review, Guernica, and The Iowa Review.