I noticed from an email that the
Margaret Mead film and video festival will be in New York
City November 11-14. If you don’t know who Margaret Mead is, you can check out
this online bio. Most people know Mead from her
book Coming of Age in Samoa which, according to the bio site:
Presented to the public for the first time the idea that the individual experience of developmental stages could
be shaped by cultural demands and expectations, so that adolescence might be more or less stormy and sexual
development more or less problematic in different cultures.
In other words nurture v. nature.
The reason I bring this up is because a) it might be an interesting festival, as the films are largely about other
cultures, and b) Margaret Mead remains a very controversial figure, as you can read about
at this site, which discusses criticism of her by
anthropologist Derek Freeman. Oh, the governor of Florida called her a “dirty old lady” for her views on
decriminalizing marijuana.