Sunday, December 27, 2009

Where Have You Been?




The video that you see above is an adaptation of the classic story "Where are you going, where have you been?" by Joyce Carol Oates.

Ever since high school, this one story has followed me around. The first time I read it, I couldn't understand anything about it. I didn't know there were many layers to this one little story. The second time, much older, I was told that for a few extra credit points we could draw a representation of the story. That picture, I guess, is lost to time. Fortunately, In 2007, in my intro to fiction class, our teacher said we could do a short film for 30 extra credit points. I jumped at the chance. The films were only supposed to be 5 to 7 minutes long. Three other students jumped at this too. This short, however, was 13 minutes long which was way over the time allotted. But my teacher liked it so much he didn't care.

Hope you enjoy. Select the annotations for some trivia facts.

I played Arnold Friend while my girlfriend played Connie.

Have you ever read this story before? How did you feel when you read it?


"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul." — Joyce Carol Oates

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I read this story in a Contemporary American Lit course in college. It was my introduction to J.C.O. I ended up writing a paper on it, in which I posited that Arnold Friend was the devil in disguise. "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" are the questions parents need to be asking their teenagers (which Connie's parents failed to do). Now that my kids are almost old enough to be coming and going, it's interesting to see this story pop up again.