MOOCs as Eddie Murphy
File under: pointless things that occur to you while walking the dog.
My daughter came across Beverley Hills Cop on TV the other day, and then worked her way through a range of Eddie Murphy films. She quickly discovered what the rest of us learnt back in the 80s. Most Eddie Murphy films are not very good. Murphy has undeniable screen presence, and when he’s not on screen these films are just interminable. But for a few years anything with Murphy in it was a guaranteed hit. I came to the conclusion that what happened was that a lot of average scripts had sat around without any real backing, because they weren’t very original. But stick Eddie Murphy in it, and you’ve got box office success on your hands. It is hard to imagine why on earth anyone would make The Golden Child if it didn’t have Murphy headlining it. Or 48 Hours which was just another mismatched cop film. But with Murphy in it, they become something else. A lot of them aren’t really comedies either. They’re just films that have Eddie Murphy in. This is not a critique of Murphy as an actor, but I think he paid the price for this in the end. That “anything with Murphy in it is great” attitude wore thin by Beverley Hills Cop 3, and by the time you got to Pluto Nash, it was insulting.
So, what does this have to do with MOOCs? The ‘stick Murphy in it’ attitude of studio bosses back in the 80s seems to me rather akin to the ‘stick a MOOC in it’ attitude I’ve encountered with research bids, or discussions around innovative teaching. I have joked that I’ve dusted off all my rejected research bids and replaced “OER” with “MOOC”. It’s not quite true, but there’s an element of the Golden Child script about it all. At the moment, even with the MOOC backlash hitting, funders, governments, journalists – they all want a bit of MOOC action in there. To extend the Murphy-MOOC analogy, then I think MOOCs will pay the price for this high coverage. A good MOOC proposal will be rejected because they were of their time.
Actually, watching all those 80s Murphy films made me think there is a MOOC in there somewhere about 1980s action films and what they reveal about social attitudes of the time (it’s a LOT by the way).
9 Comments
Rob Farrow
Good Eddie Murphy films: Trading Places; Coming to America; Beverley Hills Cop
OK, I think I’m out
dkernohan
Put a donk on it.
admin
a *banging* donk
CogDog
Bowfinger wins the MOOC metaphor (I think)- make sure your daughter sees that one.
admin
i don’t think I’ve ever seen Bowfinger. Is it a stinker?
Matt Crosslin
I haven’t watched The Golden Child since it came out in the theaters, but it was a pretty standard Hollywood flick of “supernatural + action + comedy + big name star + eastern martial arts mysticism.” There were dozens like it that year (Big Trouble in Little China). Mel Gibson was originally the lead, but his schedule didn’t work out and they brought in Eddie Murphy.
admin
Ha, yes I’d forgotten that 80s sub-sub-genre. I wonder if it was scheduled as a comedy with Gibson? There is precious little comedy in it, so could easily have been played straight.
Rolin Moe
Also interesting — the Ernie Hudson character from Ghostbusters was originally written for Eddie Murphy, as was the Shatner love interest in Star Trek IV (though, in that version, it was not a love interest).
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