Research

I love discovering new things, making connections between old bits of information and new. I once took a class on library sciences, which included learning the Dewey decimal system and a unit on internet research. I've been using the internet for various classwork since I was in junior high, so most searching is pretty intuitive for me, but this class helped me realize you can find any answer online. What's nearly impossible to pinpoint is whether or not that answer is true.

At any rate, I was writing a movie review for next Monday (spoiler alert: it's "The Scarlet Pimpernel") and I started doing a little research. For a serious research paper I would go to the library for much more reliable resources, but for my movie review purposes, I rely mostly on the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb. 

As far as I know, this website is perfectly reputable, I just have never bothered to find out for sure--that is a project requiring a lot more time than I really want to invest right now. This is just an example of how easy it is to take someone's word for it. A website may look big and official, but it needs to have endorsements from other companies you've heard of, or at least for the facts to match up with what a few other sources have to say. It also helps if someone you trust offers up a recommendation for said website (even if it's another big website).

When writing my movie reviews, I like to include the director of the film and a few key actors, mentioning noteworthy prior roles as well. While researching "The Scarlet Pimpernel," I decided to investigate if it was an original screenplay or one based off a book (I'm really not a very well-read English major). I typed in the title at the Amazon website and a book popped up in the search results. That meant the movie was based off a book and not written specifically as a film. Then I noticed the author and looked her up on Wikipedia: Baroness Emma Orczy.

It is assumed that Wikipedia is a trusted source of information for the general public (again, if this were a serious scholarly paper I would find actual books written about the Baroness to confirm the facts), so I perused the article. It turns out that Baroness Orczy was born in Hungary in 1865 and wrote "The Scarlet Pimpernel" in 1903. She started writing as a means to supplement her husband's meager income and gained much success with her character Sir Percy Blakeney (who is secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel). The article also mentioned that her family left Hungary in fear of a peasant revolution--a theme that seems to have influenced her Pimpernel play. Very interesting.


I also decided to look up the scarlet pimpernel on Wikipedia, since it is a flower and I wanted to know what it looks like. It turns out that I am already familiar with anagallis arvensis, a.k.a. red chickweed or "poorman's barometer." I used to pick these little flowers in my yard all the time as a child, or in the fields at my elementary school during recess! They are really quite small flowers, and most consider them weeds. But I remember adding them to the tiny bouquets I would make, pretending I was a giant or something. Something else I learned about this miniscule flower: it's called a "barometer" because the petals close up when there is a change in atmospheric pressure (remember, that usually indicates rain is on the way). I love learning new things!

I could have also spent some time researching the French Revolution, since the story is an historical fiction based around that war. My husband summed it up as a big waste of time and lots of unnecessary death, as all it did was remove one set of aristocrats and replace them with new ones. Every society is going to have a rich upper class; killing them all will only make room for someone else to fill that role. A better idea is to help rich people keep their sympathies open to those less fortunate and figure out ways to help the poor help themselves. But it's all history now.


Anyway, it was a fascinating way to spend the afternoon. Go research something today!