After reading Freeman’s “On the Form of the Video Essay,”  The way the pieces Grandpa, Mangoes and That Kind of daughter reflect the goals or characteristics of the essay form are that they all happen to be informal, personal and reflective (associative).

In Steven Chen’s Grandpa, Chen uses features and strategies  like painting a person who symbolizes him in the visual in the color blue while the rest of his family is painted in red to visually frame the difference and distance he feels from his Chinese grandparents, since there is a language barrier. Chen’s use of a static-y and blurry image frames his past memories like a tape on VCR, old but still memorable. Looking back at Freeman’s discussion of what a video essay’s form should resemble I can see that Chen plays with associative thoughts, and is able to move the reader deeper into his own mental process of feeling distant from his family throughout his video.

Freeman discusses in “On The Form” that a video essay is a mixed blend of poetry, creative non fiction, documentary and art among many other factors. A video essay is “subjective, autobiographical” and is designed “to mess with the audience’s expectations of a nonfiction film”. A video essay should be self questioning and self conscious, which Chen pulls off as he speaks directly to his audience, briefing us about his family history, focusing on his dad’s Chinese parents, the differences between his mom and father’s side and the difficult language barriers he faces as a mixed child. Chen might not questions himself through his video, but he questions if other mixed children in his audience are like him or feel as he does about his culture. Chen is conscious about his heritage and we learn through his past experiences with his family that he wishes he had learned more. But Chen does not argue, or try to persuade and solve his problems. Instead he just states his own point of view of himself and his family. Chen’s video essay introduces us to believe he will discuss his grandfather, but instead uses his grandparents and parents to distinguish the distance he feels living in a mixed family unfamiliar about his own heritage and language.