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Richard Angelo 144 C Taylor
Educational Policy Studies 257-3993
EPE 773, Special Topics Seminar
Teaching and Learning in Contemporary American Film
Fall, 2007
Our critical task is to discover why they use their time
as they do, why they say the things they say. Without taking
up the details of the films, we should not expect to know
what they are, to know what causes them.
—Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness
Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already
on hand. The making is a remaking.
—Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking
What can the imagination defend us against except the preemptive
force of another imagination?
—Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading
Required Reading:
Thomas Doherty, Teenagers & Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950’s (2nd revised & expanded ed., Temple University Press, 2002).
Robert C.Bulman, Hollywood Goes to High School: Cinema, Schools, and American Culture (Worth, 2005).
Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Harvard, 1981).
Henry Giroux, Breaking into the Movies: Film and the Culture of Politics (Blackwell, 2002).
For the last twenty years or so,a lively but still largely unappreciated discussion of education and American culture has been underway in and about the movies. This seminar aims to make that discussion audible, and come to terms with at least some of its implications. Bulman, Doherty, Cavell, and Giroux contribute to this project, not because they cover our subject so much as theyuncover it, because each of these books is notably aliveto the challenges and pleasures that can be ours once we begin to take the thought of the movies seriously. Bulman, Doherty and the others have different starting points, different ways of proceeding, and that’s precisely what makes them instructive. Ironing out those differenceswill be less important as we go along than the precision wemuster in describing them.
For our purposes this semester, I’ve excluded films like The Color of Money, An Officer and a Gentleman, Training Day, or Million Dollar Baby, films whichtake a keen interest in the moral ambiguities of instruction but situate the action welloutside the realm of schools and colleges. Instead, I suggest we focus on four narrative situationsbasic to coming-of-age comedies and melodramas—four different “scenes of instruction,” as I like to think of them. We begin with films centered on teacher-figures who are schoolteachers (e.g., Dead Poets Society or Dangerous Minds). Cases where instruction is cradled in the relationships young people have with one another (e.g., Risky Business or October Sky) come next, followed by those where the burdens of instruction are shouldered by an adult figure who isnot a schoolteacher or a parent (e.g., With Honors, or Bronx Tale). We conclude the by sampling films centered on the untutored capacity of the young to meet and redeem the world (e.g., Dennis the Menace, Fresh, George Washington, or Whale Rider).
Repetition and differencewithin each of thesesub-genres is sure to be of interest to us. (For example:Cavell’s conception of genre—though not Bulman’s or Doherty’s, as it turns out— films like White Squall, Man Without a Face, 187, or Emperor’s Club might be read as so manyanswers or replies to Dead Poets Society. What do these answers or replies amount to, I wonder?) But we should also take an interest inthe broad contrasts or conflicts between the stories the filmmakers are prone to tell and those that greet us regularly in the newspapers or here in the college of education, for that matter. For instance: when people talk seriously about KERA, about “No Child Left Behind” or reducing the “achievement gap,” their ambition, implicitly if not explicitly—their dream— is to make learning the rule rather than the exception, the predictable result of a perfected classroom technique. But in the movies, if I’m not mistaken—and this seems to be true across the board—learning gets underway only when the rules are broken. In other words, while policy discourse banks on the centripetal forces of organization and planning in one scene of instruction and one scene only—schoolteachers in the classroom—the movies put the emphasis on the centrifugal—on happenstance, good fortune, and surprise—in school or out. Again, one can only wonder if these differences matter, and if they do, how or what ways do they matter.How should we characterize these differences, and what claims do they make—are they making—on our attention?
Thisis a seminar after all, which means have more freedom than you might have otherwise to pursue your own interpretive interests—to stake out a project, to settle on the scope and emphasis of your term paper, to determine which films you watch at home each week, and what criticism (if any) beyond Bulman, Cavell, Doherty and Giroux you take to heart. We also have some collective decisions to make. I’ve included a few movie titles in the schedule, if only as sign posts, together with readings to support them, but the arrangement is tentative, open to revision at any point. As our conversation develops and interpretive lines of interest emerge more clearly, we will be in a position to decide which films (or portions of films) we watch together in class. Finally, I would like each of youtake someresponsibility on a round robin basisfor leading our weekly discussions. There will no final exam. Your grade will be based on my evaluation of your written efforts and the quality of your participation in class.
August 23: First meeting.
August 30: Doherty, Chapters 1-5, pp.1-114: “American Movies as a Less-than-Mass Medium” through “Dangerous Youth.” Screen Blackboard Jungle or Rebel Without a Causein class?
September 6: Finish Doherty, with special emphasis on the concluding chapter, “Generation after Generation of Teenpics.” Discussion.
September 13: Bulman, Chapter 1, “Using the Movies to Make Sense of Society: A Sociological Introduction,” pp. 1-15 and Cavell, “Introduction: Words for a Conversation.” How does Cavell’s understanding of genre and the task of criticism—the aim in “reading a film” or a series of films—differ from Doherty’s on the one side, and Bulman’s on the other?
September 20: Screen one of the comedies of remarriage in class (Adam’s Rib?) and watch one on your own beforehand?
September 27: Giroux, “Breaking Into the Movies: An Introduction,” and Chapter 8, “The Politics of Pedagogy, Gender and Whiteness in Dangerous Minds.”Bulman, Chapters 2 & 3, “Middle Class Individualism and the Adolescent Frontier,” pp. 16-42, and “Fighting the Culture of Poverty: The Teacher as the Urban School Cowboy. View a schoolteacher-centered film of your choice. Screen a portion ofDangerous Mindsin class…? How or in what ways does Giroux’s approach differ from Cavell’s and Doherty’s?
October 4: Giroux, Chapter 6, “Culture, Class and Pedagogy in Dead Poets Society,” and Bulman, Chaper 5, “Challenging the Culture of Privilege: Class Conflict in the Private School Film,” pp. 119-144. Continue discussion of teacher-as-schoolteacher films. (Mr.Holland’s Opus, Man Without a Face,Inside Outor 187?) or what Bulman categorizes as “the private school film” (eg.Scent of a Women, Emperor’s Club, or Finding Forrester). Screen Dead Poets in class?
October 11: Bulman, Chapter 4, “Expressing Oneself in the Culture of Conformity: Contradictions in Suburban School Cinema,” pp. 80-118. Watch any film where pedagogic relations are cradled in the relationships which young people have with one another. Screen Risky Business in class…? Follow up discussion, drawing on Giroux, Cavell, Doherty as you see fit, along with anyone else you care to mention.
October 18: Continue instruction by peers. Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or October Sky?
October 25: Consider a film where the burden of instruction is shouldered by an adult who is not a schoolteacher or a parent. ScreenKarate Kid,With Honors, Renaissance Man, or Bronx Tale in class…?
November 1: Revisionary tendencies within these sub-genres: Rushmore,Election, Searching for Bobbie Fischer,Good Will Hunting, Higher Learning, or School Daze.
November 8:
November 15: The redemptive heroism of the young: Dennis the Menace, Fresh, George Washington or Whale Rider?
November 22: Thanksgiving. No class.
November 29: A concluding exercise: Mona Lisa’s Smile?Art SchoolConfidential?
December 6: Last class
December 13: Exam Week. Papers due.