In Europe, before Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press and movable type in the 1400s, books were privileged forms of entertainment and scholarship reserved for royalty and the church. In the movie,
In the Name of the Rose
(based on Umberto Echo’s novel under the same title), the lost library of Alexandria has become the clandestine treasure of a monastery, hidden in an Escheresque labyrinth tower. Scholarship of the library’s “heretical” information, dating back to works by Aristotle on humor, is surreptitiously bartered in exchange for “unspeakable favors” and blackmail, which leads to a few murders. In the end, the library is burned by its mysterious caretaker (also the murderer) who fears that its brilliance could illuminate the Dark Ages. A world in which the common man, and even the poor, could be enlightened, would become a world open to question and investigation; a world that could and would become literate. With literacy among the masses, Europe would eventually put an end to the tyranny of the Church of Rome, its Inquisition and abject power. Monarchies would take a back seat to parliaments, and while world power would see-saw economically and politically for better or for worse, the common man would come to understand such power through more broadly distributed literature made possible initially by Gutenberg’s invention. Consequently, people would reason their fate rather than blindly accept it solely on the basis of divine intervention. And as time and technology would continue to expand, the world would shrink, making human existence (for the individual, if not the state) far more precious.
Coming into the twentieth century, steam power and electricity continued to shrink the globe even more. Pictures captured on film were made to move at the cinématograph and the cathode-ray tube brought them home. It became well-known that “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and painfully, many Americans, especially young ones, took that message to heart as they traded in literacy skills for the instant gratification that the television offered. Books had engendered literacy and with literacy came thinking skills, brain power and intellectual interaction. Film and television had (and has) the potential to do the same, but more often than not, it has created fictitious companions for the lonely, a vicarious physicality and a tenuous connection with the surrounding world that can all too easily be tuned out or switched off. While our libraries have not been burned to the ground for fear of illuminating the common man as in
The Name of the Rose,
they risk obsolescence at the hands of a new kind of heresy—film, largely as it has been filtered through TV sets—reconstituting a kind of modernized serf in the creation of the “couch potato.”
Pealing the Potato
A fundamental objective of this curriculum unit is to introduce students to film as an interactive medium; one that is at the same time educational, entertaining, and mind-expanding. In order to do this, students will be apprised of various sensory awareness factors that affect how they see a movie, such as: involuntary attention (the sensation of surprise); voluntary attention (points of interest that motivate one to see); novelty; movement; intensity and size; comfort and surroundings; lastly, mindset (based on past experience, need for acceptance, and personal and cultural prejudices). In this regard, students will view the film,
Babe,
a fanciful story about a pig who overcomes the prejudices of the more uppity farm animals on the food chain. This film will be shown in its entirety (as an in-school field trip) with some intermittent discussion relating to sensory awareness factors that will guide them in determining how they “feel” about the film. Student attention will also be directed to production design as the architecture of all the visual aspects of the movie—the “look” of the movie—and how color, settings, properties, costumes, etc. are coordinated by the production designer to create a feel and an atmosphere that will be believed by the audience. Various film making roles will be represented throughout the curriculum unit. Since the production designer is usually one of the first people hired to work on a film, this role is presented in this introductory section.
Lastly, students will write a short movie critique. They will be supplied with background information that will include: film title, producer, director, actors, screenplay writer, director of photography, costume designer, makeup artist, art director, special effects and copyright date. (Students will be given background information sheets for each presentation in the unit.) They will be instructed to write a preliminary outline of the plot: beginning (setting, character introductions); middle (challenge and/or conflict presented); turnaround (a twist in the story); ending (resolution). From the background information and their preliminary outlines, they will begin drafting one-page critiques. Focusing on the sensory awareness factors previously discussed, they will formulate opinions and express feelings; backing their observations with examples taken from their outlines. They can also use the background information should they want to make mention of something that they either liked or disliked with regard to the production or the performances in the film. Students will share their critiques and will be advised that sensory awareness, production design and story line are elements that will be discussed in each film presentation.
The next three presentations will focus largely on diversity. Diversity is introduced to students in three ways: Allegorically through further film study of the movie
Babe
; practically by viewing excerpted clips from an NBC special for children titled
A Nationwide Town Meeting on Racism
; and philosophically in viewing a clip from a PBS Bill Moyers interview with Houston Smith titled
The Wisdom of Religion.
Babe (1995)
Babe,
previously viewed in its entirety in the introduction to this unit, will be viewed again in selected clips to further emphasize the film’s theme. As its opening narration states, it is “The story of an unprejudiced heart.”
Babe
, in a friendly way, clearly illustrates societal problems with diversity, namely: stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination and scapegoating. The film also offers viable solutions to regaining and maintaining one’s integrity. Students will explore some of the predicaments that Babe finds himself in as well as how ingeniously or haphazardly he manages to get out of them. Definitions for
stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, racism, religious bigotry, anti-semitism, sexism, heterosexism,
and
scapegoating
taken from the Anti Defamation League information sheet, “Some Helpful Terms,” will be given to students, which they will review in class and keep in their “Resource File” folder since these terms will be referred to frequently throughout the entire unit.
In the next class, students will receive five sheets of printed matter in various color stocks. These sheets will contain randomly placed words and phrases (printed in various type styles and font sizes) that have been taken directly from quotes in the movie and the ADL definition sheet. From these items, students will compose or perhaps, “construct,” a found poem. They are not limited to the color hand-out sheets, but may also use words and phrases clipped out of magazines or other disposable print media. They will be instructed to compose a found poem in much the same way that they might put a puzzle or collage together. They may also add graphics (cut from magazines) if they wish, but they are coached to only use words and phrases that they “find.” They may not cut letters in order to make words. Toward the end of class, we will review the work in progress and make revisions as are deemed desirable.
A Nationwide Town Meeting on Racism (1993)
Various clips will be presented to students from this 1993 NBC children’s special. This show not only offered an open dialogue on prejudice to a diverse group of young children and teenagers, but also explained the origins of race and culture. The purpose of this section will be to explore those origins in order to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the diverse qualities of peoples from various places that comprise the whole of humanity. After viewing selected clips from this show, students will be introduced to acrostic poems. They will randomly select name tags from a box, which will give each student the name of a particular ethnic or cultural group, e.g., Mexican, African, Jewish, etc. A series of maps taken from
Exploring American History
(the 8th grade Social Studies text) will be shown in an overhead presentation in order to illustrate where many American cultural groups came from. Transparencies of the maps to be included are: “Arrival of the First Americans” (p. 7); “Early Voyages of Discovery” (p. 58); “Early Spanish Explorers” (p. 70); “North America in 1750” (p. 168); “North America in 1763” (p. 184); “The U.S. and Its Neighbors in 1825” (p. 304); “Immigration to the U.S.—1840-1920” (pp. 458). Students will be advised to take notes pertaining to the ethnic/cultural groups that are listed on their name tags. They will also be instructed to find three facts about their respective groups from their Social Studies text for homework.
In the next class, the homework will be reviewed and discussed. I will then demonstrate the acrostic poetic form to the class by using the group, “Irish,” and will briefly discuss the history of the potato famine that killed 750,000 Irish by 1850 and led thousands of them away from their homeland.
Sample Acrostic:
____
I
reland surrenders to
A
____
R
ighteous crown, bereft of wil
L
,
____
I
mmigrating to empty arms, t
O
____
S
hameless greed, she carries o
N
____
H
ungry, hated and alon
E
The students will work independently on their acrostic poems for approximately ten minutes at which point they will share the work in progress. Comments, suggestions and cooperative editing will aid in fine-tuning their work. Lastly, the class will work cooperatively on an acrostic for the word “A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N.” At the end of class, homework will be assigned to read: “Race and Culture” from the 7th grade Social Studies text,
A Changing World
(pp. 65-67).
The Wisdom of Religion (1996)
Thus far students have addressed some political, social, geographical and historical aspects of human diversity. In this next presentation, a philosophy for diversity will be the focus as students view a clip from the PBS Bill Moyer’s interview with Houston Smith, Professor of Comparative Religions, regarding Confucianism. In this presentation, students will explore the pragmatic aspect of this religious philosophy. Simply stated, Confucianism offers a cosmic view of existence that emanates from the family at its center. The key to the philosophy is empathy (which correlates to the ADL’s focus on understanding and overcoming prejudice), but we are warned that to give empathy only to our family creates nepotism; to give empathy only to our community creates provincialism; to empathize only with our “own kind” creates nationalism; and not until we can give our empathy to the entire world, can we create humanism. Beyond humanism, Confucius believed that we could expand our empathy even further to the cosmos and to our existence into the infinite. After this presentation and subsequent discussion, students will be given the homework assignment to read: “Cultural Borrowing” (
A Changing World
, pp. 60-64).
The homework will be reviewed at the start of this next class and the poetic form of calligram will be introduced. Students will be instructed to draw five concentric arcs on a sheet of plain paper. The arcs should be drawn in light pencil line, spaced about one inch apart from each other, and labeled (in color marking pens) as follows. (Please note that the sample is a reduced version.)
(figure available in print form)
Students are then instructed to write a phrase (in pencil) that describes the importance of empathy for each area. They are to write on the line of the arc (that appears above the label) for each phrase. After reviewing the work and revising accordingly, students will be instructed to use color marking pens to ink their phrases (using a specific color for each phrase). Then they will erase the pencil lines. What they will end up with should resemble a rainbow. Students will be told that the rainbow is often used as a symbol for diversity, and that this kind of poetic writing that forms a shape and/or design is called a calligram. At the end of class, students will be given a homework assignment to compose another calligram (in another shape) that will represent some aspect of empathy and/or diversity.
