Matthew S. Monahan
1.1 Statement of Context
Metropolitan Business Academy (MBA) is an interdistrict magnet high school that has adopted many of the ideals of the Regional Educational Support Center (RESC), the Center for 21st Century Skills. Like many of the smaller high schools in New Haven, it is moving towards Mastery Based Standards and Grading with emphasis on Project Based Learning (PBL). It is my aim that students who complete this unit through either of my courses (i.e. senior level English, Introduction to Film elective) will have a deeper understanding of American citizenship and democracy. Students will critically assess “Americans” struggle against forces of oppression, especially in the context of present day post-9/11, post-Katrina America.
During the 2011-2012 academic year MBA introduced its film studies elective [insert shameless plug for Best Video and Cultural Center here]. From day one the class has been filled to capacity (27 students per section, few of the initial cohort arrived with any academic interest in the subject). My aim was to impart my love of film while teaching critical thinking. I soon discovered that introducing too many technical film terms and too much industry jargon was counterproductive. Compelling storytelling and a surfeit of text-dependent questions proved to be more fruitful. By criticizing film rather than passively absorbing it, my students discovered film to be a medium to engage beyond summer blockbusters. By the end the course, most students grasped that Introduction to Film was neither Video on Demand nor an easy “crip” course (e.g. “Rocks for Jocks,” an easy science credit for those who are less academically inclined), but a gateway to enjoying film as an academic and thought-provoking art form for the rest of their lives.
Not only did students change their film experience from passive absorption to active critique, but their newfound excitement for the medium fueled their writing which in turn improved their skills. They produced more and better quality analysis. At the end of year one, I began booking computer lab time and initiated a class blog; although the blog was arguably a failure this first year, student feedback advocated future curricular inclusion. Three years later both the quality of the posts and the traffic on the site have improved. At the time of this writing, the site is just shy of 12,000 page views. The elective produced outstanding critical pieces, showing an improvement in long-form writing and higher-order thinking.
Building on research and curriculum writing I have completed through my involvement in past Yale New Haven Teacher Institute seminars (led by professors Kathy Dudley, John Gaddis, Lanny Hammer, Matt Jacobson, Pericles Lewis, Mary Liu, and Annabel Patterson), my aim is to use documentary and feature-length films to facilitate and broaden students’ understanding of America’s recent past and present and to have them think critically about such concepts as democracy and citizenship, especially in terms of rights and surveillance culture. I believe the subject matter is vital for students in 21
st
century America and film is an outstanding means of teaching while eliciting complex analysis and increasingly sophisticated writing skills.
1.2 Descriptive Overview
While my primary areas of interest and the focus of the courses I teach are literature and film, I was and continue to be intrigued by the passage in Professor Gerken’s outline regarding “Citizenship, Rights, and the Times of Emergency.” Last year, before participating in Professor Matt Jacobson’s seminar “American Culture in the Long Twentieth Century,” I envisioned constructing a unit that would focus on the surveillance culture and lost liberties in post 9/11 America and in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
My students will benefit from such a unit, especially as it takes into consideration their interests. An increasing number of my students display interests in social justice and activism, two areas that should be at the heart of “Citizenship and American Democracy.” This unit encourages critical thinking and facilitates the production of student-generated projects that aim to either bring about change or raise awareness.
Initial research questions revolve around surveillance culture (SC): is today’s SC a byproduct of the post-9/11 era or a carryover from the Cold War? How much further back in time do its roots go?
Where can I find out more about COINTELPRO [a portmanteau that carries COunter, INTELligence, PROgram, and refers to FBI attempts to infiltrate, surveill, disrupt, and discredit domestic political organizations (e.g. the Black Panther Party, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Nation of Islam
(see a pattern emerging here?)
et al) by means of covert and at times illegal methods] and how do I make that material relevant to my students? What are the implications and lasting effects of Guantanamo and the expanded roles of the NSA?
What rights and privileges are guaranteed to citizens under the constitution? If times of ‘emergency’ require a suspension, a limitation, or alteration of these rights and privileges, how do we know what an “emergency” is during a period in which we wage wars on drugs as well as terror, and in which the “War on Terror” has lasted for more than a decade? Does the requirement need amending in times of seemingly endless conflict/war, or is a state of emergency temporary by definition?
This last query has essentially gone unanswered. Although the Supreme Court has wrestled with the issue, they have shied away from providing a definitive answer. The Court’s hesitation is just one more justification for having my students think about it.
1.3 Rationale
Stephen Apkon in his book
The Age of the Image
makes the claim that before being able to graduate from our public high schools, students should be able to write a script for a short video segment; shoot coherent narrative film that correctly incorporates literate elements of expression; edit raw footage into a persuasive argument; access an audience through appropriate channels of distribution including the Internet; and critically deconstruct and demonstrate an understanding of visual media. Not only do I agree with Apkon’s assertions, but I also find it interesting how they relate to the ideas of John Howard Lawson, which found their way into print half of a century ago. Lawson stated, “The problems of film today are problems of world communication. Human survival is a global question- it relates to the nature of man, his creative will, his ability to face the future.” Lawson goes on to question the relation between the film image and reality. He questions whether or not the documentary film is closer to the truth than the narrative film; whether there’s a connection between film and other arts, especially theatre and literature; and how the moving image is able to express psychological truths and states of feeling. His observations are quite salient to my attempts to use historical dramas and biopics to both illustrate and illuminate ideas, historical periods, and movements that have contributed to the development of American culture over time. My challenge now is not to justify the inclusion of one mode over the other, but rather to find ways to promote student acceptance of ‘nonfiction’ film and to make such artifacts appear relevant.
At present I include only two documentary features in my Introduction to Film Studies curriculum, both Academy Award-winners, James Marsh’s
Man on Wire
and Leon Gast’s
When We Were Kings
. It is interesting to think of both of these films in the larger context of this unit. Philip Petit’s high-wire act between the Twin Towers, now impossible for obvious reasons, would also be less likely regardless of site-specification if only for the heightened security measures in a post 9/11 world. The narrative of
When We Were Kings,
Ali as underdog versus Foreman in ‘The Rumble in the Jungle,’ would not be nearly as compelling were he not stripped of his title and his freedom in a ‘time of emergency’ for refusal on religious grounds to serve in Viet Nam. I include this information because I am aware of the challenges of engaging students with non-fiction films, especially with its genre conventions of talking heads and heavy reliance on infographics.
Man on Wire
and
When We Were Kings
work in large part because they focus on feats of physical activity that is quite different from, if not the polar opposite of, the static that is Edward Snowden, waiting for the other shoe to drop while he is holed up in a Hong Kong hotel, or former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, waxing poetic with his seemingly endless collection of ‘aphorisms and apothegms’ as he evades his interviewers’ questions and constantly looks for what former AP and UPI reporter Pam Hess has described as ‘exit ramps.’ In an interview with filmmaker Errol Morris for
The New York Times,
Hess explained, “We’re there as reporters, trying to assemble a public record. You had to have all your ducks in a row to ask a question and to be able to keep pursuing it, because he [Rumsfeld] would find any weakness and take it apart. I thought of them as exit ramps. I tried not to give him exit ramps in my questions.”
A challenge will be to present such highly politically charged materials to students in a way that avoids bias (mine) and therefore cannot be confused with indoctrination. My aim is to have my students critically assess and analyze the films and writings and to draw their our conclusions about political power, individual rights, and the tensions between them.
