Implications for Choosing Film

Introduction

As stated in chapter one, the French New Wave movement served as a period of time in cinematic history in which ideas of director as auteur/author informed the notion of film as text for the purposes of this study. This notion of la caméra-stylo, the camera pen or camera as pen, put forth by Astruc (1948) holds current and ever-present implications for the ways in which educators define texts, as well as the ways that particular texts and ways of communicating are centralized and essentialized by curricular approaches. The implications for this auteristic/artist-based approach on the part of teachers and in the context of the classroom includes the use of film itself as an authored product, as well as the ways that teachers took on authorship as a role in their construction of film, specifically, and in their co-construction of learning environments (with students), more generally.

Among the implications for choosing film as a textual site for literacy development in the classroom is the theoretical and pragmatic expansion of what constitutes a text, as well as the intentional positioning of film as a text for analysis, dialogue, and evaluation. Film is complex, illuminating, open to interpretation, and artful – all of these elements demand an active, rather than passive, pedagogical stance. The ways that educators take up film, as well as other cultural texts, speaks to the positioning of media and the prioritization that is placed in certain comprehension processes.

This view of film is situated in the New Literacies paradigm as an ever-changing model of what literacy means in terms of social practice and interaction (Coiro et al., 2008). Classroom implications of employing New Literacies include a sense of adaptation, embracing a wide range of ways of communicating, and provide space for students to enact these practices across content areas – both through reading and writing processes. This process of engaging with media is an alongside activity, rather than one in which the teacher is always seen as the only voice in the room and the sage who has all of the easy answers. There is a sense of editing, design, and utilization of aspects of texts to communicate meaning, and to consider ethical presentation and response in environments that may extend beyond the audience-level limitations of a printed page in a classroom (Kellner & Share, 2007).

Kist (2000) examined the analysis process that is enabled by a New Literacies paradigm, and the role of analysis has been central in both the literature review completed for this study, as well as the ways in which educators used film. Growing understandings of symbolism, the development of characters, the utility of individual modes or even single shots or moments in film – all of these elements lead to potential for questioning, guiding, and considering further meaning. Kist (2000) imagined a New Literacies classroom with “evidence of active, engaged students” (p. 712), a place of conversation and collaboration gathered around critical questions of all varieties of textual form. These interactions are not bound by the structures of traditional schooling, but link to the lived experiences that students explore in their daily interactions with communication practices and popular culture (Alvermann & Hagood, 2007).

Part of this examination is a look at new communication practices, as well as a consideration of what practices are embodied in social interactions and ways of presenting/considering identity. These practices have social, economic, political, and potentially ethical ramifications. More on each of these ramifications will unfold as chapters examine the use of film throughout the network of studies.