Reforming Society One Film at a Time - Essay Example

Reforming Society One Film at a Time Even in the earliest days of the film industry, it was recognized that this particular medium has the potential to involve the audience in a variety of profound, sometimes life-changing, ways. Films are able to appeal to the audience’s emotions, morals, thoughts and social understandings to great depth through symbolic and occasionally blatant means. As a result, this form of entertainment is able to bring about significant change on a large scale within a short span of time. Film is literally an extension of literature in many ways and thus employs many of the same techniques to convey its message on a number of levels and depending upon the skill of its makers. “Literature uses the normal means of communication – language images, symbols, codes, stories – but uses them with more complexity and subtlety than is normal in everyday communication” (Lye, 2003). Films are able to employ more than mere words, however, as they also use sound, music, light and motion to make the story come to life. Responsible film makers have used films as a means of raising the social consciousness regarding a variety of issues, adopting a libertarian stance to the use of media. By studying films such as Dead Poet’s Society (1989) and Stand and Deliver (1988), one can begin to understand and appreciate the libertarian media and its benefits as it is applied to the question of educational reform. At its most basic level, the concept of the libertarian media as it is demonstrated through these two films is a concept based on the philosophy that the media should serve as a ‘check’ on the power structures of society. Although much attention in this regard is given to the media of newspapers or printed material, the theories and approaches are recognized in most arenas as being equally applicable to the other forms of mass communication, such as films. According to Siebert (1956), the libertarian philosophy is founded on the assumption that man is an end in himself. “The happiness and well-being of the individual is the goal of society, and man as a thinking organism is capable of organizing the world around him and of making decisions which will advance his interests” (Siebert 40). From this stance, the role of the government was established to be as the representative of the people with the primary duty of securing a space in which the individual could fully explore his or her own happiness and well-being. However, the individual must be aware of what the government is doing in order to make sure that it is doing all it can to secure that space without placing too many limits on the individual’s ability to pursue his own interests. The medium through which the individual is thus informed is the mass media. “The function of the press was to participate in the education of the individual and at the same time to guard against deviations by government from its original purposes” (Siebert 47). When government strays from this primary purpose or when decisions must be made, it is the media that the public depends upon as its primary source of information. While the presentation of hard, dry facts has not always been the primary focus of the film industry unless one is speaking of documentaries, it is undeniable that the industry can bring attention to, and contribute discussion upon, issues of great importance to the general welfare of the community. “Since World War I, the motion picture has clearly shared the function of furnishing information and opinion as well as entertainment on which citizens build their attitudes and convictions and upon which, in part, they base their behavior” (Siebert 63). Films manage to accomplish this task both in the way that they are presented as well as in the type of story that they tell. The 1988 film Stand Up and Deliver is a good example of a film that takes this libertarian approach through its presentation in assuming responsibility to point out where government is failing as well as educating the public regarding some of their false perceptions. The film opens with the teacher, Mr. Jaime Escalante, making his first drive to the school. As he drives his old VW bug through the city streets of East LA, he passes very stereotypical scenes such as graffiti-sprayed walls, car and muffler shops in which dilapidated cars are up on blocks or being tricked out in some outlandish way that is generally considered ‘typically Mexican’. He sees one store that has a number of different colorful piñatas hanging from the awning and all the people seen in the streets seem to be angry and unkempt. When he gets to the school, it is seen as equally dirty and run-down, surrounded by gates and with bars on the windows. Everything seems to be covered in concrete and the classroom he is given is too full of students. As the film progresses, though, the classroom improves, the kids begin to dress better and the graffiti emerges as a desperate attempt for oppressed voices to be heard. While their external conditions in life are not significantly changed, the changes in the internal attitudes of the various characters are manifested in their behavior and self-esteem. A good example of how the presentation works to try to change prevalent public attitudes can be found in the stolen radio from Escalante’s car at the beginning and the stolen car near the end as the students took it in to get a new paint job for it. Meanwhile, the art of the streets is discovered to be a means of trying to beautify the extremely poor maintenance of government facilities. The film also depicts these ideas of social responsibility in the story told. The failure of government to adequately provide for its citizens is captured in the school’s lack of provision for its students. Although Escalante was hired to teach computers to the students, the school does not have any computers and he is given a basic math class instead. As the film moves forward, it becomes clear that the majority of effort expended by the staff is devoted to enforcing discipline upon students who aren’t expected to reach much beyond their present position in life. The other teachers seem to feel they’re doing all they can to keep the students in line and teach them the basics that they missed in earlier grades, Escalante proves willing to continue to try harder by donating his time for extra classes and focusing his attention on those students who prove they are willing and wanting to learn. Rather than accepting the other teachers’ low expectations for their students, Escalante tells them “students will rise to the level of your expectations.” Although he does lose several students because they are not actually interested in learning, this provides him with the discipline and attention he needs to teach the remaining students what they want to learn. In the end, he is successful in teaching 18 students how to put in the effort to make a significant difference in their lives. This philosophical approach is also apparent in the presentation and story line of the 1989 film Dead Poet’s Society. The concept of the authoritarian stance is presented in the film through the photographic elements while the concept of the need for a more libertarian stance is shown through the atmospheric points. Throughout the film, there is a great deal of emphasis on the traditional elements of the scenery – the solid architecture of the school buildings, the lawn down to the lake, the rowing exercises on the river. However, these traditional scenes are frequently tempered with atmospheric elements such as when the school is seen in the early morning mist or through the falling snow, purposely softening the ideas of institutionalization to focus more specifically upon the individuals involved in the scene. The story of this film is stronger in its appeal to the libertarian philosophy. The story begins with the welcome address to the incoming class of Welton Academy prep school set in the late 1950s. During this address, it is revealed that the school adopts an authoritarian worldview in that the four principles by which they live are considered to be tradition, honor, discipline and excellence. In this, it is shown that the school operates on a philosophy in which the students are considered incapable of making the most of themselves without the organization of the school itself. “The state, the highest expression of group organization, superseded the individual in a scale of values since without the state the individual was helpless in developing the attributes of a civilized man … In and through the state, man achieves his ends; without the state, man remains a primitive being” (Siebert 11). The boys are seen to be nearly mechanical in their emotionless progress through the routines of the school until they reach the English class and an innovative new teacher Mr. John Keating. Keating works to bring out the inner treasure of the boys’ individual personalities, introducing them to the libertarian idea that they have an inherent value all their own that has little or nothing to do with the school. Although the film ends with the tragic death of one of the students and the subsequent termination of Keating’s employment at the school, this tragedy is clearly the result of the stifling atmosphere of the authoritarian system. This clarity is supported by the obvious deadening of the spirit of the boy in question as the film opened and his father insisted he drop the one extracurricular activity he truly enjoyed. Thus, while both films adopt a libertarian approach to media, criticizing the establishment and educating the public, they do so to different degrees as Stand and Deliver emphasizes the presentation of strong visual comparisons and Dead Poet’s Society adopts a more direct approach in the telling of its story. Both of the films use this libertarian approach to media to support educational reform that adopts a well-rounded libertarian approach to education. Psychologist Benjamin S. Bloom indicates development occurs in three psychological domains – cognitive (intellect), affective (emotional) and psychomotor (physical). However, the present-day education system only focuses on one of these domains, the cognitive one (Bellotti 2009). The current system that places children in intellectual competition introduces children to a fear of failure not fully encountered elsewhere until their unique skill set atrophies under the weight of external expectations. This is not to say that children should be left free to do whatever they please free of any form of imposed discipline. “Children should be given due freedom to experiment, to wander, to explore but caution should be observed that they don’t exceed limits in doing so. The great art lies in how to keep up a child’s spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many things he has a mind to that may implant a bad habit in him” (Bellotti 2009). Education, if it is to be meaningful, should therefore employ appeals to the three psychological domains and encourage children to take an active role in their learning while still giving them parameters of expected behavior ranges. These ideas are evident in both of the examined films. It is obvious at the opening of Stand and Deliver that not much is expected of the students at the high school other than that they show up to class and don’t get into fights. At the teacher’s meetings, it is revealed that lessons are largely involved with trying to teach students the basic concepts of education that they have failed to learn in earlier grades. This means that the students have been presented with the same information year after year with little change and not much to stimulate them into taking a more active role in their education. Classrooms are overcrowded and contain students who don’t even speak English but are expected to keep up with the English-speaking materials. The organization of the classroom in straight rows of desks establishes the emphasis placed on cognitive learning when learning does take place, but the teachers continuously complain about the problems of discipline. This changes when Escalante appears with a very unconventional approach to teaching that enables him to almost ignore those students uninterested in learning and to adopt creative means of teaching those who are interested in a more complete way. By inviting disruptive students to leave the class if they are not interested, Escalante forces the students to take ownership in their educations simply by their choice to stay while providing himself with the ability to establish the behavior ranges that he expects for his classes – come prepared, come on time, and come ready to learn. The students know what is expected of them and they accept it because it is something they want for themselves. While Escalante is limited in his ability to teach within the psychomotor domain because of the setting, he does introduce this concept into his lessons to some degree in having the students move about the classroom and move their desks into different configurations and uses physical models such as apples to illustrate concepts. He engages their intellect by introducing them to new material and concepts that he is sure they can learn. Finally, he engages their affective domain by speaking to them in their own language, complete with insults and teasing or praise and encouragement as suits the occasion. He makes them care by showing them that they are capable of discovering the answers for themselves. John Keating in Dead Poet’s Society also engages his students by deliberately throwing away the rule books on traditional cognitive teaching to embrace a more individualistic approach. That the school adheres to the traditional method is evidenced in the way that the other teachers are depicted as the boys make their way through the first day of classes. Instructions are consistently delivered in a dry monotone by professors who are more interested in what the books say than that the boys are thinking. The assignments given the boys are to answer study questions on materials read, to repeat Latin verb conjugations over and over and to listen to a dictated lesson. None of these activities are even able to engage the intellect much although they are considered to be cognitive exercises. Essentially, the boys are expected to become a homogenized group of the ‘civilized’ man by forcing the individual spirit into a pre-established concept of correct behavior, knowledge and activity. These concepts are taken into the greater community as Mr. Perry dictates to his son what the boy will learn, where he will go to school, what profession he will seek and what activities he will participate in. Even when Neil finally attempts to confront his dad about what he wants, to be able to act in the theater, the authoritative stance is consistently applied driving Neil to feel there is no way for him to be the person he wants to be. The philosophical approach is entirely different within Keating’s classroom. Keating engages his students immediately by taking them physically out of the classroom, separating them from the normal course of activity and delivering his lesson from the entry hall of the school where past awards and trophies stand. He uses the unusual practice of whistling to break the boys pre-conceptions of an instructor’s proper behavior and introduces them to the concept of needing to seize their opportunities while they may. Through the term, he uses a variety of methods to get the boys engaged in his class and actively involved in the learning process. These include physical and emotional activities. One lesson involves the students reading inspirational lines of poetry as they kick a soccer ball into a net while they listen to vigorous classical music played on a record player. This particular activity engages the cognitive function as it connects the line of poetry with meaning that is enhanced by the physical activity of a goal scored and the emotional element of the music being heard. Another activity involves having some of the boys walk around the courtyard until they are walking in unison and the others are clapping to the beat of their steps. The lesson in this particular activity is the ease with which one tends to fall into the false rhythm of someone else’s step and the importance of remaining true to your own personal rhythm. A particularly moving moment is experienced when Keating forces Todd Anderson to compose an original piece of poetry while standing in front of the rest of the class. While his revolutionary ideas regarding the importance of the individual’s ability to discover his own internal attributes are blamed for Neil Perry’s death, the film ends with most of the members of the re-established Dead Poet’s Society standing on their desks in salute and recognition of the enlightenment they’ve received as a result of Keating’s instruction. The last scene of the film is of Todd with nothing but shadow behind him and a light shining directly overhead. Both films adopt a libertarian approach to media as they present their arguments for a more libertarian approach to education. Each of the films seek to provide the public with an education regarding the current state of affairs – one by using a modern day true story and the other by presenting a fictional account set in a past with similar ideologies to what was being encountered in the modern day system. At the same time, they both serve to point out errors of authoritarianism. While the true story contains credence by its truthful status, Stand and Deliver establishes its media stance more through its presentation than story while Dead Poet’s Society uses blatant story elements to hammer home its point. In both cases, the primary concern is placed on educational reform in which a more libertarian approach is strongly encouraged. This is easy to see in Stand and Deliver as the students persevere and succeed in passing a difficult test twice and proving their skills without a doubt. It is a bit harder to see in Dead Poet’s Society as the boys are forced back into conformity at the end, the teacher is fired in disgrace and one of the students is dead following a tragic suicide. It can argued that without the revolutionary ideas of the teacher, the boy never would have rebelled the way he did and would still be alive, however the ending of the film makes it clear that these ideas have saved more than one boy from the deadening despair each of them were feeling at the beginning of the term. The boys standing on desks were symbolizing that they would remember to look at things from a different perspective while the light seen above Todd indicates the concept of enlightenment as a positive thing. In addition, Neil’s death is seen as a physical manifestation of his father’s authoritarian stance regarding Neil’s soul. In each case, there is an importance placed on the desires of the individual as well as importance placed on an individual approach to education. Works Cited Bellotti, Rocky. “Education: The Reformation of Man.” (April 22, 2009). Dead Poet’s Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Kurtwood Smith & Josh Charles. Touchstone Pictures, 1989. Lye, John. “The Uses of Studying Literature.” Literature in English. Ontario, Canada: Brock University, (January 8, 2003). Siebert, Fred S. Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956. Stand and Deliver. Dir. Ramon Menenedez. Perf. Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rosanna DeSoto & Andy Garcia. Warner Bros, 1988. Read More