Nothing that we've read thus far has evoked so much
note-taking from me as Beach and O’Brien’s chapter on Teaching Popular Culture Texts[1]. It was so full of specific examples of
application, and precisely defined proscriptions that there were a lot of
concrete ideas that could be gleaned and immediately transferred into
practice. I felt this entire article
interplayed interestingly with last week’s interview with Robert McKee[2]
about the power of making and creativity.
Nearly every suggestion in this Pop-Culture-Text article focused on
empowering students as creators of their own texts and as makers of
meaning. I appreciated the idea of
bringing the process of learning how to read a text critically to the texts
that students are already engaging in with earnestness and delight. I do, however, see the potential for
resistance. For many people, and
especially for vulnerable teens and adolescents, private media habits are
intensely personal. Reflecting upon them
critically and publicly requires a willingness for vulnerability that I would
anticipate most insecure teens to resist.
(Not unlike Drew’s reticence in About Home Movies.[3])
I had read
Dean Duncan’s article, Family Home Media[4]
before. It came up in context when I
took a Children’s Media class from him, long before the rubber hit the road for
application in my own family life.
Reading it again from my current perspective was interesting. I still agree with the concepts in it, but
for myself I have a much clearer idea of the work and resistance involved in
putting those concepts into practice. I
don’t think the resistance was addressed in either article.
My
7-year-old son, my oldest, has had a peculiar relationship with media from the
beginning. He has a tenuous, anxious
relationship with videos and film, and he refused on pain of panic attack to
watch anything with a plot until he was 4 and a half years old. We still have to introduce new texts to him
very carefully and often with bribes. He’s also revealed an unusual propensity
for fixation, even for children at ages naturally prone to fixation. This severely complicated my idealized vision
of my own “family home media,” and I’ve never actually managed to steer it back
to where I’d originally hoped it to be.
But I have learned to work with what I have. I was interested to see how my willingness
to work with my son and the media he was willing to engage with often
paralleled the pop-culture-texts teaching described by Beach and O’Brien.
Along with
a host of other long-suffering parents, I have become well-versed in children’s
media characters and constructed realities that my younger self would have
scoffed at. I have learned to engage
with my son in creative play and discussion revolving around Jake and the
Neverland Pirates and Lego Star Wars.
Certainly a part of me resists this because I perceive it as “low”
art. And certainly I’m still trying to
compensate with more “high art” in areas he’s less resistant to, like bedtime
reading. But as much as I’d perhaps
prefer his creative play to not revolve around licensed characters, that
doesn’t mean that there is no creative value or potential for critical analysis
in that play.
I felt that
both Duncan and Beach/O’Brien addressed the need to help adults, parents, and
children reflect upon their own relationship with media and how it could be
refined and enriched. They both
encouraged adult/teacher figures to model critical thinking with casually
encountered texts for the children in their care. I think they even both encouraged blurring
the distinction between the teacher and the learner in these
conversations. The biggest difference I
felt between these two conversations was that the end goal of one was literacy
skills while the end goal of the other seemed to reach further – to the
becoming enlightened and improved by the sort of critical encounters with texts
that literacy can facilitate. Certainly
Beach and O’Brien were less discriminatory about what texts are deserving of
our deepest focus.
My biggest
question coming away from Beach and O’Brien’s article was whether allowing for
more focus on pop-culture literacy will ultimately leave some students
unacquainted with “high culture” texts that might have otherwise stretched them. I can easily see the value in helping kids
engage more thoughtfully with the texts they are already immersing themselves
in. But I think I’d personally resist
doing that at the expense of exposing them to perhaps more meritorious
material. Or rather, while I’m willing
to find ways to work with Lightning McQueen and the Wonderpets, I’m still
looking forward to the possibility of sharing some delight in meaty polysemic
cinema with my son.
[1] Beach R. and D. O’Brien.
(2008). Teaching popular-culture texts in the classroom in Handbook of research
on new literacies. Eds Coiro, J., M. Knoble, C Lankshear, and D. Leu. Lawrence
Earlbaum. NY.
[2] http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/studying_creativity_in_the_age.html#sthash.ipn5vuoZ.dpuff
[3]
Best example, see: http://abouthomemovies.org/2012/10/30/love/
[4] http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=47
No comments:
Post a Comment