It is a foolish endeavor to try and teach children without morality. Often, in academic settings we eschew morality in favor of objectivity. Seen as incompatible with the academic nature of the educational system, morality is relegated to the family and the religious institutions. It is well documented that morals were taught in school for hundreds of years and modern separation of morals and education is just that: modern. When morality was given over to the religious types and parents, education robbed itself of its most powerful weapon. That weapon, Morality is closely connected with the very human sense of justice. What is right and wrong is the same as what is just and what is unjust. By divorcing morality from education we have also severed ties with a sense of justice. Many have spent the last century chasing after what is just. Materialists like Marx are just as guilty as any. By identifying inconsistencies and injustices in the market, Marx is making a value judgement. The exploitation of the worker by the bourgeoisie is unjust. This making of the value judgement is found in almost all theories. The critical theorists, political economist, cultural theorists, Gender studies, Post-colonialism, postmodernism; they are all looking at injustice. Whether it is the oppression of the colonized people, or misogyny, or coercing people into a hyperreality, various theorists are identifying a universal definition of justice: that exerting one’s will over another is unjust. It is wrong. It is not Moral. It is, though this is anathema to say so, a sin.
Unfortunately, in public education we have fallen off of both sides of the boat. We refuse to teach morality because of the perceived religious implications and we avoid teaching gender theory, post-colonialism, etc. because of their political association. So what to we teach? We teach the bare facts (so-called, as it is virtually impossible in a history course). We teach purely academics. In math there are no moral implications. There is no justice in physics. English classes sap the sense of justice from any text by focusing on grammar, syntax, personification, metaphor, and the 5-paragraph-essay. In music it is about vocal support, rhythm, dynamic, and pitch. In dance it is about steps, technique, and movement. Even in theatre we focus on vocal production, diction, objectives, tactics, motivations, tableaux, blocking, and any other thing but avoid the truth that is in any discipline, the justice, the morality.
As one who teaches. I find that there must be a balance. I cannot change the world, I likely cannot even change the school culture. But I can change what I do. I can look for ways to teach justice and injustice to my students, and thereby teach morality. In public school I am forbidden to teach from religious sources (ill-defined) but I can look to academic sources. I can look to those men and women who have defined and responded to the various injustices of life. I can teach from Mulvey, Irigaray, Sartre, Marx, Bhaba, and Baudrillard. I can look at the way that these women and men faced the oppression of their era and devised a means of identifying and navigating that injustice.
In that sense I am interested in teaching students about these theories and how to apply them in their own individual lives. Many of my students are hooked and signed it at all times. These are kids who go to the movies several times a month, watch TV several times a year, and view videos on the internet several times a day. Media is woven into the fabric of their lives. It is their lives. So I look at these critical theories and I look at the media and I try to make the two converge in a way that with have a moral outcome with my students, so that they can identify and navigate the oppressive forces that they come to. I believe that much of media, and particularly narrative media (films, TV shows, etc.) are teaching tools. They can, when approached with the proper mindset, open visions of the world as is and as it could be. When asked if life imitates art or art imitates life, I say both. That is verily true.
So I have by way of the adjoined lessons created a plan to teach these moral principles to my students. I want them to be able to identify injustice in the world through media and injustice in media. I have found in my study of Roland Barthes’ work that there are Myths; second order semiological systems that co-opt the familiar and use it to promulgate false or oppressive ideology. When Barthes discusses myth, he uses static visual signs. While I certainly don’t disagree that those signs are effective, I find them inadequate in the media saturated world of my students. In narrative media, thousands of images are played and as a result, there exists a plethora of potential second order semiological systems. If a picture is worth a thousand words a film is worth millions. So I have determined there are certain aspects of the form of film that are worth discussing in association with Myth.
In Mulvey’s groundbreaking work Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema she identifies a nearly universal mode of representation that promotes an oppressive ideology. She identifies what she calls the Gaze that is the way in which spectator’s view the film. Through a simple editing technique called “shot/reverse shot” a single character shows their power over another character. The eye moves from left to right across the screen and the character whose eyes look in that direction has power over the character(s) whose eyes look contrary. This is called the “look”. He who possesses the look is the subject, the active driver of the plot, he who holds the power. This represents a form of oppression, an injustice. Since film is a man’s medium, the look is given to men. Man is the subject and woman is by default the object. The object is to be taken or destroyed by the subject. The man is oppressive by his look to the woman.
This then connects with the audience. The audience can interact with the film in two ways. They can posses the look themselves by gazing at the characters on screen directly. In this sense the woman becomes a fetish, whose body is looked at with scopophilic desire. Since she cannot be taken or destroyed by the audience in this way, she becomes part of the spectacle. Her body is to be looked at. She is object to the audience’s subject. The second means is when the audience looks with the subject. The subject becomes proxy for the audience and the spectator’s see themselves in the film as the subject. This way the audience is able to look with, and be active, and have the opportunity to take or destroy the object.
This all works to create a myth. Instead of the sign simply representing two people talking, and maybe one having power, it tells us an ought. Myths define values, the values of a false ideology. So this use of the form of shot/reverse shot supports the look which then connects to the myth that men ought to take or destroy a woman. That women are by definition passive and fetish. This is powerful because the film, as a sequence of millions of images; as a collection of hundreds of narcissistic and fetishised experiences, builds a wall of myth that is difficult to overcome. Students can, however be taught to recognize the form and the myth it represents and therefore learn to combat that myth.
Edward Buscombe discusses in his work The Idea of Genre in American Cinema the concept of inner and outer form. He argues that genres are defined by the outer form i.e. setting, costumes, tools. I would add that certain cinematic elements are necessary as well e.g. framing, movement, angle, lighting, etc. This outer form reveals the inner form. The inner form is the message, theme, ideology of the film. Genres, because of the unique outer form, talk about the same inner form. I believe that the inner and out form can be a sort of myth. The lighting of horror is often dark and mysterious ostensibly to convey the fear of the unknown. But that sign can be transformed into a myth. That myth is that death is a dark and mysterious thing that should be feared. In this sense, genres then become a sort of repository for the mythology of our culture. If we want to study certain myths then we look to the genres that have become their home through the outer form.
There are certain myths that become trans-generic. These myths are often those that most strongly associate with oppression. The myth that the nature of the woman as passive and as an object to be taken or destroyed seems to cross genre boundaries due to its being best conveyed through the form of the shot/reverse shot and the Gaze. Since this form shows up in virtually any genre it is a myth that is trans-generic. There are subtle novelties in the myth from genre to genre but ultimately it remains fairly stolid. Whether it is in Star Wars (1977) when Luke saves Leia (Leia lying on the bench/Luke’s face/Leia on the bench again) or Dracula (1931) when the Count kills the poor flower girl (Dracula’s face/Flower girl/Dracula consuming the girl) the myth is the same. Women are to be acted upon by men. Though one is to save and the other is to destroy, the genres hold the myth, and then share it.
As a teacher I believe that I have the moral obligation to teach students to recognize this oppression, this injustice , this sin. I cannot merely look at techniques, or skills, or analyze objectively trying to figure out what a play or film ‘means’. I must show them that there are institutions that have a certain stake in maintaining the hegemonic structure. These institutions use the form of film, like the shot/reverse shot, to share the mythology that maintains that structure. The have developed genres as holding places to create the illusion of novelty so that the myth appears to be distinct, occluding it from view. Though there be myriad myths the one that I have focussed on in my unit is related to the role of women. Women have been oppressed by the hegemony for thousands of years. Film has been used to maintain that by way of its myths.
I believe that my students can understand this system of oppression. They can once they are made aware of the system identify and navigate the myths that they face every day of their lives. Will they stop watching? No. I haven’t. But they can defend themselves and perhaps even combat the myths that they see. No child should be sent out into the world without the tools to deal with the challenges to face them. They need to speak the language and recognize threats. They need to know the truth and fight the lies. They need to stand in the face of injustice and say, “I know you. And you won’t get away with this.” To abandon this responsibility is more than negligent. It is unethical. It is immoral. It is sin.
I am a teacher of truth. I teach morality in public school.
At the end of the project they made a film representing what they had learned. Here it is:
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