Film Yourself

Dubious level of maintenance on the blog recently and for that i can only apologise. This is the last post on teaching at my previous school. 

In the past I viewed the use of film in the classroom as being a cop-out, something the teacher does when he's got too much else to do or is all washed out on a Friday afternoon. I was scathing in my first job about a young teacher who'd always show his riotous Year 8s The Simpsons, my techist idealism rather he be delivering something, anything. The fact that's he'd also be shouting at them a lot did nothing to make this resemble a real lesson. 

In truth it scared me. The suggestion that teaching was in fact just babysitting, a youth club, that you could strip away the business of objectives and syllabus and be left with what? Text messages and children touching one-another under the tables?

But I've learned to let my worries go on this one, learning that you can make a pretty big impact squeezing decent film into the curriculum wherever possible, or slipping it under the radar. Here's a (short) list of films which work with teenagers:

• What's Eating Gilbert Grape (all years)
  
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (aged 15 up)
  
• The Shining (14 up)
• A Room for Romeo Brass (14 up)
• This is England (15 up)
• A Clockwork Orange (16 up)

Clever kids also like Rosemary's Baby.

(Kids will watch any film of course. One boy in my class recently, when another was moaning about having seen the film before, piped, 'Shut Uupp! At least it's something', meaning they didn't have to do any writing or reading.)

But I'm talking about real films in which kids have a real emotional investment. If you look at the list above you might conclude that this means films: a). with children in them; b). with Jack Nicholson in them; c). that deal with mental illness (are a, b, and c therefore synonymous?); or d). directed by Shane Meadows.

Most modern film is shockingly bad, or at least most of the films most kids see are shockingly bad. They are also not about them in any way. To show them good cinema is often to get that sort of naive, unrestrained response which is somehow glorious. Standing up and shouting at the screen, refusing to watch a scene, deep enraptured silence, This all sounds terribly romantic but it all actually happens, and I really like sitting at the front and watching all their dropped faces, their bulging eyes, as much as I like the film.

That sounds a bit creepy. 

So the East Midlands. I decided that i wanted to show the East Midlands Youth, This is England: Shane Meadows was brought up just around the corner from where we are in this school. 

If you haven't seen the film you should. It's rough and provincial and glories in this, a paean to the fashion, attitudes and accents of the working class, up to a crucial point. Past this point This is England, like all his films, descends into violence, the sad corollary, Meadows suggests, to all that rough provincial character. The film is a superb exploration of what causes people to join right-wing political groups at a grass-roots level.

My Year 10 were rapt, the bullying theme and recognisable millieu really working them over. I was however nervous showing the film as there are some really dodgy bits in it, and these bits usually coincide with a senior member of staff walking into the room. I was therefore aware as we approached the scene, a racist attack on an Asian shopkeepers, and kept a close eye on the door. 

Sure enough, as on screen a fat man starts to take a dump on the floor of the shop, I observe the door handle slowly begin to turn: a flashback from my youth, smoking out of my bedroom window, overpowers me. I jump out of my seat and make for the door and just about manage to bar the view from the door to the screen as one of the characters screams, 'I'LL SLIT YOU FROM EAR TO EAR YOU FUCKING PAKI CUNT!' in full Dolby Surround.

She says, 'What's this?' It's the bulldog Head of English. I have managed to pause it by this point, the image flickering on the screen that of a terrified shopkeeper, in close up, having a machete waved in his face, her words ringing out to the class in the silence. She has taken a step into the room to look at this; but the thirty children are doing their job. If not angelic-looking they certainly look serious, suspiciously serious it must be said. They look to her, then to me, then to her expectantly. To say I am red-faced would be classic understatement. One boy is grinning at me from the middle of the class and I implore him with my eyes to stop. 

Helpless, she asks me what this for and I finesse, finesse, getting her out of the room as i do. For a moment she looks irate. She shakes her head as if clearing it, wants to ask me something about what poetry I have done with the class. I am calm but still an indecent shade of purple. She enquires what i am showing the students. What is it for? I say we've finished the work and i wanted to show them something, I tell her what she wants to hear about poetry and field no further questions about the film. She seems to accept this and leaves.

Back into the class the kids are silent and looking at me, one girl (rosy heart-shaped face) with raised eyebrows. I say how scared i am of that woman and that disarms them. They chuckle. I explain how I'm not sure I should be showing them this, bluster, pacing around the room scratching my head and making earnest statements. For there part the students make all the right noises, saying they've seen this film/worse than this before. They are clearly amused by the whole thing.

The problem is you never know what somebody else is really feeling or thinking. I know what i take from this film, know i am shocked and wrenched by it and sensitive to it's excesses, and i tend to assume, up to a point, that people will take it the same way I do. I have to be the most nervous or sensitive person in the room in order to justify this project. 

But who knows where these children's sympathies lie, who knows where they hold on to the story? The key question seems to be 'Can they tell good from bad?'.

I always attempt to check this with these films, good films in which it is sometimes not easy to identify black and white, goodies and baddies. Where do our sympathies lie? Many of the films on my list resist easy dissection, with anti-heroes prevalent and traditional institutions  being challenged. 

But sometimes you have to take a risk on the film conveying it's own message and leave it to speak for itself. I'm not PG after all. Just let the film work and trust.

Controversy is an obvious thing for a teacher to pursue.