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 |  موضوع: Reading, Writing, and Critical Viewing:Coordinating Skill Development in History Learning  الأربعاء 27 أكتوبر 2010, 1:02 am | |
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Reading, Writing, and Critical Viewing:Coordinating Skill Development in History Learning
John E. O'Connor
New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark
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FRIDAY AFTERNOON was film-time when I was in school, and the teacher who planned carefully could have the reel spin off the projector just as the dismissal bell sounded. This avoided the need for a sometimes strained class discussion. Unfortunately, what was an easy teaching day often missed the opportunity for really significant learning. A more thoughtful approach to film and television can truly enliven traditional history teaching/learning at the same time that it encourages students to develop the critical thinking skills necessary for them to be well informed about issues and events of their own time. It is this more thoughtful approach that I have tried to follow over the past thirty years in developing courses, writing and editing books, and founding and editing the journal Film & History, sources which have provided some of the wherewithal for teachers to take up this more challenging style for dealing with visual materials. In the pages of Film & History, and in my own Teaching History With Film and Television and Image as Artifact: The Historical Analysis of Film and Television,1 there has been some accent on specialized elective courses organized around eight or ten feature films, and scores of such courses have been developed across the country. What has sometimes gotten lost in the shuffle, and what deserves more attention here, is how integrating as few as one or two critical viewing experiences into the traditional survey course can accomplish such high educational goals. 1
In short, the approach I have advocated involves classroom analysis of film and television documents using the same general methodology typically applied to more traditional historical documents. Of course, there does have to be some attention paid to visual language, the sometimes subtle ways through which images and editing create the meanings which paper documents typically communicate with words, phrases and punctuation. But much of the substance of film and television study can serve as a reinforcement for the techniques of traditional historical analysis. For example, each visual document should be analyzed in terms of its content (what is pictured and what is said); its production (how it came to portray what it does); and its reception (what sense people made of it when it was first produced and how it may have influenced attitudes or events over time).2 2
Then, in a second phase of analysis, each visual document should be considered in the context of one or more of four basic frameworks for historical analysis: 3
A. Moving-image documents as representations of history;
B. Moving-image documents as evidence for social and cultural history;
C. Moving-image documents as evidence for historical fact; and
D. Moving-image documents as evidence for the history of film and television.3
Any historical document, take the Declaration of Independence for example, might be studied in terms of the first three. The Declaration can be read as a) a representation or interpretation of imperial relations leading up to 1776, or as b) an indicator of the social/political values of its authors, or as c) a simple statement of revolutionary facts. In working with audio-visual documents, the second and third frameworks are particularly valuable, and the fourth becomes relevant as well. The latter three frameworks are primarily limited to twentieth-century topics, but the first approach can be applied productively in any history course. Basically, it involves asking challenging questions about what point of view the film in question may be taking regarding an historical period, event or character and the ways in which that point of view comes across. Are its messages direct and obvious or more subtle and implied? Perhaps the filmmaker(s) has (have) added levels of interpretation unconsciously, influenced--as any historian might be--by the concerns and interests of their own time or the unique opportunities/limitations of the medium in which they work.
A few years ago, after several semesters of teaching senior elective courses and seminars, I found myself again, so to speak, "in the trenches," assigned to teach several sections of a new sophomore-level survey course designed to broaden the base of our traditional approach to Western civilization while still introducing our student body (primarily engineering, architecture and business majors) to the humanities and social sciences more broadly. Our students are required to take two of three new courses: HSS 211: The Pre-Modern World (to 1500); HSS 212 The Modern World (1500 to World War I); or HSS 213: The Twentieth-Century World. I teach the one in the middle, and have tried in a limited way, to introduce visual analysis there. Necessarily, it's the first of the four frameworks that gets most attention in this course. Over the last three years I have developed four units, each involving a text reading, a film viewing, and the writing of a critical paper about the historical topic addressed and the strengths and weaknesses of the film in dealing with the theme. 4
One of the first challenges I have found when introducing students to the past, especially the somewhat more distant past, is to get them to think of how different life was. Of course there are striking similarities, usually based in the human condition, but what makes the past different is often more interesting and instructive. 5
According to the course requirements, I begin "The World and the West" in the early modern era, talking about the importance of religion in people's lives and the stratification of post-medieval society. After reading a chapter on the Ottoman Empire at its height, we move into western Europe and outline the evolution of ancien régime institutions. A useful film to use at this point is The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), a late sixteenth-century tale based in part on the scholarship of Princeton historian Natalie Zemon Davis. The structure of the film is part of what makes it so challenging for students. I provide them with a three-page sequence-by-sequence outline of the film4 (see Appendix) which makes it easier for them to follow the series of flashbacks through which the film retells the tale. By withholding key pieces of information until the very end, the film transforms history into an engaging mystery that never fails to capture students' attention. What is key, however, is less the entertainment value of the story than the historical context which is filled out so expertly. In a published interview with Professor Davis,5 which I also assign the class to read, she complains about how specific details of the costuming and certain complications of the story line were oversimplified or unnecessarily moderized to appeal more to a 1980's audience. But, by and large, the relationships of characters, the mise-en-scéne of a late medieval country town, and the role of women and certain institutional characters such as the parish priest and the bishop's envoy sent to solve the mystery and exact justice, evoke the differentness of the historical period (what Davis calls the "pastness of the past") more effectively than any text chapter might. And students will remember it better too. 6
The paper assignment on The Return of Martin Guerre challenges students to read the interview with Davis and "consider how the film illuminates the interplay of religious, social and political institutions" in France in the sixteenth century. They are also to analyze the roles of the central chacters "with an eye to how they bring to life the concerns of the people at that time." Finally, they are to consider the aspects of life portrayed in the film "that were to undergo change in the century or two to follow with the Reformation and the political pressures that were to lead to revolution." 7
After several semesters with Martin Guerre, I developed an alternative film-related assignment using a sixty-minute NOVA broadcast entitled Lost At Sea: The Search for Longitude (1998). The broadcast is based on Dava Sobel's book Longitude6 and bears the interesting subtitle: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time.7Both book and film tell the story of an Englishman, John Harrison, an uneducated amateur clockmaker from Yorkshire who became obsessed with the challenge of inventing a clock which could keep reliable time on the rocking and pitching deck of a ship. This would allow the comparison of what became Greenwich Mean Time (maintained by the clock) with the current time aboard the ship (established by celestial observation), and hence the fixing of the ship's longitude at sea (each hour of difference marking fifteen degrees of longitude). Sobel's book describes dramatically how, although a ship's latitude could be fairly easily established by studying the stars, the lack of a way to know one's longitude had led to numerous and famous disasters. The story gives added stature to the nautical accomplishments of the Age of Discovery, all of which were made before one could reliably determine longitude, thus, as it were, "with one eye closed." But from a historian's point of view the context is equally interesting because of the way it plays up Harrison's feat. In 1772, after years of proving and re- proving the practicality of his method, the Yorkshireman was finally granted the King's monetary award for his accomplishment. 8
The NOVA production is more straightforward in its narrative than the Martin Guerre film, and it does allow students to see and hear Dava Sobel interviewed and to see some of the actual instruments Harrison developed. The film also helps students to comprehend more clearly, through visual representation, the nature of the longitude problem. Moreover, the film allows us to identify more easily with the human characteristics of some of the historical individuals involved--particularly the single mindedness with which Harrison stuck to his idea and the passion with which his rival, the Rev. Neville Maskelyne, sought to undermine his efforts and steal the prize money for himself (Sobel describes Maskelyne as "really more an anti-hero than a villain.").8 The paper assignment in this case instructs students to read the Sobel book and compare it with the film in terms of how it explains both the difficulties that demanded that a method be found for establishing one's longitude at sea and the procedures through which Harrison came to his solution. Both the film and the book point out how present-day mariners depend on a satelite-based "global positioning system" as an aid to navigation, but, also make the point that understanding the previous state of science and technology is necessary to fully comprehend the accomplishments of the past. The paper assignment pushes students one step further, instructing them to "spend an hour or two in the library with the journal Technology and Culture, and to come up with another interesting example of how some other breakthrough in science and/or technology has been influenced by comparable practical, personal and political factors." As with Martin Guerre, the combination of the close viewing of the film and the seeking out of published information makes the assignment memorable. 9
For later in the course, where I want to help students comprehend third-world issues from a third-world point of view, I came upon the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe,9 which several of my colleagues had used successfully. The book, in essence, novelizes a traditional folk tale about Ikonquo, a young boy of the Ebo tribe in Nigeria, and his relation to a culture being sapped of its essence and otherwise challenged by the dominance of European imperialists. In this case the film, basically a talking-head interview of Achebe by Bill Moyers,10 offers less opportunity for visual analysis, but it does encourage students to think ideas through in broader context. Moyer's interview plumbs Achebe's personal experiences (coming from his tribal African roots to study in America for example) and how they may have influenced his views of his own culture. Moyers' and Achebe's discussion establishes that in tribal as well as in broader context history may best be understood as "shared memory," and that memories may at times be formed and kept in unusual ways. What the historian, like the folklorist, needs is the imagination to put themself into other people's shoes. 10
Finally, looking for a variety of experiences and, perhaps, influenced by my own Irish-American roots, I came upon the short book by Helen Litton, The Irish Famine: An Illustrated History.11 Again, in terms of "the pastness of the past," students are amazed to realize that as recently as a century-and-a-half ago, in the 1840s, tens of thousands of people were allowed to die of starvation despite the relative ease with which relief could have been provided. In this case the film chosen, When Ireland Starved: The Great Famine (Radharc Films) utilizes hand- colored engravings from the nineteenth-century popular press narrated and with varied quotations from published and unpublished descriptions of the day. The Irish brogues of the narrator and readers add a touching note of reality to the often shocking elements of the story told about the ineffectiveness of the charitable aid and the inhumanity of the workhouses where people had to turn for relief. In the end, tens of thousands of homeless men, women and children were left to die of starvation and disease on the roadsides. 11
Many Irish were pushed by their plight into emigration to America while others rose in a short-lived rebellion in 1848. But most suffered quietly, turning to their faith for solace. It's a sad story, involving both prejudice and charity, revolt and resignation, and the combination of reading and viewing brings it to life more effectively. In this last case the paper assignment required students to seek out at least one addition published source12 and to reflect on and write about the influence of the famine on the traditional enmity between the Irish and the English who ruled them as well as its impact on the decision of tens of thousands of Irish to come to America. 12
Thus, with The Return of Martin Guerre, Longitude, Things Fall Apart, and When Ireland Starved--one feature film, one television documentary, one interview and one documentary designed for the classroom--we have four classroom experiences that not only bring interesting historical issues to life, but also challenge students to think differently. There are scores of films and videos that could yield as positive results, if approached in a challenging and critical way. The primary challenge for the teacher is to provide background material on the films which will allow students to think critically about their content, production and reception. There are a number of books which provide such production and reception information on feature films which might be used in class. Consider, for example, my own and Martin Jackson's American History/American Film: Interpreting the Hollywood Image (Ungar, 1988) or Peter Rollins' Hollywood as Historian: American Film in Cultural Context (University Press of Kentucky, 1997).13 In the end, hopefully, by making them more "visually literate" as well as historically aware, exercises such as these will also prepare students to deal more thoughtfully with the films and TV news programs which bring them so much of the information they have about the world around them today. 13
Appendix
Each description of a sequence or scene is opened with an indication of the running minute-second in the film at which it begins. 14
I. Prologue, 0:00. A notary is seen riding into town under the titles. As the titles end, we find ourselves in a church, witnessing the marriage of Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols. 15
2:55. As the camera takes us outside and around the village of Artigat, a voiceover tells us that the story we are about to hear is not a fantasy, but "a true story in all its purity." The scene shifts to inside the house, where the marriage contract is sworn, and the newlyweds are seen to their marriage bed. This is the scene included as the first excerpt in the video compilation. 16
II. Bertrande's Testimony, 6:00. Twelve years later (Bertrande is now played by Nathalie Baye). Judge Coras arrives in town to interrogate Bertrande de Rols (women kept their maiden names in the sixteenth century). She tells of her husband's impotence when they were first married and of the way the townspeople made fun of them for not having children right away. 17
7:45. Flashback to Candlemas the year after the wedding. The townspeople conduct a charivari. Martin is dressed as a bear, chased through the streets, and symbolically castrated. 18
9:10. Coras continues the interrogation. 19
9:40. Flashback to Martin's exorcism and symbolic whipping by the parish priest, efforts to dispel impotence. 20
10:45. Coras continues the interrogation. Bertrande explains that the exorcism was successful and that they had a son right away, but things were still not well. Martin always quarreled with his family. 21
11:20. Flashback shows Martin arguing with his father about two missing sacks of grain, which the father charges Martin with stealing. Bertrande has made a pair of silk leggings for Martin, but he criticizes her for making them too small. He apologizes; they make love. 22
13:30. Coras continues the interrogation. Bertrande explains that this was the night that Martin went away 23
14:00. Visual flashback with voiceover of Bertrande explaining how Martin's parents died of grief when he did not return, and how Bertrande's mother married Martin's uncle so that the property would not be divided and all the lands would be held in common. The scene shifts to full flashback, as an impish character teases Bertrande by placing a frog in her bed. 24
16:00. Coras continues the interrogation. Bertrande explains that she remained chaste during Martin's absence, and how she prayed to St. Catherine for his return, until one day her prayers were heard. 25
III. The Return, 17:00. Arnaud (played by Gerard Depardieu) is seen arriving at the village. The first men he meets recognize him as Martin Guerre. Gradually, he is accepted by the villagers. He remembers many details of Martin's life and the life of the village. He meets Bertrande and her son, who accept him, as does Martin's uncle Pierre. 26
27:00. Scene in the house on the night of the return. Arnaud/Martin describes his adventures as a soldier and in Spain; he gives gifts and tells stories. He can read and write now. 27
34:20. Coras continues the interrogation. 28
IV. Doubts about Arnaud/Martin, 35:50. "One day some vagabonds came along." One of the vagabonds recognizes Arnaud and calls him by his nickname Pansette. This vagabond also knows Martin, having fought with him at the battle where Martin lost his leg. 29
37:55. Arnaud/Martin is in the house at night telling the family about Brazil and the Indians that live there. 30
40:00. Arnaud/Martin and Bertrande walk out into the fields at night. She is afraid because she feels that "the spirits are out." They are tormented by Nicolas and another man from the town, who call him Pansette. 31
41:50. Pierre Guerre is told what the vagabonds have said about his nephew and does not believe them. "If anyone knows Martin, it is us." 32
V. Arnaud/Martin and Pierre Guerre's Falling Out, 42:50. The entire family is working in the fields. Even the baby is tied to a tree limb nearby. Arnaud/Martin upsets Pierre by asking for an accounting of the money made by his estates during the years that he was away. Worst of all, he threatens to sell some of the land that belonged to his father. Arnaud/Martin threatens to take the case to court if he is forced to. Arnaud/Martin and Pierre wind up fighting on the ground. 33
45:30. The family is pressing grapes together, talking about Martin and how they might be wrong about him. Perhaps he is an impostor. After all, "a person who can read and write is capable of any mischief." Bertrande walks off, saying she is ashamed of her uncle. 34
47:10. Arnaud/Martin is being sized for shoes; the shoemaker notes that his foot is smaller than Martin's had been. Pierre apologizes to Arnaud/ Martin and makes an arrangement to meet in the hay loft the next day and pay what he owes. 35
49:15. Evening in the house. Arnaud/Martin is teaching Bertrande to write her name. 36
50:25. The next day, as Arnaud/Martin goes to meet Pierre, Pierre's sons lie in wait for him and attack him. Bertrande has to throw herself in to stop them from killing him. 37
51:40. Coras continues the interrogation. Bertrande for the first time admits that she came to doubt for a time whether Arnaud/Martin was the real Martin, that it might be that she was living in sin with a man who was not her husband, and that the child that they had together was a bastard. But now her doubts were dispelled. Now she would swear that he is her husband. 38
VI. The Culmination of the First Trial, 53:55. Coras walks to the cell where Arnaud/Martin is held and questions him. Pierre confronts Arnaud/ Martin in front of the judge. Coras asks the people of the town to vote for or against the veracity of Arnaud/Martin. Nicholas and a few others vote against him, but the majority support him. The judge dismisses the case for lack of proof and requires that Pierre pay damages to the king and to Arnaud/Martin. 39
58:20. In their bedroom, Bertrande washes Arnaud/Martin's feet and they make love (a sensitively filmed love scene with Bertrande on top). 40
VII. The Arrest, 60:00. In the morning Pierre breaks into the room to arrest Arnaud/Martin again, claiming that Bertrande herself had also signed the complaint against him (actually marked it with her sign). Bertrande does not deny that she signed. 41
62:25. Coras interrogates Arnaud/Martin in the court in Toulouse. The interrogation continues in the courtyard, where two men from Tilh identify Arnaud/Martin as Pansette. 42
69:05. The people of Artigat come to Toulouse for the trial. Coras interrogates townspeople including the priest, the cobbler, a blind woman, and Bertrande, who now says that her "X" was forged. To prove this, she surprises everyone by signing her name in full. 43
76:25. The townspeople are encamped in the courtyard of a cloister at Toulouse. In her private quarters nearby, Bertrande prays to the Virgin Mary. 44
VIII. The High Court at Toulouse, 79:30. The judges are now seated in high court and are dressed in their red robes of office. Other witnesses are heard, Arnaud/Martin calling them out from the crowd. Some support Arnaud/Martin. others do not. Some witnesses admit that they were called to testify against Arnaud/Martin either for money or in response to threats from Pierre Guerre. 45
83:00. After the day in court, the judges observe the villagers fighting in the courtyard and comment on whether or not Arnaud/Martin is possessed by the devil. 46
84:10. Back in court. A woman testifies that Arnaud/Martin uses magic and is in league with the devil. The judges speak privately of their likely decision of innocence, but question Bertrande once more. "He knew everything there was to know about me...," she says. The judges retire to discuss their verdict. 47
IX. The Real Martin Returns, 88:50. The court reconvenes, and as the judge is about to read the decision finding Arnaud/Martin innocent, in walks the real Martin Guerre on his wooden leg. 48
88:40. Arnaud/Martin challenges the real Martin and actually remembers some details better than he does. But Arnaud is caught in a lie and found out. 49
96:00. Bertrande is called before them and apologizes to Martin, who blames her for everything that has happened. Arnaud explains how the idea for the imposture arose and asks forgiveness. 50
X. Execution Day, 100:55. Coras rides into Artigat to be present for the execution. He meets with Bertrande to discuss her motives, what she really knew and when. He explains that the judges had found her innocent and declared her daughter to be legitimate because they understood that women were weak and susceptible to the tricks of designing men like Arnaud. She responds that Arnaud treated her with respect, like a real husband. She indicates that they had thought of bringing their own case, and would have won at that point. She changed her position at the last moment and betrayed Arnaud in the courtroom because he told her with his eyes to save herself and her children. 51
105:25. Preparations continue for the execution. Arnaud is in church preparing himself. He walks to the gallows and is hanged and burned with Bertrande looking on. 52
Notes
1 The quarterly journal Film & History is published by The Historians Film Committee and edited by Peter C. Rollins at Oklahoma State University (write to the Popular Culture Center, Route 3 Box 80, Cleveland, OK 74020). The pamphlet, Teaching History With Film and Television was published by The American Historical Association in 1987 and is available from the Association at 400 A Street S.E., Washington D.C. 20003. Image As Artifact was published by Robert Krieger Publishers in 1990 and is cross referenced to the two-hour Image as Artifact Video Compilation and its 400 page study guide, also available from the American Historical Association.
2 This method for analysis is spelled out in detail in the AHA pamphlet and Image as Artifact book noted above.
3 Ibid.
4 The scene-by-scene outline of The Return of Martin Guerre is from the study guide to the American Historical Association's Image as Artifact Video Compilation and was designed to be photocopied by teachers for classroom distribution.
5 The Davis interview is in Film & History 13 (1983): 49-65.
6 Longitude (New York: Penguin Books, 1995).
7 As I write this another interesting film has appeared. Produced by the Arts & Education (A&E) Cable Network, Longitude (2,000) stars Michael Gambon as Harrison and Jeremy Irons as Rupert Gould, the twentieth-century scholar who found Harrison's machines in museum storage and restored them to working order, restoring Harrison's historical reputation in the process.
8 Dava Sobel, Longitude (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 111.
9 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor Books, 1959).
10 Chinua Achebe: A World of Ideas (Princeton: Films for the Humanities, Inc., 1994).
11 Helen Litton, The Irish Famine: An Illustrated History, (Minneapolis, MN: Irish Books and Media, 1994).
12 The following books were put on reserve in the college library for student reference: Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, (New York: New English Library, 1962); Tom Hayden, ed., Irish Hunger, (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1997); Arthur Gribben, ed., The Great Famine and the Irish Diaspora in America, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999); and Edward Laxton, The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996).
13 Also valuable are: Robert A. Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); George MacDonald Fraser, The Hollywood History of the World (London: Harvill Press, 1988), and Mark C. Carnes, ed., Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995). Finally, for thirty years the journal Film & History has published detailed analyses of both feature length and classroom films. In more recent years the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History have also reviewed films for the history classroom
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