Leistyna and Alper argue that TV has been perceived as just a means of entertainment for too long. The corporations responsible for television programs have created unjust entertainment that does not accurately portray the working class. These programs have consistently impacted the way that most Americans perceive their class roles and it is important that people begin to develop critical media literacy in order to become aware of the falsehoods presented by entertainment television. Leistyna and Alper support their argument by showing how the working class has been inaccurately depicted throughout the history of American television. Currently the working class is depicted more inaccurately than ever: lazy, uneducated, and uncaring, even though many hard facts say the opposite. The authors are calling for a critical media literacy movement to raise consciousness about the incongruent relations of the working class and TV.
Now, what does this imply to an English teacher?
As an ELA teacher, I believe my job is to begin developing the practices of looking at and analyzing depictions of class roles within the media with my students. I should not overwhelm students (I teach 8th Grade) with a history of the working class and television, but begin simply by having students look at several media forms, along with definitions of social, economic, and political class. Then, ask students questions about depictions of people within the form. Leistyna and Alper said, “…it is not surprising that critical media literacy is often discouraged. As people, especially students, are distracted or lured away from critically reading historical and existing social formations…” By laying the foundations for such critical practices, students will be more likely to question what they see on TV so they do not become “the newest wave of exploited labor power and reproducers, whether they are conscious of it or not, of oppressive social practices” (517). It is necessary to show students that it is OK to question the depictions of people within the media. Students can compare their reactions and begin to create their own ideas of class. I started this conversation with my students this year by having students look at the depiction of immigrants in US propaganda and throughout the memoir “Reaching Out” by Francisco Jimenez. It may have not been a TV show, but students were critiquing how a specific group of people were being characterized within a few different forms.
What does this mean for those who do not know how to look at TV critically?
What I also could not help to think about while reading the article was the role television in the lives of my own parents. My father is a mechanic and my mother is a retired Walgreen’s clerk. They both watch TV as entertainment, and would never consider watching television critically: it’s not in their nature. The characters in the sitcoms they like (and I, as well) are easy to identify with, but do portray the stereotypical blue-collar workers as seen in the Leistyna and Alper piece. While it would be nice to see them take a look at TV critically, I believe that they would rather not. It would interrupt the release they have received from TV their whole lives. They have also not been taught the critical thinking skills that so many younger, college educated people have been. So, should we try to interrupt a pattern that has been instilled for over 50 years?
As for the new generations we educate, it would be great for all of them to have a perception of how the media depicts classes. By beginning to show these students steps to critically evaluating media, I think we will create life-long skills that are not just applicable to TV.
Questions to consider:
- What are the problems that may be associated with critically evaluating class in an urban setting?
- What role does TV play in your life? In the lives of your students?
- Have you tried critically evaluating other forms of media in your classroom?
- What about those of us who understand how to critically evaluate TV class roles, but don’t start a movement about it?
- What would you say is the class of the narrator from the following lyrics:
I gotta brand new car that drinks a bunch a gas/ Got a house in a neighborhood thats fading fast / Got a dog and a cat that don’t fight too much / Got a few hundred channels to keep me in touch / Got a beautiful wife and three tow-headed kids / A couple big secrets I’d kill to keep hid / I don’t God but i fear his wrath / I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path – Patterson Hood (of the Drive By Truckers)
Brian
Teaching English in Urban Contexts 
Brian, when you shared the role of television for your parents, I think you effectively hit the tension point about the value of critical media literacy. As you point out, it is often undesirable for many of us to critique entertainment that gives us a certain amount of escape or pleasure. As a father of two young girls, I often grapple with this issue when considering their love of Disney princesses. At what point is it appropriate to point out to them (or at least give them a chance to engage with) the disturbing representations of women in these films? On the one hand, I find it vitally important for them to enter into these imaginative, fantastic worlds – this is one of the aspects of childhood I miss and value the most. But on the other, I can’t help but want them to see how such idealizations of a certain kind of cartoonish beauty, submission to male authority, and race/gender stereotyping are hostile to our own dedication to compassion, equality, community, and social justice.
I guess my tentative solution has been to recognize entertainment as entertainment and await the day when we can critique it productively. That is, when my girls are old enough, I hope to take advantage of opportunities to have conversations about how entertainment can be manipulative and part of a larger system that cares less about the common good and more about making money. As teachers, I don’t think we need to play the role of “Debbie Downer” for our students by saying, effectively, “I know you love this stuff, but do you know how naive you are to buy into it?” I think we need to develop strategies in which students can begin to realize how digital and television media often position them as consumers and to respond to/resist the kinds of entertainment that are manipulating them.
Brian,
Very interesting take on the Leistyna and Alper article! Like Alex, I was intrigued by your exasperation at the very thought of encouraging your parents to look at television through a more critical lens. To many, perhaps including your parents, television operates as an escape-pod from the mundane, depressing, unfulfilling starship that is life; as such, it is an uphill battle to suggest scrutinizing regularly scheduled programming.
Fortunately, as educators, we are presented opportunities to encourage just such scrutiny. Maybe this is a hackneyed assignment, but I enjoy taking the opportunity to compare scenes from texts with their TV/movie adaptation counterparts. Before engaging in such comparisons, I do my best to remind the students that I am a fan of cinema and television, which helps assuage their suspicions that I am attempting to depict the forms as wholly malevolent.
During especially productive comparisons, students are usually able to come to the conclusion that TV/movies are different media forms from print, and as such they cater to their audiences differently. On a few occasions, I’ve managed to guide students through some deeper discussions about whether certain media may be better suited for presenting different material (or maybe presenting the same material in different ways).
Although I’d like to think that my book vs. DVD lessons are always supreme hits (they’re not), I’ve also found it useful to address televisional issues as they arise naturally. For instance, I can recall a moment towards the beginning of the school year in which a number of my students were talking about reality-TV victim Honey Boo Boo. They asked me if I watched her show, and when I couldn’t mask my contempt, they asked me why I didn’t. I took this opportunity to ask them whether they felt that it was fair for TLC to cash in on the exploitation of a seven-year old. Although many of the students were quick to offer kneejerk defenses of the show, most eventual came to see (even if they didn’t necessarily agree with) my reading.
Long story short – I think it’s important to encourage our students to take a critical look at how their lives are shaped by various structures, one of which is the ubiquity of television. Although the book was published years before the advent of the Internet age, I can’t help but think of “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” by Neal Postman. Here’s a bit of Postman worth considering:
“There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed. Our culture’s adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all but complete; we have so thoroughly accept its definitions of truth, knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane.” (80).
I am intrigued by Alex’s mention of Disney, which leads me to recall some of the content of a class I took called “Grimm to Disney,” concerning how these tales came to serve similar or different cultural purposes as they moved through time, from place to place. The original Cinderella story, for instance, was quite a bit different from the one Disney tells us. This has led me to consider the Leistyna and Alper argument in the context of a greater span of time.
I’m not sure to what degree I really comprehend the idea, but it is intriguing to think about Shakespeare as once being literally contemporary entertainment, and whether his works might have been held under similar scrutiny as our television is today. No doubt there have been analyses of portrayals of class in his plays (Prospero and Caliban come to mind as an example of a problematic power relationship). Granted, his works are still ever present in our culture today, but at one time he was alive while they were being performed and people went to see his plays performed. Did Hamlet have to be a prince? His difficult circumstances aside, he is afforded the opportunity to walk around all day thinking about slings and arrows, not checking on his goats, counting how many bails of hay he has left for the winter, and so on.
I wonder if there might be another way to approach entertainment that could lead to valuable insights about class via teaching students to consider all kinds of media.
In this way, media could be seen it neither as something that serves as a loudspeaker of morality and assimilation nor as something that needs to be undermined before it perpetuates power relationships we might prefer to work against (whether they have to do with gender or violence or class or all of these). As a strange example, while I wouldn’t suggest that a thirty-second Pringles commercial is of the same artistic merit as something such as the graveyard scene in Hamlet, a certain commonality can exist external to these products in the classroom—they can both be approached as artistic creations. A Pringles commercial may not offer any timeless themes (then again…), but it could be analyzed for various elements such as use of color, changes in camera angles, choices about wording, who is shown eating, where they do so, and so on. I have used such clips when considering the use of rhetorical devices in essays, writing introductions and conclusions, and so on. This kind of work can be applied to all kinds of programs, even news programs (the rate at which the camera angle changes in news reports is sometimes dizzying, the structure of an hour of news can be considered for its purpose, such as the choice selection of inadequate details given at the beginning to hook a viewer in). In this sense, the sociocultural elements of the entertainment aren’t as significant as the skills and thinking that students might learn to exercise in a consideration of it. Of course, these skills might then lead to the kind of critical thinking and intellectual resistance to media manipulation that we would like to see in our students. If not, then at least they know how to use the hammer, versus just knowing what kind of house I might think is best to build.
This seems to work at times with my classes. What I have found is that once students are encouraged to look at something such as a television clip in terms of its effects, purposes, and choices, students seem to begin doing so without being aware of it. Sometimes, the initial complaints about “just wanting to watch” a movie are replaced by sharing something noticed and what effect it had: a pattern of colors or images, a close-up at some point. It is as if students learn to see a film they didn’t before—the film of a casual and perhaps easily influenced observer, and the film of the director’s vision. It is like the painting you glance at and coast by versus the one you spend time with and therefore end up communicating with. I think that with this kind of foundation, depictions of different classes would inevitably be brought up, as would those of gender, race, and politics. I don’t mean to suggest that such topics “take care of themselves,” but that it can sometimes be more meaningful if it is something the students are led to discover. Like Brian said, they can “begin to create their own ideas of class.”
The above consideration of how students are led to approach media such as television or film productions might be said to be in perfect cahoots with the confining nature of bourgeois classroom behavioral expectations that bell hooks discusses—what is so wrong with accepting entertainment at what seems to be its face value? Why should students be made to respond in certain mediums to the works they read or see? Isn’t this, too, a manifestation of the desire for control? I tend to disagree with this, however. Awakening for students the reality that she or he is not the only one operating from the camera angle, that choices are made in the construction of entertainment, is a means of shedding light on the relationship that is actually there between viewer and producer, a relationship that might be manipulative, constructive, informative, and so on. Awareness of such a relationship seems to be the first step towards subverting a destructive imbalance of power.
That said, however, I have some confusion about bell hooks’ argument. Although her depiction seems to relegate certain behaviors as representative of the bourgeois class, it seems reasonable to think that any particular class does not own any particular kind of behavior. In this sense, while I agree (with anecdotal evidence) with hooks’ statements that “Fear of losing control in the classroom often leads individual professors to fall into a conventional teaching pattern wherein power is used destructively” and that “this fear…leads to collective professorial investment in bourgeois decorum as a means of maintaining a fixed notion of order,” I do not necessarily know if that notion of order is in fact “bourgeois,” and might argue that certain “controlled” behaviors may sometimes actually enable the kind of critical thinking we would like our students to approach the powerful media with (140). The ability to recognize and use language that isn’t colloquial, for instance, is something that can provide for clarity and more efficient communication when making one’s statements.
Admittedly, I come from the bourgeois myself, and while my own upbringing might be influencing my understandings, I am also aware that there is certainly not one way to critique the media around oneself, nor is there one best way to teach. In fact, I’m almost certain that there is no formally widely accepted definition of what it means to be well educated either. I’m not sure if there should be one, either.
Thank you, Brian, for your thought-provoking response to an intriguing article. I do believe that it is important to view all media with a critical lens, or at the very least have the ability to do so, so when we and our students are just “vegging out” and watching TV, we can minimize television’s brainwashing effects. The fact that the airwaves are controlled by advertisers is unsettling, not just because they can influence what we buy, but also because they control how we think. The examples throughout the Leistyna/Alper article show us how advertisers have worked to not only “redefine the American dream,” but also embed in our subconscious various stereotypes while at the same time providing signals that the struggle to end these stereotypes and the marginalization of various groups (blue collar workers and minority groups in particular) are no longer major battles to be won. While last we week debated whether or not the ELA classroom is the appropriate setting to discuss and educate students regarding sexuality, it is clear to me that there is no debating the fact that the ELA classroom is absolutely the place where we must educate our students to be critical viewers of media, including television.
The second Speaking and Listening standard for eighth graders in the Massachusetts Common Core requires students to “analyze the purpose of information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind its presentation.” I think that a discussion and analysis of television would be an engaging and effective way to meet this new standard. To address the quandary discussed by Brian and Alex about finding a balance between letting our kids enjoy television and movies while giving them the skills to view critically, we can simply work these lessons into our curricula without preaching. Students can still enjoy the shows they love, but they will be more likely to think deeply about television when they see it is a medium that has been acknowledged and addressed in the classroom. This is not something I have done in the past (like Allen and Todd, I have mostly stuck to analysis of a text vs. film version of a given work), but it is definitely something I am more likely to do now. I can see why Todd postulates that asking students to do this is a manifestation of a desire for control, but I do believe that the advantages of critically analyzing television far outweigh any disadvantages when it comes to television’s role in affirming and proliferating stereotypes and ultimately reinforcing the repression of the underclass.
I laughed out loud that “Roseanne” was started using non-unionized workers.
As for Alex’s notion of not always wanting to think critically about our entertainment, I wholeheartedly agree. I think it extends to independent reading as well. Some teachers (especially some angry bloggers I read!) are against “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” type books because they lack literary merit. I do not restrict my student’s independent reading choices – I want them to read what they want to read. Partly because I believe that they will always struggle to read critically if they struggle with reading, and reading more leads to better reading. But also because I want them to read to be entertained by books. I did not want to think critically about “50 Shades of Grey,” I wanted to be entertained and see what all the fuss was about (not much, for the record!)
I thought the article “Confronting Class in the Classroom” was really interesting as well. As a white teacher in a low-income, predominantly African-American school, I grimaced a little at the discussion about how in order to succeed in education, students must conform to middle-class ideals of of speech and demeanor. We absolutely talk about what kind of English students should use at a job interview, in school, etc, and it’s not the student’s usual vernacular. However, while I enjoyed bell hook’s article and thought she raised a lot of interesting points, I was disappointed in her “solutions.” The only concrete thing I took from her was that she has students write and read a paragraph so that all voices are heard – but that one paragraph might be the only time the student’s voice is heard! In my opinion, having everyone read one paragraph doesn’t do enough to ensure all voices in the classroom are heard.
I first wanted to begin with the article Confronting Class in the Classroom. I agree with Sue that I was a little disappointed in the article. I liked the premise of making sure voices from all classes could be heard but thought the article lacked specific examples to help teachers think about this topic more in their classrooms. Hooks often referred to this idea of the bourgeois cultural ideas being reinforced in the classroom but never specifically named what these ideals were. I also felt that besides the reading a paragraph idea, she did not give teachers any “take-aways” of how to implement more discussions about class within the classroom. I think that Hooks’ idea has a lot of potential for change in the classroom. However, the fact that she didn’t give specific examples to accomplish this change, or even really define what this change would look like in the classroom, I think made this article fall short.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed Leistyna and Alpers Critical Media Literacy article. I agree with many of you who felt torn between letting T.V. be funny and entertaining but also critically examining roles of the working class and Disney Princesses in media. I do think it is important to make students aware of the funding process and advertising in television. Making this connection does not have to just be confined to television but can also be generalized to politics and issues of control in our society. I thought the statistic on page 503 that 80% of all political contributions come from less than 1% of the American people particularly unsettling. At this point, we have to wonder who is really running our country: congress or CEO’s of commercial companies. As a city employ that must take a conflict of interest training course each year, this seems like a big conflict of interest. Corporations donating to politicians to ensure their needs are being served, instead of the needs of the people, seem incredibly unethical. I think that starting with the conversation of looking at T.V. critically has a lot of potential to be branched out to other areas of discussion. However, I do agree with those of you who cited not wanting to be too negative on the forms of entertainment our students like and there has to be a happy medium.
I found these articles insightful and they revealed some struggles I have in my own teaching. First, the tightrope that must be walked between reading a text critically versus reading for entertainment. Many of my students struggle with reading, and find some success in simply completing the act (leaving comprehension and analysis by the wayside). So, when I inquire deeper into what my students have read, they struggle, and very quickly the feelings of accomplishment are deflated. They soon begin to shut down, and the act of reading grows to leave a bad taste in their mouth.
Regarding the role of TV, I can respect the “watching strictly for entertainment” perspective (as I do it often); however, I think it’s vital to revisit work after the fact. I often try to hit two birds with one stone. I inquire often as to what shows/films students are watching and after a textual reading, I try to compare and contrast the two, ideally with critical lenses. This hopefully allows them to make connections and further develop their critical thinking skills.
Another point I thought interesting, as Sue began to address, is the notion that students must “conform to middle-class ideals of of speech and demeanor.” I have had many conversations with teachers (today in fact) who are frustrated with their students inability to “act like students,” which through further questioning, sums up to sitting in isolation, working diligently in silence, and always maintaining speech and action appropriate for a classroom setting — in a way to avoid fears of losing control/power. Yet, many of my students come from families and have personalities where emotion plays a significant role. They are prone to emotional outbursts, fits of laughter, and forms of behavior that some wouldn’t identify as “appropriate for a classroom setting.” I too find myself getting frustrated when this behavior reveals itself and I am constantly trying to find a balance bet allowing students to behave in such way that allows them to express themselves uniquely without their begins disrespectful to the peers around them.
A final, yet powerful realization for me was how the term “nonmaterial privileged” was introduced, rather than non-privleged. I think many forget that simply not having material possessions leads to our “deficit thinking” notions, while many of these same students have a wealth of privilege in other, nonmaterial areas.
Such an interesting discussion!
I was particularly intrigued by Brian’s point about his parents, and how they might resist engagement with a critical analysis of the media. The point is definitely an important one, and one that I’ve experienced with my own family and within the classroom; it reminds me of how a real critical analysis of anything is often an attack on the very things we hold dear—whether that is our source of entertainment and relaxation, our choices, or our ideas about the world. It is, of course, why the media is so effective at perpetuating so many myths and helping to maintain the unequal distribution of power across race, class and gender. Even thinking about it calls so much of how we live our lives into question. To criticize something like television, which, unfortunately, is often the go-to choice for relaxation, enjoyment, and a time and space to “zone out” is so unbelievable uncomfortable (what do you MEAN a high sodium, high fat diet is bad for me! How dare your ruin my meal!) Many people might be right in that I should not be hijacking what little time they do have to relax and forget the world by forcing them to consider their entertainment choices with a critical eye. Unfortunately for them, I’m still going to do it! 🙂
Another thing I couldn’t stop thinking about while I was reading Leistyna and Alper’s article was how this myth of easy social mobility and how that applies to my urban classroom. This notion of the American dream—this idealized, falsified idea that our society is, in fact, a meritocracy, and that anyone can transcend class barriers—is one of the major thematic discussions of my 9th grade curriculum. I agree with Leistyna and Aleper in that our society tends to highlight personal responsibility as the most important factor in one’s success, and that this viewpoint is used to distract from the many inherent inequities in our society that are often the real barriers to success. With that said, as I think about our role as teachers in all of this, how do we provide students, especially in an urban area, with a critical understanding of the myth of the American dream (one that will inevitably expose the illusion of social mobility) while at the same time inspiring them with the hope that they can overcome the obstacles in front of them through education? As teachers of urban students, how can we frame conversations so that they promote critical thinking without discouraging our students?
I love Allen’s suggestion of a book-to-movie comparison. In addition to looking at the differences between the media, students can also practice applying their critical thinking skills to film and television. Though many people watch TV purely for entertainment, there are also opportunities to learn from and think critically about the shows that one watches. Students should also realize that, like the ads that they see during commercial breaks, television shows subtly (or not so subtly) try to influence their ways of thinking as well as their lifestyles and beliefs. Whether a show is espousing a socialite lifestyle or “redneck pride,” it will enforce stereotypes, give opinions on “right” and “wrong” behavior,
I’m happy that Alex brought up Disney, mainly because, while I still look back fondly on most Disney movies, I’ve come to realize the many stereotypes they buy into. Accents, for instance, carry a lot of weight in Disney movies; typically the hero/heroine has a “standard” American accent, while villains have crisp British accents. Stylized black speech shows up for “lower class” characters (such as the hyenas in The Lion King), and Cockney accents generally symbolize a character who is rough around the edges (like the Tramp in Lady and the Tramp). It would be an interesting exercise to have students identify character traits in a given film that signify class.
Leistyna and Alper also mentioned the portrayal of women in film and television. Disney, unfortunately, is another perpetrator of negative portrayals of women, perpetuating the “damsel in distress” character, though films like Mulan and Brave have been a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, Disney is not the only one to marginalize or negatively portray women in film. Lesbian comic strip writer Alison Bechdel addressed the issue of women in film in one of her comic strips, leading to the idea of the Bechdel Test. In order to pass the Bechdel Test, a film (or tv show) must have 1) two [named] women who 2) talk to each other 3) about something other than a man. A film may have two strong female characters, but that point is moot if the women’s lives and conversations all revolve around men. Obviously, there are flaws with this evaluation tool, but it makes a strong point about the media portrayal of women.
Finally, I know this is not a common occurrence, but while I was completing my student teaching, my mentor teacher would occasionally show movies in class, especially on the last Friday of the month, or right before vacation (this occurred during the class that I co-taught, which was a supplemental English class for struggling students). He would often let the students choose from age-appropriate movies or shows on Netflix. During one class, we watched Cartoon Network cartoon that seemed to espouse stupidity and laziness in men, and subservience, over-sensitivity, and desperation to find a boyfriend for women. Though it was, in my opinion, not a good choice to show a movie in class in the first place, the choice of movie was offensive and perpetuated negative stereotypes. I realize that there are days, especially close to vacations, when teachers show movies in class. This should not be an opportunity to encourage students to turn of their brains or stop thinking critically. Show a film adaptation of a book read in class, or a non-offensive film that students can discuss critically at the end of class. We don’t need to tell students to avoid watching these shows, but we do not need to encourage them further by airing them in class. We can also encourage them to think critically about the shows they watch and the messages that those shows send about minorities, working class people, and women.
Apologies for the late reply. I think about media depictions of disenfranchised people a lot, although mostly from a feminist or ‘racially aware’ (anti-racist?) lens; it was eye-opening to realize that the working class is also represented unfairly in pop culture, and to contemplate who benefits from these exploitative and unfair representations. It seems so obvious but I somehow missed it, sort of like the teacher who forgot to think about representations of disability.
The balance we discussed in class between simple enjoyment of media and constant vigilance for its subliminal messages is also something I think about a lot. I feel compelled to bring up my code-switching co-worker (and friend) again: as a student in our American Studies grad program, she calls it the “American-Studies-ization” of media consumption. She and I are always pointing out racist and misogynist tropes in books, movies, and tv shows, which makes us a lot of fun at parties, and also has diminished another colleague’s enjoyment of media over the last year since he has to listen to us ranting every day. Once the scales fall off your eyes, so to speak, it’s hard to un-see what is so plainly there. (If you ever want to get really depressed about an 80’s classic, google “16 Candles racist,” “16 Candles rape,” or follow this link: http://surgegettysburg.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/rape-culture-ruined-my-favorite-80s-movie/.) I bet a book like The Feed–read last summer for Alex’s Teaching of Lit course–could start some great descaling conversations in lit classes.
How do you talk about class and power as the person with the power in the room? Is it helpful simply to acknowledge that this particular social construction exists, that it’s more difficult to transcend than most people would have you believe, and that it’s just one more means of oppression by those with the most (sex, race, class, and economic) privilege, to be overcome, or to resist, or to live with?
On a positive note, there are so many more choices for media these days that no one HAS to get their entertainment from sexist, racist, classist, status-quo-enforcing TV or movies or music or magazines or whatever. I try to manage my own media consumption so that I watch shows/movies/read magazine articles that show different perspectives and don’t portray people in exploitative and unfair ways. It’s not easy but it’s possible.
I’ve read elsewhere, incidentally, that Roseanne by far was the best tv show to depict working-class families as more than yahoos, and tell their stories with compassion… I wish I could remember where!