Moving Images of Society

My dad used to use Back to the Future – the first one, not the borderline unwatchable sequels – in his classes to get across some of the depth of change even within living memory.

Drugstore owner: You gonna order something, kid?
Marty: Ah, yeah… Give me a Tab.
Drugstore owner: Tab? I can’t give you a tab unless you order something!
Marty: Alright, give me a Pepsi Free.
Drugstore owner: You want a Pepsi, PAL, you’re gonna pay for it!

You can use The Godfather to illustrate almost any point you might want to make, I would imagine.

What about somthing like “Danton” for the emergence of modern politics and it’s effect on the free will of individuals…? Might require some French Revolution background but that couldn’t hurt in a 19th c. social theory class.

Or on a more philosophical note how about “Wings of Desire” (avoid the crappy US Remake)lots of free will vs determinism, social constraint vs individual agency stuff in there…and it has Peter Falk.

Or what about somthing from Kurosawa? “High and Low” perhaps? Enough there to feed a social theory class. Not to mention a hint that the almight “modern world” wasn’t exclusively a western phenomenon.

Hey just a few thoughts before finishing my coffee. Would love to see the final Syllabus for the class. Have fun.

Well, I use the “autonomous collective” scene from Monty Python to illustrate Weber’s three types of authority while simultaneously introducing students to the problem of modernity.

In terms of social structure, the Matrix Reloaded makes this point (ok, pounds you over the head with it). Too bad it isn’t a great movie. Paranthetically, I used to get a lot of mileage out of the original Matrix as the basis for a paper on Kierkegard, Hegel, and Nietzsche — you can do some nice things with agent-structure co-constitution and so forth. I don’t know how much that would serve your needs, however.

One thing you probably already know, but I would urge you to remember, is that the current generation of students have their expecations of pacing and narrative shaped by changes in film during the 1980s — particualry action films. They get easily bored with a lot of the stuff we consider “good” films with social-theoretic and philosophical undercurrents. And agency is _so_ central to American films and popular discourse that it can be difficult to find good material in which the “structural control” is not, in fact, a more powerful agent operating behind the scenes.

Thus, your best bet might be films that demonstrate the way individuals are trapped within their structural position or are punished for trying to exercise agency, e.g., Howard’s End, the Remains of the Day, A Passage to India, that sort of thing. Of course, the time period might undermine your ability to communicate structural effects.

HTH.

Oh… shameless plug :-). I have a co-authored chapter in a volume called _To Seek Out New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics_ (ed. Jutta Weldes, Palgrave) which tries to show the way in cultural structure — dominant narratives related to American liberalism — as well as production factors and ideas about “drama” constrain the ultimate way in which the Borg comes to be represented in the _Star Trek_ universe. Our argument is that these structural pressures make it impossible to sustain the representation of the Borg as a “true collective” and push the writers in the direction of presenting it as a boiler-plate totalitatian society. We try (but probably fail) to use this as an ethnographic data point with reference to the way threats are represented in American foreign-policy discourse.

“Is this thread for real, or is it a cunning parody perpetrated by some right-cultural pessimist seeking to prove that universities daren’t ask their students to read Hard Books?”

I take issue with your characterization of the pedagogical issues here and your recommendations.

I spent two years teaching “western civilization” at Columbia University (Columbia founded the “great books” course in the US). When I taught it, the class begins with selections from the Hebrew Bible, takes you through Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, …, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Mill … and so forth. The class is a Straussian’s wet dream. I freely made use of contemporary film (see my earlier post) and debates. Why?

First, the whole basis of the right-wing/Straussian critique of multiculturalism is that the “classics” get at essential truths or grapple with essential deabtes that are timeless. If one *could not* use modern popular culture, media, and other contemporary sources as lenses to expand the discussion of this material, then the whole claim that we should be reading them in the first place is nonsensical. The same thing goes for the material Kieran teaches: Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, etc. Indeed, these guys were all about diagnosing the modern condition! If what they say has any validity or value–and some of it may not–20th century film (etc.) should be a useful medium to explore their arguments and concepts. Moreover, what unique purchase would they gain by reading Dickens, Flaubert, or whomever?

Second, neither I, nor, I expect Kieran, would not make our students read “hard books.” Mon Dieu, Kieran has his students reading _Elementary Forms of Religious Life_! Even though it is one of his more accessible works, Durkheim is never easy going. I forced my students to slog through Hegel! The idea is to use these tools to enhance, apply, and illustrate concepts, not to substitute for the readings. Indeed, doing so allows us not have to decrease the reading load, which reading, for instance, Proust would certainly entail.

Third, one of the things that professors have to get used to is, as a colleague of mind points out, the fact that our students live in an overwhelmingly audio-visual culture. They are highly attuned to processing information in this way. Using _supplementary_ A/V materials helps us to tap into this fact, and aids tremendously in our ability to communicate ideas. Given there’s no real sacrafice involved, I, for one, would rather reach more students than pretend that we can just “go back” to the “good old days.”

Sorry, needed to rant…

Another one that comes to mind, perhaps more for a religious studies class, is a minor gem of philosophy that stars Arnold Schwarzenegger: Last Action Hero. Here we see Arnold, an actor not well known for intellectual work, playing the dual role of himself and a parody of his own acting career and grappling with the question “What do the created owe their creator?” And he gives us an answer too: Not a damn thing.

I’ve always wondered why this message didn’t make the film much more controvertial than it was.

“… one where, ideally, people think of themselves as making all their own choices but in fact are highly constrained by structural circumstances. (Perhaps the demands of cinema militate against this sort of film.)”

For reasons that’ll probably come to mind in a hurry, the demands of the cinema genre called “women’s picture” sometimes militate for it. For intellectual, political, and aesthetic acumen, I’d particularly suggest Ophuls (“The Reckless Moment”) and Sirk (“All I Desire,” “There’s Always Tomorrow”).

If you need something more boy-critic-friendly, Bunuel’s “The Phantom of Liberty” is well-named.

‘Moreover, what unique purchase would they gain by reading Dickens, Flaubert, or whomever?’
A damn sight more ‘purchase’ on the nineteenth…”

But your missing the whole point, which is not to give “purchase on the nineteenth century” but to gain purchase on sociological concepts such as structure, agency, the division of labor, and the like! True, the people in question were writing between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, but their value is not simply as artifacts of those periods. If you have any interest in responding to the arguments Kieran and I have advanced for why we would choose to use 20th century film as pedagogical tool, please do. Otherwise, do you have a point?

“Star Trek, or rather a recondite plot detail thereof, as an ‘ethnographic data point with reference to the way threats are represented in American foreign-policy discourse’- now be honest, this really isn’t a parody”

What makes you think there’s any parody involved? Certainly, a little bit of tongue-in-cheek, but there is inherent value in looking to popular culture to understand aspects of political culture. Mass cultural products are some of the best ways to access the zeitgeist of a period or place. If you didn’t believe this at some level, why would you be advocating that there was any value to the reading 19th century literature to gain insight into the 19th century?

Moreover,

Regarding “structural constraints,” the HK martial arts fantasies of the 1980s and 1990s might also be useful. I’ve written briefly about this aspect of “Peking Opera Blues” and “Swordsman II” on my site; Wong-Kar Wai’s “Ashes of Time” focuses on it more consistently.

And John Wayne was *great* in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence”.

As a recent graduate, I can positively say that I bitterly dreaded movie day. I must have seen “The Godfather” a dozen times before finally getting a degree.

Still, this one is interesting. Have you conidered “Requiem for a Dream”? It wouldn’t be hard to see that as entirely based in structural determinism, although it may poison your students against the theory.

Just a though.

“How about 12 Monkeys?”

An interesting suggestion. Raises an important point: many time-travel films and stories involve constraint based upon “rules” that allow for temporal continuity, but does the “can’t change the past” imperative represent something akin to the kind of structural determinism Kieran wants to communicate? Any takers?

Seems as if you could use any movie — you can tease out some self-images from any movie.

An only slightly more difficult task would be to teach a course in criminal law springing from movies. Actually you could use movies — and it would be helpful in fact — to show ALL of the key legal principles.

Of course the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Smith are not valuable merely as ‘ artifacts of those periods’. I never suggested they were. But the course that Kieran Healy is teaching was entitled ’19th Century Social Theory’, and his opening remarks included the following: ‘I usually begin with the question “How can there be a city as big as Tucson in the middle of the desert?” and go on to give them a sense of the differences between Europe around 1800 and the society they’re used to.’ I submit that these differences are, um, historical.

Apart from anything else, Marx, Durkheim and Smith were all steeped in history, and all of them rooted their arguments in their readings of history. You *can* excise history from the teaching of, say, Marx, but only by excising much of what Marx himself wrote.

If the other Dan, and ‘Mandarin’, wish to believe that history is of no importance to 19th Century social theory, fine, but I wouldn’t give a dime for their readings of the subject. If Kieran feels likewise, then he should rename the course ‘Social Theory written in some atemporal ahistorical neverland’.

Another question that has been puzzling me recently: why is the American academic Left of no account whatsoever in the formulation of US Foreign policy, whether under Republican or Democratic administrations? Why don’t ordinary citizens listen to leftist academics when they are thinking about Iraq, or Al Qaeda? Why are American leftist academics so often parodied, in the popular culture which so obsesses many of them, as footling and irrelevant?

Beats me. Especially when the US academic Left has people writing papers on such subjects as ‘the ultimate way in which the Borg comes to be represented in the Star Trek universe…an ethnographic data point with reference to the way threats are represented in American foreign-policy discourse.’

Re ‘ad hominem’:
Given that I haven’t criticised- am, indeed, utterly indifferent to- your personal appearance, behaviour, dress sense or whatever, I take this to be a reaction to the fact that I think that I described studying the plot points of Star Trek in order to gain ‘ethnographic’ insight into US Foreign Policy as parodic, irrelevant, footling, etc.

‘DNH has written a paper on the Borg in Star Trek as an ethnographic data point for the consideration of US Foreign Policy, ergo he beats his wife and is a Commie traitor’: ad hominem.
‘DNH has written a paper on the Borg in Star Trek as an ethnographic data point for the consideration of US Foreign Policy- what a bloody silly thing to do. Is this a parody? If not, it jst shows how irrelevant US lefty academics are’: not ad hominem.
Criticism of someone’s (real or imagined) personal habits, appearance, private life: ad hominem.
Criticism of someone’s writing style, reasoning, choice of academic subject matter, politics: not ad hominem.
If we accept your ridiculous definition of ad hominem, then no criticism of any paper, book or emweb-post can be accepted, since any paper/book/post has an author, and the author’s feelings can’t be hurt, poor thing.

>Your attempt…may not, in the abstract, constitute an ad homenin attack.< No, it doesn't constitute an ad hominem attack; not 'in the abstract', and not in whatever category is here being opposed to the abstract. You have no arguments for believing that it does constitute an ad hominem attack, so I consider that you have conceded the point. Why did and do I object to Kieran Healy's original post? Not because there is something wrong with referring to works of art in an attempt to interest students in an academic subject- quite the opposite. Rather, because Kieran H. takes it for granted that the only medium which will interest his students- who are, he tells me, as if this settles the point, 18 year-olds from Arizona- is twentieth and twentieth-century film. If he takes my advice and advises them to read certain 19th Century novels, then apparently- and these are not my words but his- the effect will be that of 'a twice weekly dose of cod liver oil.' Since Kieran seems rather brighter than some of his defenders, I would urge him to reconsider his assumptions. It might not be the case that students- even 18 year-old ones, even from Arizona- are horrified by the thought of being advised to read Dickens, or Twain, or Balzac. It might just be the case that they are able to enjoy these works. It might just be the case that they can derive pleasure from media other than the audio-visual, whatever the patronising beliefs of academics that 'the kids just won't like this'. It is certainly the case that agency, or or the division of labour, or class, can be considered with reference to 19th Century fiction. And finally, anyone teaching any aspect of the 19th Century seems to me to have a duty to at least let their students know about the cultural richness of the period- if not to make these novels obligatory reading (good arguments against that) then at least to put some titles on a 'Suggested' or 'Supplementary' reading list. I think Kieran might be able to grasp these arguments. But I'm waiting for DHN to tell me, again, that Kieran wasn't teaching history he was teaching etc etc etc.