On Friday, midnight openings of “The Hunger Games” in Atlanta and elsewhere will give readers of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling trilogy a chance to test their interpretations against Hollywood’s. Those who’ve not read her books are in for a surprise. Set in a dystopian future more frightening than 1984, this movie will generate discussions worthy of school time.
Although in some quarters, pop-culture movies are viewed as low culture and inappropriate for formal learning, the line separating high and low culture began to blur in the 20th century. This is apparent in that memorable moment when the classical conductor Leopold Stokowski shook hands with Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia.” This symbolic gesture, according to film critic Neal Gabler, showed how far pop culture had come in establishing its own niche in the American psyche.
Nonetheless, the perception that introducing pop culture into school curricula will waste time and undermine young people’s ability to think for themselves is still prevalent. So is the assumption that adolescents lack agency in interpreting messages embedded in media, such as movies, rap lyrics, TV advertisements, graphic novels and the like. Teachers can take comfort in the counter-argument that pop culture’s embedded messages are grist for instruction in critical areas.
For instance, teaching students how to engage with all kinds of ideological messages — in both pop culture and assigned classroom texts — is central to helping them think for themselves.
As a former social studies teacher, I believe one example is the importance of discussions that take into account how representations of whiteness common to many Hollywood movies and television programs become the invisible norm, which if taken up uncritically can foster negative or racist attitudes toward people of color.
We live in a saturated media era. Surveys conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Internet & American Life Project point to the fact that middle and high school students spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes daily on entertainment media, such as movies, videos and games.
Much of this time is spent in decoding and encoding a complex mix of images, words, sounds and symbols that typically are not taught in traditional subject-matter classrooms, yet have potential value for 21st-century learning and future jobs.
To date, however, students’ after-school learning is largely invisible to their teachers. This is disquieting, especially given research that suggests teachers who make links to students’ out-of-school experiences increase motivation and success in school learning.
Such invisibility also makes little sense when distinctions between online and offline learning blur to the point that pop culture texts produced and consumed in one space for fun and relaxation often become objects of intense study and work in another.
Rather than distancing themselves from “The Hunger Games,” graphic novels or fan fiction, teachers and media specialists should consider treating pop culture and school curricula not as structured containers but as sieves through which social, cultural and political discussions animate one another in ways that improve motivation for learning school subjects.
Donna Alvermann is a UGA distinguished research professor of language and literacy education and coauthor of “Bring It to Class: Unpacking Pop Culture in Literacy Learning.”
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