Homework #49, Writing On Film (Or Lack Of Film)

For our film, I hadn't really contributed anything. Other than having to walk in and out of the classroom with my book bag, and to try and be happy to be there on the 'first day of school'. There was the main little group of kids that wanted to investigate and try and save the teacher, and the other people were mostly background people.

Though it never got completed, our film focused mainly on the role of the students as the saviors trying to help the teacher (Jake Westwood) get out of trouble. The idea to have the kids as the liberator is the reverse of how it usually is, in the films we've watched in class including The Dead Poets Society, To Sir, With Love, Blackboard Jungle.. the teacher was always trying to help open their students' eyes. Yet in ours the teacher was a coke-addict, at first secretive but then it was discovered. The teacher was trying to teach "the darker side of history", and the kids were interested. Then there was a rumor circling around about the teacher's addiction, and the kids lost respect for him and stopped paying attention in class. The kids did save the teacher for a while, until the teacher's friend/ brother passes away, and the camera would show the teacher back to his old drug habits again.

The tone is pretty dark. It goes from all the kids being excited to be there, to the rumors spreading. The kids are losing faith in the teacher, and the mood is dimming. The teacher is trying to buy coke.. then gets robbed. This is dark as well, like the dark night Jake Westwood is found on. Then the kids start searching him and the house, and it seems like the mood is getting happier/ positive. It seems that the kids have saved him.. until his brother passes away. And everything goes back to how it started.


Esther's Film Starring Will, Class A, and written by Gavin:

How does the teacher feel about teaching the kids? How does this film compare to the teacher savior films that we watched in class and the theories?

The teacher is a drunk, who stumbles around the room telling the kids that they won't get anywhere in life. It seems like he really wanted to change the kids in a positive way, but they're too into themselves and their friends to notice. So he's frustrated and angry that he can't move them. He's trying to teach the kids about dead poets, and something that can actually help them open their minds to see the bigger pictures in life outside of what they know. Yet the kids keep saying they're bored, and interrupting the teacher. They don't think school is important to them at all, and feel more comfortable staying with what they know.

The students feel like the poets had nothing better to do in life, while they (the students) have purposeful things to do like talking on their cell phones and aim. While the teacher tells them "what these poets realized, and I think that many of you young talents of today don't, is that they had certain nuances of how they talk, they didn't spend their time all on systematic devices such as the one you are sporting right now, to rely on communicating with one another such as a faulty communions so to speak. And how much time do you spend communicating one on one? You're too afraid to do what these dead poets have done, you feel much safer in your cell phone security blankets". Mr. C (the teacher), realizes that the kids won't dare to go outside of the box of what they know. And, he's telling them that the dead poets are braver and more real, because they challenged their thinking and feeling.

The teacher feels like he can predict where the groups of kids are going to be. He pointed out the "smart kids", that don't really know anything about life. He sat next to the "gossip girls" who were talking about prom, and told them that "it's nice to see you doing something that you know, in fact its seems to be the only thing you will know, only thing you can know." And, he predicted where the class clown is going to end up, and identified him with the teacher's own father: "you'll be in a jail cell for twenty years. Say hi to my pop's for me."

This teacher wants to teach his students, yet the process is so frustrating that he has to numb his feelings with alcohol. There are times where he continues to talk, trying to be heard, even when the students are saying "this is boring." A theme that connects to Dead Poets Society, is the teachers teaching about dead poets. Robin William's character (John Keating) recognizes the boy's talents, and looks at them as people, instead of "empty vessels that must be filled". John Keating teaches at a rich private school, filled with white kids. Most of the other professors talk to talk, and don't consider teaching the kids something that will actually help them to get in touch with their own poetential.This connects to Paulo Freire's theories from the Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, where he discusses the banking method of teaching (where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it) compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them.