Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

“Let them represent themselves” Jose Sala Diaz celebrates the transformative power of film and media studies I n an era when every interaction and hobby feels like it’s been distilled into ‘content’ – i.e. a media substance that can be controlled and monetised – film studies and media studies at GCSE stand tall as subjects capable of leading a paradigm shift. That’s because they not only teach students how to really see what they see around them, but also how to shape their own representations, and harness their creative skills in the service of imagining better, more optimistic futures. Learning howto see Inmedia and film, we teach that no image comes from nowhere. Students learn how to analyse audiovisual texts from a critical and aesthetic viewpoint based on five main areas – microelements , representation , audience , industry and contexts . The popular Netflix series Stranger Things , to flag up a topical example, relies heavily on fabricated nostalgia for the 1980s – something thatWarner Bros has also attempted to do, albeit in different ways, with the Harry Potter series. Disney has gone down a similar route with its live action remakes. The Lost Boys , on the other hand, released in 1987, did more to channel the cultural concerns of its time, including the fear of crime, rising divorce rates and perceived decline of the traditional family unit that characterised the Reagan era, while at the same time demonstrating a great understanding of horror conventions. See also 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause , which echoed the then popular perception of teenage subcultures as groups of criminals without a future, while simultaneously contrasting the nihilism of its imagery with its beautiful rendering in Technicolor. Back here in the 21st century, Whiplash is an excellent film to show students when discussing toxic masculinity, culminating as it does in an ending built around our audience perceptions of individualism and success. Then there’s Skyfall (2012), the 23rd entry in the long-running James Bond franchise, which deals with a generational clash between old and new, while pointedly commenting on our modern-day attitudes to digital technology and the British Empire. Finding connections The films cited above have all been discussed in our school’s classes, if not explicitly included in the GCSE and A-Level Film specifications. It’s been said that whoever controls the media controls the culture. To study media and film is to study how fiction reflects reality, usually following a series of very specific choices. The study of media and filmhelps students explore precisely how and why those choices are made. It can show themhow the practice of video editing – a foundational media and film element – can suddenly become hugely important in the context of a Donald Trump speech broadcast by the BBC, to such an extent that the BBC’s director general feels compelled to resign his position. BlairWaldorf, the young NewYork socialite portrayed in the Gossip Girl novels and subsequent TV adaptation, once remarked that ‘Fashion is the most powerful artform’ because it ‘combines movement, design, and architecture’. I would in turn suggest that media products are a form of art, since they can be bothmedium and form in a given context. Media and film students are taught how to find and trace connections, accidental or otherwise. We explain how Dua Lipa, in her song ‘Illusion’ and its accompanying video, is engaged in a conscious dialogue with both a prior Kylie Minogue music video and a 1992 Time magazine cover celebrating that year’s Olympic Games – an exercise in intertextuality which proves that nothing is born from a void (regardless of what those feverishly discussing the latest trending topic might try to tell you). The more that media students get to explore, the more references “To studymediaandfilm is to studyhowfiction reflects reality” 60 teachwire.net/secondary