Embedded Files
Findings
Findings
Interpretation
Interpretation
Technical Aspects
Technical Aspects
Medium Matters
Medium Matters
Interpretation
Interpretation
Students are learning about interpretation of text through their newfound understanding of film.
Students are learning about interpretation of text through their newfound understanding of film.
Presenting films to my students enhanced their ability to locate and define interpretations. When I presented two different versions of Julius Caesar to them, they were better able to see just how the delivery of the lines affected the significance of said line and determined the character’s personality. Part of why this worked effectively in the classroom is because we had spoken about this particular speech at great length. We had devoted a full class to wrestling with Antony’s speech, and students had felt quite confident in revisiting this same section. In an exit ticket, one student wrote, “I felt prepared for today's lesson because I feel that I had closely read and understood Antony's monologue. I felt that I understood what was going on in the movies, and it was easy to make connections from the play to the movies.” Many other students echoed this sentiment, pointing out that they felt comfortable switching to filmic depictions after having committed to the text.
This lesson was also meant to prepare the students for their own performances, so they were able to enact some of the knowledge that they had observed from the film. We devoted the whole time to talking about the actors’ gestures, the sound in the movie, the background (or mise-en-scene), and overall the pace of everything. It was especially helpful for them to hear Shakespearean lines being delivered while seeing two orchestrated interpretations back to back. Being able to pause and look at the staging, expressions on the face, and being able to rewind or fast forward sections makes it a medium that is even easier to analyze than seeing it performed. Using these functions of film to assess the language again proved to be beneficial for students to understand Shakespearean writing and educate themselves for their own interpretations. One of my students wrote, “I will definitely learn to be more intentional with my inflection. The main difference I noticed between the two depictions was how the same speech could convey a different feeling just by the inflection.” Part of my classes’ anxieties had to do with lacking the ability to understand how the language was acted out. One student specifically told me that it was frustrating to read a play, which was intended to be acted out and consumed within a certain amount of time. This allows for this facet of students to be able to see the text in a way they would best understand it and see the other components within creating a play.
Julius Caesar (1953), Hollywood Production directed by Joseph Mankiewics
Julius Caesar (1979), BBC TV Production directed by Herbert Wise
Technical Aspects
Technical Aspects
Students are able to locate authorial intent through close reading filmic adaptations of the text. After scrutinization, they are able to articulate the impact of details, literary devices, or other writing techniques.
Students are able to locate authorial intent through close reading filmic adaptations of the text. After scrutinization, they are able to articulate the impact of details, literary devices, or other writing techniques.
Part of what the students also learned was about the techniques or choices that directors and authors make in order to illicit a certain interpretation. For example, in the first adaptation, Antony smiles as soon as chaos erupts, implying that this Antony had a deviousness that seeped through his performance of sadness. The second adaptation involved a more mournful Antony throughout, but he still says the lines, “Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot; / Take thou what course thou wilt” (3.3.275) as a voice over in order to maintain a saddened countenance. Both Antony depictions are meant to be duplicitous but these slight changes influenced the students to hold different opinions for each Antony. There were ooo’s and ahh’s with the smirking face of the first one and contemplative faces for the second, sly one. Some were more afraid of the first one’s overt intentions and other were more scared of the covertness of the second one. This in turn helped students hope for the following:
“I will incorporate the different techniques (blocking, set, timing, etc.) into my performance, now I am more aware of the techniques to show my understanding of the scene and convey the message(s) behind it.”
They noticed new meaning in the text after having seen the scenes and were also inspired for their own execution of the lines. It also helped that I added dimension to a passage we had gone over and they had a strong enough relationship to in order to understand the new layers to it. Another thing that I realized from their exit tickets is that their level of preparedness plays a huge role as to whether or not they’ll be receptive to the information.
Medium Matters
Medium Matters
Students allow for the medium or form of the narrative itself to inform them about the deeper meaning in the story.
Students allow for the medium or form of the narrative itself to inform them about the deeper meaning in the story.
There are technical components that go into any style of storytelling, but it is difficult to name them or know which ones to name in freshman year of high school. Though it is easier to show the performative aspects of a play such as Julius Caesar, it may be more difficult to show this for narratives that are written to be visualized. In order for students to be able to carry this same skill out to other narratives, I had them try to visualize parts of The Odyssey without emulating the play format. I had them focus on a passage of the epic and make believe that they were adapting it for the screen. They had to include camera angles, movements, and sizes while elaborating on parts of the narrative. More than anything, I wanted my students to be able to practice close reading, assess word choices, tone, structure, etc… Though some proved more successful than others, most of them got to at least take a close look at part of the text to pick and choose which parts were most salient. From that, many of them were inching towards an interpretation. One of my students wrote,
"If we were to visualize shot sizes in literature, we would be privy to the importance or impact of various aspects to a certain scene. For example, a closer shot of a character’s face can display their personal and internal emotions and can create greater emotional impact on the viewer, while a wider shot highlights the significance of the character’s surroundings and can help establish the setting of a scene. An example of a long shot size in the text is when Hermes travels to Calypso’s island to free Odysseus around lines 60 of book 5. The island and it’s beauty is described in great depth, highlighting the amplitude of Odysseus’ sadness as he ought to be happy in such an ethereal location."
They got to see the resonance that stories have and the changes that happen as certain parts of the text animate. Not only that, but they have a choice as to what they want to focus on, whether it be the character or the environment. Still, they must be informed as to which one focus is more appropriate based on the author's writing. Though it is most likely not the first time they notice a difference between a text or a film, it may be one of the first times they toggle between the significance of either. From that, students will hopefully acknowledge the merit in either medium, perhaps blurring the lines between entertainment, more often than not related to films but should also be part of literature, or academia, vice versa.
Making Representation Accessible
Making Representation Accessible
As one encounters the symbology within words, we must be able to visualize representation in our characters or the plots.
As one encounters the symbology within words, we must be able to visualize representation in our characters or the plots.
I found myself drawn to the concept of representation in the classroom. If we were to take a step back from the English freshmen curriculum, we could notice that all the protagonists are white men and all the writers are as well, with the exception of one. I do not aim to critique this, so much as point out the optically obvious and the many inferences people may have on this topic now. Though one of the main ways in which I believe many institutions aim to diversify their texts is to choose people, protagonists and authors alike, from different racial or ethnic backgrounds, the other side of the coin has to do with stories -- plots, actions, feelings, emotions within them – are themselves diverse. Part of why Trinity teaches texts that are canonical in the first year of high school is to equip students with these kinds of stories for the rest of high school into college. Knowing that I could not change the texts of our freshmen year curriculum, and also trusting that there’s a transcendence from these stories that makes them applicable to other cultures, I sought to amplify this transcendence by including underrepresented groups of people through film terms or snippets of film.
When reading the Odyssey, one of the main things we focused on was the fact that these stories originally started as oral narratives. The conversation was rightfully burgeoning from the context of Greek stories. I came upon a documentary about a native American woman who, as previously mentioned in my Instructional Strategies Section, was transcribing her rare, native language into a dictionary.
When I talked about memory in The Odyssey , I compared it to a documentary about this Native American woman documenting her language. I showed them a clip of the film. Yes, we are focusing on Greek traditions, but who is to say that we must isolate them from other experiences?
Recording your language is a crucial component to being able to share your stories. This is Marie’s attempt at not only keeping the language alive but also reminding herself of these stories.
It is difficult to causally relate my students' learning to this specific inquiry project in my English class. There are countless courses that seek this interdisciplinary union, but with this project, I attempted to implement these approaches to a freshman preparatory classroom where students did begin to see the transmutability of narratives.
So, by the power that no one has formally vested in me, I would like to pronounce English and Film academic partners in crime.
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