This seminar explored how American films present ideals of ethics and character development. The seminar aimed to provide a critical framework for viewing films which teachers could then convey to students. Books we used as resources were Screening Violence (Stephen Prince), Visions of Virtue in Popular Film (Joseph H. Kupfer), Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (Mark C. Carnes); and Cowboy Metaphysics (Peter A. French). We watched various movies and analyzed particular scenes. These included Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, The Searchers, Dances with Wolves, Smoke Signals, The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, The Gold Rush, Mississippi Masala, Fools Rush In, Stella Dallas, Imitation of Life, Ordinary People, The Outsiders, Rebel without a Cause, Gattaca, Jurassic Park, Mississippi Burning, Birth of a Nation, Nixon, JFK, and many more. We contrasted how films from different periods addressed specific themes and examined films with different visual and cinematic styles. One of our main goals for both ourselves and our students was to be able to understand and critically assess significant changes or continuities in values across different decades. If students have both a greater comprehension of how films manipulate, question, or reinforce existing values, they will be able to approach their own movie-watching and thinking about values more thoughtfully.
Teachers from a range of disciplines and grade levels participated and adapted material from this seminar for classroom use. Their resulting curriculum units illustrate creative ways in which teachers can use films to enhance their course materials and addressing important issues about cultural values within standard subjects like history, literature, and biology.
Gail Bromiley, in “How Much Science is in Science Fiction?” uses recent popular films like Jurassic Park as the springboard for giving science students the challenge of differentiating fact from fiction. She wants to enable students to develop their own ethical reflections about genetic engineering and other developments in science. Paula Rae Brown, who teaches English literature, uses the controversial film adaption of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus by director Julie Taymor in “Discovering American Values in Shakespeare's Titus.” Brown focuses on hard issues about vengeance, violence, and racial hatred in both Roman and American history.
Carol Gerhardt, an art teacher, in “Preteens Use Film and Filming Techniques to Discuss their Own Values.” has focused is on teaching about aspects of the art of films to enhance middle school students' abilities at self-expression She has chosen examples of films from many cultures, starting with The Lion King, and designed projects for children to reflect on their own identities and cultures. Polly Kotarba, in “American Tall Tales: Values and Videos,” developed a plan to use movies she has had success with in the middle school classroom, cartoon or animated book versions of American Tall Tales. Her unit will teach students about America's immigrant past so they can relate it to their own concerns with immigration in the present.
Seana Moss teaches reading skills and will focus on bilingualism and the uses of language to express cultural viewpoints in “No Hablan Inglés: The Role of English in the Hispanic-American Community,” using the movie Fools Rush In in relation to other material she teaches. Mary Ann Natunewicz's unit “Changing Attitudes toward War and Women in Twentieth Century Films” takes film as a resource for teaching history and social studies. Her unit includes both feature films and newsreels to highlight important themes and trends, such as changing depictions of the enemy in war movies like Pearl Harbor, varying attitudes about U.S. war involvement, etc.
Chuck Sauter also has planned to use war movies to teach history, but with a different age group in mind and a more specific attention to our country's earliest wars. In “History through Movies: The United States” Sauter uses six historical films including The Patriot to teach about the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Finally, Ben Vera asks students to grapple with questions about our nation's values, while viewing classic movies in “‘The American Dream’: Movies and their Cultural Agendas.” Vera's planned classroom activities will enable young people to learn more about how movies transmit values, and also to be critical of these values as they view films like The Outsiders.