Teaching Theory through Popular Culture Texts

Abstract

In this article, the author describes a pedagogical approach to teaching theory to pre‐service teachers. This approach involves articulating academic texts that introduce theoretical ideas and tools with carefully selected popular culture texts that can be taken up to illustrate the elements of a particular theory. Examples of the theories discussed in the article are preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings; denotative and connotative levels of meaning; and detournement. Among the popular culture texts used to teach these theories is the film Dangerous Minds, as well as visual advertising texts that accompany movies. The emphasis of the article is on the pedagogical approach that is used to teach theory, though references are provided to other articles that explain how pre‐service teachers have applied these theories in a variety of ways.

Notes

1. Most of the students are White, female teachers in their early twenties. This course is one among many courses that the pre‐service teachers take as part of a one‐year master of arts in teaching (MAT) program.

2. Imagine a “Dagwood” comic with Blondie fixing dinner, saying, “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images”, to which Dagwood, sitting at the dinner table, replies “You're absolutely right, Honey: Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle”—these are Debord's words, which take on a rather different meaning through the subversion of the comic strip's typical discourse.

3. My transcription of the audio runs over 3,000 words, and my descriptions of the visual elements of the dozen of clips runs even longer.