How to support students to intellectually and emotionally untangle and grapple with systemic oppression in education is the subject of this media review. Especially for students carrying privilege, the micro- (and macro-) aggressions toward historically marginalized groups that occur in classrooms and school yards and that reflect larger societal inequalities, can be opaque, confusing and unrelatable (Benson, Citation2013). Film can present the often intangible and multilayered oppression more viscerally, as a kind of language itself, that expresses lived experience, authenticity, and involvement across and through social relations (Agha, Citation2007) in ways textual documents can never do. Two films offer opportunities for examining theoretical concepts such as cultural capital (Bourdieu, Citation1991), integration (Ager & Strang, Citation2008), fugitivity (Campt, Citation2014) and heteroglossiaFootnote1 (Bakhtin, Citation1981) through selected themes and characters across continents and decades: Entre les Murs (The Class) from 2008 France and The Hate U Give from 2018 United States. Unable to tackle all possible issues in this short review, we first summarize each film then briefly analyze the symbolic power of language (Bourdieu, Citation1991). To conclude we suggest additional critical questions and teaching tools for university-level education courses.
Entre Les Murs (The Class) Directed by Laurent Cantet. 128 Minutes. Trailer: YouTube
Based on François Bégaudeau’s novel of the same name, Entre les Murs is a 2008 French award-winning drama directed by Laurent Cantet set in a secondary school in a Parisian working-class district typifying the largely immigrant and second generation banlieus (urban ring neighborhoods) that became notorious for protests of sociopolitical and economic inequities (Smith, Citation2005) in the early 2000s. The film, starring the novel’s author as protagonist himself, depicts his daily teaching experiences as a French teacher (François Marin) in a culturally diverse classroom.
In one of the film’s early scenes, the students are reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” although they cannot relate to her life story. Khoumba refuses to read aloud, for which Marin forces her to apologize in private after class. This interaction illustrates the generally tense classroom atmosphere. The tension is lifted temporarily by the students’ successful self-portrait activity, and Souleymane impresses his teacher and the class with personal photographs of his family and friends, but he then insults his classmates and teacher by using inappropriate language. He is taken to the principal’s office where he is presented as a (one-dimensional) troublemaker. At a subsequent teacher’s conference, final placings are decided collaboratively. Two student representatives, who swear not to expose any information of the meeting to fellow students, are also present. Marin defends Souleymane when other teachers think his recent behavior should result in a disciplinary warning. Marin argues that Souleymane has reached his “academic limits” and such a warning would further limit his progress.
Later during class, the two student representatives share information about the teachers’ conference, saying that Marin humiliated Souleymane by calling him “limited.” Marin reacts angrily saying the two girls behaved like pétasses (“sluts”). The students are shocked by his use of this derogatory term. Souleymane criticizes him for such a response using similarly vulgar language, and storms out of the classroom. On his way out, his backpack knocks Khoumba and injures her face. He is sent to the principal’s office. Marin writes a report about the incident leaving out the fact that he used the word pétasses. He is called to the principal’s office to modify the report but does not receive any sanction. After a stressful meeting with Souleymane’s mother, for whom Souleymane must interpret, the committee decides to expel Souleymane. The film—and the school year—ends with a soccer match between students and teachers.
The Hate U Give Directed by George Tillman, Jr. 133 Minutes. Trailer: YouTube
The Hate U Give is a film adaptation of the 2017 novel with the same name by Angie Thomas. It is a reaction to the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American man, by a BART police officer in Oakland, California, in 2009. The protagonist is Starr Carter, a sixteen-year-old Black girl, who is split between two worlds trying to find her place and voice: the poverty-stricken and violent Black neighborhood, Garden Heights, where she lives with her parents and siblings, and the prestigious primarily White private school where she meets her White boyfriend and has White friends.
Starr attends a party in Garden Heights where she sees her childhood friend, Khalil Harris. The party is interrupted by gunshots and they leave together in Khalil’s car. They are pulled over by a White police officer who does not explain the reason for the stop, which infuriates Khalil. The officer searches him and commands Khalil not to move while he returns to his car. Checking on Starr in the passenger seat, Khalil reaches for a hairbrush, which the officer mistakes for a gun. He fatally shoots Khalil. Starr becomes anxious and isolated. She testifies at the police station but learns that the police will not pursue legal action against the officer. Starr’s father encourages her to speak up to break the system’s persistent violence against Black communities. After another incident in which her father is threatened, she decides to testify before the grand jury and participate in an anonymized TV interview. It then becomes unbearable for her to be around her White friends at school. In particular, she realizes the extent of the unconscious White privilege exhibited by her best friend. The grand jury also decides not to indict the officer, which causes riots in Garden Heights. Starr takes the megaphone, revealing herself as the grand jury witness and publicly demanding justice for Khalil and the Black community. The police break up the protest with tear gas. Suffering from the tear gas, Starr and her friends flee to her father’s convenience store. Gang members, feeling betrayed after what Starr has revealed about them on TV, lock the store and throw a Molotov cocktail to take revenge. Starr’s parents save them while the gang leader is arrested. She continues to fight for justice on behalf of all Black people killed by the police.
These two films showcase many aspects of race and class conflict along with other sociocultural dynamics, across decades and continents, presenting opportunities for students and instructors to confront their own privilege(s) and worldviews. Here we will address the contradictory power of language which is employed “to impose the legitimate definition of the division of the social world and, thereby, to make and unmake groups” (Bourdieu, Citation1991, p. 221; emphasis in original). Language can mediate individual experiences of social belonging and control access to certain social spheres by imposing linguistic requirements. More often than not, they ascribe homogenizing standards limiting individuals’ heteroglossic self-expression (Bakhtin, Citation1981).
In Entre les Murs, for instance, Souleymane and his mother, lacking the necessary self-confidence (Kramsch, Citation2009) and the expected linguistic capital (Bourdieu, Citation1991), are unable to adequately defend themselves during Souleymane’s hearing. While this results in a censorship for them (Butler, Citation1997) and punishment for Souleymane (Campt, Citation2014), White characters such as Marin representing a powerful institution abuse their privileged linguistic resources without consequences. Further, the assimilationist school (Ager & Strang, Citation2008) seems ill-prepared to properly include students’ multi-voicedness (Bakhtin, Citation1981), promote cultural diversity (Delpit, Citation2002, Citation2006), and critically address and educate its students about racial discrimination (Ladson-Billings, Citation1998; Yosso, Citation2005).
Meanwhile, The Hate U Give was released in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Starr is pressured not to speak up since by so doing she risks sabotaging her own future and the well-being of her family, an example of the silencing element of fugitivity (Campt, Citation2014). By voicing her moral position, she is forced into the complicated space of juxtaposed beliefs, values, and habits of her Black and White identities (Hu, Citation2007). Meanwhile, her school friends, capitalizing on their “whiteness” (Gangi, Citation2008; Gillborn, Citation2006; McIntosh, Citation1988), have the privilege to choose to vocally participate in the ensuing protest (Leonardo, Citation2004; Solomon et al., Citation2005), which for them results in a convenient excuse to miss school—a school where cultural and linguistic diversity is homogenized, and racism and white privilege are implicitly reproduced.
Additional critical questions related to language in the films might include:
How are explicit and implicit power dynamics within various dyadic or other relationships expressed?
How does the use of (“appropriate”) language function to exacerbate tensions or educate?
Can language use help to flatten power hierarchies or reduce social injustice?
Teaching tools can include:
Deep analysis of context, scenes, characters, music, symbols, cinematography
Rewrites of scene or film endings, with different characters having more cultural capital, linguistic capital, etc.
Role playing with students reflecting on how it feels to inhabit various characters or with different outcomes
Film/book comparisons, as both films are based on novels
Connection to current events through newspaper/twitter research.
Entre les Murs and The Hate U Give display many axes of power and social relations and demonstrate the consequences of both privilege and oppression. Used separately or comparatively, they can elucidate the depth of systemic and structural violence, and can, when paired with academic literature and engaging classroom activities, lead students to higher awareness of the race and class struggles in which they are caught, no matter their identity, and–hopefully–to activism.
Université de Fribourg - Universität Freiburg
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Cathryn Magno
Cathryn Magno is Professor in the Department of Education Sciences at the University of Fribourg where she teaches international education policy, education theory, and other seminars related to comparative education. Her research and publications include topics such as educational leadership and governance, gender and health, migration, and human rights.
Anna Becker
Anna Becker is a PhD candidate and research assistant in the Department of Education Sciences at the University of Fribourg where she is responsible for student internships and teaches seminars on multilingual and practical education. Her lines of research focus on multilingualism in schools, migration, and language and power.
Notes
1 Heteroglossia according to Bakhtin describes the presence of different varieties or voices within a single language or way of speaking. In addition to its linguistic meaning, the concept also incorporates lived experiences of language and conceptualizations of the world expressed in language or speech.
References
- Ager, A., & Strang, A. (2008). Understanding integration: A conceptual framework. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(2), 166–191. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fen016
- Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press.
- Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. University of Texas Press.
- Benson, C. (2013). Towards adopting a multilingual habitus in educational development. In C. Benson & K. Kosonen (Eds.), Language issues in comparative education: Inclusive teaching and learning in non-dominant languages and cultures (pp. 283–302). Sense Publishers.
- Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. HUP.
- Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. Routledge.
- Campt, T. (2014). Black feminist futures and the practice of fugitivity. Helen Pond McIntyre ’48 Lecture, Barnard College, October 7. http://bcrw.barnard.edu/blog/black-feminist-futures-and-the-practice-of-fugitivity.
- Delpit, L. (2002). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom. The New Press.
- Delpit, L. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. The New Press.
- Gangi, J. (2008). The unbearable whiteness of literacy instruction: Realizing the implications of the proficient reader research. Multicultural Review, 17(1), 30–35.
- Gillborn, D. (2006). Education policy as an act of White supremacy: Whiteness, critical race theory and education reform. Journal of Education Policy, 20(4), 11–32.
- Hu, A. (2007). Mehrsprachigkeit, Identitäts- und Kulturtheorie: Tendenzen der Konvergenz. In I. De Florio-Hansen & A. Hu (Eds.), Plurilingualität und Identität. Zur Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung mehrsprachiger Menschen (pp. 1–23). Stauffenberg.
- Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject: What foreign language learners say about their experience and why it matters. OUP.
- Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863
- Leonardo, Z. (2004). The color of supremacy: Beyond the discourse of ‘white privilege’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 137–152. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2004.00057.x
- McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies. In R. Delgado & J. Stefancic (Eds.), Critical white studies: Looking behind the mirror (pp. 291–299). Temple University Press.
- Smith, C. (2005). Immigrant rioting flares in France for ninth night. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/05/world/europe/immigrant-rioting-flares-in-france-for-ninth-night.html
- Solomon, R. P., Portelli, J. P., Daniel, B.-J., & Campbell, A. (2005). The discourse of denial: How white teacher candidates construct race, racism and ‘white privilege’. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(2), 147–169. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320500110519
- Yosso, T. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.