Film choices for screening literacy: the ‘Pygmalion template’ in the curriculum as contact zone

Abstract

This study discusses the representation of (the) literacy (myth) in popular movies and a teaching and research project on cinematic literacy narratives. It attempts to reveal the existence of a powerful ‘Pygmalion template’ in contemporary movie culture. Focusing on a discourse or culture clash ‘Pygmalion movies’ simultaneously contribute to the discursive construction and deconstruction of the literacy myth. Because of their polysemic character, these films offer fertile grounds for inquiring into the problematic nature of literacy acquisition and discourse or culture clashes. Inviting pre‐service teachers to reflect on these issues, the authors created a curriculum as contact zone in which films are used as a primary source of knowledge and insight together with students’ movie analyses and interpretations, personal narratives, and theoretical readings. This exploratory study of on‐line discussion groups revealed the students’ contradictory and competing movie readings. Organizing the curriculum as a contact zone deepened the students’ and one’s own understanding of literacy as an ideological site of struggle in (movie) culture.

Keywords:

• contact zone
• literacy (myth)
• narrative
• teacher education
• visual literacy

Notes

1. Gee (1996: 137) describes ‘secondary Discourses’ as ‘those to which people are apprenticed as part of their socializations within various local, state, and national groups and institutions outside early home and peer‐group socialization’. According to Gee (1996: 132), ‘dominant Discourses’ are those ‘that lead to social goods in a society’.

2. See Soetaert et al. (2004).

3. See e.g. Alvarado and Boyd‐Barrett (1992), Alvermann et al. (1999), Buckingham (1990, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2003), Lusted (1991), and Masterman (1985).

4. This cross‐over is in some way a restoration of the old bond that existed between these fields, as shown in the work of the founding fathers of cultural studies: Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart. Indications for a ‘new’ interest in the intersection of two fields that for decades remained largely disconnected, can be found in the publication of special issues of leading journals (e.g. Maton and Wright 2002, Gaztambide‐Fernàndez and Gruner 2003). We can also point to Giroux and Shannon (1997), as well as to the proliferation of Cultural Studies in Education programmes at US, UK, and Australian universities.

5. In this sense, Giroux’s position is close to that of hooks’s view on film: ‘It has only been in the last ten years or so that I began to realize that my students learned more about race, sex, and class from movies than from all the theoretical literature I was urging them to read’ (hooks, in Giroux 2002: 9).

6. Trier (2001: 301) defines a school film as ‘a movie that in some way—even incidentally—is about an educator or a student’.

7. Details of movies discussed in this paper are listed in a filmography following the reference list.

8. See, in particular, Bloom (1987).

9. We also want to mention here the work of Keroes (1999), especially her revealing paper on Educating Rita (Gilbert 1983), to which we will return later.

10. In later versions the statue brought to life is named Galatea.

11. Director George Cukor already played on a similar theme in his movie Born Yesterday (1950). This movie however proved to be far less influential than My Fair Lady. The same can be said of the early 1938 Pygmalion screen adaptation. Clear examples of Pygmalion movies are Educating Rita (Gilbert 1983), Pretty Woman (Marshall 1990), Nikita (Besson 1990), Six Degrees of Separation (Schepisi 1993), She’s All That (Iscove 1999), Small Time Crooks (Allen 2000), Miss Congeniality (Petrie 2000), and The Shape of Things (LaBute 2003). Furthermore, elements of the Pygmalion template may be recognized in some science fiction movies, such as Bicentennial Man (Columbus 1999), Artificial Intelligence: A. I. (Spielberg 2001), and S1m0ne (Niccol 2002).

12. See Ford and Mitchell (2004).

13. We would like to recall that when speaking about the literacy myth, we use the broad interpretation of literacy by James Gee mentioned earlier. In this way, the literacy myth could be rephrased as the easy and unfounded assumption that mastering a (dominant) secondary Discourse in society will lead to individual improvement (among other things).

14. Data were collected during the academic year 2005–2006 (123 students were enrolled in the course and the entire exercise lasted one term).

15. Original extracts in Dutch have been translated by Ive Verdoodt.