Sordid Fantasies’

Reading popular ‘inner‐city’ school films as racialized texts with pre‐service teachers

Bibliographic Data

ID12584530
AuthorsJames Trier (corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume8
Issue2
Pages171-189
Publication date2005-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRace Ethnicity and Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1361-3324 • E-ISSN: 1470-109X
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13613320500110535
OpenAlexW2102745102
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited10

This article discusses a multi‐phase project designed to inquire into and challenge pre‐service teachers' assumptions, beliefs and knowledge about inner‐city schools. Prior to beginning their student teaching in inner‐city schools, pre‐service teachers articulated in essays and seminar discussions their opinions and beliefs about inner‐city schools. They then examined in depth selected cinematic representations of inner‐city schools to deconstruct those representations for their 'racialized' and 'deracialized' discourses, as well as for the 'sordid fantasies' and 'lullabies' that films set in the inner‐city typically construct. Finally, after their experiences student teaching in inner‐city schools, pre‐service teachers rearticulated their views about inner‐city schools, based on their own experiences teaching in such schools. Pre‐service teachers discovered the extent to which their views of inner‐city schools had been formed through popular representations, and they also discovered how their own experiences in schools revealed the great discrepancy between popular representations of inner‐city schools and what such schools are actually like. Pre‐service teachers found the process of analysing the school films through the theoretical lenses provided by academic texts to be engaging and productive. Notes * University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB 3500, Peabody Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. Email: [email protected] For example, one project (Trier, Citation2001a) involved problematizing pre‐service teachers' 'autonomous', traditional notions of literacy (CitationStreet, 1984) by having them read Gee's (Citation1996) articulation of discourses and multiple literacies, and then having them view the film Teachers for its construction of literacy. Through close readings of both the academic and cinematic texts, students challenged the film's assumption that literacy is merely the ability to pass standardized reading tests and they opened up to a more sophisticated conceptualization based on Gee's definition of literacy as being the mastery of a secondary discourse. In another project (Trier, Citation2003a), I introduced pre‐service teachers to the concept of 'techniques of power' through analyses of the film The Paper Chase (1973), analyses informed both by Gore's (Citation1998) articulation of eight 'techniques of power' and by certain elements from Foucault's (Citation1977) Discipline and Punish. For more examples, see Freedman (Citation1999), Freedman and Easeley (Citation2004), Paul (Citation2001) and Trier (Citation2001b, Citation2002, Citation2003bCitation). I will be using 'pre‐service teachers' and 'students' interchangeably throughout much of this article ('students' is one word and a stylistically smoother term than the phrase 'pre‐service teachers'). When, however, the pre‐service teachers are discussing their own students, I will use both terms in a way that makes the distinction. Course work for the program begins in the summer. During the fall semester, students take a full load of courses, and they also spend one day each week in the classroom of their mentor teachers, observing and being scaffolded into the classroom discourse in preparation for their student teaching (this fall semester classroom observation experience is officially called the 'practicum' experience and students remain in the same classroom with the same teacher during the spring semester student teaching experience). During the spring semester, pre‐service teachers teach full time for most of the semester and end with a two‐week post‐student teaching course with their methods professor. Then they finish with two summer capstone courses. One can access the front side of most any video box cover of a film by going to the Internet Movie Data Base web site (www.imdb.com). (The 'actual' video box covers have a front and back side, both sides include imagery and print text, the back side typically includes a summary of the plot of the film, but only the front side is available through the IMDB web site.) It is worth noting that this particular video box cover activity has been part of different projects over the years, and invariably the pre‐service teachers arrive at the same 'genre' conclusions described here. For an analysis similar to McCarthy's, see Gillborn's (Citation1995) analysis, from a UK context, of how 'inner city areas and populations have come to occupy an important place in Conservative ideology'. Gillborn explains how: ... [a] range of stereotypes has been attached such that 'inner‐city' is often used as a general signifier for lawlessness, immorality and decay. Indeed, inner‐cities are sometimes constructed in Conservative discourse as not really a part of Britain at all, at least not part of what genuinely marks that country out as special. (p. 25) All of these films are available to anyone (within and outside of the US) through Amazon.com. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJames Trier Footnote* * University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB 3500, Peabody Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. Email: [email protected]

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