Teachers

Shannon and Crawford (1998) identify a number of different representations of teachers as “caretakers,” “jailer,” “savior,” “drillmaster,” “keepers of wisdom,” “facilitator/guide-on-the-side,” “technician,” “agent of social change,” or “underpaid unionist,” arguing that each of these representations portray only a limited, partial perspective on the complex nature of teaching. For example, in the films — The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, To Sir, With Love, Up the Down Staircase, Dead Poet’s Society, Dangerous Minds, and Good Will Hunting, teachers are portrayed as totally dedicated, loner saviors of students who fight against the often repressive school to help their students. One limitation of this representation is that it “ultimately robs teachers of a life outside and inside their work and separates them from the rest of us who are charged with educating and socializing children” (Shannon & Crawford, 1998, p. 256).

Click here for a unit on “Images of Learning” for studying representations of secondary teachers.

This lesson cites an article by Gavin Hainsworth (1998) who identified a number of features of teachers in the following films: Good-bye, Mr. Chips (1939), Blackboard Jungle (1955), To Sir, with Love (1967), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Teachers (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), The Principal (1987), Stand and Deliver (1988), Lean on Me (1989), Dead Poets Society (1989), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Dangerous Minds (1995), Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995), The Substitute (1996), In & Out (1997), 187 (1997), Music of the Heart (2000), Pay it Forward (2000), Finding Forrester (2001):

Screen teachers begin as youthful and idealistic. Most teacher films are variations on the same story — beginning teachers launched feet first into the harsh reality of the new school. They are naive, idealistic and completely unprepared for what faces them. As Rick Dadier (Glenn Ford, Blackboard Jungle) states: “I want to teach. Most of us want to do something creative — a painter, writer, or engineer. But I thought if I could help to shape young minds, sort of sculpt young lives, that would be something.” After being hired on the spot to teach a class of academy kids that had already dispatched five substitutes, Dangerous Minds’ Michelle Pfeiffer’s character states, “I guess Ms. Shephard’s lesson plans will be in her desk.” Their dreams may even include innocent ambitions like Mr Chips’: “It means everything to be here, headmaster at Brookwood. That’s something to work for.” They believe that “students will raise to our expectations and desire,” Jaime Escalante (Edward Olmos, Stand and Deliver.)

Screen teachers get cynical advice instead of professional mentorship from their colleagues. This fact is revealed in the staff room or first staff meeting scene. Mr. Chips is told that “the boys are excited by fresh blood — mustn’t let them rag you — look out for drawing pins and tacks on your desk,” and he is asked if he is athletically inclined, “not that they ever become violent with weapons or anything.” A good model for the stateroom cynic is Jim Murdock (Blackboard Jungle). He is introduced working out on a punching bag, “getting into shape to defend myself for the fall term,” because his school is “the garbage can of the education system. You take the worst kids of most of the other schools, put them together here, and you get one big overflowing garbage can.” “You can’t teach logarithms to illiterates,” says one teacher in Stand and Deliver.

Screen teachers always get the worst class. This truism is timeless, from the balls of paper flying (Good-bye, Mr. Chips, 1939), through leather-jacket boppers (Blackboard Jungle, 1955), twisters and swingers (To Sir, with Love, 1967), to gangster rappers (Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, The Substitute, The Principal) — all long after the bell has rung. The desks are broken and vandalized, and the students are completely out of control. They are going through the file cabinets and the teacher’s desk (The Substitute). There aren’t enough seats (Stand and Deliver), which only partially explains why couples are sharing desks (Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Teachers, The Principal). Any attempt to teach the first class is shouted down by the students who throw baseballs (Blackboard Jungle), beer cans (The Substitute), or books (To Sir, with Love, Stand and Deliver, 187). The bell to end classes always rings a few minutes after the one to begin, leaving classroom and lesson in tatters.

Screen teachers can count on little or no support from the principal. If anyone is of less help to the screen teacher than his/ her class or colleagues, it is the screen principal. Principals are insulated within their office from the reality of the classroom and are incompetent, indifferent, or intimidating. Principal Eugene Horne (Teachers) runs back into his office when he sees two teachers fighting over the mimeograph machine, and he knows neither who does the schools filing nor where the files are kept. Principal Warneke (Blackboard Jungle) is more concerned with the softness of teacher Dadier’s voice than with the false allegations of teacher racism in his class or the repeated weapons infractions or the attempted rape of a staff member. “There is no discipline problem here, Mr. Dadier, not as long as I am principal here,” he says. A death threat against a teacher is swept under the carpet by Principal Claude Rolle (The Substitute) because without proof of a direct threat, he'd “have a lawsuit on his hands.” Where screen principals use discipline, they go to sociopathic extremes. Principals Joe Clark (Lean on Me), and Rick Latimer (James Belushi, The Principal) patrol their hallways with baseball bats (that they are often called upon to use) as well as other management tools like verbal intimidation and threats used on students and staff alike. It is no accident that Rick Latimer is promoted to principal of his inner-city school after taking a baseball bat to his ex-wife’s sports car—he has what it takes to turn a school around.

Screen teachers face an increasingly violent school environment in which they themselves must become violent to succeed. Mr. Dadier (Blackboard Jungle, 1955) fights attacks by his students in the alley and in his classroom, and he prevents a teacher rape in the library. Principal Rick Latimer (The Principal, 1987) not only has to fight an attack by five students in his library (whom he throws out the window), but breaks up a teacher rape by riding his Harley (labeled El Principal) to the rescue down the hallway. With bike and bat, he takes down the crack dealers around his school and engages in a battle to the death. The Substitute (1996) takes on KOD (The Kings of Destruction), Miami’s top gang, to avenge the intimidation of his teacher girlfriend, but to do so requires all of his mercenary training and the members of his paramilitary squad. The KOD are led by the schools principal, Mr. Rolle, who is using the school for a drug transit point. Principal Rolle shoots down students and teachers alike, saying to one young teacher, “I’m just doing you a favour” as he shoots him in the back. A final showdown with automatic weapons, grenades and bazookas is needed at the school to clean it up. The two remaining mercenaries resolve never to work at a school again.

For further reading on media representations of teachers:

Dalton, M. (2004). The Hollywood curriculum: Teachers in the movies. New York: Peter Lang.

Giroux, H. & Simon, R. (1989). Popular culture, schooling, and everyday life. New York: Bergin & Garvey.

Joseph, P., & Burnaford, G. (Eds.). (1993). Images of school teachers in twentieth-century America: Paragons, polarities, complexities. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Keroes, J. (1999). Tales out of school: Longing, and the teacher in fiction and film. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Weber, S., & Mitchell, C. (1995). That's funny, You don't look like a teacher!: Interrogating images and identity in popular culture. New York: Routledge.

Students

Students are also represented in often stereotypical ways in either pro-or anti-school.
And, news coverage of issues such as testing and accountability often represent teachers and students as “failing” or lacking motivation in schools, representations that do not account for a range of different aspects influencing student performance. For example, a study of media coverage of testing in North Carolina found that issues of testing were portrayed in one-dimensional ways.

Coaches

Coaches, as is the case with teachers, are often represented in films such as Hoosiers, Rocky/Rocky II, The Karate Kid, Cutting Edge, The Mighty Ducks, Hoop Dreams, or Vision Quest, as a driven, hard-line, authoritarian, who tries to discipline players, and is obsessed with winning at all costs, or as a compassionate, caring mentor (Crowe, 1998).

Lawyers

Lawyers are frequently portrayed in films such as A Civil Action, A Few Good Men, Amistad, Before and After, Class Action, Erin Brockovich, Guilty as Sin, Music Box, My Cousin Vinny, Philadelphia, Primal Fear, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Castle, The Client, The Devil’s Advocate, The Rainmaker, The Sweet Hereafter, The Winslow Boy, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill, Body Heat, Bonfire of the Vanities, Presumed Innocent, The Firm, Dead Man Walking, Ghosts of Mississippi, Rules of Engagement, The Shawshank Redemption as using the law to fight the traditional establishment or status quo in ways that serve clients whose rights or civil liberties have been violated or denied. However, in other cases, lawyers are portrayed as representing corporate interests against such clients.

Women lawyers are less frequent than male lawyers, but they are portrayed as assuming important roles in defending women’s rights and civil liberties.

Portrayals of television lawyers on Law & Order, Ally McBeal, The Practice, This Life often dramatize the role of lawyers as engaged in dramatic criminal court room practices, a representation that does not capture some of the less dramatic roles involved in practicing the law.

Police/criminals

Police and criminals have populated many prime-time detective/crime television programs such as Law & Order, Blue Heelers, NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street, Blue Murder, or Silent Witness. Criminal are often portrayed in films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Heat, The Godfather, Chopper, Bonnie and Clyde, Sexy Beast or on television in The Sopranos, as engaged in practices that violate social norms in ways that are appealing to viewers, but still represent illegal practices. Similarly, there is a fascination with portrayals of serial killers in films such as Silence of the Lambs, Natural Born Killers, Summer of Sam, Manhunter, Seven, American Psycho, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Copycat, Hannibal.

Students could examine the ways in which the roles of the law enforcer and the law violator are often dramatized in ways that blur the distinction between the two. The police may resort to the same violent means to stop a criminal and the criminal may employ detective work to allude the police. Both may subscribe to the same cynical attitude regarding the level of institutional corruption.

Representations of crime or criminals are often constituted by discourses of race in which criminals are often shown as African American males. Crime is often associated with racial stereotypes, assuming that, for example, black males are continually perpetuating crime. The video clip from Framing an Execution explores issues around Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist on Pennsylvania’s death row in connection with the death of a police office.

Doctors/health issues

Doctors have also frequently appeared in prime-time medical drama shows such as Casualty, Chicago Hope, City of Angels, Crossing Jordan, Diagnosis Murder, Doc, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Emergency!, ER, Gideon’s Crossing, Holby City, L. A. Doctors, Peak Practice, St. Elsewhere, and Strong Medicine. On these shows, they are often represented as, similar to the representations of teachers, as saviors or miracle workers who pull through in the end to cure a patient. As the same time, their own emotional or personal lives become involved in their work, adding to the dramatic elements of these programs.

Doctors or reporters posing as “medical experts” are also represented on television news are providing medical advice or summaries of current medical research. These representations, which have received increased attention on television news, reflect an increased attention to health issues by the viewing public. In some cases, however, the information provided may be superficial, or, as in the case with some Internet sites, misleading or inaccurate. For example, one study of the media representation of breast and bottle feeding (Henderson, Kitzinger, & Green, 2000), found that breastfeeding was often portrayed as embarrassing, difficult or funny, while bottle feeding is presented as the normal and socially acceptable.

Students could examine how a particular medical or health issue is represented on dramas or the news in terms of the complexity or accuracy of the representation.

Module 5: Word document

What are Media Representations?

Why Study Media Representations?

Studying Media Representations

Methods for Analyzing Media Representations

Representation and Censorship

Representations and Public Relations / Promotions

Studying Representations of Social Types or Groups

Representations of Femininity

Masculinity

Masculinity and Sports

Gays / Lesbians

Racial and Ethnic Groups

Class

Representations of Different Age Groups or Occupations

Occupations

Institutions

Instructional Activity

References

Teaching Activities