I’m very happy that I did not choose to specialize in film theory. Teaching film sucks, people.
I have a three-week-long section on Spanish film in my Culture of Spain course, and I suffer. The movies I selected are wonderful, the students enjoy them greatly, we have intense discussions of the films, the students are really good at analyzing movies (which is obviously the result of the hard work conducted by two of my colleagues who do specialize in film criticism.)
Still, I suffer because the moralizing gets to me. The students moralize about film in the way they never do when we are working with literary texts. I’m into moralizing myself but never to the same degree as the students.
“If he is unemployed, how come he has money to buy cigarettes?”
“Why is he sitting in a bar instead of looking for a job?”
“Why is he smiling at his friend’s daughter? Doesn’t he know she is underage?”
“The 40-year-old male protagonist held a 15-year-old girl’s hand. Is he a pedophile?”
“Why is this woman letting a male colleague give her a lift home? Is she cheating on her husband?”
“Why is he using such bad language? Doesn’t he care there is a small boy listening to him?”
When I try to get the students to stop being judgmental for a few minutes and try to analyze the film as a work of art, I begin to sound to myself like a defender of alcoholism, smoking, pedophilia, adultery, profanity, and God knows what else.
If anybody has any subtle tricks they use to soften the students’ judgmental streak, please share.
Clarissa's Blog 
Ugh, I see this attitude all the time with conservative bloggers and any sort of popular entertainment. If a movie, music video, book or whatever shows anything that is the least bit off-color they go absolutely nuts about what a bad influence it is and this shows the decay of society or whatever. A great example would be this guy: http://www.mrc.org/taxonomy/term/21
Everything offends them, if it were up to them there would only be Disney movies at the cinemas and pop country on the radio. I’m against censorship, period, reading this crap makes me want to watch one of the Saw movies while listening to some vintage Slayer 😀 Sorry if I couldn’t answer your question, but I bet your students would like that guy if they think this way 🙂
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Cinema is a form of literary expression, so….
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This is a tough one. I don’t teach film but that sort of thing does happen with literature. So I try to steer towards why/how questions. So _how_ does the author make the character unappealing? How do other characters react to this “unappealing” character? Is this character _meant_ to be unappealing? Would s/he be unappealing in his/her historical moment or cultural context? What is the author/director trying to suggest by having the character engage in these behaviors? I make the students be specific and quote the text as much as possible. But I agree: the “moralizing” can be difficult.
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Those are good ideas. I also struggle with this.
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Holding hands = pedophilia ? Wow. It must be hard to take kids out in America.
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There is a sort of a very mild flirtation going on between the adult man and the teenage girl in the movie. However, as hateful as I find pedophilia, what happens in the movie is very far from being it.
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